Big announcement: Portland 2020

That's where we are spending our days right now: the Boise Conference Center. Eventually, it stopped to rain or snow and the sun came out. In a break inbetween I went out for a couple of minutes to check out the attractive city center:

This morning the host city for 2020 was announced during a special breakfast (pic above) with a Portland DJ and a rapper performing and with mimosas/bloody marys, salmon hash and other goodies being served: PORTLAND, Oregon. Good for us! We love this city, and, in addition, our just-published guidebook on Portland hopefully needs an update until then. Also, possibly we can see more of Oregon (and Washington) and visit our friends in Astoria. Already received a couple of invitations to come and visit.

And, I just received a nice pic of our sleigh ride in Leavenworth, with our fantastic international group:

GO WEST !

"Go West" is a 4-day-tourism show taking place at a different place very year, with around 800 attendants: suppliers representing destinations, properties and attractions from the American West and international tour operators (and a hand full of media) participating. It started yesterday with a choice of either lectures and speeches or a city tour of Boise/Idaho, the attractive metropolitan center of the "Potato State" Idaho.


The opening event in the evening took place in Boise's beautifully renovated Idaho State Museum (pics below and on left), with a performance of Basque dancers (the city has a long basque heritage, with a community of about 16,000 - one of the largest in the U.S.!) and pow wow dancers and an unique all-female drum group of the local Coeur d'Alene tribe. There was Basque food, Basque wine and local beer being served, too.



Today we had our first full day of appointments, which gets pretty tiring after a while. There are a 155 tables set up (each of us had one) and "suppliers" are running around to meet with "buyers" (and the few media people). It's a lot of talking and being attentive. Some of the appointments are interesting and productive, some are not so much. But, you never know before,,,

Some contacts we choose ourselves, some were chosen by the suppliers. In between lunch was being served (pic below), coming along with speeches and presentations, sponsored by Best Western: pork tenderloin with hash browns and veggies and not bad at all, considering the number of meals they had to serve at the same time. We met a lot of people today and my head is spinning now (it's late afternoon). Fortunately, no event tonight, just a quiet beer with a good friend of us in a nearby brewery.

Experience the Northwest

Time is flying and our days were packed since our flight into Seattle last Tuesday. Besides not having slept all night, our flights from Honolulu to San Francisco - where we had a 4,5 hour layover - and, on to Seattle, went smooth. Seattle was the starting point of our "pre-fam" (a group familiarization tour) called "Experience the Northwest" and, anticipating the outcome, it was one of the finest group tours we have ever had.

It was a VERY mixed group (see pic above) of ten people, all tour operators with the exception of us. They came from Korea, China, Thailand, Hongkong, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, France and the U.S. and the tour was operated by a regional tour operator, the tall guy on the pic: Guy Glaeser with InquisiTours. For Seattle the Port of Seattle has arranged a whirlwind itinerary for us, including Bill Speidel's Underground Tours (top left) to the Troll (a huge stone sculpture), Pike Place Market (pics below), Chihuly Garden & Glass and the Space Needle, offering great views. We stayed at the historic Mayflower Hotel in the middle of downtown and were spoiled food-wise at Dahlia Lounge. Just a few Seattle pics without much of a description:

Malaho!

Our last day on Hawaii was rained out. Only in the late afternoon it cleared up, but that didn't help anymore. Because of the rain we spent a pretty lazy morning in our hotel room with some donuts from the nearby ABC Store and coffee from the hotel lobby. At noon we checked out, left our luggage and took the bus to the Ala Moana Center, a huge shopping center (pic) in Midtown Honolulu, swamped by Asian People, with over 350 stores and restaurants and a stage. Didn't plan to go there, but since it rained and since the Pearl Harbor Memorial on top of the sunken USS Arizona was closed for renovations, we decided otherwise. Also, there was an Uniqlo Store in the Shopping Center, a store we both love.

Did some not-planned shopping at Uniqlo and Sketchers (love their comfy shoes!) and enjoyed an early dinner of Ahi Poke and "Loaded Fries" (with salsa, guacamole and cheese) at Waikiki Brewing. Yummy!

Not wanting to wait for a bus again, we walked back to the hotel - rain had stopped in the meantime -, re-packed in the hotel lobby (right pic) and called an Uber at 6 pm. Again, the driver was an interesting man from the Philippines, a single parent of two daughters and a son, who lives on Oahu near the Dole pineapple plantation for 15 years and before that in Los Angeles. His late wife was from Molokai and we talked about this island, too. Got to like Uber (or Lyft) much better than regular cabs (not that we usually take cabs or other services if there is public transportation, but sometimes have to). With Uber you know exactly what you are going to pay, you don't need cash, you decide about tipping lateron on the app. Drivers are usually more interesting, too.

Now we are sitting at Honolulu Airport, which is partly open-air, as all the previous Hawaiian Airports were, but - strangely - most shops were closed at 7 pm already. Wouldn't have had to worry about the weight of our luggage (both pieces close to 50 pound), the lady at check-in told us that we have a 75 pound (instead of 50) allowance as UA Silver Medallion members. Didn't know that. Checked out the plants/flower shop (with beautiful "real flower" leis) and was enticed to buy frangipani or ginger plant stalks to grow at home, but did not. Won't grow anyway in our rough climate.

I passed on my long-time cold to Peter, he is sneezing and coughing badly now and we got him some cough sirup and lozenges. Hope the expected cold weather won't make it worse. Also, I hope that he will get some shut eye on the plane, won't have a real night's sleep anyway, arriving in San Francisco at around 5 am in the morning and having 4,5 hours layover there till our plane to Seattle takes off where our Go West congress' fam tour starts in the afternoon.

Malaho und Aloha Hawaii! It's been an interesting trip and perhaps we will be back one day - to Big Island, and, perhaps to Molokai.