Portland "Weekend" Trip
When our friend Martina messaged me about what to get Chris for his birthday, I didn't really have any great ideas to share. All my good ideas I'd already bought to give him myself, or they were outrageously expensive and thus not gonna happen. Luckily she eventually asked what I thought of concert tickets. That sounded like an excellent idea. And I just remembered that Red Hot Chili Peppers were going to be in Oakland soon! Slam dunk.
Or so we thought.
All concerts nearby were sold out! Alright, well, we'd always wanted to see Portland, so why not?
Fast forward a few months, and we realized this concert was on a Wednesday. I guess Wednesday-Thursday is the new weekend, then ಠ_ఠ
This was not a very well planned trip. All we knew about Portland was
- coffee
- craft beer
- donuts
- hipsters
- vegan
- something about a TV show called Portlandia, but neither of us have ever seen an episode,
which was not really a whole lot to go on to start touristing.
Well, we were here now, and our Airbnb hosts had kindly left us a list of recommendations of what to do in Portland. It was all food, coffee and beer. We concluded this would be a very culinary (ahem, gluttonous, ahem) sort of trip and decided to find brunch to plot our "weekend" over food.
We grabbed our raincoats and took an Uber to The Daily Feast, where we got handpressed orange juice, our first Portland coffee, a "Power Bowl" ("grain free warm porridge of ground chia, flax, hemp seeds, coconut & toasted walnuts with nut milk & fruit" - if that isn't a hipster start I don't know what is), and the "Full Monty" of eggs and bacon.
The planning wasn't going great. We didn't even know where "downtown" was, relative to this restaurant, and we were definitely under-caffeinated so we decided to go to the nearest 4+ Yelp-starred coffee shop and perhaps inspiration would strike us then.
This found us in Case Study Coffee, where we got large lattes and a gluten-free pound cake from Petunia's (hey I remember reading about this place! let's check it out later!).
We formed the plan loose idea to head direction Pioneer Courthouse Square and the waterfront, which kind of seemed to be where it's happening, and maybe on the way there we'd figure out the layout of this city and wander in concentric circles from the middle, or something like that. The map below illustrates our ambitious plan:
Here is what actually ended up happening:
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Our approximate actual itinerary:
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From Case Study Coffee we started off into the drizzle, in the general direction that felt roughly right. Note the absence of map checking in that sentence.
We passed a dozen food trucks, although "truck" is a generous term since they did not look like they had moved in half a decade. Remembering that our Airbnb host had mentioned something about them, we added them to our mental list of Portland characteristics. On we strolled until we happened upon the icon of Portland, Powell's Books' storefront! That was one of the things in the guidebook (= code for the Lonely Planet "Guides" app)! We had no choice but to go in.
So. Many. Books.
So. Many. Books.
This place is a bookworm's heaven. The "guidebook" did not do this place justice at all. I didn't even plan to come here (#facepalm). They definitely emphasized "used books" too much in their description. The truth could not be further from my mental image: It's all open and inviting and not at all stuffy and tattered books that have who knows how many years of dust and stale cigarette smoke imprinted in their yellow pages. The guidebook did also described it as being very big, covering an entire city block, but they really didn't do it the slightest bit of justice. It's not really something that can be captured in pictures, so here's an interaction we overheard instead, that really hits the nail on the head:
Customer: So, what's the layout of this place? Is there like a map?
Employee: Nah, not really. Your best bet is probably our Wikipedia article.
Or put another way: We spent three hours here and still only skimmed each section. Fiona had a meltdown because there were too many books to choose from. They have a rare books section that you can only go in after registering and leaving all your belongings outside. They have books about reading books. They have a coffee shop inside who's blends are "Bookworm Blend" and "Puddlejumper".
$60 and 6 additional books later, we found ourselves outside and somewhat hungry. Realizing we were not too far from Petunia's we decided to head there and get a famous Portland donut, GF version. Sadly, they only do donuts on (real) weekends, so instead we gorged on a slice of Bumble Berry Peach Pie and Pecan Sticky Bun and leafed through the pages of our new treasures.
$60 and 6 additional books later, we found ourselves outside and somewhat hungry. Realizing we were not too far from Petunia's we decided to head there and get a famous Portland donut, GF version. Sadly, they only do donuts on (real) weekends, so instead we gorged on a slice of Bumble Berry Peach Pie and Pecan Sticky Bun and leafed through the pages of our new treasures.
Given that it was late afternoon by this time, we figured we should really get our act together and make a plan and stick to it, which we actually largely succeeded at. We meandered direction Pioneer Courthouse Square, actually checking the map this time, but not without stopping by two allegedly quintessential Portland hipster stores: Poler and Tender Loving Empire.
When we finally got to the square, I suspect we were so overwhelmed by our successful completion of the entirely achievable mission we had set out on in the morning, we took some terribly touristy photos and promptly left to continue on our merry way to find... more food.
For whatever reason, we elected to head to our dinner destination via the Chinatown Gates, and in doing so also ran into the "Keep Portland Weird" mural and Voodoo doughnuts. It was only now that it struck us that the scale of the maps we had been referencing was really incredibly big - the mural, the doughnuts and the gates were a whopping 20 yards apart in real life, when on the map we were convinced we'd never actually get to see all of them in one day.
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| Doing our part to keep Portland weird |
Obligatory goofy pictures completed, we continued our stroll direction dinner, when we came upon an open garage door. As if enchanted by the same magic, we wordlessly veered in. No way we were going to pass up a giant warehouse full of vintage, cool and reclaimed furniture and knickknacks!
Finally our hunger overcame us (just kidding, we weren't hungry after all the face stuffing we'd been doing all day, really we would otherwise not have been able eat before the concert) and we wandered into Deschutes, where we augmented our waistlines with another few pounds of delicious carbs and fat, otherwise known as burgers and beer.
Finally overcome by guilt for our gluttony, we then made the wise choice to walk over the bridge to the concert. Incidentally, we also walked all the way back home from the concert, although we must admit it was due to Uber surge prices, rather than continued smart decision making.
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| No, he's not checking the map. |
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| Doughnuts! |
The garden was not too big, dainty and peaceful. We spent a good chunk of time sitting on the benches in the sun, and musing about life, which as far as we could tell is the exact proper way to enjoy this sort of garden. We also tried spotting Mount Hood, which was supposed to be easily visible from here, but didn't succeed.
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| Chris on Bridge, 1 |
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| Chris on Bridge, 2 |
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| Pond sans water, 1 |
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| Chris on Bridge, 3 |
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| Pond sans water, 2 |
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| The Japanese were onto something. Sitting here for an hour really does calm the soul. |
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| Can anyone spot Mt Hood? Cause we couldn't... |
It was definitely time for more coffee by now, so we hailed another Uber to Coava coffee on the east side of the river. Probably the most hipster of places we'd been to so far, we enjoyed some excellent honey lattes, lightly sweetened lattes with honey from the bee keeper "literally across the street from here" (cue pointing finger at the bee keeper's place).
The east side of the river had less to explore than the west side, on foot anyway, so after a fairly long stop at Next Adventure and no purchases, we strolled over to Ground Breaker Brewing so we could do the craft brewing experience thing but gluten-free!
Bad Uber skillz meant we made another detour to the actual bakery, where they had set aside a donut for us to grab and go so we really wouldn't miss the plane. At least it meant we got to bring a little bit of Portland with us as we snacked on deliciously unhealthy desserts well into the next day back at home.
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