Since I’ve traveled a few times for work (July ’14 – Chicago area, August ’14 – Seattle), I figured it would be awesome to document some of the things that I am learning about travel since it’s all new to me. That and I think it’s nice to remember the cool things about these places that are not work related!
Scheduling
I found out Sept 17th that I was going to need to travel to Portland for work the week of Sept 22nd. My first thought was “wow Portland!” and my second thought was “holy s**t that’s next week!”
It’s worth mentioning that typically when people where I work travel there’s usually one person who handles finding the hotel, rental car, etc. because it’s just easier this way. This time around the duties fell to me, so that meant that I would be setting up our stay.
My first stop was booking the flight (Delta) and car (National), which were pretty painless, thank goodness. As for the hotel, the client luckily has agreements with hotels in Portland because they frequently have people traveling, so I just had to call around and see what hotels were a part of the agreement and if they had rooms. Seems pretty simple, right?
Well, after over an hour of calling around all I found were hotels that were booked solid, no longer had their discounted rooms available, OR they did have discounted rooms but didn’t have enough rooms (we needed three). (Apparently there was a corporate event, unrelated to us, that was compounding the difficulty that I expect I would have ordinarily had with such short notice.) I was beginning to get discouraged. Then I thought maybe I should skip the nice hotels with the agreement and just find a cheap hotel? Always an option… but a less fun one and why not stay at an awesome hotel if I can?
Finally, after over two hours total of calling around (I’m dedicated), I find Hotel Lucia. All I have to say is thank goodness for them. Seriously. The woman I spoke with on the phone, Caitlen, was absolutely wonderful. They had the rooms and, not only that, she offered to have them empty out the honor bar so I could use the minifridge/freezer to store the food I would be bringing with me. (I have an allergy to gluten and thus far have been bringing food with me for travel to ensure that I have something to eat.) I was SO relieved that everything would be taken care of! She was so great handling my questions and setting everything up that I made sure to pass along a feedback email to her manager :)
The flight that wasn’t
Fastforward to the day of the flight. Well, I’m still new to traveling so I was up late the night before being a little anxious and overpreparing a little. I eventually fall asleep at around 2 AM for a “nap” before intending to head over to the airport at 5:30 AM.
Except I slept through my alarm. I was woken up by my fiancée’s “deaf kid” alarm (read: really loud and bright). My fiancée’s alarm was set to go off at 7:30 AM. My plane left at ~7:15 AM.
Cue instant, and I mean immediate, panic. Tears. Hyperventilating. I didn’t know what to do. Call the airport. Try to be coherent. Have my fiancée talk to them instead because I can’t manage that.
Delta was super nice about it though and changed my would-be morning flight to the evening flight. I was a little sad that I missed an opportunity to be in Portland for the day, but honestly I spent the better part of the day to retain my calm… losing periodically… so I really didn’t focus too much on that.
The flights themselves were pretty uneventful. For the first flight I sat next to a really tall guy (6’8″, or a little over 2m) who was traveling to visit family in Oklahoma and on the second/connecting flight I was next to a Social Security attorney who was severely jet lagged and still had many fights to go.
I finally make it to Portland at around 11 PM local time. I go to pick up the car and found they had no more cars in the car class for my reservation, so I received a free upgrade to a silver 2015 Cadillac SUV. Holy. S**t.
The rental. Oh yeah.
So here I am, incredibly tired but excited to be driving a 2015 Cadillac. I get to the hotel to find that my room had been upgraded to the Superior King. Not only is my room beautiful with a huge king bed, two of my walls – if I’m on the bed, the one to my left and the one at the foot of the bed – are entirely windows. I can see the Portland skyline! I slept every night with the curtains entirely open and so that when I opened my eyes in the morning I am met with the Portland cityscape. SO. MUCH. AWESOME.
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| Good morning Portland! | Nice comfy big bed | Comfy chair |
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| Pretty bathroom! | Hallway! | My room! |
I can only imagine the universe is trying to teach me that good things happen even when you screw up and sleep through your flight. I am loving this lesson.
