Saturday Markets

This last weekend I got a rare Saturday off so I made sure to take full advantage of it. At first we just planned on going to the Portland Saturday Market. But Cody had a house showing at 1:00 and we didn't want to be stressed out about traffic so it looked like we were just going to go afterwards (the market closes @ 5pm). But then I had the genius idea of heading over the Vancouver Farmer's Market in downtown Vancouver before Cody's showing! I like going to these kind of markets earlier in the morning. The crowd seems cheerier and it just feels more like a morning activity to do. The farmer's market is always filled with yummy looking produce (especially the strawberries and the giant sugar snap peas). I love that everyone brings their dogs too. There are so many sizes and shapes and it just such a fun community to mingle in. There are also some booths with handmade goods but this one is mostly produce and flowers and food stands of course! There's a really good award winning jambalaya stand that I ate at last year but we just settled for a strawberry covered funnel cake since we had something better in store for later.

Vancouver Farmer's Market

After we'd seen everything @ the Vancouver Market and with a Rosemary and Olive Oil loaf of bread, a cheap bunch of kale and a couple healthy looking zucchinis in tow we headed to Battle Ground. We stopped and chatted with Cody grandma for a bit and she showed us around her always impressive garden. 

Then we headed over to Cody's appointment. I couldn't just sit in the car so we had to figure out somewhere close by that Cody could drop me off. So I decided to get an impromptu hair cut at a hair/nail/day spa in Brush Prairie and had the happiest and funniest asian guy give me one of the best hair cuts I've had in a long time. 

Then Cody picked me up and we headed out to Portland. That morning I wasn't sure if it was going to be a pants/sweater day or a shorts day but by 2pm it was definitely a shorts day. The clouds had burned off and we got some solid hot weather. 

I love the Portland Saturday Market. I try and at least go once a year. It's located right along the river at the Waterfront Park, half of it being underneath the Burnside  Bridge which gives it a really neat backdrop. The handmade and some of the food vendors are alongside the river and then across the street there's more of the commercially made booths. If you ever want to get a good feel of "Portland" and the weird that exists in the city you just need to go here. There are all kinds of people you can imagine. I just love seeing all the different handmade goodies. One of my favorite were soap truffles. They look like colorful chocolate truffles but were actually soap and lotion bars! Last year I got Cody a handmade travel size cribbage board made out of a lighter and really red wood for Christmas.

You'll always run across a bucket drummer in Portland

Burnside Bridge

I'm not going to lie one of the biggest magnets that pulls me across the river to the market is this little beauty that Megan, Rusty and I discovered last year. Brought to you by Angelina's Greek is literally the best gyro you will ever taste.  They had two legs of lamb on a vertical spit that they shave the meat off of so you get it really thin (not those chunky lamb patties that you can get sometimes). They have an amazing tzatziki sauce with an optional jalepeno spicy sauce that Cody loved. And their pitas are really thin and buttery. It's just a whole different level of gyro.

 

Cody doesn't really like these scenes but he was such a trooper and knew that it would make his wife so happy to go with her (and he got a yummy gryo out of it). It's definitely one of the places you've got to put on your Experience Portland Checklist. It was a good Saturday away from work and a good start to what seems like a fabulous summer together.