Oregon Coast and Portland

The Essentials in Life according to Ward: Wine and Soccer

After our visit to Crater Lake, we drove back to the coast. Along the way, we stopped at Hillcrest vineyards in Roseburg for a short (mainly pinot noir) wine tasting. The owner considered wine his hobby and clearly knew what he was talking about. Unfortunately, he only sells wine locally and doesn't use distributors. Which according to Ward meant that we simply hàd to buy two bottles for on the road.

On July 9^th, we were back on the Pacific Coast Highway, this time following the Oregon coast. The view in California was amazing (remember my post?) but this was even more beautiful. As was the case in California, there was a lot of fog but we didn’t mind, it made our drive only more mysterious.

Our first stop along the Pacific Coast Highway was at the Oregon Dunes where we did a 2 mile hike through the dunes to the sea. Now this is what I call a beach!

In the afternoon, we followed the “Three Capes Loop” which brought us to Cape Kiwanda, Cape Lookout and Cape Meares… needless to say that there were a lot of great photo opportunities!

On July 10^th, we drove to the Oregon Willamette Wine valley (can you spot the theme here?) and did a few wine tastings (Torii Mor and Adelsheim, our personal favorite, which might be available in Europe in the near future). Ward impressed the people at Adelsheim with his knowledge about wine so much that we didn't need to pay for our wine tasting! On the other hand, most of the folks there looked like they were only interested in the percentage of alcohol of each wine poured into their glass...

Sunday, July 11^th was a special day for Ward, the World Cup final... We met up with a former Spanish colleague of Ward to watch the game in Bagdad Theatre, an old movie theatre in Portland's Hawthorne District. Orange was omni-present at the theatre and for those of you who didn't watch the game, it was pretty tense!

After an exciting game (and overtime), we spent what was left of the day in downtown Portland. We drove to Washington Park to smell the roses in the International Rose Test Garden and to get in touch with our "zen" side in the Japanese Garden.