Fun Day, Bad Noodles

Portland for the night. We are sitting in bed in the hotel room. For a three star hotel there are a lot of SNAFUs going on here. The girls at the front desk were…well, shall we say, annoyed by customers’ presence? The maids were just beginning to get the rooms clean as we were bringing our bags in…at 330PM, we nearly tripped over piles of dirty laundry. Then Cora wanted to go explore. OK, so did I. I enjoy exploring with her. When we take wrong turns…errr, explore…we get a few laughs. I enjoy driving around a new city and seeing how things work. Unfortunately, Portland is not like most cities. Most cities have a layout that make sense, or at least you can imagine what the city planners were thinking. Portland seems to have been designed by an epileptic cartographer during a seizure (If there are any epileptic mapmakers out there, please accept my apologies ). Yes, I blame the guy who designed it, not my sense of direction, which is supremely accurate! It was rainy (no sun for direction finding), and there are a whole lot of trees that all look the same, not to mention all the identical buildings (Cora claims we drove by the same one several times, I don’t think she realizes the guy who designed the buildings here was also an employee of Xerox [no offense intended for employees of Xerox]).

We drove by an IKEA when we got here. We have never been to one. I doubt if we ever will again. Lots of neat stuff, but jeez, if I was lost once today, it was in the IKEA. We had a really bad time at first, then we noticed the arrows on the floor. Everyone was in a human river going one direction. There were numerous coves and eddies, in which the human flow slowed down, but mostly they all wound around the maze slowly. Then we went downstairs…upstairs was the display floor! Cool stuff. Really, it was interesting, and I thought some of the stuff was very well priced, but the human part was, well, like rivers in the American Midwest! Overflowing. It is either a very new store or a very popular one. Cora will doubtless have something to say about it.

The drive was nice. The car was a dream. It galloped up the hills over Satus Pass. Just prior to that, I was noting the gas mileage was 36mpg. That soon deteriorated. By the time we reached the pass, behind a Sherriff, it was 31mpg…I like to rocket uphill, and the Sherriff probably saved our mileage. But, by the time we were done driving around and around Portland it was back to 36mpg. Love that car.

Phoenix tomorrow. I am SO JAZZED!! I suppose that is an acceptable turn of phrase. I cannot wait!! We expected to head out for my parents about noon to drop off the dogs. We found ourselves wandering around looking for things to pack by 10AM. So, we got in the car and left. My parents gave us some money for our birthdays to spend on our trip!

We had dinner tonight at the Pacific Grill(?), here at the hotel. It was NOT good. I don’t think I have ever had such horrid food. we ordered a Chicken Pasta dish. The Chicken was hard on the outside…hurt to chew. The noodles…well, might as well have been a noodle mush. Oh, and Cora said there was supposed to be bleu cheese in there…but I don’t think I got any flavor out of it. I have never left a dish uneaten…I could only stomach a few bites. The waitress? She came by and asked how it was. Cora told her. I expounded on that. She looked at us and said, “hmmm, that’s what others have said, maybe I should tell customers not to order it.” She got a two dollar tip. I would not have left that, but Cora said I should. I suppose, if I were more outgoing or self-righteous or had a wife who would let me, I would have demanded to see the manager. As it was, dinner took forever getting to us, as the waitress wandered by dazed and confused at best, harried and desperate at others. She thought we had ordered Jack Daniels at one point, even though we had both clearly repeated our desire for soda directly to HER. By the end of the evening, I think we regretted turning away the Jack Daniels! The table behind us ordered a BLT, the server came back and asked what was in it. She had mistaken it for a drink. When they explained, she replied that there was no bacon. Cora said she was glad we would not be here for breakfast, I agreed. We decided just to bag it and go back to the room and sleep. Phoenix beckons and so does bed.