Portland = Happy hour and breweries

Arriving in Portland, the weather was terrible. I think Nik was really worried I wouldn't like the area, because of the weather, but I thought to myself if this is the worst it is going to get, then this is not so bad. Nik graduated from University of Portland. He played division 1 baseball for the school and over the years he really fell in love with Portland. He was hoping I would feel the same way. I absolutely did, even with the terrible weather that we had the first few days.

Portland has the best happy hours I have ever seen. I'm not just talking about alcohol happy hour, but the best food. Everyday, Nik and I went to a different happy hour. The most we ever spent on food and drinks was about $25 total for our bill. It was great.  We would have local brews, great sushi, sliders, pizza, hamburgers, etc. It really opened my eyes to how affordable Portland is. My favorite place was Jake's Famous Crawfish. Apparently, it is one of the oldest restaurants in Portland. We arrived, ordered some local brews (which by the way, I did not have one bad beer while I was there) and 4 plates of food. We sat at the bar and watched the bartenders make these incredible looking and very tedious to make drinks called the Spanish Coffee. One of the bartenders was busy working away.  He seemed kind of flustered, but we kept watching him. The process of this drink entailed lighting the drink on fire. Well... he lit the drink on fire and somehow tipped the drink over on to Nik's menu. Neither Nik or I reacted, we just kind of watched the menu catch on fire and start to burn. The bartender proceeded to take the coffee pot and pound out the fire on Nik's menu. We still sat there in silence and a kind of awww!! Soon the fire was out and the bartender apologized for his mishap. He also thanked us profusely for not overreacting to his unfortunate accident. We just laughed and said it was good entertainment. After the bill was paid and we were ready to head out the bartender brought us the famous spanish coffee on the house. We were very grateful.

                                 

Another night, Nik and I went with his very good friend Andrew (Wris) to the Bridgeport Brewery. We happened to go the night that they were announcing their new beer for the season. It was the Scotch Ale. We had no idea. Actually, we showed up early for happy hour, because we had been out and about all day and were just ready to sit down and have some food and beer. Our server was kind of a drag to start, we could hardly get his attention and we thought we were going to have terrible service. I noticed that they had a scotch ale poster hanging up, but somehow I missed the fact that they weren't launching it until 5 PM that day. It was 4 and I asked the server if I could try one. He smirked at me and said, "We don't have that beer for another hour." I didn't really care, so we ordered a bunch of food, a few beers and soon 5 PM rolled around. Suddenly our server started to become very friendly.  The head brewmaster made an announcement. He said the new beer was aged in old Makers Mark barrels and they have spent a lot of time on making this beer, one of their best. Our server then brought us the first round of this new beer. Like I said he totally turned around. It was a great experience! Happy Hour and Portland go hand in hand. More great experiences to come!!