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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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