Mini-Kolo in Portland

Well Mini-Kolo was sad to leave LA but he was also excited to go to Portland.  Monkey had told him lots about it and he was keen to see it.  He flew from LA to San Francisco, stopped there for an hour and then on to Portland.  He got to the hotel very late in the evening so he just went to sleep and didn't see how marvellous the hotel was until the morning.  Now we don't usually take lots of pictures of hotels, they are not usually that interesting, but this one was.

The room had its own kitchen!!  What can you say, look at the cool lighting!!  Then there was a seating area.

 

OK most people know the Baboon HQ baboons are not major fans of shocking pink but hey this colour scheme was awesome, funky!  Even the carpets in the hallways were cool.  See the breakfast room.

 



There were cool sweets there all the time and you could help yourself to breakfast and there was coffee and cool things like yogurt and fruit available all day!  Way cool!  Oh yes and there was a roof garden.

Monkey and Mini-Kolo took advantage of the sunshine on the roof.  Check out this hotel if you are ever going to Portland.  www.northrupstation.com everyone there was awesome, so friendly and helpful, the baboon rating was stratespheric!!

OK they didn't spend all day in the hotel, honest!  Portland is a cool city and has a European flavour I think.  On the first morning they went out for pastries in a great pastry shop round the corner.  Maybe Monkey can tell me the name.  It was lovely.

Mini-Kolo had a pain au raison and an almond croissant yummy, you can just see Monkey's lemon tart behind.  Of course they had great coffee.  There was lots of lovely food in Portland we didn't photograph all of it.

Then they walked up to see the rose garden and the Japanese garden.  Mini-Kolo meditated in the Zen garden.

 

It was very peaceful.  He also met a very nice Japanese lion.  He is a lot bigger than @LeroySealion.

 



Mini-Kolo was very interested in the Oregon pines, he had heard of them and was fascinated to see them.  He had never realised how tall they were.

 

Later that day they had the second Tweet-up of the trip, they went to Lucky Lab, in NW.  This place got a good baboon rating, they had beer and pizza, not that Mini-Kolo was allowed beer.  As I have said we will do a special blog for the Tweet-ups, but here are a couple of pictures.

They met @danapixi, who brought @BorisKitty's pal @EdgardaKitty and @Kittehboi's Mini-Breeze, Cybercat919 and @Liedertafel_pdx.  They had lots of fun and some gelato afterwards.

Mini-Kolo caught up with two more rehomed baboons, DanaPixi's Awbrey and Willy's Marley.  Its so cool to catch up with the rehomed baboons and find out how happy they are.

The next day they went out for a walk exploring.  They managed to find Voodoo Donuts, that is an amazing place, they didn't have donuts, the colours looked scary to us, but there was an amazing long queue for them.  They also saw at least one drag queen, early in the morning after their performance, what a city!  Mini-Kolo met a Chinese lion this time at the Chinese garden.

They visited the Saturday market, walked along the river and had a lovely lunch in another French bakery and then went on the Portland street car.

That was exciting and they saw a cable car, we have to go back to ride in that cable car, we had planned to the next day but there was so much to do in Portland that it was difficult to fit it all in.

The next day they went to the zoo.  This is another thing that I will blog about separately but I will show you the highlights.

On the way to the zoo Mini-Kolo met some cool street pigs.

These pigs live on the street and have babies, they are really happy cos they live outside a gelato shop!!  Sounds good to me!

I was delighted they met a bear because I think this part of the US actually has bears like this.  Near the bears our friend found a Geocache!  We didn't know about these before but we will be getting into that now.

The major thing about Oregon zoo is that they have mandrills.

It ws not easy to get pictures of these guys because of the plexiglass, but our man person did well.

 

Now this is a handsome baboon and he had a family group with him.  He chatted with Mini-Kolo and told him that he has a good life in the zoo.  More about the zoo in a separate blog.

 

That evening we had a nice dinner in a Thai resturant called Red Onion, this got a high baboon rating, but it is very easy to over-order here so watch out.

 

Well the next morning we were due to fly to Boston, this was sad because we had to say goodbye to Monkey who was going back to Dallas.  We had a great trip with Monkey and it was good to spend time with him.  Thank you Monkey for spending your holiday with us an for finding us such a cool hotel.

 



Mini-Kolo got ready for Boston by putting his Red Sox shirt on while he was waiting at the airport.  A word here about our flight.  We flew Alaskan Airlines, we did not know what to expect with them but they got a really high baboon rating, it was a 5 hour flight so quite long, we felt really well informed, well looked after and comfortable.  We highly recommend to our friends who fly internally in the US, if you have not checked out Alaskan Airlines, do so it was a good flight.