Travels of a Cheap Foodie

Glacial Change

2014-01-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

Last September (this is how far behind I am in writing blog posts) - last September, I was in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. I’ve said it before: I am a child of the West. I feel most at peace among the mountains, the forests, the vast empty spaces that make you feel tiny and expansive at the same time.

Ready for adventure, we set forth one day to see the Columbia Icefield, a massive expanse of cold that straddles a triple continental divide. When we got there, I was reminded of the fact that I don’t actually like the cold. Plus stark white expanses are not exactly photographable, at least not by amateurs. So this story turns out not to about the icefield, but about what we learned of glaciers along the way.

(If it sounds like an icefield would be the same thing as a glacier, you’re not far off: an icefield is basically a bigger and more permanent glacier.)

The jewels of Banff are not so much the mountains - remarkable though they are - but the brilliant lakes that stretch between them. (Don’t worry, I’m getting to the glaciers). The lakes are a stunning, surreal aquamarine color:

But such snapshots don't do these lakes justice. They are beautiful.

Turns out these are all glacier-fed lakes, and it is the minerals and debris deposited by the glaciers that cause the lakes to reflect sunlight in such a way that all we see is this narrow but spectacular sliver of the color spectrum. (In other words, it’s science.)

So why are glaciers depositing minerals and debris into innocent mountain lakes? Because glaciers, contrary to my preconceived notions (I won’t assume anything about yours), are always moving. In fact, the very definition of a glacier requires constant movement. I guess I assumed that the cliche “glacial change” meant, well, that things weren’t really changing. But glaciers can change rapidly. I mean, relatively speaking.

So that got me thinking about what kinds of change could be considered “glacial.” Like slow, constant evolution or progress towards an outcome, the intermediate steps of which aren’t really visible, but then one day you wake up and - holy cow! That lake is BLUE!

Not quite the same, but it made me think of how we woke up one morning in Banff (and mind you, this was in late September), and the season had changed from fall:

to winter:

Just like that. Except not really because the seasons are a continuum, and we build up to the next one even if we aren’t noticing the subtle signs.

New Year's is kind of like that, too: an arbitrary holiday we use to demarcate and distinguish the slow buildup of days from the past to the future, when we will be surprised by how things have changed when we weren't looking. Happy new year, by the way.

So I’m going through my own sort of glacial change right now. I’m about half way through my first pregnancy, and after months of feeling almost nothing and worrying that I’d forget I’m pregnant and start downing stiff drinks like I’m an ad exec in 1962, I can now feel the baby kick (often too much so) at all hours of the day and night. That is, over the course of five months, I’ve grown a frickin' human being in my belly - albeit in severely miniature form - without any daily awareness of what’s going on in there.

Nine months is a long time. I can imagine myself, come late April, being ripped from my complacent, work-focused daily existence to the sudden realization: O. M. G. It’s a BABY! And just like that, the world will look completely different.

This Isn't Your Farmer's Market

2013-12-14T10:37:00.002-08:00

Way back when, I visited an old friend in Boston only to discover she had turned a sickly shade of yellow. "Holy cow," I said. "Do you have jaundice?"

"No," she replied. "I just eat a lot of carrots."

Erica had discovered Boston's Haymarket: not a riot, more than just a T stop, Haymarket is a nearly 200-year-old tradition in the heart of Boston's downtown. I think I lived in Boston (meaning Cambridge) for eight years without ever going to the Haymarket. This was probably because, back then, the Haymarket lived in the shadow of Boston's central artery, the elevated freeway that used to divide downtown Boston from its harbor. Everything around the central artery was super-sketch and generally unpleasant.

No more. Whatever else one might think of Boston's infamous Big Dig, it did succeed in opening up this core slice of central Boston. In place of the looming concrete jungle of pollution and noise, we now have a human-scaled park and a sense of openness in the midst of the city. This makes the Haymarket rather more appealing as a Saturday morning field trip.

The Rose Kennedy Parkway: Much more pleasant than a freeway.

I don't know what the Haymarket was back in the 1800s, but today it is Boston's discount outdoor produce market. This ain't no farmer's market: you will find no organic produce or $3 doughnuts here (a staple of Harvard's farmer's market, the $3 doughnut stand always has a line). No, Haymarket is the landing place for the produce the grocery stores don't want any more, those still-edible fruits and vegetables that need a good home, stat. And if you do get hungry while shopping, hole-in-the-wall pizza and falafel joints line one side of Blackstone Street (I can't recommend any of them, but at least you can get a full meal for your $3).

I love an outdoor produce market. With surly vendors, mounds of bright vegetables, and a cross-section of Boston's diverse population, Haymarket reminds me of a scaled-down version of the Hague's Turkish Market. The Haymarket isn't nearly as impressive, but the food is at least as cheap. On a recent Saturday, we were buying 8 apples for a dollar, a pound of pickling cucumbers for just over a dollar, healthy bunches of parsley and cilantro for 25 cents each. Of course, none of it would last past Monday.

So what do you do with ample, cheap produce that isn't going to keep - at least, if you don't have ten mouths to feed that night? You can pickle it, like Jeff, who recently made quarts of refrigerator pickles out of mini-cucumbers. You can jam it, like a colleague of mine who decorates his living room with different colored jars of preserves. You can bake it, like I did with those twelve-cent apples. (OK, so maybe I intended far more baking and sauce-making than actually occurred - best of intentions...) And then there's stock-making, stew-freezing, and good ol' massive stir-frys.

I recognize that cheap, hit-or-miss, nonorganic produce is not everyone's cup of tea. Toto, we're not in Whole Foods anymore. But here's a couple things to consider: First, while this produce is in no ways "sustainable," the Haymarket does help save it from total waste. If we're going to fly in planes full of peppers from Chile, we might as well use them. Second, not all of us can afford to shop at Whole Foods. Third, a bit of savvy shopping will get you a long way. Bring small bills (this is a cash-only world) and browse the stalls and prices before you buy; insist on picking out your own produce (let me reiterate: insist on picking out your own produce); don't do business with vendors who are rude to you; and keep in mind the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen - those fruits and vegetables you should always buy organic vs. those that carry the least amount of harmful pesticides. We never buy the former at the Haymarket, but we'll stock up on the latter.

Still, your mileage may vary. If nothing else, the Haymarket is a scene worth seeing before moving on to the Rose Kennedy Parkway (a.k.a., the Big Dig's final legacy) and fresh cannoli in the North End.

Haymarket runs pretty much every Friday and Saturday. The closest T-stop is, unsurprisingly, Haymarket - but it's also walking distance from most points of interest in Boston's compact downtown.

Fall in(to) Cambridge

2013-12-01T18:46:00.002-08:00

Cambridge is made for fall. From the university campuses to the tree-lined streets, fall in Cambridge means two months of bright blue skies and flaming leaves set off against the red bricks of school buildings and sidewalks. I first came to Cambridge fifteen years ago as a freshman in college, only to find that fall in New England was a fundamentally different concept than fall in Portland.

First, a New England fall is sunny. In Portland, on the other hand, the rain starts around October 1 and doesn't let up until sometime in May.

Second, thanks to the clear skies, the leaves in Cambridge crunch. If you grew up outside the Pacific Northwest, I assure you - you underestimate the miracle of crunchy leaves. All through my childhood, fall just meant decomposing piles of sodden brown leaves beaten down by weeks of rain. You didn't rake leaves as much as push them into sad little piles that vaguely resembled something scatological.

Third, because fall is a true shoulder season here - a distinct change from what came before, but not so sudden that you just want to hide indoors - there are super-special fall festivities, annual traditions keyed to the gradual shift in season. These traditions make the fall for me. After the difficulty of moving back across the country and starting a new job this summer, fall in Cambridge was like a warm and fuzzy welcome mat. Year after year, these are my favorite (free) fall traditions:

Apple picking (and apple baking)

As strawberry picking in June is to Oregon, so is apple picking in September and October to Massachusetts. Every weekend, hordes of cars head out of Boston to nearby u-pick orchards, complete with hayrides, petting zoos, and the all-important cider doughnut. (mmmm, doughnuts....)

No, this is not just a field trip for families, and no, that's not just because grown-ups love cider doughnuts, too. There's something rejuvenating about spending an afternoon outside on a blue-sky fall day, gathering your food right from the source. There's something affirming about the way an apple feels in your hand - whole, smooth, firm - as you pull it from the bough. Ideally, apple picking is a group activity with friends, followed by a glut of apple-themed baking back home (apple pie, apple crumble, apple cake, baked apples, sautéed apples, apple sauce… but mostly apple pie).

Truth be told, going out to pick your own apples isn't any cheaper than buying the bags of local apples that show up in the grocery stores this time of year anyway. And truth be told, I ran out of time to go apple picking this year (sad). But it's still my favorite fall activity.

Head of the Charles

Nothing says Ivy League like a crew regatta. Every year, mid-October, hordes of prep school and college crew teams descend on Cambridge for a civilized party along the Charles river. This year the weather was particularly perfect, with the boats racing through the glittering water to the faint rhythmic click of oar locks and the calls of coxswains. Spectators packed the bridges; families on picnic blankets covered the river banks; and the stretch of the river alongside Harvard's campus was transformed into a low-key carnival.

Crewing down the Charles.

For me, Head of the Charles can be more fun than a homecoming game: both provide an excuse to be outside on a beautiful fall day, but watching crew boats is like watching art in motion, plus you don't really have to pay attention to whose ahead or what the score is - and you can leave anytime. It is a peaceful form of quasi-spectatorship, more about people-watching and traditions than about driving towards a single, definitive goal.

In other words - as they say - it's about the experience, not the destination.

Outdoor adventures

August and December - two months I don't want to be outside in Boston. So in between, you have to make up for lost time. In past years, I've used the fall to go walking in the hills outside Boston. In college, there would be outings to New Hampshire for hikes and canoeing (canoeing: it always sounds like such a good idea…). This year, we broke out our Dutch-style bikes and headed for the Minuteman Bikeway.

Fall on the Minuteman Bikeway.

An early rails-to-trails success, the Minuteman Bikeway starts at the edge of Cambridge and runs for ten easy miles past Lexington to Bedford. In the fall, the ponds and parks along the path are framed by foliage, and the mild weather draws out families on bikes with kids like ducklings trailing behind their parents.

We stopped in Lexington to take in "history," consisting primarily of the town's green where the first (unplanned) shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. Not high on my list of must-see tourist sites for the region, it still provided a convenient excuse for a beautiful ride.

Jeff on the Lexington Green: The start of the American Revolution, aflame.

Fall Foliage

And then, of course, there's the leaves. I suppose you can drive out of the city to go "leaf peeping," but being under the age of fifty, I can't say that's really my style. Luckily, Cambridge alone offers plenty of fall colors, more than enough to keep me entertained.

I spend a lot my time walking around Cambridge: to work, to friends', to restaurants and Starbucks, to the doctor's office and the library. For ten weeks or so, my walks were defined by the ever-changing trees; with a dry and sunny season, the leaves turned in slow waves that made fall feel like it was lasting forever. Each week, I had a new favorite tree, and I was not the only one stopping to take pictures with my camera phone. One afternoon I watched little children in Harvard Yard collect big red maple leaves and gather them into prickly bouquets. It's like stopping to smell the roses in Portland: the beauty of the fall is everywhere, if you can pause long enough to appreciate it.

Camera phone snapshots,
walking to and from work.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery on Halloween morning.

When my super-cool friend Megan came through town on Halloween, we celebrated the macabre - and the end of the foliage season - with a pilgrimage to Cambridge's Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Yes, famous people are buried there, but I appreciate much more the cemetery's park-like setting, which even at that late date was on fire with fall leaves.

Now the weather has turned again, and last week's snow flurries tell me we are heading resolutely into winter. The trees are skinny and bare, and the morning skies are no longer blue but that steely whiteness that promises scarcity and cold for months to come. For me, Thanksgiving marks the official end of fall, a last hurrah of harvest and plenty before we settle in for the winter. I am grateful this Thanksgiving for the beautiful Cambridge fall, for new beginnings and old friends - and for adventures still to come.

Oregon: Off the Beaten Path

2013-09-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

Part of my family recently spent a weekend in the Wallowa Mountains, in the northeastern corner of the state. Stuck in Boston, I can only contemplate how I have never been to the Wallowas. Indeed, a proud native Oregonian, I have never been to many parts of the great state. Behold the richness of the American West: more majesty than we can experience in a lifetime.

In 2009, when we still lived in D.C., I dragged Jeff on a big tour of Oregon: the Columbia Gorge, Mt. Hood, Bend, the Willamette Valley wineries, and my favorite stretch of the Oregon Coast around Newport. These are like the state's golden oldies. But things got most interesting when we traveled (way) off the beaten path, down to a part of Oregon as new to me as it was to Jeff: Steens Mountain.

Steens Mountain and the Alvord Desert

"The Steens" sits in the southeastern corner of Oregon, a full day’s drive from anything resembling a town. There’s not much out there, once you pass Frenchglen (population: 12). The mountain is a long, jagged gash of rock in an otherwise flat landscape of sage brush and emptiness. To its east stretches the Alvord “Desert,” a bright white playa that is home to the mineral-rich Alvord Hot Springs. The hot springs are more surreal than substantive: a tiny tin shack in the middle of the flat playa, where campers come to bathe in the steaming water while watching the sun set over the Steens.

What does one do in "the Steens"? Hike (but beware the heat, and bring gallons of water). Contemplate existentialism. Camp on Bureau of Land Management territory (just about everything here is owned by the government). For those without camping equipment, the historic Frenchglen Hotel on the other side of the mountain provides quaint lodging and home-cooked meals. But you lose something of the extreme solitude and vastness of the landscape if you don't spend the night alone under the stars, surrounded by nothing in all directions.

Oregon is full of extreme and surreal beauty once you get away from the evergreens and rolling farmland. I can't vouch for all of these - like I said, there's still much of the state that I have never seen - but here's a partial list of Oregon's greatest natural treasures:

Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

At 50 miles of coastline, the dunes between Florence and Coos Bay are the largest expanse of oceanfront sand dunes in the U.S. (say that three times fast). We’re talking dunes 500 feet high, stretching three miles inland. (Reportedly, this is what inspired Dune.) If hiking or looking for wildlife, aim for the top half; noisier recreation (think dune buggies) are limited to the southern half.

Bend and Central Oregon

Cross Mt. Hood, and you enter Oregon’s high desert: dry heat during the day, cool temperatures in the evenings, stunning red canyons, endless sagebrush, and periodic rock formations with a flair for the dramatic. You can camp on public land out here, stay on the Warm Springs Reservation, or live the yuppie high-life in Bend. Sun River is a popular but low-key resort in these parts, and everyone’s favorite small town is Sisters, at the eastern foot of the Cascade Mountains.

Hells Canyon

The deepest river gorge in North America (seriously!), Hells Canyon follows the Snake River along the most northern stretch of the Oregon-Idaho border. To do: hike, camp, jet boat down the rapids. Getting there involves traveling through the beautiful Wallowa Mountains (more hiking and camping opportunities) and cute western towns like Joseph and Baker City.

Owyhee River

South of Hells Canyon but still close to the Idaho border, the Owyhee River forms a series of dramatic canyons, some only accessible by multi-day rafting trips. One incredible landscape that is also accessible by car is Leslie Gulch, where hoodoos reach up like fingers in an otherwise barren gorge.

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

One of the largest sources of pre-historic fossils in the world, the fossil beds are also home to beautiful geological formations – like the soft curves and bands of colors that make up the oft-photographed Painted Hills unit.

Crater Lake

Oregon’s only national park is a pristine blue lake that formed in the caldera of a volcano in the southern Cascades. Think Lake Tahoe, but utterly undeveloped. Hike the rim trail, or take a gentle boat tour. The southern (primary) entrance to Crater Lake is only an hour or so north from Ashland; during the summer, you can also use the northern entrance, which is an hour or two south of Bend. Note: Crater Lake is only snow-free in, say, July and August. But that's also when it's most crowded.

Volcanic fields

Oregon’s spine of volcanoes not only provides great skiing, but also dramatic lava flows. The road from Bend to Eugene over the McKenzie pass leads through the Belknap lava flow, where the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s built the Dee Wright observatory entirely out of lava rock. Just south of Bend is Newberry National Volcanic Monument: walk through a lava tube, climb a perfect lava cone, see an ancient forest cast into stone. Newberry Crater, the center of all this activity, is now topped with super-deep lakes.

Hot Springs

Oregon is oddly rich in hot springs. A great introductory guide from The Oregonian is available here. These are worthy of a trip in their own right:

Bagby: Located deep within a National Forest, Bagby is publicly owned and maintained yet consists of beautiful (rustic) wood bath houses with old-fashioned wooden soaking tubs. Getting there requires hiking 1.5 miles each way through old Northwest forests. This could be a day-trip from Portland.
Breitenbush: Run like a retreat center but moderately priced, Breitenbush provides peaceful stone soaking pools, vegetarian meals, and yoga opportunities. A popular overnight destination from Portland.
Terwilliger/Cougar: Deep in the old-growth forests of the Cascades between Eugene and Bend, hot mineral water spills over a cliff and fills a series of natural pools, each one slightly cooler than the last.
Umpqua: Closer to Crater Lake, hand-hewn stone pools filled with iron-rich mineral water perch on the edge of a bluff, overlooking the Umpqua river. This is really getting away from it all.

God Is in the Barren Places

2013-08-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

Maui's famous road to Hana was everything I thought Hawaii would be: verdant rainforest, waterfalls, vistas of undulating coastline and azure ocean, bright tropical flowers and hidden swimming holes.

Yes, that was nice. But it was the road that stretched beyond Hana that swept me off my feet.

Here was the inverse of everything that had come before, a barren and empty land of rocky soil, the occasional windswept tree, and very little evidence of human presence other than the rutted road. There was almost no living thing out there - just gold, grey, brown, and sun-bleached stones. It was like I had eternity all to myself.

Why is it the barren landscapes that move me the most? I was reminded of our first cross-country drive, through the humid overgrowth of the deep South and the bayous of Louisiana. Everyone warned us that the drive through west Texas would be the most tedious stretch of the journey - but it was only after we cleared Austin that I felt a weight lift from my heart. The absolute emptiness of west Texas, the beauty of lonesome trees, the endless horizon framed by rocky outcroppings, here there was room to breathe, to feel empty and expansive at the same time.

The sun was setting as we reached the border of Texas and New Mexico that night, having turned from the Interstate onto a perfectly flat and straight two-lane highway that felt like a road to nowhere. Solitary oil derricks bobbed slowly in the distance, reminders that we were not alone in the world but also perhaps reminders that we really are. Jeff and I stopped to take pictures of ourselves on the yellow strip in the middle of the highway - just because we could.

