Mini-break to Portland -- the gateway drug

A couple of days away was less rejuvenating and more of an appetite-whetting.  I think I need a vacation.  A real one.
Photos are random and more or less just stuff that looked interesting at the time.  Some, like this one, I can't explain except that there was some draw.

Wet rainy street looked like a movie set.  Why is it so pretty?  Is it always like that?  Are they dressed up early for holiday shopping?

Store window display.

More rainy pretty street.  I think Emily was 'singing in the rain' or something.

I got the impression that my calling this place 'the bra bar' didn't go over well for someone who actually speaks French.

A lot happens at Jake's grill.  After-dinner drinks, dessert, post-opera drunkenness (not mine), group dates (also not mine), announcements that we should all applaud for a celebrated, decorated Marine in our midst, dead animals on the walls, and naked persons running through the streets in front of the window (not me).

Looks better than it tasted.

Tastes better than it looks.

Time to walk home -- pouring down rain.  This photo was an attempt to capture the 3 police cars that showed up to restrain the aforementioned naked man who was running through the streets.  He must have been cold.  I surmised that maybe he's just a visitor to Portland as several times I figured it didn't matter what I said or did as I would not see these people again, most likely.  Though my rationale only had me taking pictures of strangers and laughing out loud when the mood struck.  I kept my clothes on throughout.

View from breakfast.

Look how sunny it is.  Walking to Powells', I found these elephants posing for a photo.

Not the best view, is it?

We sat in the Powell's coffee shop and watched the storm come in.  Dumped down rain for a while.  I spent my time eavesdropping on college entrance interviews going on at the next table.  I think my engaging in other people's lives gives Emily the willies.

Oh, Mary!

Lovely sunflower's dying day.

If you have the chance to stop by a cellar bar, I highly recommend it.  This one in particular, but perhaps any would do.  Down down down the steep stairs into a warm little cave with the friendliest bartender and the funkiest vibe.

Our bartending host.  He made me a drink with apple cider named after fall that was quite good (a little sweet) that he was going to enter into a contest the next day.  I can't remember the contest, his name, or the name of the drink.  Matt?  Ben?  Zeek?  I don't know.  I remember his stories though -- wants to home-brew hard liquors, has a small son, a wife who does lots of different things including the artwork for a local (celebrated) donut shop (Voodoo Donuts). 

I saw these signs all over.  Someone wrote a law.  Someone had to write a law based on a perceived problem?

We sat at the bar and chatted with good ol' whatshisface, but here's a view of the rest of the seating area.

New buds.  He was on board with my 'I'll never see this people again, so what the hell' attitude and probably did not mind being the subject of my photo-intrusion.

Bike scuplture.

Mmmm.  Yummy sushi dinner at a little teeny place with very little opportunities for eavesdropping.

But I managed.  Two women on this side of the table, two men on that.  The woman on the left seemed to be with the man on the left.  The man on the right was doing a pretty good job of talking himself up to impress the woman on the right.  There are more details.  All imagined.  But you're probably not as interested.

There was also quite a mural to behold.

A quick stop at a cajun place for decaf coffee and sweet potato ice cream while Emily warmed up her pipes for karaoke night.

The singing was great (Emily's), but I think Emily was disappointed in the overall outing.  There were a couple of really good singers, a bunch of drunk people, and a "KJ in training" who stood behind all the singers and stared at the women from behind.  I was ready to leave about an hour before we got there.  It wasn't my night though -- so I stayed as long as I could until I started whining. 

Met up with some of Emily's friends from Utah who now live in Portland and have an adorably stubborn, independent, and thoughtful little girl. 

 Who wanted to check out just about everything. 

 

But does not smile on cue.

 I was quite taken with Portland this time around.  Ready to go back for some more exploring!

Pura Vida: Costa Rican Vacation

Day 1: Go to beach, play around, plan all the fun runs and workouts and whatnot for the week.

Day 2: Run on the beach as planned.

Later Day 2: sprain ankle.

Brilliant!
Other than that, a fine trip. My sister and niece were lovely hostesses and played my game of 'it's my birthday all month,' which I appreciated greatly, even if my niece had to be reminded constantly the rules of the game. My brother and his girlfriend were fabulous companions during the first several days of the trip, and my brother even braved driving the strips of 'Costa Rican pavement between pot-holes' (I think they call them "roads" there) several times. The water was warm and the sun omnipresent.

Several photos follow.

Welcome!

