Good day! I'm back with more photos of our trip. Just uploading these photos is making my heart hurt a little. I miss you Portland!
I especially miss the spectacular, gargantuan bookstore, Powell's Books. Powell's takes up a whole city block and is made up of several stories of new and used books. They had a whole room of art books that completely blew my mind. I'm use to the one tiny, pathetic corner of art and design books that Border's offers, so needless to say, I was in heaven. Robert and I spent several hours perusing the many stacks of bound treasure before convincing ourselves that we should probably see the rest of Portland.
We eventually headed down to Hawthorne Street for some vintage shopping and lunch (although we did end up in the baby Powell's located on Hawthorne as well.) When our tummies started to rumble, we decided to try out Vege Thai.
I'll just start this review by admitting that I'm fairly bias in the Thai food department. Here in Lawrence we are blessed with the amazing Zen Zero, an Asian fusion restaurant that has spoiled most of my experiences in Thai dining. While I tried to give Vege Thai a fair shot, it did fall a little short on my measure-everything-against-Zen scale. The flavors in our dishes were quite good, but fairly standard and not as dazzling as I wanted them to be. One thing Vege Thai did have going for it was its variety of vegan proteins, with a choice of tofu, tempeh, soy chicken, soy pepper steak, and soy shrimp. Soy shrimp, you say! We were both curious so Robert tried his in a vegetable soup while I opted for the massamun curry.
I liked the imitation. The shrimp was flavorful and visually appealing without tasting too much like the real deal.
We spent a lot of time walking around Portland and checking out the neighborhoods. Here is a great example of the great ways Portland uses its space and keeps things really down to earth, pun intended.
A sweet little produce market with a bounty of fall goodies.

After trotting around town, our next top was dinner. As fiscally responsible as Robert is, his achilles' heel is fine dining. The one thing he requested on our trip was to take me out to a schmany dinner. So difficult, that one. ;)
Robert picked a Peruvian restaurant called Andina. It was hip and upscale without being stuffy or uncomfortable. It even offered several vegan, and easily-made-vegan options! The drink selection was also something to brag about. They had quite a few quirky little cocktails made with exotic ingredients such as hibiscus nectar, roasted pineapple infused amber rum, pink guava nectar, acai, and passion fruit. I ordered the ron-yki-on, roasted ginger-infused silver rum, grapefruit juice, lime juice, and cane sugar with a cardamom sugar rim. Yum! Our starter was warm, fresh bread served with delectable sauces including mint jalapeño, mango and habanero with cracker crumbs, and a peanut and cheese sauce.

I ordered the causa solterito as my appetizer, a cake of mashed potatoes infused with lime juice and served with avocado. It's topped off with fresh veggies and a cheese salad, but I had them leave the queso off.
My main course was called hongos saltados which included wok-fried wild mountain mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions. The mushrooms were out of this world, seasoned with garlic, soy sauce, and ají pepper. The garlic rice and yukon potato french fries side dishes were just kinda...ehh. Overall the meal was amazing and very filling;
about half of those twenty dollar mushrooms feed a homeless man dinner.
So I still have quite a bit of food left to talk about, and I don't like the idea of having a ridiculously long post. Stay tuned for part three of pretty Portland.
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