Seattle to Alex’s in Eugene

We arrived to Marisa’s brother’s house in Eugene, Oregon around 7pm. For those of you that don’t know – Alex is new to Eugene; he’s attending the University of Oregon for a Master’s in Architecture. First impression of Eugene – very quaint, charming and clean! Alex’s temporary summer house was very charming as well, small front porch and a garden with fresh veggies and fruit being grown. Alex strolled up on his bike, his only means of transportation, and gave us the grand tour of his house. We then walked a few streets away to Cornucopia, a delicious little restaurant with a great vegetarian menu and local micro brewed beers on tap. We sat outside and had a relaxing meal, but Alex needed to return to campus and head back to the studio to continue working on a major deadline he had for class on Monday. We took Alex’s suggestion and went ‘downtown’ to get a few drinks at Jameson, a college bar that attracts hippies, preppies, and girls with little dresses and heels. One drink turned into 4, but we had a good time chatting and people watching. We returned home around 1am and crashed. We woke up the next day to terrible rain, lightning and thunder in Eugene. Us three had wanted to go to the “Country Fair” that was taking place in Eugene for the weekend (live music, crafts, beer, etc), but the weather was too bad for the majority of the day. After a relaxing day at home, we ventured out and took a trip to Alex’s campus. The University of Oregon is a beautiful campus, with an impressive amount of landscaping and foliage everywhere. We took a trip up to Alex’s architecture studio (his home away from home) where we were very surprised to see so many other students frantically working at 6pm on a Sunday afternoon. After a quick tour and several introductions to classmates, we left campus so that Alex could grab his bike at home and return to complete his project, where he ended up staying until 5am! We ended up finding a fantastic affordable vegetarian restaurant called Laughing Planet, where we enjoyed a great meal. We then hopped right across the street and enjoyed dessert at Sweet Life, a local patisserie. We returned home at 8pm (still without Alex who was busy at the studio) and watched Kill Bill over a bottle of Oregon state wine. We woke up at 7am so that we could get an early start on the 8 and ½ hour drive to our last destination – SAN FRANCISCO!! We stopped at one of the nicest coffee houses we had ever seen (Vera) for a quick bagel and coffee and we were off!