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My holidays started with a rather uneventful journey to one of the most boring places on Earth: Corvallis, Oregon, USA.
I won't go as far as to call Corvallis a one horse town, but the truth is the place is rather quiet to say the least.
Most of the city life, certainly most of the cultural life, runs around Oregon State University.
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In times like November, when the students who are still in town are busy with exams and reports, most of them swarming the library, there isn't much action around. The ones who are not busy simply leave town to travel home for thanksgiving.
The one good thing about it as a destination:
Good Half is there.
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After a few days in Corvallis we headed North to Portland to spend our 10th anniversary there.
We didn't want to stay at friends' places so I got us a room at the Hilton, in downtown Portland. Although we love our friends we wanted some privacy, just the two of us in a 'not so strange' town. Staying downtown also meant most of the time neither of us had to drive, we could walk almost everywhere we wanted to go and also there is always the lightrail (MAX is free in the downtown area)
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It's always nice to revisit a few places in or around Portland, like the Multnomah Falls, the Saturday market, the Classical Chinese Gardens in Chinatown.
Places to eat around town: Alexander's; Todai; Ruth Chris' Steak House; Fong Chong.
After a couple of days we headed back to Corvallis. She still had a lot of work to do so I had to keep myself busy some of the time (by escaping to Meadows to snowboard for example).
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The weather was weird for this time of the year, warm and sunny. That and the lack of rain added up to crunchy and hard snow on the slopes. That and the fact that I am really a lousy boarder resulted in having aches in muscles I didn't even remember I had.
Going over my head trying to tack trails above my level just to keep the pace with the guys also didn't help, after all they go there two to three times a week every week of every season...
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Unlike our usual holidays we took very few pictures though. I guess the fact that we were revisiting places had something to do with it.
Tags:
photo Oregon