Portland Day 1-It’s All About the Food (tour)

by | 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…

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

 

 

Lisboa—more day 1

by | Dec 3, 2023 | Food Experiences, Photography

Yesterday, I got you through to a great breakfast at the beautiful  Hotel Portugal.  Our day only got better food-wise as we had planned a food tour with Eating Europe. We had previously done a food tour with them in Amsterdam a few years ago (they have tours in many European cities), and it was wonderful, so we thought we would try them again because the one in Amsterdam was so great. And this one was, as well.

We met our guide, Fred (his actual name is Frederico, but he says Fred is easier) at 10:00 am, and we’re off on a four-hour tour. Three hours were superb food samples around the city with Fred, and one hour was a Tuk-Tuk tour with Miguel (who really loves speed) as well. Tell me the truth. Does Fred not look like Linn-Manuel Miranda? And he has a lot of mannerisms that kept me thinking we were on our tour with Hamilton himself—one of the funniest and most fun guides we have had in all our time touring. We hope to see him again when we return to Lisbon next fall.

Our tour consisted of four stops for food and a one-hour Tuk-Tuk ride. We first stopped for an amazing pork sandwich with a glass of the local white wine, Vino Verde. Both were delicious. As we walked from there to where we would meet Miguel, Fred told us a lot about the history of Lisboa as well as the traditions about food. He was a totally knowledgeable guide who was also a great entertainer and as you will see in my photos, really up for anything.

Once we reached the plaza where the Tuk-Tuks were, we met Miguel, jumped (more like crawled) into his Tuk-Tuk, and off we went for a very crazy and bumpy ride up into the city’s hills. We stopped at a Roman ruin, an amazing overlook of the entire city and found that Miguel was almost as good a guide as Fred—just not as funny.

Our Tuk-Tuk ride took around an hour, and we finished at a restaurant that was high on one of those hills. This was one of the reasons we had decided on this particular tour. The other tours they offered didn’t have the Tuk-Tuk ride and warned of a lot of walking uphill and downhill. With Miguel and his Tuk-Tuk, we only had the downhill. Our second food stop featured two other Portuguese specialties. One was a coated and fried ball with tomato and basil filling; one was veal. Both were delicious and came with a special may0-mustard sauce. We also tried green beans with a tempura-style coating and we learned that the Portuguese had not only invented this type of coating but taken it to the Orient in the 1500s. Who knew?

After this lovely tidbit (nice word, unh?) served with sparkling wine, we started our trek downhill to our next restaurant, which was owned by a former Michelin-starred chef.  There, we tried an octopus salad (even better than the one I had the night before) and a codfish dish. Codfish is a staple in Portuguese cuisine. Fred told us that Portuguese chefs brag that there are 365 different codfish recipes that they can make, so you never have to have the same one twice in one year. Kathleen had skipped the octopus so the chef roasted her some veggies and they too were outstanding. She wasn’t really thrilled with the codfish dish (it wasn’t my favorite either) but by then we were getting full so it didn’t really matter.

While at this very cool restaurant, we saw a hilarious collection of art that is very famous in Portugal. It seems that more than a hundred years ago, after Portugal threw out Spanish rule, the king of Portugal sent a gift to the king of Spain. Of course, once you see the gift, you understand its significance. The king of Spain sent him back an even bigger one, and they continued for some time. Fred was happy to show us these “gifts,” and I have other photos showing the other sizes in my gallery below. The “gifts” are hollow and full of the “best wine of that country.” Often, they had a spigot (as this one does) to dispense the wine. This one that Fred is holding is the largest in the collection. And they had a special surprise on the bottom to make everyone happy. You will have to look at the other pics to find out what it was. And by the way, did I mention that Fred was a total ham?

After our entrée and art show, we were off to dessert back in the old city at the bottom of the hill. It was the Portuguese egg tart known as a pastéis. These tarts are everywhere in Lisboa. By the time we got to this one, we had consumed at least six of them in the hotel at breakfast. On our Sunday tour, we would travel all the way to the suburb of Belem to get one of the originals (and yes, it is worth the trip, and the one you get there IS better than any other). Fred told us the place he took us had the “second-best pastéis in Lisboa, and we agree.

