13 May 2008

Where was I?

Lisa and I were in Portland for the Indie Wine Festival Thursday April 30th through Monday May 5th. Wineries, book store, lots of amazing restaurants and bars, and some great hiking. All documented in Twitter but not easily linkable. Photo entry and highlights to come.

[ updated 1 July 2008 ]

Photos posted here (somewhat slow) and a few random artifacts from the trip. The flight there:

portland.flight-there.1 portland.flight-there.2

And back:

portland.flight-back

The access card from the Hotel Deluxe (a classic movie themed hotel):

portland.hotel-card

And the card from a small shop in Dundee called The Dapper Frog. We picked up a couple of wine toppers when we were there for the Willamette Valley wineries:

portland.dapper-frog.jpg

[ updated 21 Dec 2009 ]

A friend was asking about restaurants in Portland, so I dug up our TripIt page for that trip to help jog my memory. Andina had crazy South American drinks (Lisa first discovered the Caipirinha there) and deliciously unusual, Peruvian recipes. Saucebox was a hip seafood and sushi joint (aren't they all?) with a crazy mural of robots and aliens and somesuch nonsense of which I wish I would have gotten the artist's name. Lunch at The Dundee Bistro in the tiny tiny town of Dundee when we went to Willamette wineries. Super-fancy dinner at Bluehour (which I think we were late getting to because of a post-Willamette nap). The service and food was absolutely outstanding.

Went to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at The Shakespeare Tavern last Thursday (runs through June 1st). One of my favorite movies and the play was outstanding. Much more bawdy than I remember from the movie, and I caught more of Stoppard's wordplay in this version, sometimes clever and sometimes vaudevillian.

movie.iron-man

Friday was Iron Man (3/5) at Atlantic Station. Without Downey and Paltrow, the movie would have only been a minor effects-vehicle. They were electric throughout (he getting most of the screentime, of course). I had difficulty getting past the silly science that seemed to stretch the bounds of even comic-book-science. Radical direction changes in a metal suit (whether in the air or hitting the ground) would be catastrophic to the body. And when Paltrow reached into the metal tube that went into his heart in order to pull out some faulty wire, well ... just silly. All-in-all a fun ride though.

Saturday was my niece Sarah's ballet recital. There were some very good dancers there and (at times overly) complex choreography. One senior was Absolutely Amazing showing off such grace and flow throughout her whole body that she can only be moving on to professional dance. I noticed the greatest sense of flow in how she used her hands and wrists in relation to the rest of her movements. Seeing such art helps you more clearly differentiate mere skill.

[ posted by sstrader on 13 May 2008 at 12:17:28 PM in Cinema , Where was I? ]