Memorial Day Weekend 2014: Day 3 - Newport, Tualatin, and back to Portland (Fishtails Cafe, Panera Bread, and more Voodoo Doughnut)

My alarm went off at 6 am.  Not exactly the most sensible thing for someone spending a single, relaxing night by the ocean, but I didn't know if the morning crowds were as bad as the evening ones at the local restaurants.  I love breakfast food, and don't go out for it anywhere near as often as I would like because, well, I loathe getting up early.  Yet here I was, doing it on my vacation, and all because someone on my Facebook page happened to mention an eatery that I had already been kind of interested in while I was griping about my disappointing dinner the previous night.

Welcome to South Beach...

Memorial Day Weekend 2014: Day 1 - Portland (Sen Yai, Uno Mas, Voodoo Doughnut)

A little less than a year ago, I embarked on a road trip to Seattle for a three day weekend (meaning that I really only got to spend about two days enjoying the city).  This time around, I decided to step up the crazy by going on the single strangest vacation of my life (so far)...

At roughly 5:30 on Saturday morning, we hit Starbucks for coffee and breakfast (I do NOT recommend the bacon Gouda breakfast sandwiches) before jumping on the freeway.  In one car rode myself, my roommate and her kids; in the other, my mother and sister.  In Boardman, we stopped to visit with my aunt for a few minutes and gas up the vehicles.  At that point, the roommate's kids hopped in the car with my Mom and Sis so their mother could crawl in my back seat, and then it was straight through to Portland.  We reconvened at a shopping mall that I don't recall the name of, where the roommate's BFF awaited to whisk her and the younger child away to the Oregon Coast.  

The older child would stay with me and my family, spending the rest of the day and part of Sunday exploring Portland.  Sunday evening we would drive to Albany to visit with my cousin and her kids, and after a bit of that I would continue on to the Coast alone to spend the night relaxing (and hopefully indulging my rarely-addressed seafood cravings).  Monday morning I would collect the roommate and younger kid, swing back by Albany for the older kid, and then head homeward.  Yes, I agree that it seems a bit insane looking at it all laid out like that, but at the time it seemed perfectly sensible (or maybe I was just glad to be out of town for the weekend).  We checked into our hotel, which was a lot nicer than I expected, even though they charge three bucks to rent one of their severely limited selection of videotapes and were completely out of complimentary cookies.  Then, it was on to lunch.

Treats and Tragedies on the road: Voodoo Doughnut (Portland)

One of the biggest issues I have with this little hobby of mine is self-control.  Not the eating part...well, maybe that as well...but what I'm referring to here is my penchant for profanity and my sense of humor.  It's no stretch to say that I edit and revise each entry at least twice to make sure it's as non-offensive as I'm capable of being.  I do this not only at the behest of my loved ones, but also because I don't want to inadvertently turn anyone off of a good place just because they might be foolish enough to make an association between something I said in a write-up that irked them and the place that the write-up was about (this is the internet after all, the gene pool can be pretty shallow in places).  However, every once in a while a situation comes along that allows for a little vulgarity by its very nature.  Therefore, I must say here that THE FOLLOWING ENTRY CONTAINS LANGUAGE AND SUBJECT MATTER THAT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR ALL VIEWERS.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!  And I would furthermore like to give my most sincere thanks to Voodoo Doughnut for giving me the chance to finally say that...