by Jim Bellomo | Oct 8, 2025 | Uncategorized
Our first full day back together with the rest of the October bunch was all about food. We had booked a walking food tour with Secret Food Tours. Kathleen and I had toured with them quite a few years ago, and we are happy to report that they still do a superb food tour. That’s the whole crowd at Deschutes Brewery (but more about that later) above.
We started the day with a free breakfast at our hotel (Embassy Suites by Hilton-PDX), and it was fine. It gave us enough to get us to the tour. We were to meet up with Ken Lin from Secret Food Tours at 11:00 am beneath the Umbrella Man sculpture in Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland. And, not to be too political here, I can tell you that Portland is NOT AT WAR. It is NOT DANGEROUS. We saw no crime, just a beautiful day and a lot of really nice people out enjoying the sunshine in the heart of Portland.
I took some shots around the Square before we met up with Ken. Just some interesting architecture, people, and the aforementioned Umbrella Man statue. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
Taken from the middle of the square on a beautiful fall day.
Facing in another direction.
The Umbrella Man
Up close he’s kind of spooky.
This guy was doing pushups on his hands for a while.
On the edges of what look like horse watering troughs just down from the Square were a variety of animal sculptures. I really liked these otters.
These are called Benson Bubblers. They are all around downtown.
Once Ken (at right) arrived, it was off on the food tour. Our first stop was a food pod. We had never been to a food pod before, but it turned out to be a really nice, fenced area with numerous food carts lining the edges, seating, and a stage in the middle. BTW: we were told that these were carts and not food trucks because they have no engines, thus they could not go anywhere. They are there permanently. If you can’t find something to eat or drink there, you aren’t trying. We got to try the Cubano sandwiches from Stella’s Sandwiches, which were drop-dead delicious. Never had one with pulled pork before (always just sliced pork) and it was amazing.
Kathleen heading into the food pod.
Stella’s Sandwiches and Bowls where we got…
This awesome Cubano sandwich.
After our food pod experience, we took the longest walk of the day from downtown into the Pearl District to visit Deschutes Brewery and sample their wonderful pretzel with cheese sauce and mustard. All I can say is that it was wonderful. Not quite up to our favorite at Valley House Brewing near us in Duvall, WA but still really good.
This is the place.
This is the food.
This is the really cool urinals in the men’s room. Like almost 6 feet high.
Next up was Nong’s Khao Man Gai. It’s an interesting place that is renowned for just this one dish. As you can tell from the name, it is an Asian restaurant. When you order the Khao Man Gai, you get chicken, rice, soup, cucumbers and one of the most amazing sauces. Truly delicious.
This is the place.
This is the food! The sauce was to die for.
From there it was on to Grassa, which is predominantly a pasta restaurant. We got to sample their Pork Belly Mac & Cheese. Absolute decadence might be a good way to describe it. Just amazing.
This is the place.
This is the food.
The last spot and the last course were, of course, dessert. We went just down the street to Petunia’s Pies and Pastries, the home of some truly delicious marionberry pie. If you have no clue what a marionberry is, think of a blackberry without all the annoying seeds. The pie, despite being gluten-free and vegan ?, was amazing.
This was the place.
This was the food.
During the entire tour, I took some street photos, mostly of neon signs, which I love, as well as others of interesting buildings. They are a good way to wind this up photographically.
Definitely a happy city.
A very cool bike sculpture.
And neon.
I love neon.
Can you tell?
Just love shooting it.
That about did it for Kathleen and me. She was exhausted from all the walking, so we dropped off Steve, Jamie, Mike, and Cathy at the Portland Rose Garden, and I took Kathleen back to the hotel to rest before going back to pick up the other four about an hour later. The traffic sucked, and that’s kind of what we get for staying in an airport hotel. We had reservations for dinner at Andina, a Peruvian restaurant Kathleen and I had visited before. However, everyone was still so full from the food tour, that I called and rescheduled them for Thursday.
Tomorrow is a trip up the Gorge to visit Multnomah Falls, Hood River and see Mount Hood. Should be fun. I will let you know on Thursday.
Portland is quickly becoming one of those lovely, lush Third World countries where kinda-rich people retire with their money. Here, they can live like kings, generating only service-industry jobs and jacking up housing prices. —Chuck Palahniuk
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 6, 2025 | Uncategorized
Well, travel followers, we are on our way (or at least we will be in about three hours). The October Bunch (us, my brother, his bride Jamie and our good friends Mike and Cathy from way down in Florida) is on the road again. And for the next few days, it will actually be a road trip.
Steve and Jamie arrived last Thursday, and we have been feeding them well and showing them a little of Seattle and Redmond since then. Last night we met up with our kids and grandkids for dinner. This afternoon, we will drive to Portland, and Mike and Cathy will fly in later tonight (like REALLY LATER tonight, like 11:45 pm). We will all finally be together tomorrow morning for a food tour in downtown Portland.