A dear friend loaned me her underwater camera so we could take photos while snorkeling. A grand idea -- thwarted only by the crummy water. A sample of the types of available photos:

Make no mistake, there WERE fish in the water and plenty of 'em. They brushed by our legs and jumped around us and made people laugh at me when I screamed and laughed.

The camera also took pretty pink pictures above-water. Here we are hanging out in the water, all smiles -- see that straw off off to the left of my head? It's popping out of a birthday drink Karen had gotten me from the beach-bar. Ice and sugary rum-flavored goodness.

Okay -- that's all from that camera.

Here's my welcome to Costa Rica drive -- Karen and KARL picked me up from the airport all smiles. We got into their useful, though not attractive, rental car and headed home.
My first glimpse of Costa Rica:
The airport:

KARL's (new!) school as seen from the moving car:

And, to welcome me to town -- a parade!

Just slowly moving down the road in all its fabulousness. I don't know why.
Sugar cane, also from the moving car.

Karen said this was her favorite part of the drive home -- turn around this corner, and WHAM! there's the ocean.

We made it back to the lovely house and Jeremy greeted me with welcome-to-costa-rica beverage, and we all changed for a trip to the beach to play for a couple of hours before heading back for the sunset.

You might think this sunset is pretty, but I was told it was mediocre. It was sort of like being in the movie Liar Liar when Jim Carrey is asked whether the romp in the sack he'd just had was good. His response? "I've had better." (Take note: this is the WRONG thing to say to someone if you ever want to romp in that same sack again.)
Anyway . . . those who'd been staying there for a while told me it was nothing like the sunsets they had seen of late.
Whatever. The sun was setting in Costa Rica. I was in the pool. It was warm. We were overlooking the ocean. I was in the company of 2 of my favorite siblings, one of my favorite nieces, and one of my brother's favorite people. Nothing to downgrade.

Up there is jeremy in the water with his little head.
Ahhhh . . .
Not too shabby, right?

Dinner -- night 1. Fruit, Water and a nicely set table.
One night, KARL even fancily folded the napkins.

A view from the pool during the day.

My birthday month means I get to sit up front! Not squished in the back with these clowns!

Yo amo Imperial. (special note to Mom: neither of those beers is open.)

If I ever get bored cleaning up California politics, maybe I could look into what it takes to be an abogada in Costa Rica.

Hello Karen. Hello Karen's tongue.

Right around this time, we took a photo of all of us on the steps. We sang, we danced. Just call us VonTrapp. But those photos (taken by some tourists from someplaces started with an M) must be on someone else's camera.
Banana!

Awww. Karen and Ana. It took three or four takes, but aren't they cute!

Karen and KARL in the pool nearing sunset.

This is kind of cute -- what's going on is that J-Bird is talking to Dad on Skype and he's turned his computer around so that Dad can see the sunset. A few more computers and the whole family could have been sitting by the pool with us!

Look toward the bottom a little to the left. Chillin' lizards. Or whatever they are. The looked GIGANTIC to me.

KARL was not going to rest until everyone she knew had gone ziplining. I think she only invited us to Costa Rica because she wanted some more people to take her ziplining. I love this photo -- it's a visual of just how short Ana is. Jeremy and I are bending over, KARL is in the back also sort of bending, and look at Ana's knees -- no bend. I think she's about 2 feet shorter than Jeremy, who is about 5 foot 40 as it is.

The following are some sights as we zipped the lines.

Monkeys!

A ziplining traffic jam. These folks had a HUGE group. Come ON already.

Upside down!

I think this was a few from the end- it was quite apparent that the guides know this is a pretty view, so they usher you up there and take your photo. Kind of staged and forced, but whatever -- they got their tip.

The steepest and the longest segment. Yikes.

Up up.

I think this is hibiscus. Willing to be corrected. It grew all around here and was gorgeous.

Yes, I know what it means. But it reads rather funny, hm?

Suspended bridge. The boys thought it was so funny to jump on the bridge when we were crossing. It was so not funny.

Being dorky tourists.

Still.

The little restaurant on the beach we went to for some snorkeling. Jeremy was clever enough to discover there had been a diesel spill in the water. So -- no snorkeling and we all jumped back in the car to head to a different beach while J-Bird described how it feels post-swim-in-diesel fuel.

One of these was the offending boat.

Me at the diesel beach while waiting very patiently for Karen to fetch the latest of my birthday drinks.

Doesn't she look so pleased that her doting aunt is paying her such kind attentions?

