9/10/2010
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| Clay's salad |
Just when you thought I was done! Here I am sitting at PDX, back again. I had to come back to report that last night we randomly selected our 2nd most expensive and best meal of the trip. We went to Salty’s on the Columbia on NE Marine Drive behind the airport’s runway and right on the Columbia River. Wonderful food and great views and it was packed with locals. It was so busy that there was NO parking available. I had to just hand the keys to a valet and hope that I was not in serious violation of my Avis rental car agreement! Clay finally had cedar-planked salmon and decided that he really doesn’t like it cooked that way.
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| Clay's Salmon |
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| Debbie's dinner - half eaten! |
I had a petite filet mignon with a loaded baked potato cake and bacon jam. It sounds weird, but it was all delicious. Clay had a 3 glass 5-oz. beer tasting flight and got one loser, Klickitat. I had a Yakima Valley, WA Riesling that was very nice. For dessert, Clay had the Udderly Chocolate ice cream from Tillamook that I had at the factory, yum! I had a white chocolate mousse crème cake that was delicious too.
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| Debbie's dessert |
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| Clay's Tillamook Udderly Chocolate Ice Cream |
We had our least expensive meal of the trip this morning at Pig N Pancake and it was good too. We had no line whatsoever at Voodoo doughnuts this morning and turned in the rental car without incident and checked in our bags with Southwest without incident. We were through security after about 30 minutes. It seemed like a busy morning at PDX. So, I think that is the end of this trip journal. All that is left is flying home all day. We change planes in Phoenix and expect to be landing at home near midnight. We should be tired tonight after a long day of travel. This is probably the last entry then!
I went to the Starbucks in the PDX terminal to look for a Portland mug. I had been looking for an Oregon (or Washington, really wanted Walla Walla!) city specific mug at every Starbucks I walked past since we got here almost 2 weeks ago. This is the first place that I found them! Thank you to Stuart Jones for his $10 Starbucks gift card! I used it to buy my souvenir Portland mug!
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| Coveted empty center seat for Voodoo Doughnuts! |
Our flight from Portland to Phoenix was full. We only had an hour layover and then on to Raleigh. The flight from Phoenix to Raleigh was about twice as long and fortunately was not full, so we had a row of 3 seats to ourselves. Clay let me use his lap for my feet or my head at various times and I was able to sleep for a good portion of the flight. Happily, we had no turbulence and quite smooth flights on both segments. We arrived home on time and without incident. My checked bag was opened by TSA and a dirty shirt of Clay’s got damaged. The front pocket zipper was not closed all the way and when I tried to open it I found it was zipped over the sleeve of Clay’s shirt. I finally got it uncaught, but it took a little bite out of it. The bag was packed differently than I had done it, but I could not find anything else wrong. Not sure what they were looking for. I hate flying and don’t do it often, and when I do, I try really hard to only fly with carry on luggage, so this is the first time I have found a TSA card in my bag. Anyway, I was just happy the bags arrived with us and intact.
On a final note, Clay and I are still feeling like the kiss of death to cruise lines. Beware to any company that books us on a cruise! I will say that we were getting our Quyana pitch onboard just as if Cruise West was going strong and there was no hint onboard from Quyana alumni (of which there was such a high percentage because our particular sailing was additionally discounted for them) or from any Cruise West employees onboard. No one that I asked said they had heard about Cruise West being in any financial difficulty and most of the other passengers onboard were enthusiastic about booking onboard deposits for future cruises before disembarkation. When we expressed interest, we got a strong sales pitch to put our money down immediately and work out the details later. So, it is not clear whether the employees onboard were really in the dark, or if they were well trained to keep company business private. Anyway based on the news available to us at the time and now, we actually feel quite relieved that we decided not to do another Cruise West trip.
http://www.cruisewest.com/
The Cruise West website seems to have been taken down. I am pasting the only page up on 9/11/2010 in case the link above changes again. It was definitely still up while we were onboard because Alison used it at one point as a sales tool.
http://travel.usatoday.com/cruises/post/2010/09/cruise-west-spirit-of-oceanus-world-cruise/111611/1
http://travel.usatoday.com/cruises/post/2010/09/cruise-west-suspends-bookings-temporarily-/111461/1
http://travel.usatoday.com/cruises/post/2010/09/cruise-west-restructuring-leaves-passengers-in-limbo/111800/1
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2012851277_cruisewest09.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129800170
Stay tuned for photos. I will work on adding them to posts in chronological order next week and keep at until finished for as long as it takes!
