Congratulations on passing your review. I always knew you could do it. You are seriously one of the smartest and most dedicated people I have ever met. We will have to celebrate with something chocolately delicious.

My last day in Portland was one of the best. After a day of swimming across a river and socializing with the natives at the beach, (e:james) and I headed out for some delicious sushi. I didn't have my phone with me for the whole first part because I was afraid it would get wet so the only pictures are from dinner. Afterwards I realized I never got any pics of me with Jim and James just all the food we ate ;(

I ate so much sushi that night that I fell asleep like an hour later.

The pictures really don't do it justice. The Portland rose garden was the most amazing rose garden I have ever seen. The roses were all giant and perfectly in bloom. It smelled amazing.

Its hard to tell from the pics just how large it really is.







































UPDATE: I couldn't talk about it back then but this was the day I purchased (e:terry)'s engadgement ring. I added a petal from a yellow rose in the garden (below) to the jewelry box. I sat around in the sun all day being excited about giving it to him when I got back. People must have thought I was on drugs because I kept taking something out of my backpack and acting all smiley and excited. (e:hodown) and (e:lilho) were on text with me all day helping me pick it out.

I really didn't take enough pictures of the buidings downtown. Nothing says, "I am a tourist." like taking photos of buildings. That being said I did take a few of some old bank buildings. There were quite a few of these and they all looked really neat.

They eat grass like deer and have the fur patterns of deer and they are way less furry than squirrels but other than that they act like squirrels.

The strangest situation last night. I was trying to book a hotel in downtown portland for tonight. I looked at the downtown map area. Then I accidentally clicked on another map call "downtown portand - south waterfront". Then I prompted me to login, session timeout when I forgot the pass, etc so I used the back button to go back to the downtown map when I checked out but ended up with a South Waterfront area hotel which is out of the city. It would be like staying in Lackawanna in you were going to Buffalo.

I immediately called expedia to resolve the issue. I was cut off twice during transfer. Then they realized the corp office was closed until "5am eastern time" so I waited up and called again. Another cut off during transfer. I called back and got to a supervisor. The supervisor told me she couldn't do anything without corporate and they open 5am central time. I explain it is already 5am central time and we have an argument about time zones. She is in the phillipines and clearly does no understand american time zones. Then she says to call back in the morning.

So I call back this morning 7am pacific time and Lakisha at corporate in Vegas reviews my session and insists it was south waterfront. I explained that I think the issue was caused by using the back button. We argue about it and she says there is nothing she can do, I am stuck with it because otherwise expedia would have to eat the full cost. Clearly, expedia would not have to eat the whole cost because they must be making some profit and I was willing to pay more to be in the area I wanted and believed I was selecting.

I then explained to her that if she did not resolve this I was never using their service again, so the $200 lost would be much less than the entire of my future business by a large magnitude.

She said there was nothing she could do. It seems so stupid to me that they would have such bad customer relationship management. I didn't even want to cancel, I just wanted a room within the area, I was under the impression I was choosing and I was willing to pay more.

Maybe they should redesign their software so that the map is explicitly shown on checkout instead of just the name. The terms "Downtown Portand" vs "Downtown Portland - South Waterfront" look too similar when you were looking at both and though you had backed up to the first one, especially with all of the forgotten password, session timeout bullshit.

I am also going to make it a point to tell everyone I know about this terrible customer service experience from being hung up on several times to the way I was treated by Lakisha. I guess I will checkout priceline in the future. Looking at it now there site seems a lot nicer. Expedias seems real 2003.

So Portland has the donut shop where people line up practically around the block 24/7 to get donuts. At 2am last night I thought it was a good idea to try them. I got three and ate the mass of 1/2 of one. I am really not a baked sweets kind of guy but they were delicious. The best one I got was maple frosted with two full slices of bacon on top.

I am at a semi fancy straight dance bar and someone pooped on the wall in the bathroom. For realz. WTF?

Went out to dinner with (e:james) and (e:jim). It was great seeing them and catching up. Afterwards we went to go eat ice cream. The place had the craziest flavors. Sadly, they were all out of olive oil flavor. Apparently that one was Oprah's fav.

After a disastrous attempt at trying to get quality seafood at the Seafood Grotto (out of clams, shrimp, scallops) I ended up at Jakes Famous Crawfish. Hands down it was the best seafood meal I ever had in a restaurant.

I got the dungeoness crab leg sauté. It was pre-shelled crab legs with artichokes hearts and mushrooms. It came with plain rice and string beans. If you ever had my mother's artichoke heart and mushroom dish, it was just like that with a ton of crab legs on top. It is exactly all the things I love in one. They might as well call it the Paul Visco.