Oregon

I'm in Portland, Oregon for my LWML convention, sans Scott and Gracie. I'll be here for 5 days and I already miss them a lot. But my group is a lot of fun and I'm enjoying it so far. Kelly and her husband came and got me this morning at 2:30 so we could be at our driver's house by 3, then on the plane by 7. The check-in and flights were smooth. We had a 10 minute layover in Denver. We had honey-roasted peanuts and graham crackers on both flights, but by the time we arrived in Portland, we were hungry. It was 2:00 our time; just 12:00 local time. The last flight crew was very friendly and we were serenaded when we landed.
Everyone really has been super nice, from airport personnel to the locals riding the light rail helping us find our way around. Super friendly people. The city is pretty clean and open. There is a lot of walking space, biking space. It's a good, planned downtown district. Hard for those of us not used to walking and finding our way around, but you could definitely get used to it here.
We ate at a Red Robin for our late lunch, then checked into the hotel, then all of us crashed for several hours. We went to the convention center to register and get our stuff and scope things out. We met up with another group and went out to eat at Jake's Grill, a nationally recognized restaurant for seafood. I had Mediterranean seafood soup, kind of a minestrone with seafood and a seafood sampler that my SE Texas self thought would be more traditional seafood, but it wasn't. I wish I had taken a picture before I ate it. It was served in a cocktail glass filled with lettuce, some crab meat, some small boiled shrimp, a big prawn tail and a crawfish on top. Interesting. It was good. Enough since lunch was still riding my tummy. We had strawberry shortcake for dessert. An illusionist came by and did some tricks for us, which was really neat. My group is going on a tour most of the day tomorrow, but I'm going to be doing delegate stuff and can't go. I'm doing servant events in the morning and have some time in the afternoon to hang out. I think I want to go back to the area we were tonight and look around some shops.
It's just a couple of stops on the maxrail. There's an Oregon store and a toy store I wanted to look at. I can sleep in some tomorrow before my servant event. I'm looking forward to seeing more people. Pastor and Sally should be here. Having fun so far. :)