“…at the red & black” {personal}

and so continues my excursion with family in the beautiful rose city. after the zoo, we headed over to the national college of naturopathic medicine to read and wait for my mom to be finished with her conference.

we went to a delicious thai restaurant in NE for dinner – the name of which i have now promptly forgotten. maybe chai yo? something like that. then it was back to the hotel for an early bedtime (a treat for me!).

that is talya’s little pup named mochi on the right.

such a sweet face.

and then it was morning! oh hey, foggy portland.

view from the 15th floor..

we get to be serenaded in the morning. very peaceful.

then it was time to get voodoo dougnuts before mom’s 2nd day of the conference. we cheated and went to the NE location because the line at the downtown one sucks at all hours of the day and night.

oh deliciousness. we saved our doughnuts for the red & black, a coffee shop in SE that is all vegan and unionized. my favorite coffee mocha tastes great with soy milk, i discovered. 🙂

my dad wrote a song called “red & black” which mentions this specific coffee shop (and no, it’s not about coffee, it’s quite political). you can hear it here along with some other songs he’s written. my favorite is “garden of children”.

in case you can’t tell, that is a little crochet bird’s nest and eggs on the pipe.

across the street from red & black is st. francis park – the paving reminded me of legos. and it’s got this cool wooden pirate-ship play structure.

our last stop before i had to take them to the train station to go back to bellingham was the audubon society where we saw some very handsome birds (except the turkey vulture, he was pretty ugly. but cute).

since i’m not from portland, and actually only spend my time in NW and in beaverton most times i visit, i don’t know my way around very well. it was interesting and fun to navigate the city with my family. since i’ll be moving there soon, i think it was good practice, especially because we literally went to almost every corner of the city.

thanks for reading! ❤