Day 6 Portland, Oregon

I'm so sleepy despite the fact that I've been drinking coffee/cappuccino all day long.  Earlier in the week, I discovered that I actually do have a limit of caffeine intake, and today I realized that over these last few days, that limit no longer holds true.  My body is saturated with so much caffeine that I'm breathing coffee.  Give me more!!!  Haha, no...I think I should hold off until tomorrow morning ;)

So yesterday was a good day, even though my morning started off with a lady bicyclist who shouted out to me "Close your umbrella!" as she passed me by on the Hawthorn bridge.  I miss Texas...  In class, we did have some more hands on practice on the espresso machines.  Then we went coffee house touring where we started off at Crema.  One thing about businesses in Portland is that they don't make their signs highly visible from the outside.  Jared explained that the natives of Portland enjoy having their own little secret spots that only they (as regular customers) are aware of.  I thought that was a little odd because to me it seems like businesses are cheating themselves from gaining new customers.  Had I not known the place existed on the street corner and I was walking in that area, I most likely would have passed it up.  We also visited Stumptown Rostery, which was pretty interesting.  Coffee beans actually are not beans at all.  Rather, they are the seeds of the coffee cherries that grow on trees.  Every cherry yields two coffee seeds.  When the coffee seeds have been extracted from the cherry and have gone through a drying process, they are sent as "green" coffee beans to roasters, i.e. Stumptown.  So at Stumptown Rostery, I was able to see the process of how the green coffee beans get roasted to become the brown coffee beans we all are used to seeing.  We also went to Cafe Umbria and Barista.  Barista is one of the newest coffee shops in town and was mentioned as having some of the best quality espressos in the area.  I have to say, the cappuccino I had today from there was mighty fine.  O'Ba's was next, where we went as a group.  Later on...Laura and I had another opportunity to learn another lesson :/  

As for today, I struggled to stay awake in the beginning of class.  However, as the day progressed and we started sampling Jared's non coffee drinks such as variations of Chai tea, the day got better.  We even made grilled paninis for lunch today and Italian sodas.  Yum!  We had some more practice on the machines later in the day where I actually had made (sloppy but still pretty) latte art!  Yay!  I was extremely excited :)  I can't wait for tomorrow, almost the whole day dedicated to perfecting our barista skills and learning to make latte art.  After class, I stopped by my hotel then went exploring downtown.  I hopped on the streetcar and headed up to Pearl District to eat at the Noodle Company.  The guy who worked there wasn't friendly at all.  I would have talked to the manager about his attitude, but I didn't really have the time to waste on him...so Brian, you got lucky this time >:'o  After buying a pair of squirrel underwear (not for me, but actual underwear for squirrels) I had a cappuccino from Baristas afterwards.  Then I had some GELATO!!!  The place was called Mio Gelato, and the combination of banana and coconut gelato was absolutely wonderful.  Yum.