Portland Trip....

It was a weekend of Books, Fabulous Food & Belly Dance....

My mini-vaca was great fun! Luckily the weather just knew I wasn't happy with the idea of 53 degree highs so they accommodated my desires and warmed up a bit.

Davina and I flew Thursday afternoon on a full but problem free flight out of San Jose on Southwest's new and improved on boarding number system. This so called New & Improved boarding number system may prevent some from getting in line ages before the plane arrives but now, instead, everyone is concerned that they are in the right order... I say whatever...

Anyhoo, we arrived on time found our luggage on the carousel and headed to the car rentals. After a little conversation I was doing a mini 2 minute belly dance for our customer service rep and our Economy car was upgraded to a Subaru Outback (what a nice car & even better surprise!) And then we were off to my sister Sara's house, she was letting us stay there that night, we had a fantastic feast of a dinner before turning in... big local/tourist day ahead!

FRIDAY - After a lazy wake up and a late breakfast/lunch we headed downtown -in the cool outback - and went to Powells. If you've never been Powell's Books is a huge multi floor, full city block of a book store. Each section is a color and it's kinda fun to get separated and try to find the rest of your group....
Sara sold some books, Davina found stuff she wanted and I found two recorded books that I wanted (gotta love Portland's no tax!).

We did some other window shopping in the area which was nice, found a great sale at one shop, and then decided it was time for dinner and there was Jake's Famous Crawfish. Sara had heard of Jake's but hadn't ever been there... So we went. It was 'old school' with white linens and dark mahogany wood and the food was delish! I practically licked the sauce off the plate after I ate all of the salmon and halibut saute with wild mushrooms in a sherry cream sauce - YUM!!! Then we each did the dangerous thing of ordering dessert - I ordered the Trio: which was three ramekins of berry cobbler w/ ice cream, chocolate pot d'creme and creme brule. It was fantastic but just put me over the top full!

After taking Sara back home Davina and I headed to Hillsboro where the Belly Dance Festival was and where we would be staying for the rest of the weekend with Kathi, who we were there to help vend at her booth. We went to the hotel got our room info and made our way to the elevator which was right next to the hot tub ~ said hot tub was full, and I mean FULL, of male high school water polo players. Davina and I couldn't help but feast our eyes with the young-man-hot-water-buffet while we waited for the elevator. Once in the privacy of the elevator we both just looked at one another and exclaimed "OMG!!!" practically in unison.

SATURDAY - up early to get the booth set up at the Belly Dance Event we made a quick trip for groceries. At the County Fair Complex the Belly Dance Festival is in a main building and in an attached building area there was a 'Husband's Nightmare Bazaar' - basically it was bazaar with vintage home-ware, carved wood animals, homemade soap, and

loads of other crap.... not anything at all Belly Dance but they had an Italian Ice vendor so we made a quick trip to get some!

On Saturday Sara drove out to see me dance, which was great fun ~ I haven't watched the DVD yet to see how it looks... hopefully it's good, it felt pretty good. Sara, who hadn't seen me dance in quite a while liked it and when a sister likes it that's good - because friends may soften a bad review but a sibling is the first to tell you if you suck.

The festival somehow got WAY off schedule and instead of ending at 9pm it ended at 11.30pm! We did not stay to the bitter end and escaped to go rest our feet and backs from a day of standing on cement floors and then went to dinner.

SUNDAY - wasn't quite as early a morning and Davina, who went down for the Breakfast Express earlier than we did, called to let us know that the water polo team was down stairs in case we wanted to partake in the young male testosterone fest... so we headed down for yogurt and tea.

The rest of the Belly Dance Festival was nice, I made time for henna and got to see a few dancers but mostly I worked at Kathi's booth. Davina and I had a 7pm-ish flight so we had to leave before the end so we helped partially breakdown before we left.

The drive to the airport, return of the rental car and flight were all uneventful. Once back home Davina and I wanted to get a late dinner and headed to a Denny's only to find that there were about 5 police cars in the parking lot which was odd... and as I walked up one police officer told me that the Denny's was closed (I really thought he was joking) but it turns out that the place had just been robbed and police were dusting for prints and the Denny's was closed until further notice so Davina and I each went our own ways home where I had a couple pieces of cold meat for dinner... not nearly quite as yummie as the amazing foods I ate over the weekend. That's okay it was a great trip!