Oregon
Travel Oregon
Portland
Portland, Oregon Visitors
Association
Alaska
Airlines' Portland City Guide
Stuff that's
worth checking out: Portland is one of the best planned cities in the
U.S. The downtown area is wonderful, and there's two huge rivers in town, the
Willamette and the Columbia, and a walk
along a riverfront is recommended, especially
at night. Mountains, including Mt. Hood, rise majestically in the city's
background, and if you're flying into town, be sure to keep an eye out the
window because Mt. Hood on a clear day is insanely beautiful from a plane.
Portland has a nice temperate climate with mild, wet winters and warm, dry
summers which helps to make it a great spot for cultivating roses. In fact,
Portland is the City of Roses and home to the oldest official continuously
operated public rose test gardens in the United States so visiting
the garden is a must! If you like beer, you will be in nirvana in
Portland with its pubs and breweries. If you plan to be in town on the Labor Day
weekend, enjoy Art in the Pearl, an
annual arts festival held in Northwest Portland Park that encompasses all the
arts and has hands-on activities for everyone. If you're a book person, you must
go to Powell's Books.
Powell's is one of those places where you have to ask what kind of stuff you
can't you get in there! It's huge, and they have virtually everything.
Powell's website also has a suggested walking
tour of downtown Portland. There's public
transportation pretty much everywhere in
Portland so it's easy to explore even the farthest reaches of the city without
having to worry about driving and parking a car.
Side
trips: There are a lot of cool things to do within an hour's drive of
Portland. Head east along the Columbia River to see the waterfalls in
the scenic Columbia River Gorge. Continue on to the Bonneville Dam. If
there are any salmon running, you might be able to see them at the ladders next
to the dam. If you think seeing salmon is cool (and who doesn't!), check out the
fish hatchery at the dam. They have salmon and big sturgeon over six feet long.
Spend a day in the Mt. Hood area, especially if you visit
Portland during ski season, but it's also a great area for camping, fishing,
hiking, and other outdoor activities.
Trip Report, October
2005
I went to Portland, Oregon for a preservation conference. I had
never been to the Pacific Northwest so I was super-excited about the trip (I
also haven't been out of Indiana in way too long -- Kentucky doesn't count). My
friend and I booked our flight from Indianapolis to Portland together with our
accommodation on Expedia.com and got a really good
deal.
I had no idea that we'd be able to see Mt. St. Helens and Mt.
Rainier from the plane. That was an added bonus! If we were sitting on the other
side of the plane, we could have seen Mt. Hood. Unfortunately, we didn't get to
see Mt. Hood at all (and I even went on a Mt. Hood tour!) because it was cloudy
the rest of the week. We took the light rail from the airport and relied
on public transportation our whole trip. It was very easy to get around, and the
bus drivers were the friendliest I've ever encountered.
We stayed at the
Hotel Mallory (editor's note: this is now the Hotel DeLuxe). We really liked the hotel. The room was smallish, but
that's to be expected in a historic building. Apparently they had just replaced
mattresses so we slept on plush, pillow-top mattresses with fluffy feather
pillows. There was a down duvet above a sheet above another duvet and another
sheet! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to check out the hotel's
bar/restaurant. Some of the minuses: the hotel is one stop outside fareless
square. We felt guilty for not paying for the extra stop so we usually walked
the five blocks or so from the previous stop. Also, there was a sign in the
bathroom telling us to open the window or door while showering because the steam
could trigger the smoke detector. Opening the window made the bathroom very
chilly early in the morning. I can't imagine going that route in the
winter.
