An update has been long overdue. So here we go.
What ended up happening because of the extreme and unpredictable nature of this winter season, what was supposed to be a one week vacation became a three week one. A long vacation isn't a bad thing, but I am a creature of habit; I was eager to get back to my everyday routine. But I digress.
Portland has officially become my favorite city, and I had such a fantastic time. It gives off such a home-y feeling in which it didn't take long for me to adjust. And I didn't get tired of it at all.

We were lucky the weather was much better than we expected. It didn't rain once and we saw three days of sunshine. It of course was overcast the majority of the time, but better overcast than rain, I suppose.

Being that the weather was accommodating, we were able to walk around and explore a lot. Everyday we visited a different neighborhood, but always found ourselves downtown by the end of the night. After a couple of days, it wasn't too hard to conclude that Portland is an afternoon city. Shops open late and close early. It's strange to be coming from a city that never sleeps to a city that doesn't have much of a nightlife. Not that it bothers me; I'm not much of a night owl.
I did love all of the shops and the locally made and grown way of life. I was only there a week, but that local small business feature really impacted me.

We took a trip to Seattle for a day. It was a nice day trip, but staying in Portland really spoiled us. We didn't come across so many local businesses as Portland. They're similar cities, but so different. It was nice to see how the other coast lives. Thinking about it now, I'm sure everyone in Seattle has intense calf muscles. Those hills were a little brutal to walk up and down.

The last few days we just continued winging everything and just explored, shopped, and ate. Oh boy, did we eat and eat.

The day before our flight we met up with family friends and they took us to the coast, two hours outside of Portland. It was amazing to see more of Oregon, which is beautiful. People don't give Oregon enough credit. There's so much to see and so much to do. We visited Astoria, where The Goonies was filmed. And then went to a couple of beach locations near Cannon Beach. It was a treat to see so much variety.

(Photo taken by Natalie.)

On our way back home, there was another snow storm that hit New York. We had a transfer flight in Phoenix, so we got stuck there for two days until our rescheduled flight home. Phoenix was great; downtown looked like loads of fun. Arizona is now on my list of places to visit. It was hard to appreciate it when we were stressing on where to stay, how to fill our down time, and when the next flight out was. But it was mostly brutal being in 80 degree weather and flying to 8 degree weather in the same day.

I could go on and on about the trip, but I'll end it with these videos. My friend shot some videos and made two compilations of our trip. Enjoy!