Recapping Our Trip to Portland
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As I’ve written about previously, last year I started getting into travel hacking, which is earning travel rewards through credit card signup bonuses. Our first big win was signing up for two Southwest credit cards, earning us the Southwest Companion Pass. The Companion Pass lets the pass holder bring a companion for free on ANY Southwest flight they take. You can read more about how we earned it and the benefits to it here.
Since we have the Companion Pass until the end of 2018, our goal for the year was to utilize it as much as possible. Travel is important to us and we make it a priority to explore new places together. One of the destinations we identified was Portland, and we made this trip happen last week over President’s Day weekend! We went to Seattle a few years back, but have never visited Portland.
This post will recap our experience visiting the city and the costs that went into this trip.
Planning for the Trip
Before heading to Portland we talked to many friends and family members to get recommendations for where to visit. I also sent out a tweet, and the personal finance blogging community did not disappoint!
Headed to #Portland next month, any recommendations? Best breweries/restaurants/bars/sites to visit?
— Matt Spillar | Spills Spot (@mattspills8) January 8, 2018
We received so many recommendations that we’re going to have to go back and visit a few more times to see them all. Thank you to those people for chiming in, we appreciate it!
Day 1: Pine State Biscuits, Kennedy School, Powell’s Books, Fathead Brewery
We flew in Saturday morning and met up with our friends. Our first stop was brunch at Pine State Biscuits. As we approached the restaurant we saw a long line waiting, despite the light rain that was falling. Normally I would’ve just left and picked a different place to eat, but Pine State Biscuits was a place that multiple people told us was a MUST. We learned that this was common in Portland, which I dubbed the “Portland Rule.” If a place has a line, you know it has to be good. This meal was my favorite of the trip, as I had a fried chicken sandwich with cheese and apple butter on freshly baked biscuits! So delicious and highly recommend.
We spent the rest of the day walking around downtown, exploring the Kennedy School, Powell’s Books, and stopping in at Fathead Brewery.
Day 2: Stumptown Coffee, Blue Star Donuts, Ground Kontrol Arcade Bar, Sizzle Pie
Day 2 started with some Portland staples: Stumptown Coffee and Blue Star Donuts. More lines, but more delicious eats. The donuts featured unique flavors such as lemon poppyseed, key-lime, and maple bacon! The rest of the day was filled with going to vintage shops, more exploring downtown with snow coming down in the evening, and then visiting Ground Kontrol arcade bar. This place was very cool, a bar filled with classic arcade games including numerous pinball machines, Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man, NBA Jam, Mario Kart, Tetris, and more. We spent a couple hours playing games and it only cost a few dollars.
Day 3: Washington Park, Salt & Straw
We had a nice brunch at Jam Hawthorne, explored Washington Park during the day, and visited Salt & Straw for some of Portland’s finest ice cream.
Cost Breakdown
Flights: $22 – We used Rapid Rewards points along with the Southwest Companion Pass to book these flights, meaning it only cost us $11 in taxes for each ticket!
Airbnb: $154.09 – We love using Airbnb when we travel. For this trip we split a 2 bedroom basement apartment with our friends, and this portion was our half. Great price, central location, and very nice space.
Food/Drinks: $163.07 – Includes all meals, drinks, coffee, dessert.
Gas/Parking/Misc: $29
Gifts: $23.42 – Picked up some books for gifts.
Total: $391.58
This all comes out of our “Vacation Fund” that we set aside savings for each month.
Final Thoughts
Overall we had a great time exploring a new city! Portland is definitely a unique place. We were impressed at the cleanliness of the city and that it didn’t seem very crowded. The food was amazing, and I loved how within the city there were very few fast food restaurants and big name brands. There was an emphasis on local, high quality restaurants and stores. We would love to go back and explore the city further.
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Those fares can’t be beat — well done!
We had ice cream at Salt and Straw when we were in Portland a few years ago. But for donuts we went to Voodoo. We went to a micro-distillery which was a lot of fun, too.
Do you have any tips on using Airbnb? We only tried to make a reservation once, and got turned off. Maybe it was too close to a holiday weekend but we didn’t get a response. Then I did some research and found articles which said you have to create a good personal profile. It felt like a dating site.
We heard Voodoo donuts was good, but the line was insane! Sorry to hear that your first experience with Airbnb wasn’t positive. I don’t remember the signup process being difficult at all. They do encourage you to make a profile (similar to Twitter, with a picture and short About Me) and I would assume it helps deter bots/spam. We tend to book at least a month in advance so we have more selection, and we just make sure the reviews are positive. I think we’ve booked 9 times total and all of them have worked out well. A good place for you guys to start would be using one of the filters where you can select “Superhost.” This means the host has an extremely high amount of 5 star reviews. You’ll pay a bit more, but this would be a great way to try it out and get used to the process.
Some of the listings let you do book right away and some require approval from the host. For the ones requiring approval I’ve just sent a short message introducing myself. Again I think it’s just an extra step to make sure people aren’t booking/cancelling a bunch of places. I’d encourage you to give it another try. The first time was a little daunting, but you get comfortable with the site and process rather quickly.