Portland might best be summed up by our first stop: Pip’s Original Doughnuts and Chai (five stars, for the record). They offered 5-6 flavors of chai and when I asked for the barista’s recommendation, she peppered me with questions: Do you like sweet or more mellow? Do you like flavor-forward? What’s your preferred spice level? Every time I tried to just simplify things and claim one, she’d go into another descriptive circle about how it would compare to another. I honestly had never reflected on my taste buds quite so elaborately, yet this moment was everything (and more) that the show Portlandia describes about the city where “the dreams of the nineties are alive.”

It may have been 100% due to our stop at Powell’s (the bookstore), but our kids are all claiming Portland as their favorite city.