March 10, 2003
Portland or Bust!
Thankfully, there was no busting involved.
We went down to Portland yesterday to meet some friends for lunch, the zoo and a trip to Powell's bookstore. The weather wasn't looking too promising for the zoo before lunch, but by the time we were done eating, we could actually see sunshine!
We ate at Mother's Bistro, and the food was very good! I had a waffle with ginger pear compote, and the pear was so good, just sweet enough and nicely spiced from the ginger. Katrina had two huge pancakes with a whole layer of chocolate chips inbetween them. We didn't pass her the syrup! Abby had a nicely-rounded meal with eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast.
We took the train to the zoo from downtown, which was nice and handy, as the new line runs right out to the zoo now, and the stop is right by the zoo gates. The zoo was fairly empty, and we saw lots of animals. The polar bears were really fun to watch. They had balls that had been stuffed with fish, so they'd throw the balls around to try to make the fish fall out.
The bats were interesting too. Their cage had bananas hung all around on the branches, and the bats would eat the banana right out of the skin. They had food bowls too, and one bat was hanging with his head just resting in the food bowl!
We saw two seals that started a bit of a fight with each other. They were growling and kind of biting, but then they seemed to calm down, and Katrina got bored, so we were off to see other things.
The girls had fun posing among the animal statues near the elephant area. Katrina seemed to think that I should take lots of pictures of her studying the map of the zoo.
Even though I lived in Portland for six years, I'd never been to Powell's before. It is huge! We picked up maps inside the front entrance, and there were many different rooms, all with color names, and numbered sections inside each room. They have both used and new books, and they put them all together, which makes it really handy to look for cheap books. I could have bought many, many books, but we escaped with a fairly small bagful.
Abby stayed awake all the way home, which surprised me! K. sacked out after we stopped in Centralia for dinner. I fell asleep in the middle of a tv show after we got home. Now I'll never know what happened to the man John Smith was trying to help on the Dead Zone. Well, lucky for me, since it's USA, I'll get to find out Thursday night, when they show the episode again.
Many more pictures available here.