Here are the rest of the photos from the food tour with captions to explain their significance. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After the tour (and still suffering from jet lag), we went back to the hotel for a short nap. Kathleen extended her nap into the evening and stayed in to surf the web and keep track of what was happening in the world. I, on the other hand, went out to take photos of the amazing Christmas decorations all over the city. I took a ton of photos, so I will let Lisboa speak for itself. I will just say that this city LOVES Christmas, and when they decorate, they DECORATE! And we didn’t think we would see Christmas Markets until we got to Prague. Were we ever wrong? Here, there seems to be one in every square, and there are big squares everywhere. Here are my photos with very few captions because they’re just the WOW decorations. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

That about does it for Day 1. As you can tell, we were BUSY! Back with Day 2 soon.

Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.  —Edna Ferber

Montreal: Food Tour and Church Show

by | Sep 30, 2023 | Food Experiences, Photography

I’m up very early today (our third on the road). We boarded Oceania Vista yesterday, and I haven’t adjusted to the AC in the rooms. With my sinuses, that means I get up when I can no longer breathe through my nose. But enough about me. I promised you more about Montreal.

Following my pre-dawn photo walk (see previous post), we had a complimentary breakfast at our hotel. We had a two-night stay at the Homewood Suites by Hilton Downtown. It sat right at the base of Chinatown, just across a roaring freeway from Old Town. At least we were on the eighth floor, so the noise didn’t bother us that much. The breakfast (we ate there both days) was OK—your typical free hotel food. Which was OK; we had a bunch of food headed our way.

At 10:30, we grabbed Ubers. I wish there was a better way to order an Uber. We needed a larger car because there were seven of us. We knew that we couldn’t all fit in one car, so we ordered two of their XLs. Those are supposed to fit up to 6 people. What we got this morning (for four of us) was a Mazda that barely fix four, and I had to climb over seats to sit in a third-row seat that was designed for a child of about eight years old. Not a grown human. Yet my brother got a full-size van that could have easily fit seven, but they were already gone by the time we got ours. There needs to be a way to see the kind of car you are getting before you say OK.  Maybe there is, but I don’t know what it is.

On to the food tour. We met our guide, Eric, of Secret Food Tours of Montreal, at Guillaume Bakery in the Mile-End section of Montreal. Eric was a great guide and had quite the tour planned for us. We started off with a brioche from the bakery, which was delicious. I might have even voted it the best thing we had. While we ate it, Eric told us all kinds of cool facts about his city and quizzed us to see how much we already knew. Great brioche, fun facts and trivia—I’m in!

Our next stop was Drogheria Fine, where we got to sample some excellent gnocchi. Eric told us what was really important here was their world-famous (or at least Montreal-famous) tomato sauce. The gnocchi were only a delivery system for the sauce. Not only that, the place only does take-away in paper cups with chopsticks. Either way, the gnocchi was delicious, and the sauce was pretty good (I like my Italian grandma’s sauce better).

From there, we were off a long walk to the Green Panther restaurant. This place has a fully vegetarian menu, and we sampled a pita sandwich made with jackfruit. Even though Kathleen and I don’t eat a lot of meat, which means I cook a lot of veggies, the jackfruit sandwich did nothing for me. It’s easily my least favorite food on the tour. And the very long walk it took to get to that restaurant left Kathleen and Jocelyn worn out before we even got to the fourth place out of six.

Our fourth place was St Viateur Bagels. Montreal is (we were told) famous for its bagels, which are not boiled but baked in a wood-fired oven. Eric wanted us to sample bagels right out of the oven, and they were delicious. The ones coming out of the oven when we walked in were sesame seed (again, not a favorite of mine), but my bite was very good. The bakery provided an excellent photo opportunity of the bagels being moved around the HUGE wood-fired oven.

Next up was Poutineville. Guess what the specialty of this place was? If you guessed poutine (Canada’s favorite comfort food), you would be correct. For those who have never had poutine, it is a beef gravy (this one had lots of Montreal Smoked Meat in it) poured over french fries (which, in this case, were kind of wimpy) and topped with cheese curds. As I mentioned, gravy and smoked meat were delicious—the fries were kind of flat.

Our last stop was a tiny Italian deli-type place called Caffe Grazie Millie, where we sampled espresso and some outstanding cannoli. I LOVE cannoli, and they have four different types of filling. I chose the traditional ricotta, and Kathleen had the limoncello. We each took a couple of small bites from our three-inch long cannoli and swapped. I still go with the traditional. It was excellent.

