Hello! It feels like ages since I last posted. May is flying by so quickly and alas it is almost June! How is it that Aly and Noah are graduating from Kindergarten in three weeks? It seems like their school year started not so long ago. All Mommies are talking about summer camp plans and that very organized ones already booked their kids into a program or two. Well, I am no way one of those people. Some things will never change no matter how hard I try! I will be scrambling to find something last minute, but that is for me to stress over later!
My good friend Jen and I went on a girls weekend away trip in mid May to Portland. I was very much looking forward to this trip because both of us are so busy with family, we hardly have much time to chat without being interrupted by our children or schedule. The last trip we took together was in March last year, so it was long overdue. We always have tons of kids-free fun, but we learned from the previous trips that we should avoid overeating and go easy on walking (let's say I almost threw up in Jen's car for eating too much and our husbands had to baby us after the trip, since we were too tired from walking all day). We were skeptical if we could stick by our words, but we were too excited to care.
After checking into the hotel near downtown, we walked over to Washington Ave. where there are rows of foot carts (food vendors on trucks) are located. I really wanted to try a Guam food cart which was featured on TV, but that one was a bit far from the main part of downtown. Maybe next time! There were many vendors to choose from and we walked around to get the sense of what they are. Jen picked a famous fish and chips shop and I settled on a Greek cuisine. It was cheap and delicious! I wonder when Seattle is going to have a centralized food cart spots in downtown. I started seeing more trucks around town, but nothing like in Portland.
We walked around town a bit and shopped for clothes for us. Not for kids but US! I rarely get in a mood to shop for my own clothes but without being pressed on time and no nagging children around, it was a perfect situation (or a perfect storm). No sales tax in Oregon helped, too, of course! It is now certain that 80s fashion came back in trend. As survivors of 80s fashion, it made us laugh to see balloon pants and Guns and Roses T-shirts at the store.
We were hoping to go to Pok Pok, a Thai restaurant that won James Beard Award, for dinner but the wait was two hours long. So, we decided to walk over to the noodle house owned by the same chef a few blocks down the road. We were glad we did! The shaved pan fried rice noodles were delicious! We also had a dish called Dragon's Egg, which is a duck egg yolk buried into ground pork. It was delicious and I vowed to try making the same thing at home. I am sure Mike won't mind it. The best part was finding Salt and Straw, our favorite ice cream shop on the same street as we headed out to the car. They make the best unique ice creams in the whole Pacific Northwest in my opinion. I had to stick with my favorite, pear with blue cheese ice cream where as Jen tried dandelion ice cream with ricotta cheese. Sounds strange? I beg you to try it! They are so good, I dream about it.
We shopped some more the next day at the Premium Outlet mall the next day before heading home. We did it!! We didn't overeat or exhaust ourselves! We did spend a bit on ourselves, but we saved on our food bill, right? I am looking forward to our next trip next year. We love our family, but sometimes we need to get away to refresh! Thanks for the best Mother's Day gift ever, Mike! (Yes, it was on the Mother's Day weekend!) Now I am ready to be the sweet Mommy and wife you all want me to be. Maybe... for a little bit...
No comments:
Post a Comment