I am not alone in finding some communion with the infinite in these barren places: Alain de Botton describes this feeling as the sublime, the coming face-to-face with the "strength, age, and size of the universe" and realizing that one is "merely dust postponed."

That may sound depressing, but in truth it is freeing. So much of life, de Botton explains, defies our will, frustrates us and makes us feel inadequate. Sublime landscapes remind us of our frailty and insignificance, but not in a mean or petty way. Through our awe of a universe so much greater than we, the sublime teaches us to accept what we cannot change - a spiritual moment when, despite all the noise and worries of our lives, we experience our immateriality and find it brings us peace.

Or maybe it's just that these barren places, in the words of my Grandpa Nels, "blow the stink off."

I did not expect to find such sublime places on Maui, a tropical paradise that seems to assure us instead that the world was made for our comfort. Yet the day after we followed the road beyond Hana, we found ourselves again in a barren world, descending from the summit of Haleakala into a desolate landscape of red rocks and volcanic cinder cones. Our progress felt dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape; we were envelopped by the mountain's subtly shifting colors and curves.

Indeed, much of the American West is a close encounter with the sublime. "Barren" describes the high mountain pass of the Beartooth Highway between Montana and Wyoming, where the wind blew the stick off us and the prospect of mountains unfolding below us left us feeling expansive, even giddy.

Or the startling white desert of White Sands, New Mexico, where a flaming sunset left me feeling not just peaceful, but somehow safe in the impersonal hands of the universe.

Driving back across the country this June, we detoured through the Badlands of South Dakota: a sudden gash in the prairie, bare stone cliffs stretching for miles in the midst of green grasses. We were not prepared for the rawness of this land, or its surreal stark emptiness.

We camped that night on the edge of the Badlands, backing up against the broad prairie that sent wind whipping unbroken across the campground. We were woken in the night by lightening and booming thunder, the sky a flat mass of black cloud, our tent and campsite lit by white flashes like a series of still photographs. The universe was angry, raging (not at us, we just happened to be there). For hours that night, we huddled in our little car, watching the wind flatten our tent again and again, each time in a different direction, the rain spitting down, the lightening unrelenting. Three storms rolled through, one after the other, before I finally fell asleep.

When I woke, it was shortly after dawn. The sky was a pale blue, the air was fresh and soft, the grasses of the prairie rustled in a gentle morning greeting. I crawled from the car back to our tent, which was somehow still dry inside, and curled up to sleep just a bit more to the chirrups of birds and the distant sounds of other people stirring.

When we drove out of the Badlands that morning, heading east to the farms and the cities of the Midwest, to the people and industry and third-growth forests waiting on the other side of the Missouri and Mississippi, I was reminded of a beloved poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

[I've discussed Alain de Botton's essays from The Art of Travel before, in this introductory post and also here. It turns out I've also used this poem before in a prior post - logically, in talking about the love of the American West that I inherited from my grandmother Pearl.]

Portland Sidetrips: To the Coast

2013-08-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

Don't get your hopes up: The Oregon Coast will never be
this sunny for you.

The first thing you should know about Oregon's western edge (and this is true even in the height of summer) is that it is the “coast” – not the “beach,” the “shore,” or the “sea.” You do not lay on a beach blanket or play in the surf. Instead, you admire the raw beauty of the coastline before heading indoors for some clam chowder.

The second thing you should know is that the entire shoreline is public - there is no such thing as a private beach in Oregon. You are entitled to wander wherever, whenever, you want. This also means that there are state parks up and down the coast where you can rent a yurt or cabin right next to the beach for $30 a night (b.y.o.bedding).

The third thing you should know is that the coast is easy-peasy - just a day trip away from Portland (though I recommend a full weekend). If you head due west from Portland on Highway 26, you dead end into the coastal highway, Highway 101, in just under 1.5 hours. But where to go from there? Here are the highlights, from north to south.

Astoria

View of Astoria (in February) from the Astoria Column.

Turn right and head north on Highway 101, and you will dead-end in Astoria, made famous by The Goonies and Free Willy. Sitting at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River, and once the largest city on the West Coast (stop and think about that one), Astoria is still a working fishing port with an old-school feel. Compared to what else the Oregon Coast has to offer, Astoria would not be my first pick for visitors, but it has its charms - and a very different feel than all the other towns on this list.

Stroll down the main drag and loop back along the docks; climb the Astoria Column; if you have kids in tow, check out Fort Clatsop, a replica of the small compound where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1806. And before heading out of town, stop by Home Bakery (2845 Marine Drive), a traditional Finnish bakery with hearty danishes and (my favorite sugary treat) doughnuts. Or stay for the night: cabins can be rented at nearby Fort Stevens State Park.

Breakfast/heart attack at Home Bakery.

Seaside

Before you reach Astoria on Highway 101, you will pass through Seaside, Oregon's closest relation to the Jersey shore. This is your best bet for entertaining kids: arcades, bumper cars, salt water taffy, and ice cream parlors abound. And then there's the beach - a long, flat, wide stretch of sand bordered by a well-maintained boardwalk.

Cannon Beach

If you prefer your beach towns cute, turn left on Highway 101 for Cannon Beach, popular among the grown-up crowd for its little art galleries and less kitschy shopping.

In between Seaside and Cannon Beach is the ever-popular Ecola State Park, a beautiful stretch of undeveloped shore that epitomizes what locals think of when you say “the coast” (small day use fee required). And just south of Cannon Beach is Haystack Rock, a favorite of Jeff’s that is particularly dramatic at sunset.

Contemplating Haystack Rock on a typical Oregon Coast day.

(Seaside and Cannon Beach are close enough together - and to Portland - to visit both in the same day.)

Manzanita and Nehalem

Further south along Highway 101, through the misty forests of Oswald West State Park, you reach the trendy little town of Manzanita - think Carmel, but colder. The beach here is long and straight, ending in the gentle dunes of Nehalem Bay State Park (yurts available for rent). Meanwhile, Highway 101 curves inland through the delta of the Nehalem River, a scenic estuary that is a soothing contrast to the drama of the coast.

Rockaway, Tillamook, and Netarts

Now we are reaching a "real" part of the coast, more work than play. Rockaway is a distinctly non-yuppie town with a lovely beach. Bay City is home to Pacific Oyster Company, an oyster-shucking warehouse with a small storefront selling plates of no-frills seafood (I can vouch for anything with oysters in or on it). Highway 101 detours from the coast a bit here, heading inland to Tillamook (home of the famous cheese factory) and skipping over Netarts Bay. If you hug the coast instead, you'll reach Cape Lookout State Park, where more yurts are available for rent.

Sunset at Rockaway Beach.

Lincoln City

Here starts my favorite stretch of the coast: Lincoln City to Yachats. To get here directly from Portland, take Highway 99W to McMinnville (heart of wine country) and then Highway 18 south to Otis (home to the classic Otis Cafe). This is a long enough drive that you will probably want to spent the night somewhere between here and Yachats before heading back. In Lincoln City, yurts can be rented at Devil's Lake State Park.

While not particularly quaint (understatement), Lincoln City is famous for its kites. If you are looking for a good souvenir, this might be it - besides which, when was the last time you flew a kite?

Depoe Bay

So I can make no promises – but when Jeff and I came through Depoe Bay in July a couple years ago, there were multiple whales cavorting in the bay. Yes, whales. It’s worth pulling over here regardless to check out the promenade along the old stone seawall.

Devil's Punch Bowl

A slight detour from Highway 101 brings you to my favorite pit stop as a kid: when the tide is in, water crashes around Devil's Punch Bowl like, well, a punch bowl. Pause here for a (windy) picnic, or to explore tide pools. Nearby Beverly Beach State Park has yurts right alongside a particularly beautiful beach.

Newport

Work still gets done in Newport.

Newport - the biggest town around these parts - has a gentle bay, a lovely bridge, a long stretch of sandy beach, and a high concentration of campy kitschy shops and old-school tourist attractions (wax museum! underwater gardens!). For those with kids, the classiest joint in town is the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Our favorite memory from our last trip to Newport: dinner at Local Ocean Seafood, right at the end of Newport’s main drag.

On the other side of the bridge is South Beach State Park, with more yurts for rent a short walk from a long beach and, in season, kayak tours of nearby Beaver Creek. Another favorite of mine is the Sylvia Beach Hotel, a book-themed B&B right on the beach in Newport.

Cape Perpetua and Yachats

South of Newport on Highway 101, the coastline gives Big Sur a run for its money. Much of the land here is volcanic rock – Newport’s sandy beaches are quickly replaced by dramatic cliffs, prickly black shoreline, and frothy crashing waves.

Frothy crashing waves and tide pools.

Plus, porous volcanic rock + frothy crashing waves = tide pools! We had great luck pulling off at Cape Perpetua (south of Yachats) and scrambling around the rocky shoreline, hunting down starfish and anemones and sea snails and other assorted funky critters.

Yachats is a good turning around point – if only because you won’t believe how the locals actually pronounce the name of their hometown. Head back north to Newport and take Highway 20 east over the mountains to Corvalis to catch I-5 back to Portland.

Or keep heading south - the coastline continues to be lovely along here, with countless state parks and scenic lighthouses. The next big town is Florence, which I haven't visited since college and thus am not in a position to write about. But high on my personal list of places-still-to-explore-in-Oregon is the reputedly surreal Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, just south of Florence. If you go, let me know what you think.

Armchair-travel-plus: Finding Japan in Portland

2013-08-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

I was laying in bed last night contemplating my mortality. If yesterday had been my last day, it was singularly unremarkable. Death is inevitable, and as they say - you can't take it with you. That leaves me with today. This is why I travel: to gather experiences to make today something different, something new. And in between trips, I try to see home through the eyes of a traveler.

Cherry blossoms at Waterfront Park

Which brings me to cherry blossoms, that symbol of the fleeting beauty of life. The Japanese cherry trees along the northern end of Waterfront Park bloomed in full glory this year, in a rare week of spring sunshine in Portland. There was actual hanami, festive picnicking under the trees by young people and families. It was a tiny sliver of Japan in Portland.

When we came back from Japan last fall, I went through withdrawal and started seeking out bits and pieces of Japan in our immediate surroundings. Some was pure armchair travel - like my marathon of Japanese movies. Some was already well-known to us - like our favorite izakaya and conveyor-belt sushi (see list below). Others were more subtle, like the cherry blossoms.

Of course, the blossoms themselves were not subtle: you could see them from multiple bridges and vistas around the city (one of their many blessings). But most Portlanders don't know that the trees mark a memorial garden for the victims of our internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Beneath the trees are stones - the interesting kinds of stones you would find in a Japanese garden - etched with haikus and other poems written by the survivors. Memories, pain, regret, cultural identity, and the redemption of spring.

"With new hope, | We build new lives. |
Why complain when it rains? |
This is what it means to be free."

Another example: I was out running errands at lunch last April and stumbled upon a nondescript Japanese curry restaurant, Kale (900 SW Morrison). The owner, a young Japanese man, explained he uses the recipes of his wife's high school teacher. The curry was fragrant, savory, comforting - I'm no expert, but it was authentic enough to transport me back to a particular curry lunch in Hiroshima.

And another: Last winter, we made a pilgrimage across town to Uwajimaya, a Japanese supermarket full of dried seaweed, curry bases, 20-lb. bags of rice, and what, for me, is exotic produce. But post-Japan, I was newly mesmerized by the market's home goods aisles: rows of rice cookers, ramen bowls, bento boxes, incense burners, tamago pans, handkerchiefs and washcloths - almost all the small souvenirs we had brought back with us from Japan, now weighted for me with cultural significance. And right down the street from our apartment was Portland's original Japanese market, the venerable Anzen. A fraction of the size of Uwajimya, Anzen sits almost lonely now, across from the Convention Center between MLK and Grand.

Portland's Japanese Gardens

Some aspects of my return-to-Japan-without-leaving-Portland were not so subtle. No hidden secret, Portland's Japanese Gardens are about as close to the real deal as one can get outside of Japan. Even the hillside path from the Rose Garden (the park, not the arena) to the entrance reminded me of our walk through the cedar forest of Nikko. Though admission is not cheap, the gardens take at least an hour to explore and easily a couple more hours to enjoy. I find my attempts at description inadequate; suffice it to say, if we had stayed in Portland, I would have become a member.

I'll call this armchair-travel-plus: making the most of what's local to induce that shift in perception one gets from being someplace new. Of course, your "local" can limit the range of your armchair-travel-plus options - Portland happens to have strong ties to Japan. But with the right mindset, everything can be an adventure. In the words of a six-year-old, sent to gather the family cat from the basement, "Come, Zachary, we have a quest!"
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Portland has no shortage of fun izakaya, ramen joints, and conveyor-belt sushi. Here are my favorites, as well as a few I found disappointing:

Biwa (SE 9th & Ash): I've written about Biwa before, and for good reason - great atmosphere, good grilled food (a staple of the Japanese pub diet), and very solid ramen.

Miho (4057 N Interstate): A very Portland izakaya - set up in an old house with a menu that marries favorite Portland and Japanese ingredients. Vegan-friendly, though my favorite dish - the mochi, miso, and clams - is decidedly not vegan. I also like their basic shoyu ramen (which is, unusually, vegan) better than their roast pork ramen.

Shigezo (910 SW Salmon): I love that Shigezo feels a bit like Epcot Center inside - like a slice of traditional Japan without any irony or apology. Their menu is similar, a mix of all the fun stuff Japanese cuisine has to offer: good ramen, okonomiyaki, teriyaki and yakitori, curry, katsu, tempura, and - of course - plentiful sushi. They've recently opened a new store at SE 38th & Division with a menu that looks even more fun.

Our neighborhood Marinepolis

Marinepolis Sushi Land (multiple locations, including 138 NW 10th in the Pearl): Portland's original cheap conveyor-belt sushi joint. My sister calls this "$4 sushi" because she can get in an out for $4. I'm pretty impressed if you can do the same, but it shouldn't be much more than that. Decent salmon nigiri (two pieces) is $1.50; basic cucumber or salmon skin rolls (6 pieces) are $1. You can ask for anything as a handroll for just a bit more. Some things have to be ordered: miso soup ($1), basic udon soup ($2), calamari ($1.50), vegetable tempura ($1.50). Green tea is free. Be nice to the hard-working waiters, and don't forget to tip. For this genre - uber-cheap and fast sushi - Marinepolis is still the best.

Koji Osakaya (multiple locations, including near Pioneer Square at 606 SW Broadway): I grew up with Koji's and am including it here mostly out of nostalgia. I go to Koji's when I want Japanese comfort food, like donburi or ramen or udon, and their sushi is good quality for the price. A solid lunch option.

And the rest: I never made it to Bamboo Sushi, but I've heard very good things. Boke Bowl, touted for their ramen, is just OK in my book - it's a fun spot, though, if you're in the neighborhood. As for izakaya, Yakuza was too expensive for us (and we were underwhelmed by the happy hour), and Tanuki was cold and just not fun - I vastly prefer the atmosphere of Biwa and Miho. And if you're going to go for cheap, conveyor-belt sushi, stick with Marinepolis - nothing else we tried was as good, as reliable, or as cheap.

Hanami in Waterfront Park

Embracing the Obvious

2013-07-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

Driving east on our way to Boston, we detoured briefly to Yellowstone - that quintessential national park teeming with families and RVs, where campsites are packed in tent-to-tent and the lodges are booked up a year in advance. We entered the park through the popular northern gate, making our first experience in Yellowstone the hordes of families at Mammoth Hot Springs - like Disneyland, but with steam vents.

Like many of our generation and temperament, I disdain the obvious. I do not follow well-trod paths; I like to feel original, to have "real" experiences when I travel (by which I mean, experiences not clogged up with other tourists). In an ideal world, I like my trips to be just un-mainstream enough to provide me with decent anecdotes for yuppie dinner parties. Yellowstone is as mainstream as it gets.

But here's the rub: places are usually popular for a reason. Sometimes the collective does know best - consider, for example, crowd sourcing and (more often than not) juries. What Yellowstone lacks in obscurity, it makes up for with super-amazingness.

Loving Yellowstone

The park has everything: hot springs, boiling mud, and geysers, yes, but also a massive Alpine lake; a grand canyon with dramatic waterfalls; mountains; forests; grasslands; and my personal favorite, soft vistas of curving rivers.

And talk about crowd sourcing: the first thing we learned in Yellowstone (other than to maintain a safe distance from the bison) was to pull over when everyone else pulls over. Yes, the contrarian in me wanted to keep driving, but our willingness to follow the herd (pun intended) turned our trip into an American safari: a pronghorn pausing at a bend in the river, a black bear digging through the fire ring of an empty campsite, a bison perfectly poised at sunset in the Hayden Valley.

After we continued past Mammoth Hot Springs, we were also reminded that "popular" and "crowds" doesn't always mean "crowded," at least at all places at all times. This is definitely true in Yellowstone, bigger as it is than some east coast states. Besides which, the enjoyment of a certain view or a certain moment is not always a zero-sum game: the collective gasp or quiet comment of appreciation from a stranger, or simple silence, can add a shared profundity of experience greater than any solitude when re-discovering the natural world.

Loving Maui

We learned the same lesson a year ago in Maui. Honeymooning in Hawaii does not get you props for originality, but we loved it. Granted, I had to get over my desire to do one thing, eat one meal, find one beach that wasn't already written up in countless guidebooks - a futile task someplace like Maui where the only real industry remaining is tourism. So I learned to stop worrying and love being obvious, just like everyone else.

Black sand beach along the road to Hana.

So what if everyone else is also driving the Hana Highway? That just means all the best waterfalls and pitstops have been mapped out for us in exquisite detail. (Maui Revealed has the most meticulous recommendations.)

So what if almost every restaurant on the island caters to tourists? I can still enjoy my plate lunch of hearty (if somewhat uninspired) local food at Aloha Mixed Plate, dining al fresco next to the ocean.

Dinner at the Old Lahaina Luau

I loved the Old Lahaina Luau, with its crafts for kids at sunset and giant buffet and hula dancing in front of the surf at twilight. I loved sitting on tropical beaches watching my husband snorkel with sea turtles. I even loved the Spa Grande at the Grand Wailea, often accused of being overrated: $55 for two hours of soaking in scented baths, sitting in saunas, and resting on the quiet lanai overlooking the ocean seems a fair price for a different sort of paradise.

Yes, the drinks at the Hula Grill along Kaanapali beach are ridiculously overpriced: but what price can you put on watching the sun set over the ocean, listening to live island music with a tropical drink in hand, your toes in the sand, and a gentle breeze against your cheek?

