Our First Visitors in Portland

July and August have been awesomely filled with friends and family visiting us here in Portland. We have been very blessed with having so many people be able to come enjoy our new city with us and it has been filled with tons of fun outings. We are so thankful so many people could come out to see our new home so soon after getting settled in here.

Here are a few pictures and recaps of some of the memories!

One of my best friends from San Diego, Tiffany Sepp, came to visit in early July and we had a blast. It was a quick 24 hour trip but we crammed lots of great girl time in. I got to show her the city, we did some wine tasting in beautiful wine country (Argyle Winery & Erath Winery), had an amazing lunch at Dundee Bistro, and got great girl hang out time at our house that night.

Just about three weeks later my parents stopped by for a few nights with their close friends, Don and Patty Simons. They were doing their summer road trip in the motorhome and stopped off in Portland to spend a few days with us. They parked their motor home right out on the street and played like the "Clampets!" We really had a great time with them and did lots during the three days they were here. We went wine tasting at Willakenzie Estate, which is our favorite. (It's also the one I met my friend Mary at previously. Talked about it in previous BLOG) Then we went to Rex Hill Winery and loved that too.
Then we took a ride on the Portland Spirit Boat Cruise (same one Derek and I did when we first moved here) and they all loved it.
Derek was finally able to meet up with us for happy hour & appetizers at Departure, the restaurant on top of the Nine's Hotel. It had a beautiful view (15th floor) but it wasn't quite our scene. We still had a lovely time regardless. We then went to El Gaucho for dinner afterwards which was awfully hilarious seeing that we were all in shorts, tank tops, sandals, and had obviously been on a boat earlier. Everyone in the restaurant had tuxedos on. We were going to leave but they insisted we stay...so we decided to eat dinner off their happy hour menu in the bar area. After awhile we got over the fact that compared to our server we looked like a bunch of bums. When we left the hostess gave us a $25 gift certificate (since we were new to the area) to come back and have dinner in the restaurant. That was pretty awesome!
We also played a little Boche Ball on the lawn up the street from us in front of the new townhomes they are building. We brought the dogs and Bear had a blast running after the balls and moving them. It sure made the game more interesting!
Four days later the Clarks arrived! They stayed for a bit longer so we had time to do a few more things. There is so much to do here though, that we still didn't get to do even half of what we would love to show everyone. It really is an amazing city filled with tons of places to see and things to do.
The first night they were here we went to a cute little restaurant down the street from our house called Hall Street Grill. We had an amazing dinner followed by some amazing desserts that were all locally grown and handmade. Delicious!! The following day we met up with Derek and did a tour of the hospital and then had lunch with him in a cafe there. That night we had a spectacular dinner at Portland City Grill (30th floor!) and the view was absolutely stunning.
We also took them to encounter Voodoo donuts since Jane is such a donut lover. She was very pleased with the outcome. We even acted more like locals and ordered a dozen individually instead of having them pick the donuts out for us. We also found a wall outside of Voodoo that describes the theme of Portland very well!
I also took Jane and Jim on the Portland Spirit since it is now one of our staples to take people on. The water, the piano player, the ambiance - it's just really awesome.
We had dinner at our new favorite place called The Raccoon Lodge. They have a picnic area outside where we can bring the dogs with us AND they have sour beers. Our new love!
We also went to the Bite of Oregon Festival. There are tons of restaurants there with all the food and drinks to sample you could want. It was great fun!

We had such a great time with all of our visitors and look forward to many returning trips as well as new visitors!! We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends and also to be able to share such an amazing city with them that we can finally call home.