Here’s the food tour pics I promised above. Please don’t drool on your device of choice. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Completely stuffed, we again grabbed Ubers back to our hotel, where I did a bunch of photo-processing, and Kathleen took a quick nap as we had tickets for a performance of Aura at Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal. I would love to show you photos of the actual show, but they don’t allow photos during the 20-minute-long performance. If you check out their website, you will see the kind of laser-light show we got to see. It was truly amazing and very beautiful. Our entire group said they would recommend it to those coming to Montreal. I was able to take a few photos before the show, and they are below. If you come back tomorrow you can see a lot more photos of the inside because Mike, Steve and I went back the next morning for a photo shoot. We were late getting there before the performance so we didn’t have time to really take photos then.

Whew! That was one long day. But a good one. We would do just about everything again (other than the Uber rides) and highly recommend it to anyone visiting Montreal. The food tour was a little long for those who aren’t regular walkers. Eric told us it was 1.6 miles, but my walking app said it was closer to three. Just keep that in mind if you decide to go.

I love Montreal. I love the people, I love the history.
—Stephen Thompson

Incredible Iceland— Reykjavik-Day 1

by | Jun 16, 2019 | Uncategorized

Birkir

Birkir, Reykjavik’s best tour guide

After our Titanic foray into Belfast, we spent the next day and a little more at sea heading to Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. After a cool sail in (see the photos—we passed a huge iceberg), we arrived around 1:00 pm and after a quick lunch we set off on an 8 hour tour with our guide from Tours by Locals, Birkir. Now normally we would never start an 8-10 hour tour at 1:30 pm because within few hours all we would be able to see is darkness. But this was Iceland and we were within 2 weeks of the longest day of the year so we could tour until midnight and it would never be totally dark. That meant we could see what the tour books refer to as the southern Iceland Golden Circle. 

It included the edge of continents, incredible waterfalls, exploding geysers, volcanic craters, Icelandic horses and some of the most amazing natural beauty we have seen. Our first stop was the Þingvellir Icelandic National Park which has significance for two reasons. It is a historical site where the Icelandic parliament first met in 930 AD. And it is the intersection of two continents. Seriously. The plates that form the North American continent end in Iceland and run directly into the plates that form the European continent. In a way we were walking between North America and Europe the entire time we were in Iceland. In fact, two days later just outside Akureyri in the north, I was able to stand with my right foot in North America and my left foot in Europe. Pretty cool. 

After our visit to this beautiful (in its own way) national park, we drove onward to ice cream. Yes, ice cream. It seems that there is a world-famous dairy and ice cream factory in almost the middle of nowhere. We had some amazing ice cream and even got to meet the cows that had done the original work on it. It was a fun and delicious experience. 

Next up was Kathleen’s favorite part of the tour, a visit to feed some very cool Icelandic horses. As you drive through the wilds of Iceland, you see thousands of these Icelandic horses (never call them ponies). They are everywhere. Of course they are owned by someone but you do see some wild ones as well. Birkir knew of a place where a farmer allowed his horses to be petted and fed (he even provided “horse candy” you could buy) and so we stopped and everyone who wanted to got to feed the horses while the rest of us took photos. See mine to see how incredibly beautiful these animals are. That said, it is sad to say that Icelanders eat horse on a regular basis. It is a staple of their diet. Birkir offered to find us a restaurant that served horse but we said we were content to pet and feed them. 

After that it was on to the absolute, drop-dead highlight of the day—the Gullfoss waterfall. We have been to Niagara Falls but I have to tell you, this was so much better. In my opinion the reason for that was that these falls are still in a very natural setting and incredibly cool. Also, the water is totally unpolluted and blue. When you see the photos, just realize that I didn’t do anything to those pics at all—the water really is that blue. Seriously. The pictures tell the story. 

We thought we had seen it all but now it was on to geysers. Compared to Old Faithful that goes off once an hour, Iceland’s southern geysers go off every five minutes or so. They smell of sulfur but they also are very cool. Check out the photos below. 

After our geyser experience and a brief stop at a volcanic crater (sorry, this one didn’t come close to Crater Lake and just not impressive enough for pics), we made a brief stop for dinner (by this time it was around 8:30 but outside it looked like the middle of the day) and then it was on to our last stop of the day, The Blue Lagoon. 

If you have ever been to Iceland you have heard of the Blue Lagoon. It is so popular that people flying from the US to Europe will do a five hour stopover just to hit the Blue Lagoon (which is located between Reykjavik and the airport). If you have never heard of it or seen photos, just imagine a giant, blue hot tub with hundreds of people (maybe more) swimming around, drinking and rubbing mud on their faces. And the strangest thing was that we arrived at the lagoon just before it closes at 10:55 or so. But you would never know it. The sun was up and there were (see the pics) hundreds of people still in the lagoon. Birkir told us they stop letting people in at 11:00 pm in the summer but they don’t start kicking people out until midnight.