Food
I will start this by saying: I love food. My #GlutenFreeTraveler hashtag that I use when I take photos of what I’m eating may give that away. Even still, I wanted to explicitly state: I love food. Food and I are frenemies. Either I eat the food and I am happy or I am surprised and my body is angry because I’ve consumed an allergen (gluten). I avoid the latter situation like the plague. Mainly because I feel like I’ve contracted the plague for a good few hours if I mess up.
Daily Breakfasts at Imperial
Hotel Lucia owns the restaurant next door, called Imperial. I ate breakfast there every day. Delicious, delicious breakfasts.
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| Tuesday: Goat Cheese Omelette, mushrooms, leeks; side of potatoes | Wednesday: Omelette of the Day (beef, jalapeño peppers, potato, cheese, sour cream); side of potatoes | Thursday: Imperial Pastrami Hash poached eggs, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, arugula. Pic does NOT do it justice. |
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| Friday: Ham and cheese omelette; side of potatoes | Friday coffee | Saturday: Dungeness crab omelette; side of potatoes and bacon |
The staff was incredibly accommodating when it came to ensuring that my food was not cross contaminated. I was greatly appreciative!
Dinners
Tuesday: Swagat
Since I arrived so late Monday, I just headed up to my lovely room and managed to have the thought “this is a really beautiful view” for about 5 seconds before passing out on my bed. Needless to say, I didn’t go have dinner or anything interesting.
After a long day with our client, we headed to Swagat in Beaverton for dinner. Their reviews were fantastic and seemed to indicate that they could safely prepare meals for those with allergies or intolerances to gluten. The food was beautiful:
Beautiful, no?
Unfortunately, I did end up mildly symptomatic for a few hours after eating. I’m not sure if the food was lightly cross contaminated or if there was something else going on. (I say lightly because my reaction was extremely mild, so I’m assuming there was only a very small amount of whatever the problem was.) For those without food issues, I’d say this is a pretty safe bet either way.
Wednesday: Corbett Fish House
This was a truly amazing dinner. Since the restaurant is 99% gluten free (read: they have the option to purchase oyster crackers and such that are packaged and not gluten free, everything else is), I could order pretty much whatever I wanted. I was so excited because this never happens to me!
We split some delicious appetizers: sweet potato fries and deep fried cheese curds.
You can practically smell the fried cheese curds just by looking at this, can’t you?
Absolutely. Amazingly. Delicious. If you are ever in the Portland area for any reason whatsoever, even if you have no food issues at all, go eat these cheese curds. Seriously.
As a main course I tried the yellow perch fish & chips:
They were good, but I think having the cheese curds first almost ruined the main course – I could have easily eaten just cheese curds. And now I’m thinking about them and making myself hungry. I wonder if Corbett would be willing to ship to the East Coast…
Friday: Departure
(Yes, skipping Thursday for now. You’ll see why in a moment.)
For my last dinner in Portland I decided to take “Fish Friday” (yes, I know it’s not Lent) to a whole new level and try some “Asian Fusion”. There is nothing comparable to this loveliness where I live, so I am incredibly glad that I did. Of course, due to lack of exposure I had no idea what to order – so I used my tried and true method of asking the person “behind the counter” (the waiter). He was able to tell me about everything on the menu, from where it was sourced to how it was prepared. I am absolutely impressed at his level of knowledge regarding the food.
I thought it could get no better. And then I actually tried the food:
Specifically, at the server’s recommendation I tried the dungeness crab fried rice and big eye tuna oshi. The tuna was superb, but that fried rice was heavenly. I half-joked that I would eat myself poor on that rice if it were an option, which I suppose makes it a good thing that there isn’t someplace similar local to where I live.
As an added bonus Departure is on the top (9th) floor of The Nines, so if you are lucky enough to be seated either facing or next to one of their windows you will be treated to an amazing view of the city.
Most amazing dinner of the week award goes to Andina and Hotel Lucia
For Thursday’s dinner I was unsure where would be best for us to try, so I asked our concierges Coby and Nick at Hotel Lucia if there were any places they could recommend within walking distance that could cater to a gluten allergy. I was pretty sure I was asking for nothing short of a miracle, so imagine my surprise when they were able to produce a list without batting an eye. After some discussion, my coworkers and I ended up choosing to head over to Andina and one of the concierges kindly offered to call in our reservation so that a table would be available by the time we walked there.
