Portland Oregon Day One: Wineries, Bagels, and Race for a Good Seat

The Pacific Northwest has always been a place that fascinated me. It's really far north, but it's not really cold. I think it's a jet stream or something. Anyway, this was the case when I visited this winter.  The temperature was in the mid forties, which to me was really warm because in Michigan I had just experienced -4 degree weather.  It was wet and overcast, but it felt clean and cozy. Portland is beautiful down town. There are bridges everywhere crossing the river  running through the city. My cousin Anna and her husband live in Portland so, I was lucky to have a nice place to stay.

Photo credit: Anna  

  

For breakfast my first morning we went to a place called Bowery Bagels. We had Truffle Salt bagels, which are bagels that have sea salt and truffle oil on them. Did I mention that Oregon is a great place to grow truffles? smelled amazing. They had a ton of different spreads, BOM.com (Bacon, Onion, Mushroom), Salmon, roasted vegetable, Kimchi, plain, and then they also have weekly specials.

We went to couple of different wineries after Breakfast. The Pacific NorthWest is an ideal place for growing grapes and therefore making wine, the time of year I visited the grapes were obviously not on the vine because it is winter. We went to the Sokol Blossor and Argyle Wineries in Dundee, which is a major part of wine country in Portland.  We taste tested many kinds of wines. There were bubbly ones, red, white, and rosé. They were sweet, dry, and had all sorts of tastes to them. Anna and Justin taught me how to smell them and taste them. It was a lot of fun, but I couldn't really pick out many distinctive smells. I can imagine how beautiful it probably looks in the summer when the grapes are growing.  The Argyle Winery in Dundee is in an old house that is said to be haunted. It was a beautiful place. The Sokol Blossor was surrounded by the vineyards lined up in perfect rows all along.

After all the wineries we went to have happy hour at the Portland City Grill and it was interesting. It's on the 30th floor of the US Bankcorp Tower and from the booths you can see the entire city. There are not many booths so it is always a race to get to the top at 4pm. We got there early and waited in line to get a booth and we were lucky enough to get one over looking the entire city in all it's misty glory.  The view was worth the struggle to get in a booth. We ate Bruschetta, Sopressata spread, and steak frites.  The food was very tasty with our drinks. The first day in Portland was busy and full of exploration. 

http://youtu.be/Sx7Q8UKnKxA 

The video of us at the Portland City Grill is listed below, also listed are the other places we visited.

http://youtu.be/Sx7Q8UKnKxA
http://www.portlandcitygrill.com/menu.php
http://www.bowerybagels.com/
http://www.sokolblosser.com/
http://argylewinery.com/