Awww. This turned out lovely. Everyone looks good by sunset-light.

These two are very serious about their sunsets.

And Karen is very serious about her armpit-shaving. I think it's quite possible that she has a picture of me doing this same pose. And only because it grosses her out so much.

And now she's created another generation of obsessive shavers.

How silly to force that big smile for the camera. I wonder what made her do that.

Oh, look. My camera works when I point it the other direction too.

Shopping the following day. Okay, not so much shopping as laughing at some translations while other people shopped.
Ward is Karl's older brother. And you can probably find him in a dressing room.

Again with the shopping. From a distance, I looked at these wood carvings and thought, 'hmm. Those look kind of phallic.' So I got a little closer. And indeed, they are more than 'kind of' phallic. Yes. They are what you think they are. I don't know why. Many jokes to insert here. You take your prick. . . I mean pick.

View from my room - courtesy of my kind hostesses.

After J-Bird and Ana left, we tried to console ourselves in our despair by checking out this river tour -- where you pretty much sit in a boat and a guide steers you around and makes fun of your Spanish.

All ready to go in my life-jacket and smile. There are crocodiles in that there water and I think if I fall in and the croc wants me, no amount of flotation is going to save me.

Me and KARL with her very cute grin.

Karen was never very psyched when I did these self-portraits, particularly when she was available to take the picture. I think her belief is that if there is someone to take the photo, then the self-portrait is unnecessary. My belief system diverges from hers in this, and other respects.

Off we go.

Monkeys!

Just chillin'.
Somewhere in there was a baby monkey. A monkitito. But I'm not sure where.

And look what we have here! Well, hello Mr. Crocodile. What big teeth you have!

Our guide rowed us under this giant tree cave and sat there until we figured out that there was a bat above us, at which time I let out a little girl yelp. I don't care if they are sleeping, I do not want to be nose-to-nose with this rodent-like mammal.

Or all of their little friends either.
Given her vampire-crazed quasi-teen brain, my darling niece was proposing marriage to these unsettling little creatures. She is convinced that she actually is a vampire, but that's another story.

What's that? Oh yes. A crocodile. Just swimming right along.

And, look, it's coming right at us. We survived, but I'm pretty sure I heard a 'tick tock tick tock' as he swam away.

Sort of surprising to see such a pastoral sight in the midst of the humid, hot island-like atmosphere. But this part of the country is rather arid -- and mountainous with rivers.

Hello little cow.

Lovely view of river.

Rapids!

Our guide was lazy, so KARL had to take over.
Not really. He was awesome and cut up a pineapple with what looked like a machete, and pointed out all the cool stuff to see, and just before we got to the take-out, KARL asked if she could try her hand at rowing.

Fine dining in Liberia.

Pool just past sunset.

Another (mediocre) sunset.

Okay. So. You might be thinking this is a picture of a window. You would be wrong. It's actually a picture of a gigantic and menacing scorpion and well as a very large bug of unknown genus. What? You don't think that's a giant scorpion? Maybe if it was staring you down and being all scorpion-ish all over your house, you might think differently.

Karen's friends' restaurant on the beach where we had another birthday drink. See the parrots in this photo?

Here they are -- just hanging out in the trees.

My lovely last evening in Costa Rica, wherein Karen and KARL took me out for a fancy birthday dinner at a gorgeous restaurant where the cars were parked three-deep and you didn't give them your keys like it was a valet. No, no. They would just come get you if you needed to move. And they had yummy food and a fantastic view and people would sing you happy birthday if they were so inclined and neighboring tables would join in.

And they do not mind when you take pictures of yourselves. I just noticed that KARL and I have similar chins. And she wears more make-up than I do.
And they also bring you amazingly spun sugar on top of some sort of moussey chocolately yumminess and everyone wants to eat your cake so much that they have to get their own.

Goodnight Moon.

KARL's new school as it looks on the way back to the airport.

The airport as seen on the way to the airport.

We all ended up on the same flight, due to my cavalier attitude about time and Continental employee's breaking the law. KARL passed out, but every time I tried to take her picture, she opened her eyes. Sneaky.


And that was more or less it. Some great food, great beach time with warm water and sun and humidity, great company, great house, and a great time. Nice to spend a week going slowly. Though I did force Karen and KARL to do a spinning class while I yelled at them, helped KARL with some weight-lifting, nursed my swollen ankle, and swam in the pool quite a bit.

What's next?