Last weekend, I went on a trip with my friends to Portland, Oregon.  It was a pretty short 4 day trip filled with local attractions, food, donuts, hiking, wine tasting, coffee and lots of Boss Monster.  Portland is a pretty green place.  There’s a lot of trees everywhere.  It’s also very walkable too with light rails running all over the place.  One thing I noticed that there are very few tall buildings.  I think most of the buildings were no more than 10 stories high.  Looking at the map, there’s quite a lot of green spaces/parks in Portland. Reading about things to do, outdoor activities like hiking were at the top of the list on many websites.

We went to the Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden, Willamette Valley for wine tasting, and Latourell Falls hike.  Regarding the falls hike, I wanted to go to Multnomah Falls hike but in mid 2017, the Eagle Creek Fire wiped out pretty much all the popular trails along the Oregon side of the Columbia River.  Latourell was the only falls hike that wasn’t destroyed.  I love waterfall hikes so these other hiking trails will have to be hiked at a later date.  We also didn’t make it out to the Oregon coast or Tillamook Cheese/Ice Cream tour.

Aside from the hikes, I wanted to go to Portland for their coffee.  It’s one of the centers of what is known as the third wave of coffee mainly because of Stumptown Roasters.  According to this history of coffee waves article, Stumptown is one of the three roasters that managed to grow and become nationally recognized.  They’ve expanded to have coffee sit down stores in select cities. Intelligentsia and Counter Culture are the other two roasters.  I’ve had select Intelligentsia roasted beans but have not yet had seen Counter Culture beans to buy ever since I subscribed to Angel’s Cup.  What did I drink?  Across the 4 days, I went to Courier Coffee, World Cup Coffee, Sisters Coffee, and of course Stumptown Coffee.  There’s so many more roasters to try!

Next time!  Waterfall Hiking! Coffee! Oregon Coast!