I should add that sunset that day was at 11:58 and sunrise the next morning was at 2:15 am. It never really got dark and when we finally got back to the ship at almost midnight, we were very thankful for the blackout curtains in our staterooms. 

Our first day in Iceland was INCREDIBLE! Birkir was an amazing guide and got us everywhere in a fun and beauty filled day. It was just outstanding.

We walked and walked and ate and ate

by | May 23, 2019 | Uncategorized

IMG_1781

My walking day

IMG_3861

Kathleen’s walking day

Don’t you love trying to get back on schedule after you change a bunch of time zones. I do…NOT! Awake this morning at 1:00 am, laid in bed until 2:00 and then gave up and came in the living room (I love AirBnBs for this very reason…we have a living room) and posted and did some other stuff before noticing the sun was going to come up at 4:44. So I was dressed and out walking at 4:30. I love taking early morning golden light photos and I was thrilled to get some great ones. Walked a little over five miles all over Edinburgh’s new and old towns. And as you can see, by the end of the day, I had walked even further.

I want to take a moment here to brag about Kathleen and her walking yesterday. She did more than 7.3 miles and more than 16,688 steps. WOW! I walk miles and miles each week but this is really something for her. Those are our respective walking tallies for yesterday above. Hopefully we wore off some of the food we ate.

I have to admit to you faithful readers that I started this post last night at 9:00 pm or so when we came back from our food tour. Between the long day and the great food and drink, I fell asleep right at the end of the first paragraph. It’s now almost 7:00 am on Thursday and I have already climbed Arthur’s Seat (more about that tomorrow) and I am working on this before I go get breakfast.

After my early morning walk, we had planned to go down and tour Holyrood Palace. On both our previous trips we had skipped the Palace for some reason. But when I had walked there on my pre-dawn photowalk, I discovered the the Lord High Commissioner of some such was in residence until Sunday and that the Palace was closed to tours. Damn! Guess we will just have to come back to Edinburgh again.

So after a quick breakfast, we walked up the Royal Mile and grabbed our Saturday rail tickets at Waverly Station and did a quick “Rick Steve’s Wee Tour of New Town.” It’s a tour from his Edinburgh Highlights book. We could have skipped where we ended up going on the “Wee Tour” as we wound up walking much of the same route on the food tour later but we had a nice morning. Made it back to the Canonsgate area in time to grab lunch at the Tollbooth Tavern where we had eaten three years ago. Still great food and great beers. It ought to be for a place founded in 1820. You would think they would have their act together by now. ?

Then it was back to home for a short nap before our 5:00 pm food tour. We had booked this through a company called Eat Walk Tours and we met our guide Anastaziya (Scottish of Russian heritage) at our first restaurant at the base of the castle in the Grassmarket area. Anastaziya was AWESOME! It was her first tour (she had been on a bunch but this was her first one as a guide) and aside from having to check her notes from time to time, she was wonderful. Our tour was called the Old/New Town Tour and it did just that. Took us through the Old Town, around the Royal Mile and then over to Princes Street and the New Town. Along the way we stopped for five bites and three drinks and had a lot of splendid conversation. We were amazed that we were the only people on the tour, which I guess is a big benefit of booking on a weekday, so we got very special treatment.

The food and drink started with smoked salmon (farm-raised Atlantic, no further comment needed) and our next tastes included mash potatoes with some braised beef and blood sausage (good) that was accompanied by some outstanding raspberry gin and Prosecco (great). Then on to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society where we sampled a private label Scotch along with the haggis we had been expecting all day long, served with neeps and tatties. It was surprisingly good. Then on to what looked like from the outside to be a faux-Tudor cheesy, bar. Once inside it became a gorgeous and classy wine bar and quickly became my favorite stop of the day. The food included a plate of cheese, cured meats, carmelized onions accompanied by oatcakes and some wonderful bread. All that washed down with a super good Scottish lager. We finished at a very stylish place for dessert where we enjoyed an upscale version of a traditional Scottish desert—Cranachan. It’s raspberries, whipped cream and chocolate. Wonderful.

That’s our first full day and it was full. Weather was outstanding as it looks to be today. More tomorrow. Here’s some pics but there will be a lot more on my Flickr account linked at right. And just in case you didn’t realize it, you can click any individual picture in the collage and it becomes a slide show.

Eating good food is my favourite thing in the whole world. Nothing is more blissful. —Justine Larbalestier