I’ve gotten to the point in my travel itinerary making journey that I plan a trip within a few days, even day of landing in the location. This trip in particular was planned within about three weeks. My family and I were originally going to travel here in the fall, but life took a different turn in our working adult lives. I was also supposed to go to Oregon last year as an extension to my Colorado trip in August, but it didn’t work out. SO I was going to plan to go on my own before starting a job this year, and mom decided to tag along.

Here’s my trip in the style of a weekend getaway!

Disclaimer: I’m doing this in regard to an estimate of a 12:00 pm Friday to a 12:00 pm Monday timeframe. We gained a few hours from the west to east coast on the way there, but lost a few hours on the way back. It basically felt like we flew all day on Monday, because we left at 1:00 pm, almost didn’t make it to our layover flight, and landed at home by 11:30 pm.

DAY ONE

We landed at around 12:00 pm to pick up the rental car. Which BY THE WAY, I did it through Avis and chose to do their new option for “mystery vehicle,” which made it SO much more affordable for us. Essentially, you choose this option and get two options when you arrive to pick up your car. We ended up in a Jeep Wrangler, which was a dream for me as my weekend car. The other option for us was a Toyota Tacoma, and I would definitely not have done well with that large of a vehicle… maybe I wasn’t confidence. Who knows?!

• Landed, picked up vehicle
• Drove to the Paul Bunyan statue
• Lunch at a dive bar, Mock Crest Tavern
• Dropped our luggage at the Airbnb (super cute & loved the area!)
• Picked up some energy at Cathedral Coffee
• Walked Cathedral Park to see the St John’s Bridge

It was actually supposed to rain all weekend according to the weather. For us, it was sunny the first two days and rainy the last. And normal people have dinner, but my mom slept for 12 hours, so I had leftovers.

Close to the airbnb

portland, oregon

DAY TWO

Screenshot this, because this is what I did:

• 8:30 am- leave airbnb
• 9:00 am- breakfast at In J Coffee
• 10:00 am- Underground Donut Tour, booked here
  • 2 hr tour for Sesame Donuts, Coco Donuts, Petunia’s Pastries & Pies, Voodoo Donuts
  • Dante’s for the “Keep Portland Weird” sign
• 12:30 pm- The Portland Saturday Market
• 1:00 pm- lunch at Pine St Market
• 2:00 pm- drive to Pittock Mansion, has Portland’s skyline
• 2:45 pm- drive to Japanese Garden
  • The cherry blossoms bloomed on April 13, 2023
• 3:30 pm- drive back to Tom McCall Waterfront Park
  • Portlandia
  • Portland City Hall
  • Portland Oregon White Stag sign
  • Mill’s End Park
• Drive around town to:
  • Powell’s City Of Books
  • Chinatown
  • The Kennedy School Hotel, home to a theatre, bars, brewery, even a pool
• 6:00 pm- dinner at La Bonita
  • Explore Alberta’s Art District

(Starts left to right, every two photos)

• Sesame Donuts: The donut shop that basically said no more to Dunkin’ Donuts in Oregon. Owned by a Lebanese family, they have ten locations in Oregon, five in Portland. The donuts we got were: sesame donut, rose city, and blueberry jelly.
• Coco Donuts: It all started with three friends who wanted to create a donut shop in Portland. One friend had business knowledge, the other was a coffee expert, and the other had a secret recipe from their grandma for the lavender donut. The donuts we had were the strawberry flower donut, mochi donut (which was my FAVE), and the lavender donut (second fave from the whole donut tour). They are the only shop to source their own coffee in town, and it’s from Central America.
• Petunia’s Pastries & Pies: They specialize in gluten free and vegan donuts. It was cool to learn that they only serve donuts on the weekends as a “special weekend treat.” So we got the chocolate hazelnut and cinnamon sugar.
• Voodoo Donuts: They were originally only famous for the pepto donut they created as a joke, but it ended up making national news. While they no longer make it, it was definitely a good way of becoming a famous shop. They even had to hire entertainment while customers waited in line for their pepto donuts. We received the old dirty bastard and the bacon maple bar donuts.

