Weee. Flying out to Portland!

Of course, we had to get through the day first. We drove to Glendale from Hollywood, and it's really nice there. It was relatively easy to see that a lot of the buildings were newer, more developed, and growing. A friend of my mom's used to live here, and it was easy to see why. It looks like a nice, and conveniently placed neighborhood.

Glendale - Porto's

I didn't know what Porto's was until Tam brought some last year. He gave me some potato balls and cheese rolls. I like cheese rolls better. Well, I thought I did.

The Glendale location happened to be very peaceful this morning and we didn't have to contend with a line. I've heard stories of lines out the door at some of the other locations.

Porto's

1. Meat Pie
2. Chicken Empanada
3. Potato Ball
4. Cheese & Spicy Peppers Potato Ball
*Clockwise from the top left*

Believe all the hype. The bakery stuff is so good! I want to buy a billion of the meat pies forever... And 2 billion of the spicy potato balls. The crusts on the empanadas are perfectly flaky and the meat is just the right amount of cooked. It wasn't dry at all. The potato balls are like little pockets of meaty, mashed potato heaven... And heaven has a crunchy outside. Porto's also does desserts. I don't have a picture of the cheese rolls, but I promise they're just as good.

Westminster - Banh Cuon Tay Ho 4

We packed everything into the car and headed down to Tam's aunt's house. We had lunch together at this Vietnamese restaurant.

Pork Wrapped in Flour Sheet

Flour Sheet with Shrimp Tempura

I've rarely had Vietnamese food outside of pho. I've been to places that have some rice dishes, but it's so infrequently that I don't even know the names of things I've eaten. But they were super good! The place is known for their rice flour rolls, and we had options for pork and other things. I think I had the pork one... Tam got a different one. But the stand out was the shrimp tempura disk that came with it. AND, if you like fish sauce, they basically give you a whole carafe of it.

Bánh apparently can mean a lot of things, and Tam had a difficult time trying to explain it to me. The Wikipedia page isn't much better. Technically it can mean bread or cake, but with a qualifier at the end, it could also mean noodles, fried foods, and anything. ANYTHING.

Westminster - The Loop

I don't know how we continued to eat, but we did. Tam's relatives took us to a dessert place 2 minutes away. They make churros and add the toppings of your choice. You can even get it in ice cream! Costco doesn't have churros in Hawaii, so yes I'm going to get a churro.

It was pretty sweet. I don't know if it's something I would get again with the ice cream. Also logistically? It was pretty hard to eat... Without the toppings, it would have been a pretty average churro. Costco churros always win.

Lakewood - Green Crush

We chilled at Tam's auntie's house for some time... Mostly because I was tired and it was hot that day. His cousins got bored with us just laying around and sulking in the heat... So we went to the Lakewood Shopping Center and tried drinks flavored with chamoy. Chamoy is salty and extremely spicy.

I think we got a mango-flavored one, but I know for a fact that I didn't like it. It was too spicy. While it tasted good on the green mango, I felt like I was breathing fire. Speaking of breathing fire...

Lakewood Center - DouDou Ice Cream

I tried this place because aside from its rolled ice cream... It's known for its dragon breath corn puffs... They're alright. I basically ate corn puffs that had liquid nitrogen on them and were frozen.

A post shared by Maxx R (@chococow280) on Jul 6, 2017 at 12:48am PDT

Anyway, after this we got to the airport and checked in a few hours before our Portland flight.

LAX - The Habit

For whatever reason, I always seem to end up in the same terminals for LAX. I've been in this terminal because of Delta, and this time because of Alaska Airlines. It's a casual burger place so we grabbed a burger before our flight to Portland... In addition to my final empanada from Porto's.

For an airport burger, it was actually pretty good. It tasted beefy and the fries were awesome, but fries are always awesome. It isn't like a particularly stand out burger, you won't miss it if you don't have it.

This burger place was right next to our next terminal... So getting onto the plane was easy enough.

Portland Plane Ride

I don't know what happened, but I spilled ginger ale on myself. How unfortunate it is to waddle through PDX looking like you peed yourself.

Anyway, my brother picked us up and took us to his apartment. The next day was going to be packed with fun, for sure.