There's a lot to be said for the obvious.

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So you're ready to embrace the obvious and head to Yellowstone or Maui. Now what?

On the Beartooth Highway

Yellowstone: (1) The lodges in the park are surprisingly affordable - but they book up literally a year in advance. Reservable campsites also fill up months in advance. Plan ahead. (2) Bring binoculars. (3) You need at least two full days: a day for the geysers and hot springs to the west, and a day for the grand canyon and the valleys to the east. (4) Don't skip the Roosevelt/Tower Lodge area to the northeast - it has beautiful rugged terrain, denser wildlife, and fewer people. (5) Leave or come via the Beartooth Highway (which connects to the northeastern corner of the park, also satisfying (4)).

Maui: (1) Consider not staying in a hotel or resort. Renting a condo or finding a B&B might not be as glamorous, but it can significantly reduce the Disneyland feel of the tourist economy, in particular by letting you eat some of your meals at "home." (2) Not all beaches are crowded. Right above Kaanapali is Kahekili beach park: smaller and a bit windier than the popular Kaanapali, but mostly empty and with a free parking lot to boot. We also had DT Fleming beach park mostly to ourselves - and the sea turtles. (3) Leave early for the Hana Highway, use Maui Revealed, and don't back track - drive the full loop around the bottom of the island. (4) And when the crowds and/or the heat wear you down, we were fans of Local Boys Shave Ice in Lahaina.

DT Fleming beach park

Here

2013-07-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

Back in Portland, two posters hung over our bed. They look identical: empty white sheets of paper framed in black. But they each have a single, barely visible line of text precisely in their center. The one on my side of the bed said: Somewhere better than this place.

It is the motto of our meta-life. We met in Boston five years ago only to move to DC, to the Hague, to Portland, and now back to Boston with the expectation of another move two years from now. On good days, I feel like my life is a grand quest, with us cast as the fearless explorers (albeit of a modern, domesticated sort).

But on bad days - and there were many bad days in recent weeks - I feel scattered, my mind and body so jangly that the skin under my skin feels like it is vibrating. In our last couple of weeks in Portland, living amongst boxes yet again, our quasi-nomadic lifestyle deeply unsettled me: it's like a perpetual motion machine, with us propelled forward every time we think we come to rest. In those moments, I was drawn to the poster that hung on the other side of the bed: Nowhere better than this place.

With our remaining time in Portland slipping away like it never existed, I tried to collect a few last moments that were purely "here." It being June in Portland, I literally stopped to smell the roses.

Strawberry picking on Sauvie Island

Sauvie's: a flat delta island just beyond the meeting of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, a pastoral enclave right on the edge of the city. Most of the farms are u-pick, and the first big crop is the strawberries. It was a good year for Oregon strawberries; at the very start of June, the vines were already dense with fruit, real strawberries that are bright red and delicate all the way to the core. These strawberries are too fragile to ship; they can only be eaten locally. My sister wanted flats of them to make strawberry jam, yet with four of us, the picking only took twenty minutes. (A jar of my sister's Oregon strawberry jam was the first item in our new fridge in Boston. It didn't last long.)

The Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade

A repetitive childhood memory: waiting for what seemed like eons on an overcast day with drizzle for the annual Rose Festival parade to start. Was it an omen that this year, for the first time in my memory, parade day dawned bright and sunny?

We took a break from packing to check out the parade, given that it started within walking distance of our apartment. We only stayed for the first 10 minutes, but as Jeff pointed out, we saw what mattered: a couple floats; prancing horses; elite high school bands from out of state; the classic One More Time Around Again Marching Band (not so elite, but they make up for it with zest); and the Rose Festival Court.

Oh, how I wanted to be a Rose Festival princess when I was a little girl! (No, really, I did! Every year, I would practice my rose festival wave - elbow elbow wrist-wrist-wrist - while watching the then-televised selection of the queen.) Alas, some dreams are not meant to be. As the court floated by, I was reminded of the importance of failure in life. It was oddly reassuring, as I prepared to leap again, to think how life goes on even when you don't quite end up where you hoped you would.

Wandering through the east side industrial district

Walking to the bus stop after yoga one evening, I heard the thrilling stomp of a drum line. Detoured back across the train tracks and under the Morrison Bridge to find a punk marching band (all drums and crashing cymbals) practicing for the Starlight Parade: bass drums that lit up when whacked, the percussive beat reverberating in the echoing space under the bridge, a small flag team behind them half-heartedly practicing their routine.

Wandered off again and wound through the warehouses and bridges of the east side, discovering graffiti murals, some new stores, the raw beauty of industrial areas. The drum line had started marching, and I found them again, heading north into the twilight, flags waving.

Biking to work along the East Side Esplanade

Cool summer mornings, Portland's skyline lit by bright sun, me cruising down the esplanade alongside the river, heart rate picking up, fresh air on my face, bridges whizzing past. It was like my own sitcom theme song/credit roll every morning to start my day. This - this is it.

Beer with friends at the Kennedy School

On a particularly hot Saturday, we spontaneously met with friends at the Kennedy School just as the day was starting to cool off. Beer in hand, we sat out by the refurbished school's front steps to mellow as the sun took its fine time setting. It was the way to end one's time in the city: languidly, appreciatively, with friends and laughter and a local microbrew.

Somewhere better than this place ...

Nowhere better than this place ...

We collected the posters back in 2008 at MALBA, a museum of modern Latin American art in Buenos Aires. It was a participatory installation exhibit, two big stacks of posters that patrons walked between and then took with them. I understood the artist to mean we oscillate between the two perspectives - but I have always intended to live both at once. A dualism of loving the here while dreaming of the there.

Two weeks before we moved, I wrote in my journal: "Preparing to move, time is speeding up - I feel like we are hurtling towards somewhere better than this place at a rate that could fling us off, like centripetal force, to a no man's land between the here and the there - like we will end up in a liminal purgatory, overwhelmed by events and distance, a balloon suddenly deflated and crumpled to the ground." It is a delicate balance, this duality between somewhere better and nowhere better. Despite the passing terror of getting lost between the here and the there, we made it to the other side safely enough. Now begins the process of learning to love our new "here," even as we start to build our imaginings for the next.

Moving Day Doughnuts

2013-07-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

We have officially survived Moving Day, that traumatic life experience Jeff and I keep repeating like a broken record every two years. As with other unpleasant but necessary life experiences (dentist appointments, final exams, various tests of reproductive organs), I usually have to bribe myself out of bed on moving day. In Portland, that means doughnuts.

Oh, doughnuts! How I love you! Fried cake with frosting and sprinkles, you warm the cockles of my heart!

Portland has good doughnuts, with countless independent purveyors scattered around the city. VooDoo Doughnuts gets all the attention, but waiting in line for a doughnut defeats the purpose: doughnuts should be guilty pleasures. If you have thirty minutes to weigh the pros and cons of eating a doughnut (or three), you're missing the whole spirit of the thing.

No, the ultimate doughnut in Portland is made by the humble Delicious Donuts, a small family shop in a nondescript mini-stripmall at one of the busiest and ugliest intersections in Portland (where E. Burnside crosses MLK). The friendly couple who runs the shop opens it at 3 a.m. six days a week; they often sell out by 9. Their basic cake doughnuts are soft with a moist crumb and just a hint of lemon; the yeasty raised doughnuts still have a bit of bite to them (none of this pure sugar, insubstantial Krispy Kreme nonsense); and their maple bars are both sweet and savory, without the cloying imitation flavor that ruins much of the maple genre.

And then there's my holy grail: Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut. They shape their flavorful cake doughnut into a flattened ring, increasing the fry surface area and thus the crispness of its ridges, and then cover it in a thick, dark chocolate glaze - rich, dense, yet not too sweet. Yes, it's a heart attack in five bites, but it is also doughnut perfection.

So, for myself and for our movers, I pulled myself out of bed early on Moving Day to pick up a baker's dozen of Delicious Donuts. This was a fitting tribute to Portland: Boston might have cannoli and cream pies, but its doughnut market was long ago cornered by the nefarious Dunkin Donuts. Those sugary processed concoctions are a far cry from the real thing; doughnuts, as I know them, would soon be beyond my reach.

After securing my beautiful box o' doughnuts, however, I realized we had another problem. After 18 months, Portland managed to turn Jeff vegan just as we were packing up to move back east. My lovely doughnuts were a trial by fire: the poor man had to endure not only the trauma of Moving Day, but also hours of our house smelling like freshly fried dough and his wife having repeated food orgasms in the kitchen ("oh my gawd, this is sooo goooood!"). Some sort of recompense was in order.

Besides the doughnuts, we will miss Portland's large and growing cadre of vegan food establishments, from pubs (like Sweet Hereafter) to upscale cuisine (Blossoming Lotus, Natural Selection) to countless food carts and small cafes. This does not exist in most of the rest of the country, not even in the People's Republic of Cambridge, MA. Indeed, Portland has at least two vegan bakeries (that I know of). Think about that: a bakery that does not use milk or eggs or butter. Fascinating.

As luck would have it, we stumbled into one of them - Back to Eden - that very evening. Even I, a gleeful butter eater, have to admit that their stuff looks pretty good. Not as good as Delicious Donuts, mind you, but a plausible substitute for the true believers. Jeff got his vegan doughnut, and all was right with the world.

A few days later, we loaded up the car with the last dregs of our stuff and started the long drive east to Boston (Cambridge, to be exact). Early that morning, our friends came to see us head off into the sunrise, and they brought us one last farewell gift: a Delicious Donuts' chocolate-frosted old fashioned doughnut.

Taking the Tri' to the East Side

2013-06-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I wanted to be (a) a U.S. senator, (b) a novelist, or (c) a TriMet bus driver.

My affinity for Portland's buses was directly correlated to the amount of time I spent on them: just getting home from my summer camp at age 10 took three buses and about 1.5 hours. But kids don't mind killing time, and true to form, I used the gaps between connections to indulge in a daily food ritual (pork hum bao from an early downtown food cart, corn dogs from the Burlingame Fred Meyer's - I was not a svelte child).

The last bus on my daily journey - the 39 - only came every half hour and took even longer to reach my house, and its only riders were those like me who had all the time in the world. I always sat in the front seats, legs dangling, corn dog in hand, giant sweating fountain drink between my knees, so I could listen to the bus driver chat with the other passengers. Buses are still pretty friendly around here. Riders greet the driver and say "thank you" when they disembark, and drivers and riders are prone to striking up long and usually random conversations (which make great dinner table stories in the retelling).

Portland's bus mall and Bud Clark's muse.

Mushroom bus shelter-turned-coffee shop.

My TriMet heyday in the late '80s was the era of the original downtown "bus mall": two streets dedicated to public transit, with two bus stops per block and lots of 1970s public art installations to which our mayor Bud Clark famously exposed himself. The bus shelters were brown-and-glass mushroom-like capsules with honkin' television monitors that displayed, in shaky type like in airport terminals of old, the arrival time of the next buses (which was a-MAAAA-zing in 1988). One of these old stops has been left as a relic, turned into a coffee stand; the new shelters are all sleek and glassy, with flat screen monitors and no real protection from the rain.

Today it's the MAX light rail and the little streetcar that get all the attention (and the funding), but the buses still do most of the serious work. Don't be fooled if you come to town sans car: other than getting to and from the airport, the MAX and the streetcar are pretty much useless. You want the buses.

Granted, buses are not as tourist-friendly. But in Portland, you really can ask the bus driver for help identifying your stop or where you want to go. Plus TriMet has a decent trip planner, which is also integrated into Google maps, and there are more than 50 apps (as collected by TriMet) that provide real-time tracking of the buses.

Alas, due to serious budget shortfalls (and, imho, over-spending on extending the MAX and streetcar lines), TriMet has recently cut back bus service even further. What this means is that locals can't get cross-town quickly (say, from SE to NE Portland) - but it is still super-easy to get just about anywhere from downtown. And for tourists, that is likely what matters most.

The new shelters: sleek, yes; rainproof, not so much.

OK, so let's say you are staying at a hotel downtown, which also means you probably don't have a car, but you have an extra day to kill and you want to check out this "East Side" you keep hearing about (which is really, truth be told, where you find the heart of Portland these days). What do you do?

Pick a line, ride across the river, and hit up one of East Side's distinct neighborhoods. Roughly from south to north, your best neighborhood bets are:

Division/Clinton

Bus: #4
Vibe: Not yet quite cohesive, to be honest. But it's home to some of New Portland's most landmark establishments.
Epicenter: Between 30th and 39th Aves on Division. Clinton at 26th Ave is a cute corner cluster worth its own visit.
To eat: Pok Pok (Division at 32nd), Broder (Clinton cluster), St. Jack (Clinton cluster)
To drink: Hedge House (a Lompoc brewpub with a pleasant patio)
To do: Xtabay (upscale vintage in the Clinton cluster), Clinton Street Theater (random art house movie theater at the Clinton cluster)

Hawthorne

Bus: #14
Vibe: Portland's original crunchy hippie hang out
Epicenter: 32nd to 39th Aves, though there's an increasing amount east of 39th as well.
To eat: Waffle Window
To drink: Bazi (Belgian beer)
To do: Powell's cookbook store and Pastaworks (for the foodies), Baghdad Theater (second-run movies in a great old movie house, complete with beer and pizza), vintage warehouses (check out House of Vintage).

Belmont

Bus: #15
Vibe: Hipster bars
Epicenter: 33rd to 35th Aves (it's a compact cluster)
To eat: Sweet Hereafter (vegan pub)
To drink: Stumptown Annex (the original brew-by-the-cup coffee shop), Circa33 (find the secret room)
To do: Wunderland/Avalon Theater (a nickel arcade and second-run movie theater for kids - like Portland's answer to Chuck E. Cheese)

Laurelhurst

Bus: #20
Vibe: Restaurants that comfortably straddle old and new Portland
Epicenter: Along NE 28th between Pine and Everett Streets
To eat: Ken's Artisan Pizza, Bamboo Sushi, Navarre, the grilled cheese truck
To drink: Coalition (microbrewery)
To do: Laurelhurst Theater (cheap second-run movies, with local beer and pizza)

Williams

Bus: #4
Vibe: Low-key
Epicenter: Between Beech and Shaver (this is another small neighborhood, though rapidly expanding)
To eat: Lincoln (happy hour or dinner), Tasty N' Sons (brunch), Kenny & Zuke's (bagels)
To drink: Hopworks' Bikebar, Lompoc's Fifth Quadrant
To do: Queen Bee Creations (open studio for a local purse/bag designer)

Mississippi

Bus: #4
Vibe: Gentrification by the young and cheap hipsters
Epicenter: From Fremont to Skidmore
To eat: Por Que Non? (tacos the New York Times loves), Mississippi Pizza
To drink: Prost! (real German beer), Amnesia (uber-casual brewery with beer garden)
To do: The ReBuilding Center (nonprofit that collects and sells used building materials - surprisingly fascinating)

Alberta

Bus: #8 or #17
Vibe: The epicenter of Portland's gentrification kulturkampf
Epicenter: 15th to 23rd Ave, although really all the way east to 30th
To eat: Bollywood Theater (Indian street food), Salt & Straw (icecream), Back to Eden (vegan bakery), Pine State Biscuits (opposite of vegan)
To drink: Barista (prototypical Portland coffeeshop), Townshends (calming and lovely tea shop with extensive selection)
To do: Wander - you'll find everything from a community bicycle center to a boutique fabric store to a hands-on craft shop.

Logistics: Bus fares are $2.50 for an hour or $5 for an all-day pass (you do the math on that one). It is not particularly easy to get between these neighborhood, but you could walk between Hawthorne and Belmont, between Belmont and Laurelhurst, and between Williams and Mississippi (or hop back on the #4).

What would I pick? Probably Alberta for New Portland; Hawthorne for Old Portland; and Laurelhurst and Belmont for a night out.

How to Spend a Saturday in Downtown Portland

2013-06-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Let's say you're passing through town only briefly - for business, for a friend's wedding, as a pitstop between San Francisco and Seattle - and you only have a day to learn the lay of Portland's land. What do you do?

Welcome to PDX (says the White Stag)

My short answer: Waterfront Park and the Saturday Market, Portland's living room, Powell’s, some good food, and – time permitting – walking around the Pearl. Allow me to elaborate.

First, you should eat something.

This is, after all, what one does in Portland.

Downtown has a number of “hot” as well as classic Portland restaurants. For breakfast, consider Bijou Cafe (132 SW 3rd Ave; no website), an early entrant on the Portland breakfast scene that serves excellent, largely local, largely organic breakfast and brunch dishes. Two other classic Portland restaurants serve consistently high quality brunches and lunches: the Veritable Quandry (with delightful patio seating; reservations recommended) and the Heathman (very classic Portland; reservations probably smart).

For “new” Portland (read: longer wait and no reservations), try Kenny and Zuke’s, a more industrial space with New York deli-style plates (they smoke and cure their own meats – including fabulous pastrami – and their bagels are above average). And the famous/infamous Tasty n' Sons, the unofficial King of Portland's popular brunch scene with the two-hour waits to prove it, has recently opened a second outpost right downtown, the aptly named Tasty n' Alder (it's on Alder).

Do do that voodoo that you do so well.

Or, if you really like lines, there’s always the downtown outlet of Voodoo Doughnuts. Now, I love a good doughnut – but I refuse to stand in line for more than 5 minutes for one. But Voodoo Doughnuts has rapidly become a Portland institution, and standing in line at the downtown store has become something of a Portland institution as well. So I leave the decision to you.

For a "new" Portland lunch, there’s Little Bird, a French-style bistro that the Oregonian named Portland’s restaurant of the year in 2012. For something a bit simpler, Bunk Sandwiches next door has a big following (these are the kind of sandwiches that white people like). Or there's the Alpine cuisine of Gruner (sometimes inconsistent, but when it's good, it's really good).

Of course there are the ubiquitous food cart pods – downtown, most notably at 11th and Alder, 5th and Stark, and 3rd and Washington. Bear in mind that the best food carts tend not to open downtown on the weekends – if your heart is set on food carts, head to the Saturday Market (see below).

Sample ubiquitous food cart pod.

Then you might want to stretch your legs.

How else can you justify your next meal? Regardless of the need for exercise or excuse for further eating, I highly recommend walking through at least part of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Back in the day, Waterfront Park was an expressway clogged with cars – now it’s a mile-long stretch of riverfront park that makes for excellent people watching on warm summer evenings.

