OREGON
Oregon Road Trip - Day 5
I woke up bright and early today to go down to breakfast at 7 AM (totally unnecessary it turns out, it goes on until 9 AM). I had my coffee and food and hung out downstairs briefly. It was pretty simple fair, like continental but a little extra effort in the hot food.
I was very preoccupied with running late. I had about an hour and a half drive to Portland and I wanted to be on time to pick up my boyfriend from the airport at noon. The previous night the bartender had warned it could snow on the road today so I wanted to account extra time for that.
I wish in retrospect I had slept in an extra thirty minutes because I was way too early!
I first drove up to the Astoria Column. It’s talked about quite a bit in the visiting Astoria guides I was reading while planning. And it is totally worth going to! It’s up on a big hill and has wonderful 360 views of the entire city and surrounding area.
There is a trail here you can use to walk instead of drive called Cathedral Tree Trail. I only found it when I was already there. I considered doing the walk because I had the extra time but it’s kind of long and reviews online mentioned it being steep and muddy.
I was feeling a bit cold and lazy so I decided to skip it and just move on.
I got gas and some more snacks in town. It’s weird having someone else pump your gas for you! I was still going to be very early to Portland so I picked out two random state parks from Google maps to pop in at:
- Bradley State Scenic Viewpoint - basically just a bathroom and a view of the river
- Paradise Point State Park - has a campsite but it’s right next to a freeway
So basically neither were much to write home about. I didn’t mind getting the bathroom breaks though, and I did briefly cross into Washington.
It didn’t end up snowing too much if at all on the drive over. I just ended up parking in the cellphone lot and writing in my journal until my boyfriend landed!
We headed straight to lunch at Nong’s Khao Man Gai. This place showed up on Portland visiting guides and was recommended by my coworkers as well. I don’t eat Thai chicken and rice very often (I’m a pad thai basic bitch if I’m being honest) so I don’t have much to compare it to but I did appreciate how tender the chicken was and how soft the rice was.
We got an Airbnb in the Nob Hill neighborhood. I thought it might be easier to keep our car further out from downtown. I didn’t really realize Nob Hill is its own mini San Francisco. First of all, parking was quite difficult, even with our car being on the neighborhood parking pass.
Second, there were a bunch of restaurants and stores in our Airbnb’s neighborhood that are literally the same group of restaurants and stores in my boyfriend’s neighborhood in San Francisco. It was a bit uncanny actually!
Once we were settled in a bit, I took a 2 hour nap! All the beer and driving had finally caught up to me.
For dinner we kept going down the list of recommended restaurants and headed to Grassa, right down the street. I got the pesto and my boyfriend got the cacio e pepe. I liked mine well enough but I don’t think it’s really to my taste of how I usually eat pasta. In the sense it was a bit salty and al dente.
I will say getting a nice dinner out with wine and having it only cost 30 dollars for the two of us is pretty amazing!
The night turned into a classic datenight and we went to see Everything, Everywhere, All at Once at the theater in the neighborhood. It was a really good movie and I actually haven’t been to a theater to see a movie SINCE COVID! So it was nice to get that normal experience again.
Finally we walked over to Salt & Straw for a nightcap ice cream cone. I have no idea how we fit it in after all the popcorn and pasta. I didn’t mention Salt & Straw on the itinerary because we have them in San Francisco and they’re definitely not a Portland thing. The ice cream is really good though.