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The portland couch street

Even Portland’s Chinatown has really cool street signs.

A couch potato like me can’t resist to make this image one of my favorites

Eat in San Francisco

Sometimes, I just need to follow the signs, and do what the streets of San Francisco commands!

Portland and its wizard

Portland, Oregon is one of my favorite cities.

Stopping briefly to the Portland Sunday market is quite a highlight and you be greeted by amazing Portland characters who would stop and have a little chat with you.

When the city slogan is Keep Portland Weird, you definately need to get there for a visit. The food is amazing, there are wonderful microbreweries there that provide you with endless array of great tasting beer.

Someday I will move there.. someday

Coolest Hackerspace in Seattle

Metrix Create:Space Hackerspace in Seattle, Capitol Hill

One of the best things about Seattle is how amazing folks gather to invent, create anything and everything in great community like spaces.

While hackerspaces are quite common these days, Metrix: Create Space in Capitol Hill, Seattle, USA beats the rest for its 3D printers set up.  I can’t really tell you why I am so fascinated with 3D printers in a single sentence. I had dreams about 3D printers even before they invented or developed 3D printers and it grew into quite a reality!

Unfortunately only had the luxury of spending a few short minutes looking around as I had a five hour drive to Oregon. Wish I could participate or learn more of its workshops.

FYI:

Hackerspaces are community spaces where people gather to invent, create , socialise, mostly technology based projects.

Metrix Create:Space Hackerspace Seattle 3D Moulds

3D printer! So want one of these!

And the Winner of the Coffee Hunt is …

Best cappuccino in the Coffee Crawl of Pacific NorthWest USA

It has been a very frustrating hunt for the best coffee in the Pacific Northwest of America.

I visited Seattle to do a coffee crawl and was left disappointed. Seattle is apparently the coffee capital of USA, however they like their coffee pretty weak or over-roasted and pretty much flat aromatic. My coffee crawl brought me to the original Starbucks in Pikes Market before they turned mega huge, to Belltown, the hip part of town, right up to Capital hill, the hipper part of town to Roy street, the IT hip part of town. Still no good coffee to be tasted.

The next place was Portland, Oregon where Stumptown coffee right near the Portland Saturday Market was the runner-up. The Stumptown coffee at Division Street wasn’t that good with their single origins coffees. A few more cafes, which I had been too sad to even mention here.

After all these hours of driving around, drinking around the two cities, guess what?

The better coffees are made in the city of Olympia, Washington, where almost every corner of this tiny town has a coffeeshop or two with pretty high standards. This has been my home for 3 weeks! Imagine what I have been missing.

So the winner of the Pacific NorthWest Coffee crawl is :

Batdorf & Bronson for their cappuccino! This was judged 8/10 because all their drinks are double expressos, and not diluted to more than 4oz of water like everyone else. This is how the typical italian cappuccino should be done. The coffee had its fruity aromatic tones, well brewed with short frothy hot milk done perfectly!

If you are ever that crazy to fly all the way to Olympia, Washington,

here’s the address.

Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters
200 Market ST. NE
Olympia, WA 98501

It’s Brrrr Cold in Eugene Oregon USA

Temperature in Eugene Oregon during Spring March 2011

I drove five hours down to from Olympia Washington to  Eugene, Oregon, to visit friends whom I met in Guatemala a few years back. Eugene is home of the original hippies and the author of One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey’s LSD Acid Bus.  Eugene is also home of the founder of Nike

Eugene, founded by Eugene Skinner (great choice of not naming the town his last name) is quite a comfortable sized town filled with very groovy people. My friends who retired here have been slowly turned hippie-fied. Perhaps its Eugene’s vibes that was getting to them.

It’s quite a cold morning, quite winter-ly weather for me, coming from the tropics. I have been getting really cold temperatures from Seattle, Washington down to Oregon.  This is suppose to be the ever erratic Pacific Northwest USA Spring weather! Rain, wind and cold!

Eugene also holds the annual Oregon State fair.Where supposed aging hippies as well as the newer versions gather and dance around to celebrate the dying days of hippy-ism, if there is such a word. I shall be back to this lovely town soon.