Eastside Easplanade

For an easy (mostly flat) two-mile loop, you can walk the length of Waterfront Park, walk across the pedestrian level of the Steel Bridge (the pointy black one), walk the opposite side of the river on the Eastside Esplanade (with the best views of Portland’s skyline), and return back across the Hawthorne Bridge (the pointy green one). I run or bike part of this loop almost every day.

Throughout the summer months (indisputably the best time to visit Portland anyway), there is almost always some festival or another going on at the south end of Waterfront Park. Right now (early June) is the biggie: the Rose Festival. Other highlights include the Oregon Brewer's Festival (end of July) and my personal favorite, the Waterfront Blues Festival, always held over the 4th of July weekend. There's nothing like live blues outside on a languid summer evening to make all the world slow down.

At the northern end of Waterfront Park, from April through December, you should at least stroll through the classic Saturday Market where local artisans sell their handmade, prototypically crunchy-hippie crafts (pottery, chunky jewelry, woodworking, soaps, natural-fiber clothes, bird feeders, windchimes). In the summer, this is an excellent people-watching scene.

You probably don’t want to miss:

Powell's: the good lord's answer to a rainy day.

Portland’s most famous landmark is a bookstore. Powell’s stretches across a couple interconnected warehouses in a maze of rooms (designed to get you lost) overflowing with new and used books. Try to imagine finding a book back in the day before they had a computerized catalog of what’s in stock.

You might want to pick up a map when you enter, and always set a meeting time and place with your touring colleagues (trust me). For fellow bargain hunters, I am a big fan of Powell’s sales tables, clustered around the two main entrances.

You should also walk through Pioneer Courthouse Square, “Portland’s Living Room.” Thirty-plus years ago, it was a fairly revolutionary concept to tear down a building on prime real estate and replace it with a public plaza simply so people can hang out. This is where our Christmas Tree stands, where Portlanders ring in the new year, and where mini-concerts and film screenings fill up the summer months.

Pioneer Courthouse, its square, and flowers that *heart* Portland.

Our favorite, little-known, free Portland sightseeing hint: Pop into Pioneer Courthouse (right next to Pioneer Courthouse Square, surprisingly enough), which is open to the public on weekdays if you’re willing to show some ID and go through the metal detectors. Work your way upstairs to the copula (seen in the picture above), where you can get a bird’s-eye view of the Square and bus mall. A few blocks away, at Third and Salmon, the new federal courthouse also has a lovely public patio overlooking downtown on its ninth floor (more security screening and government-issued ID required).

Peace in the park blocks.

From Pioneer Courthouse Square, it's only a few blocks south to the South Park Blocks, a long stretch of leafy trees and quiet park benches in the midst of the city. The Portland Art Museum sits right at the start of the Park Blocks and has a good collection of (very) contemporary art. And in between Pioneer Courthouse Square and the South Park Blocks is Director Park, a new-ish plaza with plentiful cafe tables, a life-sized chess set, and a fountain for kids to splash around in.

Then set off to explore Portland's neighborhoods.

What makes Portland great is its distinct neighborhoods. Right downtown, the Pearl District (basically everything north of Burnside and west of Broadway) epitomizes the yuppie side of new Portland: fifteen years ago, almost nothing was down here, but now it is an urban planner’s paradise of loft apartments, trendy stores, and fancy gelato shops.

The Pearl backs right up to Powell’s on the bookstore’s north side. If you get tired of poking around galleries and upscale shops, the Pearl is chock-a-block with fancy restaurants (Andina is the best of the bunch), or if you’re hankering for a big juicy burger, stop by Little Big Burger for the best cheap burger you've ever had (think In-n-Out Burger, but higher quality ingredients). The Pearl is also home to the city's largest brewpubs, making it perfect for a low-key microbrew crawl.

From the Pearl, you can hop on the streetcar (which runs down 10th and 11th Avenues) to NW 23rd. This lovely neighborhood is buzzing on sunny Saturday afternoons – I would compare it to a scaled-down version of Boston’s Newbury Street. Near the streetcar stop is the wildly popular Salt & Straw, purveyors of creative ice cream flavors, and the nearly as popular Bamboo Sushi, “the first certified, sustainable sushi restaurant in the world” (they say). In fact, NW 23rd and NW 21st are packed with trendy restaurants, making this a great place for lunch or dinner.

If you are entertaining kids:

Director Park: kid-friendly.

There’s story time pretty much every day at my favorite downtown spot (nerd alert), the Multnomah County Library. If you are willing to go a bit further afield, you can take the MAX (lightrail) to the Oregon Zoo - a nicely landscaped, above-average zoo that is particularly pleasant on a sunny summer day – or find your way to OMSI on the east bank of the river. OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) is a much-beloved hands-on science museum, complete with a submarine and an IMAX theater. For younger ones, the Children’s Museum – located next to the Zoo – might be a better option for a hands-on learning and play experience.

If you are feeling adventurous:

Two classic Portland experiences are right on the edge of downtown but require a bit of finesse to reach with public transit.

Portland’s International Rose Test Garden is a swath of spectacular roses (best in June and July) overlooking downtown Portland. This is a prototypical Portland spot as well as a fabulous place for a picnic. The Japanese Gardens are also next door: though not free, this is one of the best Japanese gardens outside Japan. (Take the #83 bus from downtown.)

And then there’s Forest Park: a huuuuuuuge, well, forested park with miles and miles of hiking trails (the Wildwood Trail is the most popular). Our favorite easy loop starts in lower Macleay Park in NW Portland: the trailhead there leads along a creek to the "Stone House," where you can either turn back or take a sharp right to the Wildwood Trail. Another 10 minutes down the Wildwood will take you to a meadow, where you can exit the park to a residential neighborhood and make your way to Thurman Street. Thurman crosses the trail head where you started by way of giant trestle bridge, with stairs on the far side leading back down to Macleay Park. The total loop takes us about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. (The #15 bus from downtown goes up Thurman Street - ask the driver for where to get off for Macleay Park.)

The real deal.

If you are looking for a bit of Oregon to take home with you:

If you want to get a sense of the greater outdoors without leaving downtown, swing by the Outdoor Store (304 SW 3rd Ave.), a real deal, old-school purveyor of the Wild West gear still used by most of the state (Oregon being a mostly rural state of farmers and ranchers).

For a sampling of Portland's hipster crafty scene, stop by the aptly-named Crafty Wonderland across the street from the library. Or if you're heading to Powell's, check out nearbyTender Loving Empire for more of the same.

As the evening hour approaches:

There are several excellent happy hours in downtown Portland - many of these I covered in greater detail in my last post. For wet evenings, the classic Huber's (Portland's self-proclaimed oldest restaurant) and the newer Ringside Fish House both have extensive menus of shockingly cheap happy hour food. On warm evenings, the best outside happy hour downtown is Nel Centro. Or, for a more hipster ambiance, check out Clyde Common's happy hour, complete with communal tables and bourbon-based cocktails. Once there, you should seriously consider staying for dinner.

If you're a beer drinker, Bailey's Tap Room is a chill place to sample a wide range of local and not-so-local microbrews. (See also my beer post for more downtown beer ideas.) If you're looking for something a bit more sophisticated, Departure on top of the Nines Hotel has the best rooftop bar downtown. Or if you missed them for brunch, both the Vertiable Quandry and the Heathman have fantastic old-school bars. Indeed, a personal favorite way to end an evening involves a glass of wine and a loveseat in the Heathman's lounge, mellowing to live jazz underneath the grand chandelier.

Cocktails at Clyde Common: All gone.

Date-worthy Happy Hours

2013-05-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, I like a good deal. Portland has so many restaurants, trying them all for full evenings out would be a financial undertaking akin to a downpayment on our first house. So I have become a self-proclaimed expert on Portland's abundant happy hour scene, a scene that has allowed us to sample restaurants that would otherwise be outside our normal dining budget. After 18 months of exploration, here are my six favorites, from the casual to the upscale:

Dig a Pony: This is where the 20-something hipsters come to play like it's 1899. Huge windows fill this lovely open space with natural light; the artisanal lightbulbs and plentiful candles means attractive lighting for all once the sun sets. Exposed brick walls, an old-fashioned horseshoe bar, and a smattering of old books class up the joint, while the thumping (but always hip) music keeps it young, and the moody bartenders with their suspenders and bowties keeps it attitudinal. Happy hour runs until 7, with local beers, well drinks, and plates of food all $3. Best bet: the Cubano. The fries are good, too.

Hubers (411 SW Third): For something completely different - think 1890s without the irony - get to Huber's early to snag a booth in its dark-wood bar before it fills up with happy hour regulars. The menu is not particularly noteworthy other than its incredible cheapness: a long list of meal-sized dishes for $3 or $4. Since the food's such a deal, splurge on a Spanish coffee, the making of which Huber's has turned into performance art.

Clyde Common (1014 SW Stark): A new classic on the Portland scene, Clyde Common combines the woodsy/light industrial look with well-executed dishes that typify Portland's trendiest food trends (e.g., nettles, terrines, obscure pasta shapes, various forms of pig). The happy hour food menu is limited - you're here primarily for the $5 cocktail specials, most of which involve bourbon. Sitting around the communal table as the open kitchen behind you gets on with dinner prep, you will feel jazzed and maybe even a little hip; you might even feel inspired to stay for dinner, but be forewarned that the dinner menus aren't even printed until happy hour ends at 6.

Heathman (1001 SW Broadway): On the other side of downtown, and at the other end of the new school/old school spectrum, is the Heathman Hotel. Portland doesn't go for grand or ostentatious; it likes understated and comfortable elegance, which pretty much sums up this traditional lodging and dining establishment. The Heathman's reliably excellent restaurant is a popular lunch spot for lawyers and business types, and its bar is a classy choice for an afterwork drink. A cheaper food menu is available all night long in the bar and in the tea court lounge, where you can sip with sophistication on chaise lounges and love seats underneath the grand chandelier. Even better, the tea court lounge hosts live jazz Wednesday through Saturday.

ClarkLewis (1001 SE Water Ave.): For a classy but modern ambiance, head over the Hawthorne Bridge to the cluster of trendy establishments in the inner east side's warehouse district. ClarkLewis was a hot restaurant five or seven years ago; the buzz has died off, which just translates to "same great space, more chill vibe." I love that their happy hour drinks include real martinis and gimlets - and more-than-just-house wines - for $5. As for the food, expect a scaled-down version of their regular fare, not as good or as intricate but a decent value: a deliciously fatty burger is $6, a plate of house-made spaghetti bolognese (properly cooked al dente and not overladen with sauce) is $4, and a large green salad with seasonal toppings is $3. They also keep a dessert option on the happy hour menu (usually around $3, too), so you could have a full three-course meal for $12-$15 per person. Particularly on a nice day, with the garage-door windows rolled up, this lovely space feels positively date-like, or at least more New York than new Portland. Happy hour runs daily until 6:30 (6:00 on Fridays).

Lincoln (3808 N. Williams): Like Clyde Common, Lincoln focuses on what I think of as new Portland cuisine - house-made mousses and terrines; perfectly prepared local vegetables; well-seasoned game ragus. Like comfort food, but cooked with the precision of a French-trained chef (and speaking of chefs, chef-owner Jenn Louis is one of the best in town). Even the space feels like an upscale pub, with big windows and comfortable booths and a small bar flooded with light as the sun sets. Service is friendly and attentive; the happy hour menu is ample and constantly changing to keep pace with seasonal ingredients. This is a perfect end to the day: mellowing over plate after plate of perfectly executed fare while watching the bike commuters on N. Williams whizz by. Happy hour runs until 7 on weekdays.

PDX Brews: the Micro, the Macro, and the Nano

2013-05-22T07:52:00.002-07:00

My mom has always been ahead of the times. She moved to Portland in the '70s - way before it was hip - and, when I was a kid, would take us to the city's first brewpub: McMenamin's Hillsdale Pub. Lyza and I liked it because if you were a rube enough to order a "large," the thinly cut fries (skin still on) would come out heaped on a baking sheet. Tee-hee. Mom liked it because she could bring along a Ball jar to fill with fresh beer to take home (a growler before we called them growlers).

Today McMenamin's is a huge chain; their food is rather mediocre and their beer quality rather spotty. A micro-to-macro growing pain, I suppose. But they have a thing and they do it well - see, for example, my notes on the Kennedy School. McMenamin's is still a stalwart of old Portland, as are the other early pioneers of the Oregon microbrew scene: Bridgeport (Portland 1984), Widmer (Portland 1984), Deschutes (Bend 1988), Rogue (Ashland/Newport 1988).

Joe, our beer guru, with tasters at the Commons Brewery.

So if you're visiting Portland for the first time, know that all of these breweries have large, welcoming brewpubs with full menus and (for the most part) family-friendly atmospheres. For a great, old-school beer crawl right downtown, start at McMenamin's Ringler's Annex (1223 SW Stark) and then work your way through the Pearl district - past Rogue (1339 NW Flanders), then Deschutes (210 NW 11th), and ending at Bridgeport (1313 NW Marshall).

You might have a sensed theme, though, in my PDX posts: as a native Portlander, I can't help but view Portland through an "old Portland/new Portland" prism. Let's say you have a beer-savvy friend coming to town, and you want to impress her with a more "new Portland" (hip/edgy/small batch) brewery experience. You're in luck: in the last few years, there's been an explosion of "nano-breweries" around town. As I've said before, I'm no beer expert, but I know what I like - and this stuff is good.

First, though, in sampling beer around town over the last year, I have learned a few things worth sharing for other microbrew ingenues:

Oregon breweries are really really proud of their Northwest-grown hops. At least, that's what I assume, because they double and triple hop just about everything. Hops make beers more bitter; thus, Oregon beers tend toward the hoppy/bitter end of the spectrum (though I sense that this trend may finally be changing).
For those of us not so found of the hops, here's a really helpful tool that somehow Jeff and I just learned about a couple months ago: IBUs, or "international bittering units." The higher the IBU, the more bitter the beer. For example, as someone who does not like mouth-puckering beer, I now avoid pale ales with an IBU well above 30. This is no easy feat in Portland.
Which brings us to a word about IPAs ("India Pale Ales"). Northwest IPAs are not like other IPAs. Northwest IPAs are very "hop forward," as they say. And Double IPAs, or Imperial IPAs, are even more so. I avoid these.
But hops are balanced out on the palate by malt - thus a stout or a porter can have a high IBU without tasting bitter. So consider the IBU score in light of the beer's darkness. (Slightly punny there.)
A Bitter, however, is not necessarily bitter (!!!). The British call medium-bodied, drinkable ales "Bitters" because the historical alternative included basically no hops at all. I just learned this a week ago. It's a shame, because it turns out I really like Bitter beers, even though I don't like bitter beer.
A final note: As breweries here move away from triple-hopped pale ales and towards Belgian-farmhouse style ales (a trend of which I heartily approve), I have seen a lot of Saisons popping up on draft/draught lists. People love Saisons. In the spirit of my prior manifesto, though, I will dare to assert that this is a regrettable hangover of the hop-heavy days. Saisons, though Belgian-style, are intense, complex, and very hoppy beers. Another important distinction: Saisons are the opposite of sessions. A session beer is a eminently quaffable ale - slightly heavier than a pilsner but with a lower alcohol content than most microbrews.

To summarize: If you don't like bitter beer, aim for low IBU scores, avoid IPAs, and seek out pils, sessions, and bitters. If you like complex and hoppy beers, embrace the IPA, look for IBU scores pushing 90, and seek out some of these saisons everyone is raving about.

Right, then. To the breweries:

Even the taster at Base Camp keeps up
with the Pacific Northwest theme.

Base Camp: Base Camp (930 SE Oak) wins for best place to hang out with friends - like the brewery equivalent of Central Perk. The loft-like space is filled with handmade tables of salvaged wood and pillars of basalt. Outside, benches cluster around fire pits on a broad patio perfect for summer. Like most serious new breweries, Base Camp doesn't fuss around with food - if you're hungry, the food carts parked outside are happy to bring your order in to you. As for the beer, it's a little hoppy for my tastes - but that just adds to the Pacific Northwest theme.

Coalition: If Base Camp wins for best space, Coalition (2724 SE Ankeny) wins for best location: right in the heart of the Burnside/28th Ave. cluster of fine restaurants, and just a few blocks from the Laurelhurst Theater, a classic second-run movie house that serves pizza and (more) microbrews. Coalition is thus a great way to start or end an evening out, but it's also a destination in its own right, especially on sunny afternoons when they roll up the garage-style windows.

Hanging out at Migration on a warm spring night.

Migration: Like Base Camp, Migration (2828 NE Glisan) just wants you to hang out. Their large but comfortable pub is always chill - think dart boards, armchairs, and beaten-up board games. In the warmer months, they roll up the windows and a beer garden spills out onto their front patio.

Upright Brewery: Currently my favorite local beer, thanks to its Belgian farmhouse-style crafting. Going to the source is like finding the secret club house: you have to enter the Left Bank building (240 N. Broadway), take the elevator to the basement, and turn right to find the bare bones brewery, where they've squeezed in just a few tables and chairs around the big silver vats. They are only open on Friday nights and weekends, when they close at 6. This isn't a bar or a pub - this is a tasting room with 8 taps and a low-key vibe. A 12 oz. glass is only $3, but with 5 oz. pours for $1.50, why wouldn't you just try them all?

This "tasting room" style of brewery is popping up all over Portland. Commons Brewery (1810 SE 10th), which also specializes in Belgian-style ales, has set up a few tables amongst the vats of its small but sunny brewery. Like Upright, they keep eight taps (some of them collaborations with other breweries around town), and a hearty taster of four of them is $8. We tried them all - and surprisingly, their saison was my favorite. Gigantic (5224 SE 26th) has a similar model but with nice outdoor seating.

The Bike Bar's rattler and pint o' pretzels.

Hopworks Bike Bar: Again on the excellent outdoor seating, Hopworks Bike Bar (3947 N. Williams Ave.) has a fabulous patio out back for those languid sunny afternoons. Their inside space is designed to be family friendly, plus they have an extensive happy hour menu ranging from buttery pretzels and burgers to healthy quinoa bowls. Hopworks' schtick is that they style themselves as an eco-brewery; all their beer is organic. (Unlike the other entrants on this list, the Bike Bar isn't technically a brewpub, as the beer is brewed at the Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) on the other side of town.) In keeping with the theme, the Bike Bar celebrates Portland's trendiest mode of transportation by catering to bike commuters. I appreciate that they offer a Rattler option for those hot summer days, but alas their lager is too heavy to pull it off. Still, in sunny weather, the Bike Bar is high on my list for out-of-town guests - and with Lompoc Brewing's Fifth Quadrant and Side Bar right next door, you can turn it into a mini-pub crawl if you get restless.