We will spend the next four days touring northwest Oregon before we board American Cruise Line’s Harmony to sail both up and down the Columbia and Snake rivers for a week, stopping in Kalama, Astoria, The Dalles, The Tri-Cities and finishing up in Clarkston, Washington, on the far east side of the state. Once we are off the ship/boat, we will spend two nights in Washington’s wine country by staying in Walla Walla, a place so nice, they named it twice.
While in Portland, we will do a day trip to the coast, out the Columbia Gorge and around Mount Hood, south to the Oregon wine region and then spend some time discovering Portland. Here’s a map of the entire trip.
Since you can’t blow it up (because it’s a screenshot of a Google Map), I’ll explain that the cruise part of the ship starts here in Portland. I started this post while at home, but we are now in Portland after a four-hour drive, which is why it seems like I have changed locations since I began writing. All purple dots with ships on them are the ports for the cruise. The loop out to the coast and up the Columbia are places we are going pre-cruise, and then we stop in Walla Walla post-cruise.
To break it down for you, we will be spending tonight through Friday at the Embassy Suites by Hilton at PDX (Portland International Airport). We didn’t really pick this hotel. The cruise line puts us up at this hotel on Friday night, and we sail on Saturday, so it serves as our base of operations until then. We really didn’t want to move from someplace else for one night..
Tomorrow, we are doing a food tour in the morning, followed by a visit to the Portland (City of Roses) Rose Garden, and a few other Portland favorites. Stay tuned for more updates in the days ahead.
Portland has all the accoutrements of a big city, but the heart and soul of it is a small town, so that creates an intimacy in a large environment. —DEAN DEVLIN
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 5, 2025 | 365
Not a bad week. Some fun stuff. But upcoming are some travel pics, and you know how I love to take those. More about that tomorrow as we leave for Portland, Oregon, just after noon. I think the three wooden people grab me the most this week. How about you?
Tonight was our monthly Supper Club here at Trilogy. Eighty people came in hungry for our awesome chef Andrew’s cooking. This month featured German food, and it did not disappoint. It was just delicious. And it gave me a chance to do some crowd photography. I realize that for some, living in a 55+ community might seem like a cliché, but we love it. We’ve made so many friends here and have so much fun. Just like these people are.
Today was a really busy day, so I forgot to take a photo. Pretty ridiculous since I have been up since 1:30 am. So, as we were sitting here starting to watch Slow Horses (a great show), I suddenly realized I hadn’t taken a photo today. I went out to the car to get my camera, where I had left it, thinking I might find something to shoot while I was out. As I grabbed it, I saw the front of our garage freezer, covered with more than 100 magnets. It’s one of the things we collect on our travels. Since our kitchen refrigerator is stainless steel, the magnets won’t stick to it, so they are in the garage. This is just a small number of what we have — little reminders of all the great places we’ve been.
Way back on January 1, when I started this 365 project, I took a photo of Welcome Lake in the Lake of the Woods development about two miles from our house. I went back on April 1, July 1, and now October 1. I had hoped that the view would change with the seasons, but it pretty much looks the same in every photo. It would have looked different if I had gotten snow in the winter or colorful leaves today in autumn, but no luck. Most of the trees around the lake are evergreens. But I decided to take it four times, and here it is. If it snows before December 31, I will get another one.
You get the weekly Keeley early this week because we are about to leave for SeaTac to pick up my brother and sister-in-law, who are here for four days before we head to Portland on Monday. I want to send this now because I’ll be very busy over the next few days. I love this one because she has that big grin on her face.
I admit it. I forgot to post a photo yesterday. My excuse is that I took many photos; I just forgot to share one. My brother and sister-in-law arrived Thursday afternoon, and since then, I’ve been doing one of the things I enjoy most in the world—cooking for company. I have more to do today, but I wanted to get this online. We took them to the brand-new Seattle Waterfront. We hadn’t been there ourselves since they completed what must have been a billion-dollar redo. It’s gorgeous—a truly beautiful job. I captured a couple of street shots, an airplane flying among the downtown buildings, a very cool wooden carving sculpture of a family, and the Big Wheel.
The Big Wheel
Airplane
Street shot
Today was all about cooking. We started the day at Saturday Market, picking up vegetables for the dish you’re looking at. It’s an absolutely delicious dish you make with grilled veggies and cured meats. It’s called the Grilled Antipasto Vegetable Platter. I spent so much time on it that I had to photograph it for today.
These are our surprise flowers. Earlier this year, we had a perennial in our front yard that died. Mainly because the landscaper we hired planted it in the shade. When it seemed to be completely gone, I checked and found out it needed full sun. We have absolutely nowhere in our yards, front or back, that gets full sun for more than six hours a day. So that one didn’t make it. I went out to a nursery we liked and asked for something that would grow in partial sun and mostly shade. This is what they recommended: a Japanese anemone. When we got it, it was a small green plant, but in the last two weeks, just as fall was setting in, it blossomed like crazy, as you can see. Truly beautiful white blossoms.
When you acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then you can predict its behavior and control the lighting in photographs. – Roberto Valenzuela
by Jim Bellomo | Sep 28, 2025 | Photography
I was really happy with this week’s photos. I really love the drummer and bass player, the giant nails and the melancholy Keeley. But my favorite has to be my product shot of my iPhone. The light worked out so much better than I expected or deserved for the amount of time I took setting it up. Let me know your favorites in the comments.