Here’s photos of the places we went to for the other part of the day:

Of course you can also walk, bike, picnic, or play games as you would in any other park, too! Other areas I wanted to visit, but most closed at 4:00 or 5:00 pm:

• Portland Zoo
• World Forestry Center
• Hoyt Arboretum
• Lan Su Chinese Garden
• Pioneer Courthouse Square

We pretty much did everything on this day because of the weather and making everything happen in a short time. There was lots of traffic and barely any parking. We also tried to make the trip affordable, so we did more of the free areas or went around the payment in a sense.

DAY THREE

We went to breakfast at Victoria Bar before heading out west today. I recommend coming in sooner than later because it gets packed fairly quickly. You order your food at the bar and then they bring the food over to you. The food was a bit different and more on the bougie brunch end, but I ordered the avocado toast with bacon and eggs, and the bacon– SO crunchy and yum!!

Oregon is actually known for their pinot noir in the wine area. Marionberry is a hybrid berry used to make mostly jams, which is very flavorful. Oregon has mostly blueberries, blackberries, and apple orchard farms. We have something similar back home but for strawberry picking. It’s in Knaus Berry farm, in the Homestead area of Miami.

My mom knows a family friend from when they lived in Nicaragua that migrated to the states with her and ended up in Oregon. He ended up meeting his wife here and the rest is history! They also know all the good wine spots. We went to two of their favorite.

Domaine Divio

First things first- we met Steve, who is their winemaker/ tour guide kind of person. Bruno is the winemaker/ owner of this vineyard. He’s originally from France and has named his wines after his kids to honor them. But we’ll get into that!

They gave me some history on his work and I was just fascinated. In the 1990’s, Bruno Corneaux came from France to Oregon to make wine. He’s a 4th generation winemaker and even went to school for wine. He harvested in 1990’s and his dream was to open his own. So he practiced with Hyland Vineyard in Oregon and became close to the owner there. To this day, Hyland offers everyone their tools to make wine too.

Bruno has worked in Washington, California, and Tahiti. He has about seven wineries in Oregon and a few in Washington.

Domaine Willamette

We toured with Danielle, who is one of the very knowledgeable tour guides with the team. She mentioned that the winery has 20 acres for the vineyards located by Dundee Hills. It’s mostly known for its sparkling wine.

The 26 barrels they have in the basement is pinot noir stored for 11 months, each worth $2,000. The new barrels were only used 20-25% and the neutral barrels have been used once, so it makes the wine taste vastly different. The barrels can only be used 8-10 times maximum because each barrel creates 300 bottle of wine, which is 50 case of wine. Only few people have tasted within the 11 month time span of the new and neutral barrels, but that’s really if the owner feels ok missing out on the amount of wine that can be bottled from it.

While there’s a big difference on French vs American barrels, Domaine Willamette uses the French oak barrels. To give you perspective, the French has bright acidic flavors, fruity and American is more oak. The regions and soils are also a whole other story!

More Fun facts:

• The year on the bottle of wine is when grapes were picked not when the wine was bottled.
• Pinot noir has 800 different clones around the world.
• The 2019 wine is acidic because of all the rain there was that year in Oregon.

But what I really learned today, besides all the freaking amazing wine… is that Oregon is known for its hazelnuts, also used to be called filberts in old days, lavender flavors, and olive oil tastings.

DAY FOUR

Had an early morning so we weren’t late in returning our vehicle before the 12:00 pm slot for half day. I wanted to stop by Daydreamer Coffee before heading to the airport. Surprisingly enough, I found them on google maps close to our airbnb and the reviews were amazing!! We spoke to the owner and she mentioned the coffee shop opened in 2018 as a cart. Now they’ve extended it to the store by it and had their first mic night on April 20, 2023! How fun!!

The trip was pretty interesting to say the least. We did more adventure than eat, which ironically enough, I obviously prefer food most of the time. I think my favorite part was the wineries in the outskirts of town. It was nice to see the countryside on vacation.

Next time I come to Oregon, I’d love to do the hiking trails and the coast that everyone speaks so highly about! Sounds like I’ll be back!!!