THE VACATION THUS FAR

I have a travel journal I take with me on trips and I usually do a pretty good job of writing in it every day, but this trip I have written nothing. Which is a shame, because I don't know how I'm going to remember everything. Our trip really has centered around food. We had breakfast on our first full day here at Byways, a great little diner in the Pearl district. I've never seen so many blueberries inside a pancake in all my life. After that, Chris and I just wandered around downtown. We went into Powell's Bookstore and spent nearly two hours just roaming amongst all the books. It was the most awesome bookstore that even sold Obama swag (I love this town!). I found an Anthropologie store. I had only ever seen this place online and to actually go in a store and touch all the beautiful clothes, brought tears to my eyes. As God is my witness, I will have clothes from Anthropologie one day! Day two of vacation I went to a vinyasa class at Yoga Bhoga. It was a really great class. The studio was small and intimate. The class was exactly what I needed, challenging enough to make me sweat a little, but slow enough to have time to just be in the poses. But I will say that four minutes holding warrior I makes for some pretty sore arms the next day. After yoga, we picked up Amy and Brian from the airport and headed back downtown to peruse more shops, mostly vintage clothing shops. They have the best used clothing stores here. I haven't bought anything yet, but I have my eyes peeled for something really great. That night, we ate dinner at a place recommended by one of our friends called Paradox. Nothing, I repeat nothing, on the menu contained any meat products... at all. I think we spent fifteen minutes trying to choose something to eat because we have never been anywhere where we had so much to choose from vegetarian wise. The food was outstanding!

Yesterday was road tripping day. We drove out to Newport to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium and eat a picnic lunch near the beach. We spent forever walking along the beach picking up shells, rocks, and bits of wood. I found a starfish, but he was still kind of moving around, so I scooted him closer to the water and left him behind. It didn't take me long to fill my hands with sea swag, really wishing I had taken a bucket. I got to a point were I would point at things sticking out of the sand and make Chris pick it up and carry it. I could have spent all day there. We then headed down the coastal highway towards the Sea Lion caves and we actually saw sea lions swimming around in the water. The drive down that highway is breathtakingly beautiful. We couldn't get over it! The Pacific Ocean was right there! After the sea lion caves we headed east to Eugene so we could eat dinner at the Pizza Research Institute for the best pizza I've ever had in my life. I'm not making that up. Chris and I ordered the Chef's special (changes daily). The pizza had squash, broccoli, corn (on the cob), apricots, curried cauliflower, spinach, black olives, mushrooms, onions... I think that's it. I know you're thinking "apricots on a pizza, yuck", but oh no... very yum. After stuffing our faces on impossible pizza combination, we headed back to our hotel room in Portland concluding the longest day and sleeping like babies.

What's in store for today I wonder?