Cascade Brewery Barrel House (939 SE Belmont): And now for something completely different: sours. Sours are extra-fermented with extra bacteria and come out bright and sharp, and completely unlike ales or lagers. It's not really my thing (nor is the loud music or flat-screen tvs of the Barrel House), but it is a refreshing contrast to the Portland beer scene - like a kumquat sorbet between the fish and meat courses of an epic meal.

European-style cafe seating at Pints.

Pints: All of these other breweries are on the East Side - but what about downtown? My best bet is Pints (412 NW 5th), a true nano-brewery which doubles as a coffee shop in the morning. The beer isn't as reliable as the East Side options, but their friendliness makes up for it. Plus I love the outdoor seating, cafe tables set up under leafy trees along the quiet northern edge of the bus mall. On rainy days, Pints has a surprisingly large back room - but Tugboat (711 NW Ankeny), another tiny brewery downtown, has the cozier winter space, complete with fireplace and sagging bookshelves of battered books.

Practical Thoughts: What if you're just passing through Portland and want to sample the Portland beer scene but need something quick and easy? I'd suggest Bailey's Taproom (213 SW Broadway), a bright and open bar right downtown with a wide selection of interesting beer, both local and otherwise. Tugboat is conveniently located right across the street for a late-night hangout on a winter evening.

If you're feeling a bit more adventurous - and have an afternoon to spare - the best beer crawl in town right now is along SE 9th Ave. Start at the Commons Brewery at SE 10th and Stephens (several buses from downtown will get you close). From there, walk north on 9th Ave. stopping off every few blocks for Lucky Lab, New Deal Distillery, the Green Dragon, the Cascade Brewing Barrel House, and ending up at Base Camp. If you need a real meal, finish off your evening with a warm bowl of ramen at Biwa. Fabulous.

Or head to North Portland for a shorter crawl. From downtown, take the #17 bus, the #77 bus, or the CL street car to the Left Bank building; try Upright (assuming it's open); then catch the outbound #4 bus along N. Williams Avenue to Hopworks Bike Bar. Finish at Fifth Quadrant or walk across the street to Lincoln for an upscale, Northwest-style dinner. (Buy a $5 day pass for the buses and you can take the #4 bus back downtown afterwards. Don't worry, the bus drivers are always friendly - just ask them to tell you where to get off.)

Of course, don't take my word for it - I really know nothing about beer. But John "Bubba" Foyston does, and I like this blog (aptly named Beervana) as well.

Peace out.

New Portland Comfort Food

2013-05-16T07:15:00.001-07:00

Old Portland is alive and well when it comes to food: from the Heathman to Huber's, Portland's culinary institutions soldier on unfazed by the vegan/pork belly/itzakaya/food cart fads that might be sweeping the rest of the city. More on these stalwarts later.

The East Side: Home of New Portland

Then there is New Portland, the Portland of Portlandia, of hipsters and mavens and prematurely retired young people of a creative and entrepreneurial bent who seem unfazed by their limited economic prospects. In the extreme, this Portland can be tiresome - but it also provides great benefits. Like the following: my favorite destinations for New Portland-style comfort food, all with distinctive ambiance, good food, and weeknight-friendly prices.

Sweet Hereafter (3326 SE Belmont): Vegan comfort food served in a dark and hip bar - and it doesn't even have a website. You can't get more Portland than that. The dishes are rich and not particularly healthy (other than the lack of meat and cheese), just the way pub food should be. The beer list is decent, particularly given that all the beers are vegan, too (though I'm not particularly clear on what differentiates a vegan from a non-vegan beer). But while we really like the food at the Sweet Hereafter, the reason we keep coming back is its date-worthy atmosphere. Hint: Order before 7 p.m. for a $1 off entrees and a $1 off most beers.

Bollywood Theater, before the dinner rush.

Bollywood Theater (2039 NE Alberta): Indian street food, served casually in a bustling cafe of mismatched tables and silent screenings of the cheesiest of old Bollywood movies. The flavor of each dish is multilayered; the paneer is housemade. Excellent vegetarian options abound. The paneer kati roll, our favorite item on the menu, is a full dinner for just $7. Other winners include the shrimp curry (light on the coconut, balanced use of cardamon, a noticeable kick of spice) and, for those looking for less rich and more mild comfort food, the aloo tiki - fried potato cakes with peas, served with a chickpea stew.

Grain & Gristle (1473 NE Prescott): We might be particularly partial to G&G because it's right down the street from our house, but this cosy pub of rough-hewn wood tables and a welcoming bar is our winter-time favorite. The menu is meat-focused, classic bistro food but with fresh flavors and local ingredients. Best of all, most dishes land in the moderate $10 range. The cheeseburger is a perennial favorite, as are whole pan-roasted fish and freshly made pastas. I particularly appreciate the bar's excellent draft list of local beers, as well as their per-ounce pricing (there's no shame here in ordering just a glass, and no volume discount for ordering a pint). Also popular: the "two-fer," a daily meat special large enough to share, served with vegetables, a couple beers, and a dessert for just $20.

Broder (2508 SE Clinton): Brunch done right. Scandinavian-style, with aebleskiver, lefse, and mixed bords of delectable treats. On weekends, expect a wait, but at least you can sit around inside the Savoy Tavern next door with some Stumptown coffee to keep you company. I love the bright ambiance and the very good food (unusual for a brunch spot), plus it reminds me sweetly of our time in Copenhagen.

Snuggling up at Biwa.

Biwa (SE 9th & Ash): Portland has an abundance of good Japanese restaurants, and we're not talking just sushi here. Biwa is our favorite among the city's many itzakaya (drinking pubs), a snug underground gathering place with a long menu of ramen, yakitori, and drinking snacks and an even longer menu of shochu and sake. This is where we often take friends from out of town, both for the good food and for the hip but comfortable atmosphere. Also, their logo is an adorable chick. Best deal: After 9 p.m., at the bar, giant bowls of ramen are only $5.

Kennedy School (5736 NE 33rd Ave.): OK, so this isn't technically New Portland - the McMenamin's franchise is about as Old Portland as you can get. But it has a great set-up: they converted an old elementary school into an adult amusement park with multiple funky bars ("The Boiler Room," "The Honors Bar"), a restaurant that includes a lovely courtyard, a hotel (complete with "soaking pool"), and a second-run movie theater with $3 tickets. This is our preferred movie venue in Portland - not great on the technological front, but the seats are vintage sofas with homey end tables in between for your food and beer, and did I mention the tickets are $3?? (Fair warning: weekend movies can sell out - get there early.) Granted, the food is mediocre, but Jeff is particularly fond of their soft pretzel.

#1 Very Best Day Trip

2013-05-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Mt. Hood from the air: a "real" mountain.

When we have out-of-town guests, our #1 very top pick for a day trip from Portland is not wine country, but the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood. Natural beauty, sunnier weather, a plethora of outdoor activities, a "real" mountain – all an easy drive from Portland. It's a winner every time.

So hard do we push the Gorge/Hood loop, we compiled detailed instructions on the route for our wedding guests last year. The guests' consensus: two satisfied thumbs up. For posterity, then, the Maggie & Jeff Guide for the Best Day Trip Ever from PDX:

Part I: The Historic Highway and Vista House
Drive east on I-84 out of Portland for about 30 minutes until you reach Troutdale. Take the main Troutdale exit (Exit 17) and follow the signs for the historic highway: go straight through the first light and turn right at the second light past a big shopping center. After you clear the shopping area, take a left at the light and head down Troutdale’s main street. You are heading the right direction if you go under the arch that says “Troutdale” and past a bunch of new Old West-looking storefronts.

The highway first takes you across the Sandy River and then starts to climb up through fields. When it crests, you will get your first view of the Gorge. Shortly afterwards, the road passes around the Vista House. Get out here for some key photo ops.

Vista House (on the right): Gateway to the Gorge.

The highway – and the Vista House – were built during the Depression by the WPA. Before I-84 raced along the bottom of the Gorge, the old highway wound its way precariously along (and through) the cliffs. Only this stretch, from Troutdale to Multnomah Falls, is still open to car traffic.

Vista House itself is a charming little rest area situated at the mouth of the Gorge. It is aptly named: the start of the Gorge unfurls to the east in lush folds of cliffs and river. Once you have pictures of the vista, if you'd also like pictures of the vista that includes the Vista House, backtrack slightly up the highway to the prior lookout.

Part II: Waterfalls and Hiking
After the Vista House, you will pass a series of waterfalls: Latourell Falls, Sheperd's Dell, Bridal Veil Falls, Wahkeena Falls, and the biggie, Multnomah Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in the western hemisphere (and a key Oregon photo op).

Multnomah Falls

For those so inclined, hiking trails around here are ample. A classic choice is to hike to the top of Multnomah Falls – it's only a mile, but it's straight up. (No, really, we mean it: it's straight up.) At the very least, walk to the bridge that crosses at the base of the Falls to get up close and personal.

Part III: Salmon and Dams
From Multnomah Falls, follow the signs to get back onto I-84 East. You will soon pass through Cascade Locks, a small town along the Columbia River that is home to Bonneville Dam.

Bonneville is the first dam on the Columbia River (heading upriver from the Pacific), and it is a big one. This dam changed the region’s economy with its supply of cheap electricity, but the dams along the Columbia are also linked to the near extinction of major salmon runs.

Bonneville operates tours, and the visitors' center and fish ladders are open to the public (the spring salmon runs get going in April, but the big runs are in September). This is a good stop for those with kids or those curious about engineering marvels. If you'd prefer a serious hike amidst the Gorge's natural beauty, the Eagle Creek Trail starts close to here. Built in the early 1900s, the trail passes several major waterfalls and includes cliff-hugging paths and chasm-spanning footbridges. Afterwards, continue heading east on I-84.

Part IV: Hood River
Hood River is a sweet town perched on the edge of the Columbia about where the Gorge changes from lush to arid. It is also the windsurfing capital of, like, the world.

If you got an early start, this is the perfect place to break for lunch. Full Sail Brewery dominates the downtown and has a restaurant (tours are also possible). Alternatively, the Double Mountain Brewery is tiny and popular with the local: its beer is hoppy and its pizza is New Haven-style (I recommend the Jersey pie).

After lunch, hunt down the little shack that sells ice cream shakes using fresh local berries. Yum. (I always just stumble upon this place - it's like it has a magnetic draw.) Take your berry shake down to the waterfront park to watch the windsurfers, kite surfers, and others with apparent death wishes battle the mighty Columbia.

Hood River is also a major fruit producing region: pear, apple and cherry orchards line the country roads around here. The town has put together a 35-mile Fruit Loop that takes you past many of these farms (some of which welcome visitors), as well as fruit stands selling local produce.

From here, make a game-time decision. If it’s late afternoon and you’re getting tired, you can get back to Portland in a bit over an hour if you drive straight back west on I-84. If you still have a few hours left in you, you should loop over Mt. Hood instead.

Part V: To the Mountain
From Hood River, head out of town on SR35 (you will likely stumble upon it – Hood River is pretty small). The road takes you through more scenic farmland before entering the evergreen forests at the base of the mountain. From there the road starts to climb. Stay on SR 35 until it T's into Hwy. 26, which you want to take west towards Portland.

Mirror Lake: Another classic photo op.

While you're on the mountain, take time to stop at the overlooks and consider pausing for some short hikes (just be careful pulling over, as these roads are curvy and people drive fast). I’ve heard that the Tamanawas Falls Trail (East Fork Trail 650) is a pretty, two-mile hike past more waterfalls.

For an easy, family friendly hike, check out Mirror Lake: it’s right on the road to Portland, the trail is fairly short and well-maintained, and from the lake you get one of the iconic views (read: another photo op) of the top of Mt. Hood.

The elusive trillium

Also look out for trilliums: these rare flowers, if plucked, will not bloom again for seven years. I’ve been fascinated by these since childhood, but Jeff doesn’t get what all the fuss is about.

Part VI: Timberline Lodge
While you’re on Mt. Hood, look out for the signs for the road leading to Timberline Lodge. Also built by the WPA during the Great Depression, Timberline Lodge is a beloved local landmark full of handmade furniture and functional art. Head upstairs to the great room to rest by the central fire place, or consider having a snack or a drink at the mezzanine bar (their dining room is reportedly quite good, too). At the very least, Timberline is worth a quick detour to (a) get you closer to the “real” part of the mountain, (b) provide a bathroom break from all this driving and hiking, and (c) allow you to say you visited the hotel from the Shining.

Above the timber line.

Part VIII: Edgefield
As you drive Hwy. 26 back towards Portland, you will pass through a different section of Troutdale. Consider cutting back to I-84 from here for the rest of the return drive (taking Hwy. 26 back into town is a slow and arduous process through very unscenic urban sprawl).

If you are ravenously hungry, you might want to stop at Edgefield, an outpost of the local McMenamin’s brewpub chain. (From Hwy. 26, take a right on 242nd and follow it almost to the freeway, then take a right on NE Halsey.) Edgefield was the county poorhouse back in the day, a farm with institutional brick buildings that have now been turned into restaurants, a hotel and a concert venue. While the quality of McMenamin’s food has declined in recent years, it’s still a good place to get a burger and a beer to enjoy in their patio garden among wildflowers and shade trees.

On Coffee: A Portland Declaration

2013-05-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

Around these parts, people take their coffee with absolute seriousness. This leads to a certain amount of pretension and posturing - something I've been guilty of since high school. But let's be honest: most of us do not have any real expertise to distinguish between, say, excellent coffee and really excellent coffee. Hence my Portland declaration: We should just drink what we like.

If only it were that easy.

I recently sent Jeff to a barista class at Clive Coffee, an exemplar of the Portland coffee scene. Clive doesn't sell coffee, they sell the coffee experience - by which I mean $70 old-fashioned coffee mills so you can grind your coffee by hand, $65 Japanese water kettles so you can pour your water with precision, and $170 stands crafted from salvaged wood for your conical filter and glass beaker (to replace your $5 plastic coffee filter holder and freebie mug). I'm actually not being cynical here - this stuff is beautiful. But it's nothing you need, and in that sense reminds me of the Japanese tea ceremony: the beauty of the form becomes as important as the quality of the final product.

Clive also sells $5000 home espresso machines, which then necessitates classes to teach the new owners how to use them. I just thought it would be interesting to learn how to pull a shot. So off Jeff goes, and he brings back this story.

At the outset, the barista-instructor pulled a shot of espresso and tasted it. "Mmmm," he said. "That's good." Then he passed it around to the four students. The first three concurred: this was the good stuff. Jeff was last.

Jeff's first thought: "I don't even drink the communion wine at church, and you want me to revel in four strangers' backwash?" Jeff's second thought: "This tastes like a particularly sour lemon." Jeff says, "Oh. I don't think this tastes good." Everyone laughs, but it wasn't a joke.

My point: Way to go, Jeff! A $5000 machine does not guarantee a transcendant coffee experience, just like a two-hour-long wait doesn't guarantee a transcendent brunch experience or a triple-dose of local hops doesn't guarantee a transcendent microbrew (in truth, it never does). We should be honest with ourselves and drink what we like.

Consider also Jeff's personal mission to score a "real" cappuccino in Portland. In Portland, people love foam art. You know, the leaf/heart/tree/flower that skilled baristas can shape through precision pours of "microfoam." Problem is, foam art is not conducive to old-fashioned cappuccinos - the kind with thick foam you can stand a spoon up in. Baristas' solution: insist that microfoam coffee art does a cappuccino make. Yes, that means a cappuccino is pretty much the same as a latte, but only plebeians insist on a dry cappuccino, and plebeians' requests are easy to ignore. So foam art it is.

This is, however, a good problem to have, this imbibing pretension, because it's a symptom of having wine/beer/coffee worth being pretentious about. Our collective standards here in Portland are high, and human beings generally don't want to end up on the wrong side of public opinion, so we reach imbibing consensuses that sometimes miss the bigger picture: we should like what we drink, especially when we have so many high-quality products to choose from.

That's all I have to say about that. Here are a few of my favorite coffee drinking establishments, plebeian though I am, for those passing through Portland and seeking something beyond Starbucks.

Barista: The store on Alberta is my current favorite coffee shop in Portland because it is so Portland. The coffee can be exquisite (advanced foam art, ahoy), and its decor nails 1890s hipster, complete with artisanal lightbulbs and wall-mounted taxidermy wearing Timbers soccer scarves. (Meanwhile, their Pearl District store nails the exposed-brick-light-industrial look. I appreciate their neighborhood-specific aesthetic.) Also important: it's a pleasant place to sit.

Extracto: I had the most beautiful espresso at their secondary location on Prescott. Unfortunately, not as pleasant as a place to hang out.

Water Avenue Coffee: I recently had a transcendent espresso experience here. It was so good, I had to restrain myself from jumping up and immediately ordering another. I also like the layout of their space, with a few different types of seating options. Conveniently located next to Clive.

Spella: Tiny storefront right in the middle of downtown that's hardly every open. Like many places around town, they roast their own coffee (one of our favorites), and they hand-pull their shots. It's a little slice of Italy, complete with European hours.

Stumptown: As they like to say on Portlandia, it's OVER! Except it's not. Stumptown is no longer "cool" or cutting edge, but it's still reliably good. I'm a fan. Their shop on Belmont is worth spending time in - and their nearby Annex, which serves only individually brewed cups of coffee (no espresso), pretty much started the whole individually brewed cup of coffee thing. It's worth a visit.

Sidetripping Sideways

2013-04-28T14:13:00.001-07:00

One can day trip from Portland in any direction - my perennial favorites are to the west and the east (more on those to come). Most recently, however, we sidetripped sideways, an hour southwest of town, to the Willamette Valley wine country.

Oregon is no Napa; there are no fake chateaus here, or $400-a-plate restaurants. But we still have three critical assets: rolling vistas of vineyards and farmland; enough foot traffic for wineries to invest in pretty tasting rooms with regular hours; and decent wines (sorry, Virginia - it wasn't meant to be).

Putting a spring into my step:
my very first 10K.

Now, truth be told, we decided to spend the day in McMinnville - the population epicenter of Oregon's still-growing wine region - for entirely non-wine related reasons. I had found a small 10K race organized by a local school and decided it was time to cross item 16 off my list of life goals ("16. Run a 10K"). And we had a lovely gift certificate to a McMinnville restaurant only open for dinner. We figured we could fill the interim seven hours with the wine-related stuff.

