Here comes bod!

Wahey – daylight puts such a different perspective on the city 🙂

Hawthorn is a much less scary in the daylight, lots of little picket fence style house painted in bright colours – they looked scary and evil in the dark – apparently Portland is all about the neighbourhoods and less about the downtown.

We’ve been hanging out in and around Hawthorn, it’s a really bo-ho area – apparently a lot like Pearl, but on a lower budget. And finally we get some sun. Am going to head off to look at the Volcano later – should be able to catch the sunset before the BnA thing.

I guess the PDX people don’t do rain – everybody was a lot chattier today.

Well I managed to get hold of Julie, she said to come over to Powells bookstore over on Burnside – it’s way over the other side of the river – but I had my camera so I set off to get some skyline shots over the river.

It turns out that the Hawthorn road bridge is a raising bridge – the huge towers in the middle haul up the central section to allow ships to pass underneath – I know this because they were testing the bloody thing – still, it was cool to watch – but kind of frustrating as I was in a hurry.

Portland has a block-grid layout typical of many American cities, but unlike Seattle where there are typically several smaller developments or a single ‘stepped back’ hi-rise to a block – the blocks here are fully developed, presenting a fairly flat and solid face typically 4-12 storeys high – it looks nice, but I prefered the way that Seattle opened up as you walked around it, giving you a sneaky peak as to what was coming up.

It was 39F and pouring with rain when I eventually got to the bookshop – nobody was there – so I tried ringing my contacts – just got their answer services, so I hung around for a couple of hours trying to reach them and stomped off back to the Hostel in Hawthorn.

I think I’d have enjoyed Portland more, had I just arrived here unannounced – not meeting up with people really put a downer on it. Still, might as well make the most of it, Hawthorn seems to be a residential district – lots of tiny clapper boarded houses – think ‘Picket fences’ or mini-Amityvilles.

I didn’t feel comfortable walking around alone with my camera – the area isn’t terribly well lit and was more or less abandoned – I must have seen less than 50 people out on the streets all night.

There is a farmers market down by the river, the japanese gardens, the convention centre and some buildings in the central historic district that I want to have a look at – with any luck the weather will lift a bit and I’ll get some shots of Mt Hood.

So far I reckon that the only thing warmer than a Portland welcome is the freezing rain – perhaps this will change later.

Got the train out of King st station - it ws delayed by about 30 minutes because apparently somebody forgot to refuel the train... we then missed our slot and hgot stuck behind a freight train for a few minutes ... [Continue reading this entry]

It should have been simple... Fly out to PDX from London and fly back to London from PDX a few days later... But then my enthusiasm for exploration and architecture and stuff kicked in and it's grown a bit.

• 30th - Fly ... [Continue reading this entry]