Now I know, a lot of you are probably thinking “but they just went on holiday in April” – which is true. But there’s definitely a difference between a holiday of seeing family and friends, and a holiday of wandering around in a wholly relaxed manner and reading books and disconnecting from the online world.
And not to be whiny (although I am, quite), we were both knackered. We haven’t been taking days off – and working on the house every day had taken it’s toll. We were both struggling – and so a week hiding in the Oregon countryside was the plan.
We hopped in the i3 and headed down… the same day as the Nazi / Patriot Prayer rally in Portland. Which was just peachy timing. Thankfully, there’s a new charger off I-5 in Longview, so we slid down that way and only got a pathetic wanker staring us down once. Otherwise the journey down was uneventful (but that charger is only 25kW, not 50kW, so it takes a while to fill up our i3). Annnnyhooo.
So we got down to Eugene, found ourselves in a very nice quiet cabin, tucked up in the treeline in a valley at a little smallholding. Eugene turned out to be a very us kind of city… the first day we found a coffee shop that served French Toast and made our appointments for the massage the next day. And then we had an incident involving the Eugene House of Records…
Which unsurprisingly led to more music being at home with us. Funnily enough, we couldn’t listen to any of it, as the car lacks a CD player, and the cabin had no record deck.
We pottered around Eugene, poking at stores and generally relaxing, before heading over to see the y free-in-the-park production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which we enjoyed with fresh Strawberries :)
We pottered to various shops, had a massage, ate yummy pastries, visited Eugene Pride, had a good look around the U of O art gallery (which is really bloody good), and the Maude Kerns art center (which had a cool exhibit on). We pottered out to see waterfalls, and wandered some not-terribly-hard trails through dry-as-crisp woodland. We watched bats through the window, dipped ourselves in a stream and let the water run over us as the sun crept across the sky. We read, listened to music, mimicked ducks and turkeys.
We mooched around the farmer’s market and bought wine made from Oregon Grape. We toured a winery and tasted wine from three wineries. We sat and watched a covers group while we ate wood fired pizza at a winery as the sun slowly set.
We saw a South American Mexican dance performance (shades of Germany and Spain, it’s fascinating), and wandered around the Portland Japanese Garden on our way home.
Photos are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/49965961@N00/albums/72157699817719774/with/43972979932/ for those who are interested :)