The wine-related stuff

A friend once described her mixed feelings for New Orleans by explaining that it's where the South goes to get ugly. I sometimes feel that way about the wine region around McMinnville: at our first stop last Saturday, when it was just barely noon, we shared the tasting room with two bachelorette parties and a birthday party. An hour later, driving the winding country roads between vineyards, we passed a white stretch Hummer limousine that looked as out of place as rhinestones on a nun's wimple.

Here's my understanding: if you are serious about wine (which we, frankly, are not), you would limit yourself to two, maybe three tastings in a day - at which point, your palette is spent. You should only need a few sips of each wine to evaluate it, and you likely want to spit out most of those sips so the alcohol doesn't fuzzy your senses. But that's not what people do, so it's no longer what the industry expects.

People go wine-tasting to get drunk. Tasting rooms thus charge, on average, $10 for a flight of one-ounce pours (which is a fair value, if you're actually drinking the wine). There is an expectation that you might visit half-a-dozen wineries in an afternoon. Indeed, small towns like Dundee and Carlton consist almost entirely of winery tasting rooms, so you could sample a dozen different wineries on foot in the course of a couple hours. Like a wine crawl. This is not my scene.

So why am I here? Like I said before, the countryside, the above-average wine - and the people-watching.

I don't know if it's just because this is my native habitat - like it stirs the deepest chords of my childhood nostalgia or something - but I find the lush countryside of the Willamette Valley to be exquisitely beautiful. Orderly vineyards wrap over hillsides; fields of spring green and gold spread over the valley; red barns and stands of dark evergreens frame pastoral vignettes; and the horizon is defined by the purple shades of distant hills (what in other parts of the country would be considered mountains).

On the patio of Anne Amie.

Knowing that our vineyard-visiting stamina would be limited, I picked our first stop for the view. Anne Amie Vineyards' best feature is its broad patio overlooking the valley with ample tables for picnicking. This is where we ran into the various groups of 20-somethings on the party circuit. Which brings me to my second sociological point.

There is a social hierarchy among vineyards. I can think of at least three types in Oregon:

The slightly flashy yet approachable vineyard, often with dramatic views, that caters to late-20-something suburbanites eager to start their "collection" (example: Anne Amie)
The purposefully understated yet upscale vineyard with an established name where middle-aged patrons can demonstrate their discretionary spending power (example: Domaine Drouhin)
The boutique winery with a small tasting room, favored by slightly crunchy Portland professionals grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate that they really do know it all (example: Lemelson)

Of course this is my personal ordering, colored by the fact that of these three groups, we most closely identify with the slightly crunchy Portland professional know-it-alls. So it is not surprising that we liked our second winery - Lemelson - much better.

Lemelson's view: gentler, more bucolic.

Lemelson is your prototypical boutique Oregon winery: The vineyards are organic; the building energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Everything is made of local wood and designed to have that NW-style subtle profile. I ate it up.

It doesn't have the sweeping panorama of Anne Amie, but Lemelson maximizes the curves of its own vineyards in framing the views from its tasting room and patio. And while I am NOT (repeat, NOT) a wine person, I vastly preferred Lemelson's wine to Anne Amie's.

Even sharing a single flight at Anne Amie and Lemelson, Jeff and I were done after two stops. Like I said, we do not pretend to be wine experts. In the end, our vineyard hopping only used up a couple of our in-between hours. So what else is there to do in the McMinnville area? Eat.

The food-related stuff

I divide my time when traveling into two categories: eating, and filling the time between eating and when I can justify eating again. After leaving the house at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, running 6+ miles, and accomplishing a major life goal, there was no question what I was going to do next.

Community Plate is like a slice of Portland in McMinnville, complete with loft-like space, tables made out of reclaimed wood, and a self-service bussing station. But one piece of Portland was blessedly missing: The Wait. Brunch in Portland is a full-contact sport, usually involving multi-hour waits for mediocre food. In McMinnville, life is more laid back, and one may linger over breakfast.

Which is particularly lovely when your breakfast is orgasmic. Boy howdy, my leek-and-trumpet-mushroom quiche: after each bite, I was like, "it can't really be that good." Then I'd take another bite and think, "holy shit. it's really that gooooooood." Offer me a quiche, and I expect something dry, bland, and forgettable. Not this quiche. This was like the fluffiest omelet, gently cooked so you could still taste the eggs and with a hint (not a sledgehammer) of cheese to help it all melt away gently on your tongue - what the food industry likes to call a good "mouth feel." Jeff's chickpea-falafel burger was pretty awesome, too.

Even the font is Portland hipster-esque.

Teatime found us in Carlton, a two-block town that has been taken over entirely by winery tasting rooms. Walking down the street: winery, winery, winery, artisanal bake shop, winery, wine-themed restaurant, winery, winery, etc.

Just off the two-block strip sits Carlton Bakery, where Tim the baker makes all the breads and sweets fresh each morning before sunrise. We settled onto stools with big mugs of Stumptown coffee and a crumbly chocolate-walnut scone (you could taste the butter, and it tasted good) to enjoy some afternoon quiet time as a slow trickle of locals came and went. Teatime is such a civilized tradition.

Carlton Bakery, after the lunch time rush.

Back in McMinnville, the sun was out and the trees were leaf-ing: perfect weather for strolling. But as sweet as McMinnville's Third Street is, there's just not much there, and we found ourselves needing edible entertainment again at a distressingly early hour. Luckily, La Rambla opens its doors at 4 for happy hour along its broad and comfortable copper bar. Spanish tapas, well-executed; Oregon and Spanish wines by the glass; friendly bartenders - a gentle end to a day in wine country. Just don't order the lamb nachos.

Bottom line

Downtown McMinnville: Cute but not overly stimulating.

I like McMinnville as a stop on the way to or from the Oregon coast - spending a whole day was a bit slow for us young people. But if you are really serious about wine, check into the Hotel Oregon - right smack in the middle of McMinnville's Third Street - and spend a couple of days exploring the countryside. Just bring some good books to fill the quiet hours, unless your stamina for wine tasting vastly exceeds my own.

Also helpful: The Oregonian's summaries of McMinnville restaurants (here and here); The Oregonian's lists of wineries with views (here and here); more complete lists of Willamette Valley wineries; and reviews of Willamette Valley wineries by someone who clearly knows more about wine than I do.

Welcome to PDX

2013-04-18T07:57:00.004-07:00

We have lived in Portland now longer than Jeff and I ever lived in the Netherlands, yet since moving here in 2011, I have written nothing about our Oregon lifestyle. This is likely because, Portland being my hometown, the novelty factor of day-to-day life here is low. But it's a missed opportunity since Portland is so rich with material, especially when it comes to "lifestyle." (See generally Portlandia.)

To ease us into more Portland-centric updates, allow me to introduce the city through a brief FAQ:

So what is this Portlandia you speak of?
Before it was a quirky tv show, Portlandia was (and still is) the name for the statue on top of the Portland Building at Fifth and Main downtown. Portlandia was made in the Maryland suburbs of DC in the early 1980s – just like Jeff! Little known fact: I was once Portlandia for Halloween. Relatively better known fact: Portlandia is the second-largest hammered copper statue in the U.S. – after the Statue of Liberty.

Wow, who knew! Any other neat factoids about Portland?
Why yes: Portland is the only city in the U.S. with a volcano within the city limits. (My sister tells me that's actually volcanoes.) And yes, that includes Hawaii.

Other key selling points for the State of Oregon: No sales tax. All beaches are public. And you don’t pump your own gas. (Unless you’re me, in which case you don’t pump your own gas anywhere. It's a native Oregonian's prerogative.)

Does it really rain all the time?
Weeeeelllll .... yeah. Except August and September, which are reliably sunny and warm with no humidity - just like the best weather of Southern California. Which of course raises the question: Why don't we just live in Southern California year-round? (Answer: But then we'd have to pay sales tax, pump our own gas, and live next door to Californians. You just can't win.)

Why do people laugh when I say "Willamette"?
The "will-a-MET" is a river in Illinois; Portland's river is the "Will-LAAAM-ette." My non-native husband has drawn my attention to many of our local pronunciation idiosyncrasies:

Oregon: Not "Or-e-GONE," but "Or-e-GUN"
Tigard (suburb, also a famous Supreme Court case): Not "TEE-gard," but "TIE-gard"
Tualatin (suburb next to Tigard): I can't even recreate how Jeff tries to pronounce this suburb. It's "Too-all-a-tin."
Glisan (Portland street): Not "GLISS-an," but "GLEE-san"
Albina (another street): Not "AL-bin-a," but "All-BYE-na"
Couch (yet another street): The doozy of them all, pronounced "COOCH"

So what's up with all this food and hipster stuff the New York Times is always talking about?
If you build it, they will come? Portland in the '70s, '80s, and '90s made a concerted effort to control development and build liveable communities. In the '00s, this started to draw some national attention. Young, idealistic and/or artistic people started moving here, it got a reputation, and now we have New Portland: hip, creative, resoundingly liberal, and determinedly crunchy.

As for the food, that's a mystery to me. All you need to know is that Portland has some of the best damn food in the country. Seriously. Our waistlines will never be the same.

If there's a New Portland, is there an Old Portland?
New Portland is just a veneer; Old Portland still makes this place tick. What is Old Portland? (Cue Neko Case's ode to her hometown, Tacoma.) It's a little bit parochial, a little bit redneck, lightly industrial, and so unpretentious as to be at times frustrating (if you don't wear jeans out to dinner, you may be looked at askance). It's mundane, working class, damp, sometimes gritty, often quirky, and retro not in the cool sense but in the we never bothered to renovate sense. It's the raw material the hipsters have to work from, but it will be here long after the hipsters leave.

On the grim side, Portland has a long history of racism and exclusion, a high rate of depression and mental illness, and a growing meth problem. But there's still a lot to love. Portland is a deeply democratic city; everything is community-oriented. I remember as a teenager voting in a local neighborhood meeting for what kind of community development I did and didn't like. People care here - maybe even too much. Which is why the hipsters fit right in.

So why is Portland named “Portland” anyway?
I thought you'd never ask you.

Portland was founded in 1851 by Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettigrove (you can’t make this stuff up). They each wanted to name the new city after their hometown: Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, respectively. Naturally, they settled the dispute with a coin toss – which Pettigrove won.

You will find almost as many places in Portland named after Lovejoy and Pettigrove as Lewis and Clark. Because while Lewis and Clark showed up first, “Lovejoy and Pettigrove” is just more fun to say.

Pettygrove Park, next to Lovejoy Fountain.
(Test for Portlanders: Do you know where this is?)

Japan: Just Like in the Movies

2013-04-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

Japan makes fun movies. Really good, arty movies, yes - but generally speaking, if I want art, I'll read a book (personal preference).

We prepared (and decompressed) from our Japan trip by watching a silly amount of not-serious Japanese movies - which led to a lot of gleeful "that's just like in that movie!" or "that's just like in Japan!" To illustrate, five of my favorites (complete with Maggie haikus):

Train Man (2005)

online geeks unite!

makeover of nerd to woo

rich girl from subway

Train Man combines that classic rom-com motif of geek makeover with mild commentary on the then-new world of online socializing. It's a light movie.

Akihabara at night: prime time.

"That's just like in that movie!" Meet Akihabara, the neon-lit consumer technology district of Tokyo. Tokyo has a neighborhood for everything: teenage girls (Harajuku), disconnected expats (Roppongi), plastic food (Kappabashi). Akihabara is for the computer geeks; megastores akin to Best Buy but with entire floors dedicated to the most advanced technology in toilet seats anchor buzzing streets lined with small discount stores and parts shops with bins of electronic bric-a-brac piled on the sidewalks. Pachinko parlors and video arcades glare with florescent lighting and pavlovian chiming. Females are few, other than those dressed in costume advertising various forms of male entertainment (school girls, yes, but also Princess Leias).

Other contextualizing Tokyo movies: Shall We Dance? (note the role of the elevated JR train lines throughout the film); Lost in Translation (speaking of disconnected expats in Roppongi). Granted, Lost in Translation is not Japanese and not even particularly sympathetic to Japanese culture - for the Japanese version of the same themes, I recommend Murakami's After Dark.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

two sisters explore

new rural world of spirits

everyday magic

Totoro, To-to-ro! Hayao Miyazaki has made many brilliant movies (among them one of my all-time favorites, Spirited Away), but Totoro was/is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. Miyazaki remembers what it's like to be a child, and Totoro takes you back there. It's utterly charming, but in a deep way.

Hida Folk Village's model rice paddy.

"That's just like in Japan!" The family moves to a seriously rural - and traditional - house: we're talking rice paper doors, communal bath, tatami mats and an old-school kitchen. The girls encounter Shinto shrines in the forest and roadside jizos; Totoro and his friends are themselves forest spirits - a cross between Shintoism and a child's imagination.

Totoro is set in the 1950s and is a bit nostalgic for this sweetly innocent, rural world. While that way of life has largely disappeared, aspects of it are preserved at Takayama's Hida Folk Village: rice paddies and forest shrines, traditional houses with sliding rice paper doors. And just like Totoro, Hida Folk Village appeals to children of all ages, too.

Departures (2008)

failed cellist goes home,

breaks taboos to try new job:

dignifying death

This is the most mainstream movie on my list - it won the Academy Award for best foreign film, which is rather surprising since it's frankly not that deep. But it is endearing, mostly thanks to the wry father figure who mentors the rather maudlin lead through the fine art of Japanese undertaking.

Takayama: A river runs through it.

"That's just like in Japan!": Re-watching Departures post-trip, we recognized in the mountain town echoes of Takayama: quiet streets, dramatic mountain peaks, even the alpine river running through town that has been tamed and channeled into an orderly stream.

Also noted: the fading tradition of the local bath house (sento); the use of hibachi stoves and sweaters in winter (Japanese houses traditionally are not heated); and the tradition of eating fried chicken on Christmas.

Battle Royale (2000)

on island, school group

told to kill each other or die

campy violence ensues

All you really need to know about Battle Royale is that it's the Japanese Hunger Games (note well, however, that Battle Royale came first). Not surprisingly, the Japanese version is less gritty and more gory, in that over-the-top, obviously fake blood sort of way. And while the American version is a not-so-subtle commentary on capitalism and class divides, the Japanese version is all about intergenerational distrust. Telling.

Making momiji manju: Not exactly a Battle Royale.

"That's just like in that movie!" Battle Royale begins when a high school class, setting off on a end-of-school-year trip, is hijacked by nefarious adults to a remote island. Up to the hijacking part, this set-up is very mundane, like kids going to prom at an American school - schools in Japan routinely take class trips to other parts of the country. We saw hordes of class trips at the peace memorial in Hiroshima, but our most memorable encounter was on the island of Miyajima, where we ended up in a cookie-making class with a group of mostly female high-school students. My guess is that Miyajima, one of the most famous tourist spots in all of Japan, is pretty much the ultimate school trip destination.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

old man perfectionist

loving shots of fish and rice

and not much else ...

Yes, Jiro is too much of an art house movie to be on my list, but the movie I really wanted to include - Tampopo - wasn't ever released to DVD. So sad - who wouldn't love a movie that combines ramen, Ken Watanabe, and spaghetti western music?

"That's just like in that movie!" But Jiro allows me to plug again the mesmerizing experience of the Tsukiji fish market. Also, if you watch Jiro, which documents the market's famous tuna auction, you really don't need to bother getting up at 4 a.m. to try to see it for yourself.

Konnichiwa

2013-03-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

As the daughter of a journalist, I am convinced that a major component of the skill of traveling well is the ability to talk to people - something that does not come easily to us introverts. (Indeed, this is something I've written about before, in the context of our trip to Morocco and traveling by myself in Utrecht.) After our two weeks in Japan, I decided that such interactions are only partly dependent on serendipity - there is a science to this, too.

The samurai district of Kanazawa: talking about a closed society...

In a country like Japan, reputedly a closed society hard for casual visitors to crack, having actual conversations with the Japanese requires some forethought. Here are four places to start:

1. Friends - and friends of friends. This may be an inauspicious beginning because right now you are thinking, "Well, duh." We all know seeing a new place through the eyes of a friendly local is the best of all possible worlds, but most of us do not have such a far-flung network of friends.

Or don't we? Until this trip, I had under-appreciated the potentiality of friends-of-friends, old acquaintances, friends-of-acquaintances, and even more tenuous combinations. Contemplate this: if a friend told you his business colleague was traveling half way around the world and was going to be staying down the street from you, wouldn't you give serious thought to meeting that business colleague for lunch, or at least a coffee?

Exploring Tokyo with Jeff's business school friends

Thus, even though we were already planning a day with Jeff's classmates who live in Tokyo, I followed up on another classmate's suggestion to get in touch with a friend of a mutual friend (if that makes sense), who was able to meet us for a drink early in our trip. We learned so much from that one conversation, I cannot imagine the rest of our trip without the context that this new friend helped to provide.

In the future, I will allow myself full license to bore everyone I know with news of my upcoming travel on the chance that someone will know someone (who knows someone) who might be willing to hang out with me, or at least throw a couple personal recommendations my way.

The Tokugawa-era government house in Takayama

2. Organized interactions. Japan is replete with organized opportunities to meet English-speaking Japanese, if you know where to look. "Goodwill guides" volunteer to show tourists around famous sites: a young woman, for example, provided us with a personalized tour of the Tokugawa-era government house in Takayama. Granted, we only got a few non-historical questions worked in amongst all the facts and factoids, but in other cities (like Nara and Kanazawa), Goodwill guides will spend half a day with you and join you for lunch.

There are also home visit programs - meaning you actually get to visit with a family in their home, a rare occurrence in Japan - but the visits must typically be arranged in person at the local tourist office. This in turn requires staying put for more than a couple of days, a feat we did not ourselves accomplish during our whirlwind tour. I had also hoped to take advantage of the almost-free cultural classes taught by volunteers at Kanazawa's Ishikawa International Lounge.

I should include in this category as well more commercial experiences, like our cooking class and tea ceremony (the logistical details of which are included at the end of my long temple post). These were investments in building our cultural awareness of Japan - and, as it turned out, our only opportunity to visit a family's home.

Pursuing this track requires a bit of advanced planning, for which I recommend Frommer's Japan. But given the wide range of opportunities, the advanced planning is very likely to pay off.

3. Innkeepers. Besides being cheaper, staying at small, traditional inns and guesthouses increased our chances of meeting people - both other travelers and those running the businesses. This tactic really paid off in Kyoto when we stayed at IchiEnSou, an upscale hostel right in the middle of Gion.

Yes, we are too old for hostels - a fact Jeff made sure to remind me of repeatedly during our four-night stay in a mixed dormitory. But IchiEnSou is fairly unique among hostels, a thoughtfully designed and managed guesthouse that is a work of love for the proprietor, Yashi-san.

