Ok ok! I am catching up with what we've been doing in Portland. One thing is visiting bars and drinking delicious beverages. Here are some of them.

Most of the time I've been drinking beer in dark shadowy places, which means I have very few pictures. Oh well. We all know what a pint of beer looks like anyway, right?

The Old Gold, 2105 N Killingsworth

We went to meet friends here for not only drinks but, as it turns out, also a giant plate of kale with bacon and a platter of house-made pickles including cucumbers, beet, and even pears. SUPER interesting. I had a red ale, which was excellent, and then a cocktail called the Birds & Bees, which is "Aviation Gin, Aperol, grapefruit juice, fresh lemon juice, grapefruit bitters, served up." DELIGHTFUL.

The Old Gold is actually a whisky/ey bar and has an entire blackboard full of options, if that's your thing. It is actually my thing, but it was a gin night. It's all good in any case.

bottles, 5015 NE Fremont

Possibly my favorite new discovery of this trip. bottles has both a multi-roomed, multi-purpose bar, with a variety of both indoor and outdoor nooks, and an array of cases filled with bottles available to drink there or take home. It's super relaxing and neighborhoody, and you can easily escape the drone of tv sports with a simple change of room. Win win!

Bar of the Gods, 4801 SE Hawthorne Blvd

"Darker than Plato's cave, but only in terms of lighting." BA HA NERD JOKE

I love a good dive bar, and one called Bar of the Gods definitely deserves a visit or two. There's a double-sided bar with booths along one side and a couple of pool tables down the other: good for all your beer-drinking and socializing needs. Bonus: faux-Olympian gold columns flanking the door and sparkly grape lights hung from the rafters!

We were thinking we'd go a second time last Friday, but we discovered a quite loud band was playing. While this is probably what a lot of people want out of a bar, I'm not really at that place anymore. Be aware! Instead, we decided to go back to our airbnb with a couple bottles of our own, and spend the evening accidentally about forgetting said beers in favor of code. Yeah.

The Sapphire Hotel, 5008 SE Hawthorne Blvd

This place was dark--dark red, to be precise, with a cascade of philodendrons curtaining the doorway--and crowded, with many carefully dressed hipster customers and a substantial menu of fancy cocktails with fancy names to match. It was loud, but not unbearably so, and the drinks were certainly delightful.

The highlight of the evening was a cocktail called the Retrosex, because of course. It's the drink at the top of the page with the gigantic basil leaf: gin and basil and grapefruit, served in a freezing cold copper tumbler full of ice. Hey, did you hear that metal conducts heat? Yeah. The cup was cold, and that absolutely added to its charm. I wouldn't spend every weekend here by any means, but if you want a fancy cocktail or two--and maybe dinner besides--it's definitely a good candidate.

We still have awhile, so I'm sure we'll go to some more exciting places in the future.

In conclusion, the Portland bar scene is numerous and worth it. Hooray!