Weddingbee Blog

Here’s the part where I talk about the stuff we did in Portland that didn’t involve food…

Well, we had to sleep somewhere, right?

We stayed at the Kimpton Vintage Plaza. One of the reasons we chose this hotel was we had such a great experience at the Kimpton Serrano Hotel on our San Francisco engagement trip. Another reason we chose this hotel was the amazing “Starlight Rooms.” I came into the room and immediately raised the blinds!

It was a cityscape view (read, buildings) but I just loved having such huge windows. And, we did get use out of them. It was hot the whole time we were there, so we left them down during the day when we were out, and left them down when we were asleep, but we had a couple evenings sitting on the bed and reading, and that natural light was amazing.

We had a great experience at the hotel, and would definitely stay here, or at any other Kimpton property again. The hosted wine hour between 5PM-6PM was quite nice too!

All joking aside, we did do other stuff in Portland that did not involve food. The only thing we pre-booked (well, for us. I had all sorts of knitting stuff booked for the day and half I was alone!) was an underground Portland tour. It was fascinating, amazing, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone in Portland. It was a great 1.5 hours, and for only $13! We went through a trapdoor in the sidewalk (!!) and went on a guided tour of the network of tunnels under Portland’s buildings. Shady types would lure/trick/drag strapping young men down there, stick them in cells, and then sell them to any ship’s captain who needed new men. Women were also ‘broken’, smuggled, and sold through the tunnels. It’s something nice-happy-modern-Portland tries to cover up, but there is just so much history down there! There are so many artifacts, and so many that can’t be reached anymore because modern construction has been breaking the links. You can no longer get from 20th Ave to the river underground because of construction. No one has been to the 5th level down that they know exists. Amazing. If I lived in the area, I would be helping them dig. Now, as were were underground, there wasn’t much light, but I did manage an ominous portrait of the Mr:

We had fun with some of the statuary in downtown Portland:

Never get between a mother bear and her cubs! Somehow, I made it out alive.

We went to the zoo, which was fun. We went within a half an hour of the zoo opening, which I think was smart for (a) heat reasons, and (b) child reasons. There were scores of kids coming in when we left, and it was getting quite crowded. But when the place wasn’t stuffed with kids, we didn’t feel bad about standing at the front of all the exhibits. Excuse us folks, newlyweds coming through!

We saw a polar bear and his bukkit:

A crocodile just chillin’:

A crazy man riding a lion:

I took the single most impressive photo I have ever taken. It’s the only one I managed to take of this hummingbird because there was a gaggle of kids coming around the corner who scared him off. People with fancier cameras will hate me, but this was everything set on auto. And, I ended up not replacing my camera before this trip.

After the zoo, we went to OMSI, the science centre. It wasn’t somewhere we’d really considered until we were in Portland and saw a billboard with Sonic the Hedgehog on it. Turns out there was a ‘history of video games’ exhibit going on while we were there! So of course we went. Sadly, that was one of the ‘no photos’ area of OMSI, as was the Chronicles of Narnia room we wandered around. But we did see a random mechanical cow with a TV in its side and a plug coming out of its udder with this sign below it:

Plus, of course, we of the book-themed wedding couldn’t go to Portland and not spend some quality time at Powell’s! No pictures from there, we were a little busy with all the books. We also went to the Saturday Market on (unsurprisingly) Saturday and hung out with one of Mr CB’s gamer friends for a bit. I would totally go back to the Saturday market, there was all sorts of tasty-looking food, great crafts, great music. It was a little busy the day we were there because it was all Beerfest the weekend we were in town, and the beer gardens were very close to the market.

Overall, it was an awesome, chill time spent with just Mr. CB. It was such a great feeling to have that one-on-one time with him, because sure, we’ve spent time together since the wedding, but there’s always laundry or dinner or dishes or something in the back of our minds that needs doing. But just us two on vacation? Bliss! I have high hopes for the other half of our mini-moon, Seattle.

Did you take time to chill on your honeymoon, or structure more stuff for yourselves?