The hole in the wall

It helped that Yashi is roughly our age (early to mid-30s) and that he started his business because he wanted to meet people traveling through Japan. Hanging out at the guesthouse, I peppered him with all sorts of impertinent questions - about his business, his family, his aspirations. That evening, Yashi took us and several Korean drama students out to a favorite "bar," literally a hole in the wall in the middle of an alley. This is not a misuse of the word "literally" - we had to climb through a hole in a wall to enter a tiny space where a dozen people could squeeze around two tables. Despite significant language barriers, Jeff quizzed the Korean students on Korean gangster films; we befriended three men in town for a wedding who had slid in next to us.

The next night, Yashi and I stepped across the street from the guesthouse to Bistro Grilot, a restaurant recently opened by another mid-30s entrepreneur. The "restaurant" sat just 6 along a counter; the chef-owner prepped ingredients and sauteed, grilled, and plated them directly in front of me. Yashi and I fell into a long conversation: his worst guest stories, his plans for the future, how we met our spouses. The chef joined in when we started talking politics and business, topics like how the Japanese feel about Korea and China, what it takes to start a business like the bistro or a guesthouse, and the famed Japanese work ethic.

I am very grateful to Yashi, who felt like a friend after just a couple of days. The takeaway here is that people who start businesses built around tourists - particularly innkeepers - are likely to have (1) conversational English and (2) an interest in meeting people. Some serendipity is helpful here, but so is a little bit of initiative and a lot of sincere interest in other people's lives.

4. Conversion: turning random encounters into meaningful ones. We were surprised traveling through Japan how often random people would strike up mini-conversations with us, a tendency I chalked up to limited opportunities to practice English as well as genuine hospitality for foreigners. My theory is, once in a while, you can convert such brief encounters into slightly more meaningful conversations.

Meeting teenagers in a cookie class

I only managed to do this once, at a shop in Takayama near closing time, when the owner was so enthused to have an American in his store, he whipped out his old electronic translator to help him carry on a conversation. He and his wife were the ones who recommended Kinoene to us, but he also told me about his trip to California long ago (back when electronic translators were the height of modern technology) and how he had found the U.S.; he even brought up Pearl Harbor at one point, but then thought the better of it (nuances and electronic translators don't really mix).

I was really satisfied by this conversation, I think because of the shopkeeper's sincere enthusiasm to talk to me. Though such "conversion" is a more difficult sort of connection to achieve, there are a couple lessons to be drawn from this one encounter: (1) seize the opportunity when someone strikes up a conversation - you never know where it will lead, and (2) let your enthusiasm show - it is probably just as infectious as that of my Takayama shopkeeper.

A Tourist's History of Japan

2013-03-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Not all World Heritage sites are created equal (Wieliczka salt mines and D.F. Wouda pumping station, I'm looking at you).

But Japan does it right: their sites are entertaining and educational. Those in western Honshu, the heartland of Japanese tourism, provide a CliffsNotes of the country's history - what every visitor ought to know about Japan. To illustrate, here's what we learned from the region's many UNESCO sites.

1. Itsukushima Shrine (500s)

Shintoism

The story: Mt. Misen on the island of Itsukushima (colloquially known as Miyajima) has been worshipped since pretty much forever. The island came to be so sacred, no one could be born or die there, and commoners were verboten.

A Shinto shrine was established at the base of the mountain in the sixth century, though the present buildings date merely from the 1200s. They sit on stilts over the water; it is said that at high tide (if you squint your eyes right and tilt your head just so), the shrine looks as though it were floating.

Miyajima's famous torii gate and ninja deer

I read someplace that this design allowed commoners to visit the shrine without ever setting foot on the sacred island: they would steer their boats through the giant torii gate set out in the sea and approach the "floating" shrine by water. Whatever the original purpose of the sea-bound torii gate, it is now one of the most photographed landmarks in Japan. Indeed, the entire island of Miyajima is considered one of the three most scenic places in the country. (Yes, there's a list for that.)

What is Shinoism? The "native" religion of Japan, Shintoism is closely tied to nature and is heavy on the ancestor worship. Shinto traditions are still a major component of Japanese life, even though most Japanese describe themselves as non-religious.

The highlights:

The central streets of the village of Miyajima are thick with the Japanese domestic tourism industry (toy shops, candy stores, cheesy restaurants), which provide an anthropological adventure for foreigners.
The sea around Hiroshima is known for its giant oysters, which in season are sold on the streets of Miyajima, grilled in their shells to order.

Making momiji at the Traditional Crafts Center

Miyajima is also known for a cake-like cookie (momiji manju) filled with sweet bean paste, which you can watch being made by Rube Goldberg-esque machines at many of the aforementioned candy stores. Better yet, head to the Miyajima Traditional Crafts Center (just to your left as you exit the ferry terminal) to take a short momiji-making class. We took ours with a teenaged school group, which kindly helped tutor us in the fine art of cookie flipping.
Like Nara (see below), Miyajima is home to free-ranging deer. Unlike Nara, these deer are aggressive when you try to eat your momiji in front of them. Seriously, one reared up on its hind feet at me. Not charmed. But from afar, they add character to your photos of the shrine.
Miyajima is a good option for a romantic night in a traditional inn, at least if you don't have kids in tow. This is where we had our fabulous/fascinating experience at the People's Lodge, complete with our multi-course haute cuisine feast (as described in a prior post).

Good to know: I highly recommend taking a class at the Traditional Crafts Center as a brief and light-hearted introduction to the local culture. Miyajima is easy to reach from Hiroshima; you do not need a car on the island. Note your JR rail pass covers the JR ferry.

Educational Value: Medium
Entertainment Value: High
Kid appropriate? Yes, but keep them away from the deer.

2. Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area (late 600s/early 700s)

Buddhism

The story: Buddhism reached Japan in the mid-sixth century from China via Korea. Founded by Prince Regent Shotoku in the 600s, Horyu-ji came to be associated with the imperial family: this was the temple that guarded the empire.

Welcome to Horyui-ji

The temple buildings are pretty and elegantly laid out - but they are not earth-shattering. This is a pretty esoteric site for outsiders not familiar with Japanese Buddhism. Its greatest claim to fame (for nonbelievers, at least) is that a few of the temple buildings date back to 680 or 710, meaning they may be the oldest wooden buildings in the world. Which, when you think about it, just isn't that interesting.

The highlights: Not so much.

Educational Value: Low
Entertainment Value: Low
Kid appropriate? No

Alternative: Horyu-ji is the one exception to my thesis that Japan's World Heritage Sites are uniformly worth visiting. To get a sense of the development of Buddhism in Japan, I highly recommend visiting instead (3) The Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, which includes my all-around favorite Japanese experience, Koyasan.

Educational Value of Koyasan: High, especially if you overnight in a temple.

Entertainment Value of Koyasan: Very High

Kid appropriate? No (but only because I don't think the temples like them)

4. Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara (710-784)

Early Japanese capital

The story: Nara wasn't Japan's first capital, but it was the first capital that mattered. Coinciding with the rise of Buddhism at the imperial court, Nara was the logical home of the great Buddha (Daibutsu) - a 50-foot bronze statue finished in 751 that still lives at Todai-ji.

Todai-ji (note people entering, for sense of scale)

Todai-ji (about which I waxed rhapsodic in a prior post) sits in a giant historic park in the midst of Nara, along with many other temples, shrines, historic sites, and lots and lots of roaming deer. (These deer like it when toddlers pet them - unlike the ninja deer of Miyajima.)

From the get-go, Buddhism and Shintoism were closely intertwined in Japan. (There was actually a "Shintoism and Buddhism Separation Decree" issued in 1868 after the Meiji Restoration - which tells you there was a lot to be separated.) Next door to Todai-ji is the grand Shinto shrine of Kasuga, surrounded by primeval forest and thousands of atmospheric stone lanterns. Where Todai-ji is formal landscape and open vistas, Kasuga-taisha is a bit more mystical, all vermillion and dark green, moss and stone and the perpetual twilight of ancient forest.

Kasuga-taisha

The highlights:

The whole area has a very family-friendly vibe: little kids feed deer, crawl through the nostril of the giant buddha at Todai-ji, and picnic in the meadows of the park. Ice cream and candy stores abound.
I have detailed all the fun to be had at Todai-ji's great hall, where the Daibutsu lives - but there is much more to this temple complex. The entrance gate (Nandaimon) is home to two towering guardians: 28-foot-high statues carved from wood around 1200 AD that rival - perhaps surpass - the Italian Renaissance centuries later. (They are hard to photograph, but see here for a general idea.) Other temple buildings are scattered around the great hall along storybook cobblestone lanes; one has a wide veranda, perfect for resting, with a sweeping view over Nara.

Good to know: There's a grocery store right next to the JR train station - pick up picnic supplies there. The best place to picnic are the meadows along the entrance to Kasuga-taisha; we had difficulty finding a picnic spot in the Todai-ji precinct or in between Todai-ji and Kasuga-taisha.

Educational Value: High
Entertainment Value: Very High
Kid appropriate? Absolutely

5. Himeji-jo (early 1600s)

Feudalism and the rise of the samurai

The story: Despite the continuity of the imperial family, the other great families of Japan fought for centuries for effective control over the country. Just like in Europe, Japan experienced a prolonged period of castles, strongholds, civil wars, and professional warriors. Only a few of those feudal castles remain today, and Himeji-jo - though built at the very end of this era - is the most impressive. Or at least that's what we hear.

The upside is that Japan takes its national treasures very seriously, investing millions of dollars in their preservation. The downside is that, until March 2015, Himeji-jo is encased in a giant warehouse-type structure and is almost entirely inaccessible to visitors. Here is what it is supposed to look like, and here is what we saw:

The white warehouse of disappointment

We tried to make the best of it by visiting the grounds - but there really is nothing to see. I am sure, however, that this would be an awesome site to visit sometime after March 2015. Not that that that makes me feel any better now.

The highlights: For the time being, none.

Good to know: In case you missed it, don't bother for the next two years.

Educational Value: Unknown
Entertainment Value: Currently negative
Kid appropriate? Well, at least they have some samurai costumes on display...

6. Shrines and Temples of Nikko

The Tokugawa Shogunate

The story: Around 1600, Ieyasu Tokugawa succeeded in "unifying" the country under his command, ending the era of warring states and ushering in a long period of stability. Thereafter, the Tokugawa Shogunate effectively ruled the country from Edo (Tokyo) until 1868.

A mountain north of Tokyo that had long been worshipped and was already the site of a Buddhist temple was picked to house the memorial shrine for Ieyasu. Built under Ieyasu's son and grandson, Tosho-gu is perhaps the most ornate shrine in all of Japan. At the same time, thousands of Japanese cedars (Cryptomeria) were planted around Nikko's various temples and shrines, giving the area today a regal mysticism.

Secondary buildings at Ieyasu's shrine

The highlights:

Tosho-gu glitters in the forest like a fairytale crossed with an acid trip. Every building - even the storehouse and the stable - is intricately carved, gilded, and painted in primary colors. Still, for all its flash, it left me feeling kinda empty.
Next door, the Shinto shrine of Futarasan, dedicated to the local mountain deities, provides a calming respite after the flash of Tosho-gu.
And then there's the Buddhist temple of Rinno-ji, home to three famous Buddhas who sit together in Three Buddha Hall - which was our first run-in with the white warehouse of disappointment. The hall, enshrined in white scaffolding reminiscent of E.T., felt like a construction site; the Buddhas had been dethroned and were only partially visible in a work area. (So not, I suppose, really a "highlight" after all.)
Taiyu-in Reibyo, the mausoleum of Ieyasu's grandson Iemitsu, is past all the other temples and shrines, which makes it tempting to skip - but that would be a mistake. Secluded amidst the Cryptomeria trees, the main hall's gilt and vibrant color seem not gaudy but appropriately majestic. You can smell the earth here; the stillness of seclusion lets in bird song and the wind. Despite the crowds that visit Nikko, Taiyu-in Reibyo is peaceful.

Good to know: More white warehouses of disappointment are slated for Nikko in the coming years - research ahead in case it becomes another Himeji-jo. Nikko is a day trip from Tokyo, but note there is no great option for lunch here. This is also a more physical outing: you can catch a bus from the station to the shrine district (skipping what is otherwise a dull and lengthy hike through town), but there is still a fair amount of walking between the sites, often uphill.

Educational Value: High
Entertainment Value: Moderate to High
Kid friendly? Yes, if they won't whine about walking

7. Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (794-1868)

The flowering of Japanese culture, and the Meiji Restoration

The story: Not much story is needed here; Kyoto is Kyoto. And as Kyoto is the repository of so much Japanese culture, history, and religion, there is more to see in Kyoto than one can possibly squeeze into a single visit. Indeed, this World Heritage listing includes seventeen separate sites (the city of Kyoto has a useful map and overview here.)

Many of the most famous temples were built during Japan's feudal era, like Ryoan-ji and its famous rock garden (1400s) and Rokuon-ji (late 1300s) - which is more popularly known as Kinaku-ji, or the temple of the Golden Pavilion. The name is apt.

Literally, it's a golden pavilion

Although the Tokugawa shogunate operated out of Tokyo, Ieyasu built a palace in Kyoto to keep tabs on the imperial court. It was in Nijo palace that, several centuries later, the last Tokugawa shogun relinquished his powers and returned full control of the country back to the emperor. Known as the Meiji Restoration (1868), this event marks the beginning of modern Japan.

Educational Value: High
Entertainment Value: Medium to High (depending on the site)
Kid appropriate? Varies by location (who doesn't love a building covered in gold?)

8. Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama

How real people lived

The story: So what was everyone else doing, the people who didn't live in castles or palaces and weren't allowed on sacred islands? Life was not easy for the peasants of Japan, which perhaps explains the modern Japanese work ethic. This site preserves a particular rural way of life high up in the Japanese Alps, where roofs of houses were built to withstand multiple feet of snow and the center hearth was always burning.

Japanese alpine: the traditional gassho-style house

Full disclosure, we didn't actually go to this World Heritage site. We were close by, but setting foot in these remote villages requires long (and surprisingly expensive) bus trips and a tad too much logistical wrangling. So we settled for the next best thing: Takayama's Hida Folk Village.

Actually, it might be even better than the real thing. The folk village is home to a dozen super-old houses gathered from the mountain region, and unlike the villages were people still live, you are supposed to poke around and stick your nose into things. Plus it's designed to be family friendly - indeed, our inner childs were highly entertained.

The highlights (of Hida Folk Village):

Maggie elbows toddlers out of way to ring bell

Helpful descriptions are posted in English in all of the houses, so we came away knowing way too much about construction techniques, rural industry, and the silk worm life cycle (which villagers raised in the eaves of the gassho houses).
Visitors have free reign to explore all the houses, but the "village" also has plenty of other incidents of rural life to explore: a sample rice paddy, a small Shinto shrine, jizo statues, a working mill, a giant bell rung with a wood beam. Plus traditional artisans carve wood, make sandals, throw pottery - and sell their creations at reasonable prices.
Everything is hands-on. Sample toys, from tops to stilts, are set out for play (and yes, we played with all of them). Stamps can be collected throughout the park, like a scavenger hunt. Peasant costumes can be donned for photo ops with a hand-pulled cart (Jeff owes me big time for not providing an illustration).
But the main selling point - particularly of the real-life villages that are actually inscribed on the World Heritage List - is the alpine beauty of the gassho houses in the mountain valleys. Think Heidi, but with silk worms.

Good to know: It may be that our enjoyment of Hida Folk Village was due to nonexistent expectations. I don't want to oversell it, but it is a valid alternative for those unable or disinclined to go to the extra effort to reach Shirakawa-go.

Educational value: Very high
Entertainment value: Very high
Kid friendly? And how

9. Hiroshima Peace Memorial

WWII and after

The story: So, WWII. By the end of the war, Japan was stretched so thin that middle school students and prisoners from Korea were providing manual labor for the war effort in Hiroshima - which is why they comprised so many of the initial victims of the world's first atomic bomb attack.

The bomb detonated over this bridge; the Genbaku Dome is on the right

After the bomb detonated in the middle of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, only a few buildings were left standing; the rest of the blast zone was entirely leveled. And only one of those buildings remains standing today: the Genbaku Dome, which is now a peace memorial (and is the site inscribed on the World Heritage List).

The highlights: While most of the city has been rebuilt, the area right at ground zero has been left as a grassy park dotted with memorials ranging from the big (to all victims, to all children) to small (for particular schools, for particular professions). The almost-free museum traces the events leading up to the bomb and explores the full scope of its aftermath.

Origami cranes left at a memorial

Good to know: The whole memorial area can be thoroughly appreciated with two or three hours. For what it's worth, there's free wifi within the memorial zone.

Educational Value: Very high
Entertainment Value: "Entertainment" isn't the right word
Kid friendly? Yes, for older kids prepared to see graphic images at the museum

Perhaps equally meaningful to me was what Hiroshima has become today: a vibrant city that feels young, energetic, excited, like it's heading some place I want to be. It was reminiscent of the feeling I got in Warsaw and in Rotterdam, other cities leveled in WWII that got back up again. You know what they say: the human spirit, it's indefatigable. And that's the best kind of heritage.

Traveling in Japan: All You Really Need to Know

2013-03-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

Shibuya crossing, Tokyo

We were relieved to find that Japan - despite its very different language and very different culture - is a surprisingly easy country to visit. This is thanks primarily to the kindness and hospitality of the Japanese people; all you really need to navigate the country is a willingness to ask for help, a little bit of patience, and just a handful of practical tips:

Be prepared to pay cash. Yes, surprisingly, the world's most advanced economy operates primarily on a cash-only basis. This includes many restaurants and traditional hotels.
Rail pass. You want one. It makes you a traveling God. But it's tricky: you have to buy it in advance from a limited set of vendors (see here).
Stamps. If you are traveling by train, bring a blank book: every station (and I mean every station, even the local JR line stations in Tokyo) has its own stamp. Yes, stamp, as in the rubber and ink pad variety. Supposedly, the Japanese are avid collectors of stamps, but I only saw preteen boys and other foreigners hunting them down. Still, the hunt is a fun challenge - and the resulting collection a pictorial diary of your travels.

Don't tip. It's borderline rude in a country that prides itself on service.
Bars aren't for just drinking. Itzakaya don't take kindly to Americans walking in just looking for a beer. If you want a beer, pick one up at the 7-11. If you enter a drinking establishment, order food. That seat ain't free.
Don't worry. Japan has a ridiculously low (basically nonexistent) crime rate. You will not be mugged; your bag will not be stolen. Once you fully accept this fact, it is incredibly liberating.
Shrines are Shinto, temples are Buddhist.
Nothing is vegetarian. OK, maybe not nothing - but close enough it's a good rule of thumb. Sorry.

