Los Gorditas

For my birthday, we decided to go out and try a new place in Division in the Richmond Neighborhood in Portland. We've passed this place called Los Gorditas a couple times before and the place is always packed, so we had to try this place.  I read the reviews before going to this place and there was a whopping 220 reviews for this corner food truck..  Many people suggested the Garbage Burrito, so that's what I got.

The woman enjoying the place.

The good luck bear for an awesome meal.

Let's get down to the good stuff.  We ordered a variety of tacos and the ones above are the carne asada, carne deshebrada, and the pastor.  The carne asada and deshebrada are steak and the pastor is grilled pork.  All of them are good, but the best are the tacos below.  Hands down the carnitas which is the fried pork is the best.  This carnitas is some of the best that we've tried all over Portland and very comparable to another place in Alberta.  I'm getting hungry just by looking at these pictures. Again.

I also ordered the infamous garbage burrito that is the buzz in the reviews I read.  Look at the size of this beast compared to my head.  So the way the menu describes the garbage burrito is:

"Large flour tortilla stuffed with beans, rice, cheese, sour cream, onion, cilantro, chicken, beef, and pork, plus a scoop of red and green salsa, onion and cilantro again."

With the three types of meat incorporated into this awesome burrito, I just had to try.  It was good, really good, my life will never be the same.  Just look at this awesome thing.

What an awesome place. This will not be the last time I go here.

For dessert, my woman made me a chocolate almond cake with strawberries. What a perfect day.

Summer Thrifting

Here are some cool items that we've acquired over this past month from various places like Goodwill and Salvation Army.  We got the bottle above for $2 from the Salvation Army boutique store. 

An old looking stapler box from the southeast Goodwill Outlet.  I like the design of the box.  This shows that good design always last forever.

We got this huge wooden frame from the Aloha Goodwill Outlet for $5.

Metal hearts - .50 cents from some random estate sale in North Portland.

My favorite is this G-Star Raw jeans, straight fit cut, that I got for $5 from the thrift store Bearly Worn on Division.  Unfortunately the store closed not too long after I got this jeans.  Perfect timing and I'm glad I found these jeans.

Keila&Room

This is Keila's guilty look if she did something wrong like going through the trash, but at this moment she wasn't actually trouble at all, she just has that guilty look though.

The infamous lazy sit.

Keila being ever so watchful of us while at the same time trying to fit her whole body inside her pillow. Oh dog!!!. 

Vintage Issue: Burnside

In Portland there are many old cool looking cars but to find one in a perfect setting is hard. I always have my eye out for these kind of cars and I finally found two of them in the Burnside area of Portland; and pretty close to each other also.   My favorite is the one above, I love the aging of the metal from the blue color to a dull gray-brown rustic color.

London: Old Street / Shoreditch

One of my favorite areas that we went to while we were in London was this triangular area in between the Old Street Station, Brick Lane and the Boundary Estate circle.  This area was pretty cool because there were many public displays of art everywhere, like this dude floating on a cloud below.  The buildings were a combination of new and old industrial-turned-into commercial buildings which featured many stores and studios.  It turns out that this area also houses many of the major design firms in London so that was pretty cool.  Anyways, there were many material for me to take pictures of in this area which made me happy. 

I love this store front display.

Nana with the public arts.

One thing that I noticed that London has way more of compared to the U.S. is that there are CCTV security cameras in every single block of London. I'm not familiar with the crime rate at all or if people are just very protective of their property, but there are so many of them. I'm shocked at how many I saw, I'm even afraid of jay walking. Well, just kidding, everyone jay walked in London.

I love this piece. Nice.

One of the coolest and most favorite store that we went to in London was this store called Labour and Wait.  This store had an awesome collection of home goods and unique items.  We bought several stuff here which I will post later.  But hats off to this store, truly an awesome store. I wouldn't mind having a house which looks like the Labour and Wait. 

The woman in the city.

Farmer's Dog

While at the Farmer's Market in Pioneer Square, I saw this pretty neat dog looking at me and giving me the puppy eyes so I decided to ask the owner if I could take some pictures of the dog.  I think the dog's name was Lulu but I could be wrong, I have bad memory.  But she was such a cool dog, she starred at me the whole time with those big eyes as I snapped away.  Just a very neat dog, enjoying the city scene.

Farmer's Market

 I got a chance this past week to check out the Farmer's Market in the Pioneer Square in downtown Portland.  I pass the square everyday but I never know when the Farmer's Market pops up.  It's nice to see now that there's one in this location, it makes downtown Portland more lively.  The market it self wasn't too big, maybe about twenty vendors total including food vendors, but the square was packed when I went there.  The Farmer's Market was also paired with the Afternoon Tunes which is another event that happens in the summer where local bands play for a lunch crowd; there was a violin-cello duet playing when I was there.  Maybe next time I'll have cash in hand to buy some local produce.