Our Anniversary Celebration at The Nines!

For our 7th anniversary, Chris' parents babysat so we could have 24 wonderful hours of freedom! We started the day off at the movie theater watching The Hangover. When the movie was over, it was still 2 1/2 hours before we could check-in at The Nines, so we decided to eat a late lunch (we were starving!!!). We picked up a couple of burritos from Chipotle and headed to our favorite wine shop (WineStyles). Chris and I go there every chance we get...where else can you bring your own food and only pay 5 dollars for a glass of wine??? Oh, they also have board games so Chris and I played a game of Yahtzee. I LOVE WINESTYLES!!! After lunch, we headed downtown, hoping that our Jr. Suite at The Nines would be ready a bit early. As luck would have it, it was!

The Jr. Suite - Club Level
When we made our reservations, we decided to splurge a little and get a Jr. Suite on the Club Level! You actually had to swipe your room key in the elevator before you could push the button for our floor. Crazy! Check out our room...it was amazing! I'd have to say this was the nicest place that we've ever stayed at in Portland.

The bathroom was GIGANTIC!!!

With such a gigantic space, why in the world didn't they put two sinks in the bathroom???

There weren't two sinks, but there was a shower and a bathtub! It was a pretty tough decision as to where I wanted to take a shower, but the shower finally won out. Unfortunately, the water pressure was so awful that their "Rainforest" shower heads didn't really do much for me! I was so thankful that I have short hair, or I would have been stuck in the shower for hours trying to get the shampoo out!

The view from our amazing room!

Here we are relaxing in our room! We watched a movie (New In Town) and drank fancy wine that Chris surprised me with. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to run by the video store before heading downtown, so we ended up spending $13.99 for a pay-per-view movie...YIKES!

We had dinner reservations at Departure, which is the restaurant at the top of the hotel. But, before heading to dinner, we decided to check out the Club Level Lounge!

The Club Level Lounge
The main benefit of staying on the 12th floor is that you have access to the Club Level Lounge. They offer free appetizers & drinks until 11pm and then you can head back in the morning for a free breakfast. And if you need one, there is a concierge in the lounge who is available only to the guests on the 12th floor.

Departure

At 7:45pm, we headed to the 15th floor for dinner at Departure. When Chris made the reservation, he had requested a table outside. But when we arrived, they told us that they didn't take reservations for outside. What?!?! We were none too happy since it was a beautiful day out! We decided to go ahead and eat inside, instead of waiting for hours for an outside table. Chris ordered chicken teriyaki and garlic fried rice. I ordered the calamari. Everything but the rice showed up, which they promised was on it's way. Well, we finished our food and still no rice! We were still a little hungry because the portions were tiny, so we decided to split another order of the teriyaki chicken. Again, they promised that the rice was on it's way, but eventually the 2nd order of chicken showed up and we still didn't have the rice! By the time we were done with the chicken, our waiter came back and we told him to cancel the rice...it had been over an hour and we no longer wanted it. We were pleasantly surprised that without us even having to ask for any sort of compensation, our waiter comp'ed us our 2 glasses of wine! Even though we did enjoy the food we ate, we probably won't go back to Departure...we just had too many other issues during the short hour we were there. There are too many other good restaurants in downtown Portland, even if the view was amazing!

I guess we should have asked someone to take our picture together, but I hate disturbing others.