Thanks for the recs.
I'm not into beer, but I've heard such good things about Portland beer that maybe I'll become a convert.
We're trying to decide where to stay. We don't want to rent a car until we're ready to leave Portland, so we need our hotel to have easy access to public transportation (which I hear is fantastic there). I'm wondering if we need to stay downtown, or if other Portland hotels (that are cheaper than the downtown hotels for the same quality of hotel) are close enough to transportation to make it worth saving the money.
So far the definite's on our agenda are: Oregon zoo, Japanese garden, Powells, maybe Museum of Science, riding the trolley, and I don't know what else. We've decided on Newport for the coast trip, but I'm not sure if we should drive from Portland to Newport to Corvallis all in one day or try to spend a night in Newport. I'd rather not add a third hotel, but that seems like a lot of driving for one day.