For my husband’s birthday I gifted him with tickets to Portland for a weekend. It was our first time away from the kids in a long time and we were nervous about leaving them in various sleepovers with friends all over town. As it turns out, my oldest teen almost organized a party while we were away, but we caught it and him in time – another story for another post, fur sure, haha!

Portland is only an hour and a half away by plane from Northern California so that was the main reason I chose it for a quick getaway. We only technically had a day and a half to visit the city, so we didn’t want to spend the little time we had flying.

As soon as we got there and despite the soft, constant – and sometimes annoying – drizzle, we knew we were going to love the city. We tried to make a list of all the places we wanted to visit but it was very difficult to stick to our list; just walking the city aimlessly is a treat in itself!

We walked some of the bridges, visited the Saturday Market by the river, had brunch at Mother’s, ate some donuts at Voodo, browsed so many books at Powell’s bookstore… We are not beer people so we skipped the breweries but we still managed to walk around and find a great Peruvian restaurant with some fantastic wine! It was perfect.

Oh, and I almost forgot! I took my large format Pentax 67ii with me and some Ektar! And I shot my wonderful weekend on film. Because Portland has a reputation for being so hipster, it kind of called for it.

Have you ever been to Portland? What do you think, is it on your list of favorite cities? Let me know, I’d love to hear!

Maite