Not sure what all this was, except that it was alive at one point.

The language barrier isn't a barrier. (1) Most Japanese in urban areas know basic English. (2) Much signage in urban areas is in English, or at least transliterated to the latin alphabet. (3) The tourist infrastructure throughout the country is pretty solid, and English has become the esperanto of travelers. (4) When in doubt, most locals are willing to help even without the benefit of a shared language. Only a handful of times were we reduced to comparing characters from our guidebook with signs on the street - and only because (inevitably) we were determined to find a particular restaurant we just knew would be worth the extra effort (and frankly, it usually wasn't).
Never wear your house slippers on tatami mats. The first rule of shoe club is that you must take off your shoes when entering any house or house-like establishment, including many temples. (House slippers are provided for guests.) The second rule of shoe club is that you must take off your shoes - this is not an optional, foreigners-are-excepted sort of club. The third rule of shoe club is that you never wear shoes or house slippers on tatami mats - even in public places like temples or restaurants. (This one is hard to remember.) The fourth rule of shoe club is that bathrooms are special: you don't wear your house slippers into the bathroom (bathroom slippers are provided) and you don't wear the bathroom slippers out of the bathroom (this would be disgusting). Takeaway: Invest in walking shoes you can slip on or off easily, and wear nice socks.

Finally, while traveling in Japan isn't cheap, there are ways to keep costs down. Besides noodles and other cheap eats, here are a few more suggestions:

If in Kyoto, buy a daily bus pass. They only cost about $5, and the sites in Kyoto are spread out. (Plus the main tourist bus lines helpfully announce the stops in English, too.)

Futons awaiting at Ryokan Sawanoya (highly recommended)

Stay in traditional inns and "business" hotels. They are significantly cheaper than "Western" hotels (read: roomy with real beds) while also providing a more, shall we say, cultural experience. By "traditional," I mean places where you will sleep on tatami mats and futons (read: on the floor); by "business," I mean hotel rooms that are barely bigger than college dorm rooms (but, thankfully, private). I loved both, though those with back woes might want to limit nights spent on futons.

Use your rail pass smartly. If you do invest in a rail pass, know that you can get around much of Tokyo for free, using the local elevated JR trains.
But at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. I don't know if this is a free market economist's dream come true, but we found that generally in Japan, there was a reliable correlation between price and value. This is especially true with hotels. Also, if it's worth seeing, you'll probably have to pay an admission price. That's just the way this cookie crumbles.

Not-so-cheap-eats Japan

2013-03-02T08:16:00.000-08:00

Though we survived primarily on noodles, fried food, and department store takeout while in Japan, we did step out on select occasions. My favorite not-so-cheap eats in Japan, roughly in ascending order:

1. Teppanyaki

The preparation of our third course.

OK, so it's Benihana (not that anyone under the age of 40 has ever been to Benihana, including me) - except, as with most things Japanese, the Japanese version is way classier. Our teppanyaki experience came with fancy cotton aprons (much more Martha Stewart than plastic bibs) and a server-to-patron ratio of about three to one.

Our personal chef grilled our premium Japanese beef at our table as we munched salad and sipped delicate broth; he used the rendered fat to cook a third course of Japanese vegetables, accompanied by miso soup. I have rarely eaten a plate of steak so quickly or with so much pleasure. A personal motto of mine: if you're going to eat a mammal, make it count.

2. Izakaya

Japanese drinking establishments are not, it turns out, just for drinking. It is expected that you order food - ideally amply, though I think exceptions are made for foreigners - which, combined with the generally overpriced beer, makes izakaya a not-so-budget option.

Our most traditional izakaya experience was in Takayama, a quaint town high up in the Japanese Alps. A local had recommended Kinoene to me, and whenever we asked someone else for directions, they would get a wistful look in their eyes and say, "Ooohhh, Kinoene!" We took this as a good sign.

Like most izakaya, Kinoene's front room was filled with a bar, which housed that evening a solitary patron or two. We headed to the back room, taking off our shoes before stepping onto the tatami mats and settling ourselves around a low table.

The waitresses would slip off their plastic kitchen slippers every time they came into the tatami room, kneeling elegantly next to each table as they delivered drinks and took orders. (Hard learned lesson: never wear shoes or slippers on tatami mats.)

All the other tables were occupied by groups of men, yet I didn't feel out of place. When I ordered sake, our waitress brought out a wooden box filled with assorted sake cups so I could choose the one most to my liking.

Our yakitori, grilled up at the bar, came out tasting like the fire it was cooked over; the octopus fritters, freshly fried, were served on a cast iron dish so hot, the nori and bonito flakes sprinkled over the top were dancing in the updrafts.

Octopus fritters and dancing bonito flakes

3. Breakfast sushi at Tsukiji

The Tsukiji wholesale market now tops everyone's list of must-see Tokyo sites - a rather recent development that has alarmed those in charge. The famous tuna auctions are now mostly closed to tourists; if you really want one of the 120 observation spots available daily, you have to taxi your tired self down there at 4 a.m. (I can say from experience, 5:30 a.m. doesn't cut it). Children are verboten, all liability is disclaimed, and the most interesting "middle market" -- where every manner of sea food is on sale -- is technically closed to tourists until 9 a.m.

High-speed Tsukiji traffic jam

When we showed up at 5:30 on a Monday morning, I could see the cause for concern. In the gray pre-dawn light, speeding electric carts and forklifts did not follow traffic patterns; delivery trucks pulled in and out while restaurant workers wove through the erratic traffic on bicycles and scooters with bags of merchandise hanging from their handlebars. Wide-eyed tourists disoriented by the maze of alleys and piles of discarded styrofoam boxes (namely, us) are a hazard to themselves and to everything that crosses their path. Let's also note that for those jet-lagged on their first morning in Japan, it will not yet have become intuitive to keep to the left.

But for anyone even remotely interested in food (or a fan of Richard Scarry's Busytown books), the market is a worthwhile adventure. Especially in the early hours, the place is pulsating with energy, and the easily accessible outer market shops provide ample entertainment for the curious (so this is where restaurants buy industrial-sized flats of farm fresh eggs). Too late for the tuna auction, too early for the middle market, and too disoriented to hazard breaking any rules, we did what any red-blooded foodie would do at 6 in the morning: we had a sushi breakfast.

Note the tuna-steak on far left.

Tsukiji's outer market is famous for its tiny sushi counters. We took the last two seats at a narrow bar and watched the serious gray-haired sushi chefs prepare the fish directly in front of us.

The restaurant's single waitress brought us miso soup with tiny baby clams hidden in the bottom and green tea in roughly shaped mugs. With my limited (by which I mean nonexistent) Japanese, I managed to order a few basic rolls from the chef (this might have included pointing at our neighbor's food as well).

My tuna nigiri was a slab of fish so big and so deeply red that it almost looked like beef. Jeff's basic vegetarian rolls were exactly what sushi should be: crisp nori, firm rice, simple ingredients perfectly prepared. With growing confidence, I tried sea urchin for the first time - a fascinating texture that liquifies in your mouth, leaving the faintest taste of the sea soon erased by the vinegary sushi rice it left behind.

Fortified by breakfast, we might or might not have broken the official market rules by walking through the giant middle market, where all the real action was happening. It might or might not have been fascinating and impressive. And we'll leave it at that.

4. Kaiseki

The equivalent of the French seven-course meal at a multi-Michelin starred restaurant, a true kaiseki dinner was simply beyond our budget. But thanks to the government of Japan, we were able to approximate the experience.

A "people's lodge" on the sacred island of Miyajima, MorinoYado is a government-run hotel that feels a bit like a conference center and caters, it appeared on arrival, almost entirely to Japanese retirees. Still, we were given a veritable suite of rooms (complete with our own doorbell) and enough futons to triple-stack our beds that night (think princess and the pea). After helping ourselves to tea and cookies in our room, we changed into our yukatas - cotton kimono-esque bathrobes - before setting out to soak in the communal (gender-segregated) baths.

Clean and relaxed, we returned to our room, where dinner was brought to us - still in our yukatas and seated around a low table on the tatami mats. It was a veritable feast, something like nine dishes each plus rice and dessert - and every last little dish was exquisitely prepared.

(Not including dessert)

Our favorite was the plate of perfectly fried oysters the size of medallions - a local delicacy - accompanied by a tartar-like dipping sauce. The local oysters also made an appearance in a simmered dish of bok choy and conger eel, served in a pot over a little flame. I gorged myself on beautifully arranged sashimi - mine as well as Jeff's - and rolls of delicate Japanese beef wrapped around squishy green vegetables (that "fifth texture" of Japanese cooking). There was a plate of half a dozen intricate amuse bouche; a silken tofu topped with caviar and wasabi; a savory custard incorporating more fish (don't ask me how); crispy sardines topped with pickled vegetables; and the obligatory cup of soup - this one with a meatball dumpling. I think the dessert incorporated cantaloupe and some unrecognizable delicacies, but frankly, we couldn't eat that much.

The best part is, after we called them to take it all away, we just had to roll out our futons and fall into bed.

Although not as extensive or exquisite, our shojin ryori meal at the Buddhist temple in Koyasan also falls into this category, as does our last meal in Japan: a Ninja-themed feast in Tokyo with friends.

I believe the restaurant is actually called Ninja, and it is as much amusement park spectacle as multi-course dinner extravaganza. After following our Ninja hostess through a mini-maze of serpentine corridors, narrow staircases and a draw bridge (secret password required), we were deposited in our own little cave, complete with fake stone walls and a large orchid arrangement.

Charming Ninja cooking soup.

The food was fancy but fun: foie gras shaped like throwing stars; a savory "cream puff" with a tofu cream and salmon sashimi filling; chicken wings and cashews covered in bright red peppers; upscale "spaghetti"; perfectly cooked salmon for the main course; a plate of sushi served like a palate-cleanser; and a mango cake dessert with a dab of meringue shaped and decorated - if you looked at it just right and squinted your eyes - like a snowman equivalent of a ninja. But my favorite course was the showy soup course, made by our charming Ninja server at our table. He dropped pre-heated stones into a vat of broth, which immediately came to a frothy boil and wilted the mounds of green vegetables he heaped on top. And then there was the visit of the Master Ninja, who regaled us with advanced card tricks and suitably corny jokes in between courses.

When we finally extracted ourselves from the restaurant and started down the city street, our charming Ninja server followed us out, executed a flashy somersault on the pavement, and whipped out a banner that said "Please come again!" It was a perfectly cheerful and cheesy end to a cheerful and cheesy feast.

5. And then there are the sweets

I cannot end my multi-part ode to Japanese food without saying a word about Japanese sweets. Japanese love sweets, which come in a shocking variety (never including chocolate). Mochi (chewy rice dough) features prominently, as does green tea flavoring, sweet bean paste, dried fruit, and sugar. Each region - and in particular, every major tourist destination - is known for a local sweet specialty, and nicely packaged sweets comprise about 80% of all gift shops.

This overwhelming abundance made more sense to us once someone explained that the Japanese always bring back boxes and boxes of sweets - for their boss, their coworkers, their families, their neighbors - every time they go anywhere, whether for business or for pleasure. This also explains the entire floors of sweets in the major department stores, which is a cultural experience unto itself.

But the love of sweets runs deeper, as demonstrated by the lines stretching outside the most popular mochi stores and the prevalence of soft-serve ice cream stands. It's probably a good thing that, for most Americans, sweets devoid entirely of chocolate can be an acquired taste: otherwise, we might have eaten nothing else.

Templed Out?

2013-02-25T07:32:00.000-08:00

In Europe, it is easy to get churched out. I have few distinct memories of cathedrals; there's just a cold, gray haze of feeling vaguely impressed. Heading to Japan, we were warned of a similar experience, particularly in Kyoto, of becoming templed out.

I have to say, it didn't happen to me.

I am sure it is possible. Temples (Buddhist) and shrines (Shinto) are everywhere - and I do mean everywhere: tucked between old buildings in historic districts, hidden in the midst of rows of shops, at the end of every street. Markets have their own shrines; city corners and country roads have little Jizo buddhas. Torii gates are omnipresent.

It's interesting, when you consider that Japan is not a particularly religious nation. But despite the sheer quantity, my interest never waned.

For one thing, shrines and temples in Japan are interactive experiences - even for outsiders. Take my favorite temple experience, Todai-ji, which sits in a giant park alongside other shrines and temples in the center of Nara: like an amusement park for the soul. Tame deer approach looking for treats and pause, like zen masters, to be petted. The deer, messengers of the gods, defy cynicism: they are simply too, well, endearing.

Todai-ji itself is ginormous, built to house a ginormous bronze statue of Buddha.

The Daibutsu (giant buddha) of Todai-ji.

At the entrance, everyone pauses before a fittingly ginormous incense burner to waft clouds of incense over their bodies.

Inside, families with little children line up for hours to crawl through a hole the size of the giant Buddha's nostril. (OK, so maybe something is lost in translation here - but it's very sweet in person, like the equivalent of having your picture taken on Santa's lap - which, if you think about it, probably loses something in translation, too.)

A booth near the exit sells fortunes that you choose for yourself by drawing numbered matchsticks. (As usual, I overachieved and drew extreme good fortune. Like I said, this was my favorite temple experience.)

On their way out, people stop to pay their respects to a fittingly oversized wooden Jizo wrapped in a giant red bib and beret. Between the weather-worn wood of his face and the intense red of his draperies, he looks almost alien - which makes sense, as this statue is said to have supernatural powers. (Who/what is Jizo? See my Koyasan post.)

At the entrance of a Shinto shrine (in Takayama).

Shinto shrines can be even more interactive. At the entrance of every shrine, visitors ladle water from ornate basins to purify their mouths and hands. Shoes are removed before walking on the pliable tatami mats, and coins clatter into lacquered receptacles for offerings. Sturdy ropes can be pulled to ring bells that draw the deities' attention.

Painted wooden plaques are sold at most shrines, which supplicants personalize with prayers and leave behind in offering: good health, good fortune, love, luck, the usual suspects. At the end of a holiday weekend at my favorite shrine, Fushimi Inari outside Kyoto, the prayers numbered in the thousands:

Fushimi Inari, like Koyasan, embodies an even deeper level of interaction - meaning full-on physical engagement. Built on a small mountain, Fushimi Inari is designed as a mini-pilgrimage: you could simply visit the traditional shrine buildings at the entrance (ring bells, make offerings, leave prayers), or you can walk up the mountain - up through literally thousands of vermillion torii gates, up stone steps and winding paths, up through forest and past smaller stone shrines dedicated to Inari, the fox deity of rice (which in Japan is equivalent to wealth). To reach the very top is enough of a hike that most find the upper shrine rather anti-climatic. But it is the hike itself that is the prayer.

And this is just the beginning...

We timed our visit for sunset, when the last rays of golden light filtered through the trees and warmed the orange of the torii gates. Dusk on our descent transformed the shrine into a mysterious labyrinth; the tall trees, the smell of the woods, the nocturnal sounds of animals reasserting themselves after the crowds had left. Like the graveyard of Koyasan, the shrine belongs not to mere mortals, but to the forest and the mountain.

This is the second thing that I love about temples and shrines in Japan: that so many of them are inextricably intertwined with their natural setting - that the beauty of the man-made is secondary to the beauty of the trees, or the water, or the vista, or the garden.

At Nikko, in the mountains north of Tokyo, shrines, mausoleums, and temples radiate outwards along forested paths. The process of walking between them, in the stillness of the ancient cedar forest, draws you into a different, quieter world.

The shrine of Iemitsu Tokugawa at Nikko.

The famous shrine to Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun who unified Japan in the early 1600s, competes with the forest and mountain with its wild colors and extravagant gold leaf. I liked better the shrine of his grandson Iemitsu, further up the mountainside and most removed from the center of activity. This "lesser" shrine somehow manages to melt into the forest and the landscape even with all of its intricate carvings and glowing gold interior. There I felt drawn deep into the silence of the tall cedars, a tiny person in the midst of their height and depth and eternity.

At the other end of our trip, on the sacred island of Miyajima just outside Hiroshima, the Itsukushima shrine straddles the land and the sea, and its giant torii gate - marking the official entrance to the shrine - is surrounded by water at high tide. The shrine itself seems secondary to the forested mountains behind it, the calm bay that stretches before it, the sunset it faces every evening.

A resident boulder in Ryoan-ji's "wet" garden.

Other temples celebrate controlled nature: the nature encapsulated in Japanese gardens. At Ryoan-ji, on the northern edge of Kyoto, in the early morning before the crowds descend, the temple gardens enfold the visitor in peace and beauty. The lake is covered with lilies, the stillness punctuated by the flight of a long-legged stork. The "wet" garden is built around boulders with character, cloaked in moss and lit by green sunlight filtered through the canopy of trees and bamboo.

And in the temple's renowned "dry" garden, rocks that tell a different story to each visitor are clustered around a courtyard of groomed gravel. In the morning, alone (or nearly so) with the garden, you can find yourself communing with stones that in any other setting would be silent.

Communing with rocks.

Indeed, all Japanese gardens are inherently spiritual; nature and religion in Japan seem inseparable. In Kenroku-en, the renowned gardens of Kanazawa, the boughs of ancient trees are tenderly trained to cascade down over the lake; paths are designed to provide ever-changing views of the lake or the trees or the vista out to the green mountains. In the early morning, workers thin the needles of trees by hand and gently rake away any leaf that has gone astray. At least before the crowds arrive, quiet nooks offer space for reflection, the views accompanied by the sound of brooks or the wind in the leaves.

Kenroku-en

It is the traditional tea ceremony that brings this all back together: reuniting the spiritual fabric of the gardens with communion among a few select individuals. As an outsider, I cannot fully understand the nuances of the tradition, but sitting in a quiet garden in Kanazawa, being gently led through the tea ceremony by a gracious host, I can at least appreciate the ceremony's guiding principles of harmony, purity, respect and tranquility. And for me, a high church Episcopalian, that is pretty much what I am seeking each Sunday at church.

[We loved the private tea ceremony at Gyokusen-en in Kanazawa: it's the real deal complete with a lovely and gracious host, though we had to have a Japanese speaker call on our behalf to make the reservation. Be sure to get to Kenrokuen and Ryoan-ji early: your experience will be vastly superior in the absence of tour groups. Nara is a good day trip from Kyoto, as is Nikko from Tokyo. Thanks to Sharon for telling us Ryoan-ji and Fushimi Inari were her two favorite spots in Kyoto: we agree entirely.]