Another beautiful day here, and while I was out walking, I found myself above one of the holes on the golf course that winds through Trilogy. It makes for some stunning landscape shots.
We have this red glass poppy sticking out of a planter in our front yard. We have three other pots and have been trying to find three more, maybe in different colors or in red. We originally found it at a Trilogy Christmas bazaar two years ago. Today, I ran into a Trilogy friend I didn’t know worked with glass. She said if I sent her a photo of the one I have, she’d see if she can find who made this one. So, I took the photo today and sent it to her. Then I thought it would make a great photo of the day, so here it is.
A big week for flower photos. Yesterday, I photographed a glass flower, and today I have three more. The first is from a new hanging basket I bought at Home Depot today. I spent the last two days pulling weeds and removing dead summer annuals from the yards. I also picked up some fall flowers and bulbs to plant for next spring. The other photos of beautiful dahlias are from a lovely bouquet two of our good friends here in Trilogy grew in their yard. Now I have to try and grow some next year—they are so beautiful.
More flowers
More flowers
This photo relates to the fact that next Tuesday I will be teaching an iPhone class here at Trilogy. Over the past few months, a few of us who are more tech-savvy than the rest of Trilogy have been volunteering to provide tech support twice a week in our clubhouse. We have decided to create a series of classes based on the questions we get most often. The first one we are offering is “I didn’t know my iPhone could do that!”—a phrase we hear a lot. Since I was thinking about the phone, I decided to do a product shot, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
Walking on a trail I had never taken before, it led me through parts of Bellevue I’ve never seen. Along the way, next to the yard where they park our new trains, is this set of sculptures. I wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to be until I sent the picture to my best buddy Bob in British Columbia, and he said, “Can you just imagine the size of the hammer and the person using it?” My eyes were opened. Bob saw nails. I almost missed them. But I loved the color, so here they are.
Off to Saturday Market this morning, and they had an outstanding jazz band playing. I loved the photos I took of the horn section, but this one of the bass player and the only woman in the band, the drummer, was my absolute favorite. They are concentrating really hard here, but they were having a lot of fun. And he was one of the best bass players I have ever heard.
Time for the weekly Keeley update. Today she’s in her melancholy mood. Not really, but seriously, she’s one of the moodiest dogs ever. Yesterday is a perfect example. She got up and was kinda quiet while we showered and got dressed. Then, while we were eating breakfast, she laid down for a nap (unusual). After that, she wanted to go outside in the backyard. We let her out, and while we were eating breakfast, she did her doggie thing, and when she came back, it was like she was a completely different dog—jumping all over and wanting to play. She stayed that way for most of the day. See what I mean? Moody.
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them. – Diane Arbus
by Jim Bellomo | Sep 21, 2025 | Photography
Here’s a new bunch of seven. I know that yesterday you saw all the car pics. Now you can check out the rest of the week as well. As far as shooting, the car show was different and fun. Getting Keeley to pose is always fun as well. Enjoy.
After taking numerous photos of cars and their logos yesterday, I felt like a landscape. This was captured from the highest point in the trilogy of incredible clouds we experienced today. It rained all morning, but after rain here, the air clears out, revealing that beautiful blue. Combine that with white fluffy clouds, and you get what I believe is a great shot.
Today was fun. Our favorite local camera store, Kenmore Camera, organized a photo walk at the nearby Exotics Car Show. Since it was British Day, I managed to take over 500 photos of cars, people, and logos. I took so many (but don’t worry, I narrowed it down to fewer than 50) that I decided to create this blog post just to share them. If you like cars, typography or people, you might like these shots.
Driving from Bellevue to Redmond today, I took a bunch of photos. I decided today was a lazy day. I shot 30 photos from the driver’s seat of my car. Every time I stopped at a light, I snapped photos of what I could see out my window. Out of the 60 I took, this is my favorite. It was just a mechanical box on the back of a cement mixer. Then I dropped it into Photoshop and turned it into a photo illustration with the help of a Photoshop filter or two.
Weekly Keeley is here today. Not sure what she was staring at. It might have been a bird, maybe a plane, or maybe Superman. Or it could have just been the treat I was holding over her head. You get to see her cute underbite in the shot.
I went over to West Seattle tonight to meet an old friend for dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant. We had some time before we were supposed to meet, so I thought it would be a good chance to snap a couple of pics of Seattle from the best spot on land to shoot it.
I had to go into Redmond this morning for a dentist appointment and a haircut, so I took a few minutes to walk to the Sammamish River and take some shots. Just as I was about to leave, I saw a seagull heading straight up the river toward me. I started shooting, and I like this one best.
This photo is all about the weather. Today was beautiful, yesterday was rainy most of the day, and tomorrow is supposed to reach almost 90. It’s crazy. The trees don’t know what to do, as you can see some are already starting to turn. That’s because of the low temperatures we’ve been experiencing at night. As they used to say on Game of Thrones, “Winter is Coming.”
Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. – Diane Arbus
