Christmas morning weather in Arizona.

Hope everyone is have a great time off!

Well Noa and i area off to Arizona today. We had a flight booked for 1 which got canceled on us, and we got rebooked for 5 pm. We just made the connection flight in salt lake now, but this second plane has wifi!!! So this is my first post from more than 10,000 ft up in the air.

The one nice thing is that for the first segment, we got bumped into first class because the flight was overbooked and i have my gold status with delta. Finally it’s paid off after a year of not using it!

Anyways, we are in az for 2 weeks, returning on jan 2nd.

Well, ive been sick for the last 2 weeks, and its been a crazy 2 weeks since we got back from portland, so i have just gotten the pictures posted from our trip.

So, Marissa invited us down to her parents for american thanksgiving, and since she was driving, it meant i could just sit back and relax on this trip. We also decided that since there were still a bunch of breweries that i have not been to in portland, that we would spend the 2 days we had there doing tours!

Now, the biggest problem was that we were heading down thursday morning, and well, the weather decided to dump fresh snow on us . So, it took us about 2 and a half hours to get to the border!! we were fishtailing all over the place. but as soon as we got on the I5, we were going 70 mph the whole way, and we had no more issues.

So, heres a few pictures of snowy vancouver.

getting into town

now, i have no pictures from the actual dinner itself. but the next morning, we woke up early(ish) and went to breakfeast with marissa’s parents. this place they took us is famous for the apple pankakes. so voila

marissa’s parents

The girls

Then we spent some time at the At&t store waiting for marissa to get a new phone, so i walked over to a grocery store. look at all these LOCAL beers. god its amazing

So, with that out of the way, off to our first brewery. Rogue. Now, i have been there before for andy’s bachlor party, but its one of my favorite breweries. so it was our first stop.

marissa impressed with me

My selection, all IPA’s

FUN!

Our samplers

look at that delicious beer

these, whatever they were, were amazing. highly recommended

my drinking a full glass of the XS IPA. ohh god its good

Next we walked 2 block to deshutes. the inside is huge, and brand new. they have these carvings in there. ottors!

and bevars!

the line up of taps

yummy

Probably one of my favorite pictures of the weekend.

Sam and Marissa

not bad pretzels. im always on the hunt for real german style, so we have to try all the ones we see

the samplers at deschutes

andrew beaver is not impressed

SO, next up we walked over to Powell books. this book store is the wsize of an entire city block, and a mad house

i got a totally wicked book about chinese tea from there.

After that, we went home, and then out to dinner. this place we went speciallizes in jambalaya and mac and cheese. my mac and cheese was supreme

and, since that was not enough, we had to go to voodoo donut. this place is intense. look at the line up inside.

the menu

us picking a few

they are most famous for their voodoo donuts, which have a berry jam inside

YUM!

K, next morning, back at the house, GROMMIT!

and the 2 dogs, grommit and daisey

First thing to do saturday morning was to hit a tea shop that i had found online.
they have both a sit down tea drinking shop, and a tea shop next door.

my tea served to me in a traditional gaiwan

some pu’er tea

im pretty happy

after that we walked around a bit, and ai saw these nice bike rest cozies

And, then off to another brewerie, widmer this time!

Another pretzel of course, and thse amazing sausages

my samplers de jour

had a very good pork schnitzel

So, next up was to buy some beer for the ride back, i mean, to have beer back in vancouver!

That afternoon we went and waited in line for 30 min for apizza scholls to open

Look at that pizza!

And that was it for saturday. sunday morning we left, and stopped in seattle for serious pie again. as usual, the pizza’s were serious business. YUM!

Of course, all the snow had melted the day after we left, so we had no issue getting home. portland really is a really fun town. every time i go, i wish i could spend more time. there is so much to see, not just beer related. i wish it wasn’t quite so far away.

So, that was our short trip were we ate and drank our way through portland. and marissa’s parents have invited me down anytime i want to go on taste testings with them.