portland: comedy and coast

as comedy lovers, jam and i always planned to try to go to a proper american comedy club while we were in this part of the world so we were pleased that when reading a guide for portland i came across a description for the helium comedy club. the guide described the club as appealing to 'the daily show' crowd. well we've seen the daily show quite a bit and both like jon stewart so we thought we might come under that description. we opted to pop along a few nights later and were seated on a candlelit table for two with full table service (serving both food and drink) for the evening. it was quite different from the usual arts centre dash-for-a-pint-before-squeezing-into-any-vacant-seat process. there was an emcee compering the evening called zak toscani, and a support act called virgina jones, as well as the headline act, tommy johnagin. johnagin made me cry with laughter a couple of times (always a mark of success) and the other acts were also pretty good. however i have to say that, although it was nice to have service throughout the evening, not to worry about where to stand my drink and not to struggle for a place to sit, i can't help but feel that i prefer comedy clubs back home. to me the packed room, the queue at the bar and the buzz of chaos just adds to the fun.

right before we went to the comedy club we popped along to the 'lucky labrador' across the road. i must say i have been really impressed - in america in general but particularly in portland - by the number of real ales available (often brewed onsite). there's always a good list to choose from and all the bartenders have been keen to offer advice and make suggestions. in the lucky labrador i sampled a couple of pints of their moonlight ale while waiting for the gig to start.

one of my favourite days of america so far was the next day when jamie and i went to the oregon coast. we drove to astoria first which is about a two hour drive from portland. well, astoria isn't actually on the coast, it's on the columbia river, but that is where we went first. we went to the columbia river maritime museum, as it came highly recommended, where we discovered something very important: that i am better at learning to tie knots than jam.

we also learnt about the columbia river, the difficulty of crossing the columbia bar, as well as important history of oregon over the last few hundred years. our museum ticket also gave us admission to the 'columbia' ship docked outside which used to be a lightship. so we spent some time exploring the boat both on and below the deck.

the astoria column is a 125 foot tower overlooking the columbia river and was built in 1926. the column had been recommended to us an excellent place for views of astoria. driving up the steep road to the column takes you up about 600 feet and you then have the option of climbing the 164 steps to the top of the tower for the extra height. 

we made our way over to the astoria column and on paying for our car parking ticket we were asked if we'd be climbing the steps to look out from the top of astoria column and if so would we like to buy a small wooden model aeroplane for a dollar to fly from the top when we got up. i optimistically said yes and bought the model aeroplane.

jam, rather sensibly, opted to stay on the ground. i started off up the stairs quite well, albeit with children running past me on the circular staircase, however by the time i'd reached the top i'd worked myself up into such a state it was all i could do to take a couple of snaps, throw the aeroplane and run back down the stairs again! a shame really because i do think it was a lovely view!

the view from the bottom of the tower was still pretty impressive though so we made sure to grab a few snaps before heading on.

our coastal stop was cannon beach a little way down the road. we stopped in ecola state park first as we were informed that it was a good place to go for excellent views of cannon beach and the haystack rock which it is famed for.

we made our way down to cannon beach which was still pretty busy even considering it was a brisk march day.

we finished the day off with a swift pint of blackberry beauty (brewed in-house) at bill's tavern!