Fantasy land

After staying up far too late last night, I woke up groggily at 10:30 to a phone call from Sara asking me when I wanted to go to the Pittock Mansion. Soon, I assured her, as I rolled out of bed and got dressed with a pathetic sense of urgency. We met at First Cup an hour later and I told her about a nightmare I had last night about eating some unknown meat on a kebab in rural Spain. I haven't had a meat-related dream in a few years, but when I first became a vegetarian I had them pretty frequently, and they were always twinged with regret and later panic when I woke up unsure if I had actually taken the plunge. I was quite relieved when I realized that the whole kebab experience had not occurred in my waking life.

We missed our first bus, but due to my excellent Portland public transit knowledge, we managed to map out a completely different route that took roughly the same amount of time as the initial one would have. The bus let us off in the middle of the West Hills, leaving us to climb up a sidewalk-less road for about three-quarters of a mile in order to arrive at our final destination. A word about this excursion--earlier in the summer, my former housemate Miranda turned me on to the websites Groupon and LivingSocial. I don't want to go into detail about how these services work, but as a consequence of being signed up for their mailing lists, I managed to score two-for-one tickets to the Pittock Mansion. This was especially fortuitous since I had actually never even heard of such a place prior to receiving the offer through LivingSocial.

Anyway, after a rather steep and breathy trek up the perilous road, we arrived.

As soon as we walked up the driveway, I felt as though we entered into fantasy land. The impossibly tall Douglas firs surrounding the estate, the panoramic view of the whole city, and of course, the kitchen. Pittock Mansion is no joke, people--this is luxury at its most refined and charming.

Look at that range, for goodness' sake! I swear I walked out of my actual life and into the world I have spent such a long time creating in my imagination. And to look out of the kitchen window every morning and see this?

Please. You've got to be kidding me.

Two dreamy hours after arriving at the Mansion, Sara and I departed to head back to the city only to miss our second bus of the day. We ended up walking along Burnside down to 23rd, where we passed a few more equally indulgent hours ducking into vintage shops and chocolatiers. We walked out of Moonstruck Chocolate almost as quickly as we walked in, however, because the tremendous lure of cinnamon pear caramel truffles and tiny handmade Frankenstein Halloween candies proved unbearable.

Instead, I walked away from our day with a half-dozen bagels from Portland Bagel Company. In addition to the staple everything, multi-grain, and onion bagels, I picked one tomato-herb, one almond, and one coconut bagel. I am giddy with anticipation to try the last two especially. Josh bought goat cheese last night and offered me some in exchange for a handful of my raspberries and blackberries from the farm. I think tomorrow morning holds in store a toasted almond bagel with warm chevre and a drizzling of wildflower honey from Marven's bees. Forget all of the reading I have to do--I might as well go to bed now just to be one step closer to morning!