We seemed to eat non-stop. The first day we went to Chinatown for
lunch. We ended up eating an early dinner at Seven
Stars since we were still on Indy time. We considered leaving after
the waitress on her cell phone gave us grimy, food-splattered menus, but another
couple in the restaurant seemed to be enjoying their meal so we stuck it out and
it ended up being really tasty and a good value. The reviewer said the portions
were small, but we ordered the family-style dinner and got a ton of food. The
next day we met up with a grad-school friend who had broken her ankle and was
getting around on a rented scooter. We went to Pazzo Ristorante for
lunch, and they were very accommodating with our friend. I ordered the day's
pizza special, which was good, but my two friends both ordered the manicotti,
which looked heavenly. That night we ate at Island Joe's. I ordered a grilled
sandwich served with deep-fried yucca root. It was yummy, but my friend and I
both had upset stomachs that night and the yucca root was the only thing we had
in common. The next morning I ordered a mocha from a coffeehouse on Morrison (a
little east of the interstate), and it was super-good. I've heard Portland has
excellent non-chain coffee shops, but this is the only one I stopped in so I
can't compare it to any others. For lunch we went to a wrap shop, Rice Junkies,
and got very large wraps. I felt really bad wasting half of it so I carried it
with me in the hopes of maybe giving it to one of the many homeless. It figures
that I didn't see anyone to give it to without possibly insulting so I ended up
throwing it away because it was too smelly to take into my next conference
session. That night we took the bus to Madison's
Grill for an alumni reunion for my graduate program. I ordered the
breaded halibut sandwich, and it was yummy. They gave me fries instead of the
side salad I was supposed to get, but I didn't complain. For dinner that night
we went to the Kennedy School for
dinner. The McMenamins have rehabbed a lot of older buildings into hotels,
restaurants, pubs, theaters, etc. They have locations in Oregon and Washington.
The Kennedy School is an excellent example of adaptive reuse and how old
buildings can find new life with a little imagination and creative financing.
I'd love to stay there sometime. It was a little too far from downtown to stay
during the conference but a nice excuse to go back. The McMenamin brothers were
part of a tour during our conference, and people who went on that tour got to
meet them and had a great time. They are certainly champions of
preservation.
I didn't get to do a whole lot on my own while I was in
Portland because of the conference, but I did go on a couple tours through the
conference and had a little time for on-my-own sightseeing. My first tour was an
overview bus tour of Portland. The bus drove us around to see different
neighborhoods. We stopped at the Kennedy School (see above) and Pittock Mansion. The
mansion is a stunning house museum, which we unfortunately only had about 20
minutes to explore, inside and out.
My second tour was a bus/rail tour to
Mount Hood and Timberline Lodge. The bus took us through the Columbia River Gorge, but
unfortunately we couldn't see very well because it was raining and the bus
windows kept getting fogged up. Members of the Friends of the Columbia Gorge
acted as our tour guides. We arrived in Hood River where we boarded the
Mount Hood Railroad.
This was a lot of fun, despite the bad weather. We had a snack in the dining car
and then made our way to the open-air car to take in the scenery. We passed a
lot of apple and pear orchards. The switchback is really cool. For the first 2.5
miles, the engine pushes the cars along the tracks. At the switchback the engine
then pulls the cars up the incline. The train stopped in Parkdale ... can't
really say much about the town -- kinda kitschy, but we were too miserable in
the rain to bother trying to see it. We ran to our buses, which took us to the
wonderful, WPA-built Timberline Lodge. We
had a nice lunch there and had about an hour to explore on our own. I didn't get
any good exterior shots because of the rain, but the inside is full of
hand-crafted artwork everywhere you look. I've never been skiing, but seeing
that place made me want to come back and give it a whirl ... maybe someday. It
was raining while we were there, but it looked like a white-out. Apparently it
snowed the next day! The lodge averages 21 feet of snow, if I'm not
mistaken.
On the last day we had some time before our afternoon flight so
we went to the Portland Classical Chinese
Garden. This place is gorgeous! We lucked out and stumbled upon an
unadvertised tour. The guide explained the design of the garden, its symbolism,
the materials used in its construction, etc. There were no bad picture
opportunities to be had. After the tour we had tea in the teahouse, and I bought
some loose-leaf Grand Qiman tea to take home with me. Unfortunately, we had to
cut our visit short because we realized we needed to get back to our hotel by
check-out time.
I thought Portland was a great city. The community's
consciousness about all matters "green" was really refreshing. Public
transportation was quick and easy, and people were very friendly. We stayed at a
nice place and ate lots of good food. It was even the best one of this
conference I've been to three times. The large homeless population was really --
I don't know the right word -- striking? disturbing? unsettling? -- to me, maybe
because I used to work with homeless families. I don't know enough about the
situation in Portland and all the factors that contribute to the high homeless
population, but it seems that maybe more could be done in that area for such a
progressive city.
So that was my trip. Hopefully someday I'll get to go
back and explore the area more thoroughly!
