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(I didn't know where to put this paragraph.)  Hopefully Hanan and Adli can piece together a nice travel vlog from our trip.

Portland has been charmingly weird since day one.  Street arts and stickers bearing the slogan "Keep Portland Weird" succinctly epitomizes the nature of the city.  

From Sam, the quirky cashier at Rocket Fizz, on her first day of work (plus the weird-ass candy and soda bottles in the store), to our free personality test offered by the Church of Scientology in Portland (which took waaaaaay too long), to the pastry oddities of Voodoo Doughnut, and the readers' paradise of Powell's Books (the biggest bookstore in the nation spanning five floors and an entire city block). I had only visited two of the eight-ish sections in the store in my hour-long visit there. Shame that my limited luggage space prevents me from buying any books.

And that's only day one.

*I felt that leaving the post at that would be a nice way to keep things short and simple.  I've tried trimming off the verbal fat, and it is still a honking pile of dry information.  But if you really, really wanted to know more about my trip, do proceed*

Tuesday was gloomy, with the rain keeping Portland in an overcast.  We messed around at Cathedral Park, under the St. Johns bridge, and by the Willamette River.  We traded the cold for the shelter of Portland's oldest church (literally, the Historic Old Church... imaginative, I know!), observing a Russian lady coaching young girls in playing the piano.  Sunset was upon us as we reached the Oregon Cultural District.  Deciding to revisit the district on a later time, we left for the food trucks on SW 4th and Alder St.  Being a sucker for Mediterranean food, I had falafels.  On full bellies, we did the Shanghai Tunnel tour, learning about Portland's history of slave trade of the olden times.  We finished the night off with hipster audiophilia at Everyday Music, followed by Union Square thrift shopping. The rest of the night saw us play Exploding Kittens (Juana got both the safe and NSFW versions) and save the world in Pandemic.

Hump-day had us pick up where we left off.  The group had visited opposing museums: Adli and I went to the Oregon Historical Society Museum whereas the ladies chose contemporary art.  The museum included a gallery on Portland's backstory, and included an exhibit on WW1 and WW2 for this year.  The exhibit opened up to the original documents of the Fourteen Points plan (proposed by President Woodrow Wilson  after the end of World War 1, which was rejected) and an Enigma Machine (used in WW2 to code and decode Nazi transmissions), including audio and video clips from the moment war broke out.  Two hours later, we had visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI for short).  Due to time constraints, we did only the submarine tour in the USS Blueback.  It was amazing how a relatively small sub could fit 88 personnel, with congested walkways and instruments crammed into every nook and cranny permissible.  This was my personal vacation highlight: experiencing how a nval vessel works and the understanding the mechanics of how it works.  The end of the tour saw us meet with Portland's rush hour traffic.  So we had to forego our plan of listening to live music at Jimmy Mak's Pub & Grill.  

Thanksgiving day had us hiking Multnomah Falls and its neighbors. Although the second largest waterfall in America might be underwhelming when compared to first place Niagara Falls, it was a majestic view nonetheless. We struggled to hike Oneonta Gorge due to the fallen logs strewn along the 3-foot deep river (we didn't want to get wet). Adli's ineptitude in finding balance was quite the spectacle, as he slowly clamored from log to log on all fours.  That trek also saw me belly flop on a boulder in a misjudged attempt to climb it. Overall, hiking was still fun.  That night saw us gorging on turkey and lazing around for the night.

Which brings it to the finale.  The last day of our trip here and was a signal of things to come: my departure from the United States of America: that's baffling. But I'll leave that for another day.  We skipped the Macy's Holiday Parade, which was expected considering how much turkey we had consumed the night before.  We spent our last day in Oregon donating our extra food to the homeless, pursuing retail therapy in Woodburn, followed by a Vietnamese dinner at Luc Lac, hipster ice cream at Salt & Straw and last-minute postcard mailing.  It was a busy trip, but we definitely made the best of our time there.  There was even live music at the airport, so we did enjoy some music in the end.

Even our unexpected ten-minute cross-airport sprint in Detroit couldn't live down the vacation, despite us having to play victim to delayed departure and missing the flight as a result.

Franks Kaktus - Dungen