The food was wonderful! For dinner I ordered a virgin mojito and the carapulcra con puerco. We also had a small salad that I can’t recall the name of that had corn, tomato, octopus, and potato I believe. It was delicious! After dinner we were surprised with dessert, courtesy of our concierge from Hotel Lucia, Nick. They sent over the alfajores (a gluten free Peruvian cookie scented with key lime and filled with manjar blanco) with two glasses of chicha morada (for my coworker and I who don’t drink) and a glass of port. Everything was delicious and the dessert was a wonderful surprise!
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| Lovely place settings | Virgin Mojito | “Nameless” (I forgot) salad |
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| Carapulcra con Puerco | Alfajores | Chicha Morada |
Seeing Portland – Friday/Saturday
Friday was pretty laid back and I was able to get around and see things. I tried some fresh juice at Greenleaf Juice Company – it was great! This was near a Portland tourist center/bus stop, so I went in there to look and bus schedules and try to plan to see the Zoo, Japanese Gardens, and Rose Gardens in one day. Unfortunately, the bus system in that area was under construction, so I would have had to walk between the Zoo and the Japanese/Rose gardens, which would have eaten up a lot of time. I decided I should really just pick up the car and suck up the parking.
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| Beautiful fountains around the city | Most beautiful Starbucks I’ve ever seen | Brick dedications |
Walking back to the hotel, I spent some time in Teuscher chocolates, which are my new favorite chocolates ever. Ever. Ever. Before bringing some home, I tried a milk chocolate champagne truffle, a dark chocolate jasmin truffle, and a milk chocolate hazelnut log. I brought home a couple milk chocolate champagne truffles and a couple nougat truffles for myself, one each of a dark and milk chocolate truffle for a coworker of mine who is a fellow chocolate lover, and a pair of milk chocolate champagne truffles for someone else. It was an expensive chocolate day. I have no regrets.
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Since I was feeling a little loaded on chocolate, I decided to try some coffee at Public Domain (also en route to the hotel). My body doesn’t really tolerate caffeine well, so I went for one of their lower caffeine options. No regrets. The location itself was really nice and soothing – if I wasn’t so determined to see other things before I left I would have stayed for a bit!
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I grabbed the car and drove out to see the Zoo and Japanese Gardens. I decided it would be best to see the Zoo first since I’d probably take my time walking around the gardens. The Zoo itself was pretty standard, with quite a bit of construction, but someone there is clearly paying a lot of attention to their landscaping:
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All in all it was a beautiful place to just walk around. Though this was nothing to the Japanese Gardens. I would live there if I could. It was so beautiful and isolated from the city. The koi in the ponds were lovely and the entire experience was incredibly serene. If you just walked around without taking time to photograph and be in the moment, you could probably walk the Japanese Gardens in about 30 minutes. I stayed around a bit, though, so I could really appreciate the beauty I was experiencing.
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This all took me into dinner time and I realized I had completely neglected lunch. Again, no regrets, but I figured I should probably feed myself soon. On my way to Departure (above) I stopped at Powells to see what everyone was on about. I now understand what everyone is on about. If I lived near Portland, I’d never have want or need of a book ever again. I’d never (well, maybe rarely) know the pain of wanting to feel a books weight and love in my arms and have it not be present. This store is larger than most libraries I’ve been in. It was my second favorite place to be (following the Japanese Gardens). I sat and read a Neil Gaiman book while I waited on my dinner reservation at Departure. Eventually I realized I really had to go, so I booked it (pun intended) over there.
Since I flew out Saturday morning I didn’t do too much in the city itself. I did walk over to Voodoo Donuts since I had couple friends who accepted my “let me live vicariously through you – try Voodoo and let me know how it is” offer. They must have been good, as one friend stated that I was a “chief officer of international doughnut cartel”. I think I shall keep this title.
After I grabbed the donuts, I was able to walk the Portland Saturday Market for a bit and enjoyed talking with some of the local artisans before checking out and driving to the airport. The flight back itself was mostly uneventful, except when I initially arrived I left my cell phone in the car, despite checking it over twice. As I ran back to the car to get it, all I could think was “this is the real reason people leave so early to get to the airport!”
Photo album of Portland trip on Imgur
Even though there’s no write-up for the Seattle trip, it does have a photo album.
The Coding Mant.is 