TL;DR

Portland

• Stay
  • With friends in Portland
    • Always the best option if it exists – thanks Corey!
• Eat/Drink
  • Voodoo Doughnuts, 1501 NE Davis St, Portland, OR 97232
    • A trip to Portland should come without a trip to Voodoo. Get the voodoo donut and take out your woes on an ex or someone who has wronged you, then you can enjoy the tasty sins of sugar, fat and joy.
  • Broder Nord, 3765 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
    • My friends Mackenzie and Halbert took me here for lunch and ordered the fiskbrada (the fish bord) – a tasty combination of pickled herring fillets in wine sauce, Skagan bay shrimp salad, and house-smoked trout – all served with a Nordic rye & knäckebröd with mustard sauce, dill cream & pickles. Tasty!
  • Bambuza, (there are two – one at Concourse C by Gate C7, another at Concourse E by Gate E8), 7000 NE Airport Way #2164, Portland, OR 97218
    • I grabbed a banh mi for the flight home – both delicious and satisfying!
• See/Do
  • Black Wagon Kids Boutique, 3964 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
    • Stopped here on a walk with Mackenzie and Halbert and wound up buying Cooper this awesome ramen hat
  • rock paper scissor, 3908 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
    • Super cute shop with stationery gifts

Salem

• Stay
  • The Grand Hotel in Salem, 201 Liberty St SE, Salem, OR 97301
    • Normally I find a hotel aligned to status, but the wedding block was here, all of the guests were here, and it didn’t make any sense to try and separate.
• Eat/Drink
  • Bo&Vine Burger Bar, 176 Liberty St NE, Salem, OR 97301
    • A great place to stop and have a burger and drinks
  • Taproot Lounge & Café, 356 State St, Salem, OR 97301
    • Came here for the Welcome event for my friend’s wedding – a charming place to grab drinks
• See/Do
  • Zenith Vineyard, 5657 Zena Rd NW, Salem, OR 97304
    • Anna got married here – and it was a lovely venue to celebrate one of my favorite people in the world!

Trip Background

So in my last trip write-up from February 2022, I went to Las Vegas to celebrate one of my best friends (Anna) for her bachelorette party. Well, this was Anna’s wedding – and it started with a bit of drama and confusion (not on her part!)

Two weeks prior, I had left my job at SAP SuccessFactors and was looking forward to a couple weeks of time off in between jobs. Then my wife Caitlin accidentally broke a bone in her foot while she was stepping down the stairs. The diagnosis meant it was going to be exceptionally difficult to try and bring the kids with us to Portland and Salem. Caitlin and I had a long discussion about it – canceling wasn’t an option as I was in the wedding party but we both knew that trying to navigate Portland and Salem with two kids and an incapacitated spouse was going to be hard. So we made the tough decision to cancel Cooper and Caitlin’s tickets and keep both of them and Clementine at home in Wilmette while I flew to Portland solo.

Day 0 (April 14, 2022)

Every time I land in Portland, I am reminded how much of a craft brewing mecca and wine capital it is. Its proximity to the Willamette Valley and the history of so many brewers make it an incredible place to live or just spend a weekend.

Sadly for me, I only got one night in Portland and my friend Corey came and picked me up from the airport and let me stay at his home with him and his family. We ordered pizza and stayed up late into the night drinking and catching up on life. (and I failed to get a photo…shame on me!)

Day 1 (April 15, 2022)

The next morning, I ubered back to Portland airport to get my rental car and then went to Voodoo Doughnuts (the one on Davis) to get some donuts to bring to the wedding party later that day.

I then drove over to Peet’s Coffee to meet an old friend (Sarah) for morning coffee – I think it has been nearly a decade since I had seen my college classmate, and we spent the hour chatting about relationships, jobs, and life.

It’s these kinds of simple moments that I think I took for granted pre-pandemic. Sitting in a café, seeing someone I care about (and not worrying that they were going to infect me or vice versa). We commiserated for an hour or so before I had to go meet other friends, and it reminded me that normalcy is slowly starting to return.

I took my donuts with me to see my friends Mackenzie and Halbert (and their daughter Waverly). Mack and Hal have a very special place in my heart as they were the first folks to visit us in 2020 (outside of family) and I still vividly remember being so grateful for their visit in that year of social deprivation. I used to work with both of them when we lived in San Francisco and although they had since moved to Portland, we kept in regular contact. They live in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood in Portland – an area I found exceptionally charming. Although they soon broke my heart by telling me they were off carbs (leaving me to eat these donuts by myself – and actually I wound up giving them to the wedding party) – but we quickly set off for lunch at Broder Nord.

Maybe it’s because of my trip to Helsinki, Finland and Oslo, Norway back on 2018, but I have a fondness for the Nordic region. Getting here made me realize how much I enjoy fish dishes and I ordered the fiskbrada (the fish bord) – a tasty combination of pickled herring fillets in wine sauce, Skagan bay shrimp salad, and house-smoked trout – all served with a Nordic rye & knäckebröd with mustard sauce, dill cream & pickles. Tasty!

The neighborhood around Broder Nord was a charming, walkable area with a bunch of restaurants and boutiques, and I found myself stopping at two: Black Wagon Kids Boutique is a great place to look for kids’ clothes (I wound up buying Cooper this awesome ramen hat) and rock paper scissor, a super cute shop with stationery gifts.

After hanging out at their house for a bit more (and getting to play with Mack and Hal’s dog Baxter), I set off for the wedding down in Salem. Traffic was beastly and it took me over two hours to get to The Grand Hotel in Salem, where I would be staying for the weekend.

A few of the wedding guests and I took off for Bo&Vine Burger Bar for dinner where we got to catch up over burgers and shakes. We then decamped for the welcome social at Taproot Lounge & Café, and it was a charming place to grab drinks.

Day 2 (April 16, 2022)

If you’re in the wedding, the day of the wedding is an adrenaline rush – and it’s nonstop. Morning rehearsals at the Zenith Vineyard (a beautiful venue, by the way) took a couple hours and the wedding party was grateful for the donuts that had survived from the previous day.

The afternoon was relatively light as final preparations were made and the evening was an incredible celebration of love.

Day 3 (April 17, 2022)

I had to be up super early as I had an early flight back to Chicago and I was still rattled by how long the drive down had taken. I left my hotel around 7:30 AM, I got to Portland airport within an hour, and to my surprise, there were no issues. Portland Airport is reliably easy to get in and out of – and before I boarded my flight, I grabbed a gift for my wife Caitlin and lunch (banh mi) from Bambuza.

Final Thoughts

It was my first time back to Portland in nearly a decade, and my first time spending any real time in Salem (I’d passed through the city at least twice a year in college as I went back and forth from my family home in San Francisco to my college in Tacoma, WA).

Getting to see so many of my friends (many of whom I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic) was so much fun. And it’s hard to have a bad time at a wedding. I call this trip a great success!