An Evening in Portland or How I Bribe My Husband

It is incredible when you get to do life with someone who really gets you, someone who understands that sometimes you just need to book a trip and sometimes you just need to go on that trip all alone. I love traveling with Brandon and I miss him terribly when we are apart, but there is something about solo travel that speaks to my soul and refreshes me. I like to think that Brandon encouraged me to book a solo trip because he deeply understands who I am as a person.

More realistically he probably just got tired of me bombarding him with travel deals and trip ideas and knew that the best way to make it stop was for me to plan a trip, already.

Regardless of the reason, I booked my flights and began planning every detail. And then I got pregnant. Thankfully my plans did not have to change drastically.

I suppose you might be wondering where I was going. After considering several options, I settled on Finland. Why Finland? Well, it is consistently one of the happiest countries on earth. Also, Brandon’s two requests for when I travel alone are that I do not go anywhere he really wants to go, which is quite possible because he generally wants to go somewhere tropical and I want to go everywhere and there is a lot of everywhere that does not have warm beaches, and that I do not go anywhere especially dangerous. It is no surprise that after years of working on the north slope in Alaska that he has little desire to go to Lappish Finland in winter to be surrounded by snow and cold and darkness. But more on Finland later.

First, I had to somehow convince my husband to drop me off at the Portland airport for a 5 am flight. Given that this was at the end of the government shutdown and that TSA lines were rumored to be insanely long, I insisted on being at the airport at the (probably unnecessarily) early hour of 3 a.m. So not only was I jaunting off on a solo adventure and leaving him behind, I was also asking my husband to take me to the airport at a horribly early hour. I really think I got the better end of the deal. So I did what any reasonable person would do and resorted to bribery.

Specifically, I made reservations at a fancy hotel and at our favorite restaurant the night before my flight.

The hotel was the lovely RiverPlace Hotel.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Kimpton hotels and this was the only Kimpton in Portland where I had not yet stayed (check out my posts on the Hotel Monaco and the Hotel Vintage - both amazing). When I was looking at places to stay, I found a great price on Hotel Tonight that was too good to pass up. This is the only Portland hotel actually on the river. It had all of the boutique style that I’ve come to expect from Kimpton hotels, with a more upscale, if slightly less quirky, vibe. Even better, it was Sydney approved.

After settling into our room, we took Sydney out for a walk so we could all stretch our legs after the drive from Roseburg.

Later that evening, Brandon and I enjoyed the 15 minute stroll to and from LeChon. It was a lovely, if cool, night for a walk along the Willamette River that runs through downtown Portland.

And then there was dinner. We mixed it up by ordering some of our “usuals” like the empanadas and the baked burrata along some new dishes like corn fritters, pork belly served with a leek griddle cake, and the special lamb pasta. As usual, everything was excellent and we ordered too much food and ate it all anyway.

Due to, you know, being pregnant and all, I tried the virgin cocktail, which turned out to be a delicious passion fruit drink - sweet and tart and exactly perfect with my meal.

With full bellies and happy hearts, we enjoyed the walk back to the hotel hand in hand, where we decided to make it an early evening. After all, I had a plane to catch!