the Pearl district

Since my parents are flying back to the Netherlands today we went out for dinner in Portland last night. It had been a very hot day with temperatures over 100F (about 35C) and it was still rather hot in the evening. We went to Fratelli, which is an Italian restaurant in Portland with a Dutch chef, named Paul. Martin and Angee now this guy so we got a great table and he came out of the kitchen for a talk. Man, this guy can cook! We were very lucky in our pick of the evening. It was the first thursday of the month and we were in the Pearl district in Portland. This is the most trendy part of Portland with a nice mixture of old warehouses, new appartment buildings, fun shops and a ton of art galleries. Well, the first thursday is the traditional start of new exhibitions and there is some sort of art market on the streets. Since it was such a hot evening the streets were flooded with people. Two types of people really sticked out of the crowd; there were these really arty looking alternative people and the really trendy people (and I quote; "Women come to the Pearl district to show off their new boobs"). As I mentioned before we had a nice table with a clear view on the passing crowd so we enjoyed ourselves watching the diversity pass by.

Afterwards we went for a walk through the Pearl again and hopped into Powell's. Powell's is the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world and it's somewhat of a readers mecca. I am proud to say that I left the store again without buying any books. But who am I kidding, let's quote the governator "I'll be back". After this we dropped by Mio Gelato and got ourselves a VERY tasty gelato. I would recommend it to everyone that visits Portland. Enjoying our gelato's we walked back to the car and Martin took us home with a 100-turns detour through downtown Portland to show stuff. Altogether it was a fantastic evening, I was enjoying myself greatly (it would have been even nicer with Sita around, but you can't have everything and I think we'll visit the Pearl when she's here in a couple of days) and I think my parents couldn't have wished for a nicer last evening in Portland.