{travel} portland thru instagram

I travelled to Portland a few weeks ago. The purpose of the travel was for pure exploration and to be adventurers. To go to a city where we didn’t know anyone, sightsee and explore a new place and check out the food scene.

See, my high school friends and I all love to travel and we all travelled as a group to NYC in 2004 and Seattle in 2009. But as we got older, got married and started having kids, it has become more challenging to plan a group trip together. But somehow we made it happen.

This was my first time being away from baby, so it was a big deal for me. We planned this trip back in November, so as the travel date got closer, I felt more anxious and nervous about being apart from him.  I came close (twice) to calling the airline and changing my return flight home to an earlier time, but glad that I stayed with the original plan. So hubby and baby had their own fun adventure while I was gone, and I had a great time with my friends in Portland.

Portland is such a beautiful city and I hope to be back again, hopefully in warmer season and with the whole family. Our weekend getaway was only for 3 days, so with limited time, we did our best to visit a variety of places. I took a ton of pictures from my DSLR camera, and hope to find time to blog about them soon. But for now, here are the pictures from my Iphone and instagram.

We visited a lot of cafes and I enjoyed my lattes. This is something I don’t do at home, I’m happy making coffee at home, but when I’m traveling, I like to visit cafes where the locals hangout and just relax and observe.

It was cold during the trip, but we craved ice cream when we saw Salt & Straw. I had the Pear & Blue Cheese flavor as well as the Honey Lavender flavor. I really wanted to taste all the flavors but limited myself to two.

We also ventured away from the city and visited Multnomah Falls and the surrounding area. (Twilight fans anyone?) It was such a beautiful day and we lucked out on the weather, since it had been raining the week prior.

Our private food tour ended up stretching to 4 hours and included 7 stops. We finished with very fully bellies.

We had a huge group, flew in from 3 different airports, 2 rental cars, several hotel rooms, too many layers of clothing to count…..so glad we made this trip happen and I was able to catch up with everyone. I’m grateful for my husband who watched our little guy at home. This trip gave me a new appreciation of mommy time and friends time.

As they say, Keep Portland Weird (we saw these signs everywhere). We loved it just the way it is.