Portland, OR
July 18th
Portland is on the hot-list right now for west coast cities… It is very bike and pedestrian friendly and very ecologically-minded. It’s also the home base of a number of high tech and outdoor goods companies. I think Fabien was in love with Portland before we got there. There are just two downsides: the weather (it rains all the time) and it’s a little bit isolated from the rest of the world.
We didn’t devote a lot of time to Portland…just an afternoon and evening, but it was enough to get a little flavor of the city. We drove in through some pretty neighborhoods with old Victorian houses and then explored downtown a little bit. We stopped at Powell’s Books, the largest independent bookseller in the world, and I restocked my used book collection…next on the list is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. We took a walk along the waterfront and then had a beer in a local brewery (Oregon is capital of the micro-breweries.) For dinner, we went to a little pizzeria in a “hippy” neighborhood. We sat outside with our beer and pizza marveling at the locals taste in fashion. We must have seen 20 bicycles ride by as we were sitting there. Of course we had a bit of drizzly rain that turned into a torrential downpour the following morning. It was the cliché ending to our Oregon experience.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2011, In English 2005-2006, Oregon
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