Portland.
It’s a city that prides itself on being weird.
And it’s weird.
Coffee shops are staffed with overqualified academics. Pedestrians don’t feel compelled to follow traffic signals. Bacon is a food group. People drink chocolate. And they hike in the rain.
It’s great.
It’s one of the few places I didn’t get strange looks when I walked into a restaurant wearing tights, Skechers, a wool sweater and a knit cap complete with pom-pom.
The population of about 583,000 in Portland — 2.3 million in the metro area — don’t seem to care about trivial stuff like that.
And that only upped its Cool Factor.
The last time I had visited Portlandia was back in college — and I haven’t been back since. Two of my girlfriends are here — one returned home we left graduate school; the other moved up for a job last year, got married and had a baby — so I had a reason to return.
I hooked up with an old classmate from Northwestern University for two days and the other for my final day in the PDX.
Here’s what I did on my first two days in the City of Roses:
5 Comments
Hello Cat,
I never been to Seattle or Portland, these are on my bucket list. My cousin lives in Seattle so that’s an excuse to go.
It’s too bad you didn’t venture beyond the gate of Chinatown. There used to be a Chinese restaurant there. It has since moved way out over to SE Portland (still in biz, by the way). The humor of it, was the name of the restaurant. The name of the restaurant, which serves Chinese food, is Hung Far Low. Their sign still hangs there in Chinatown. Many folks think it’s funny, and take pictures of the sign because of the name.
Looking at the Voodoo Doughnut pic, I think you reversed the addresses. Looks like you went to the original location. The other, 2nd location is the one on NE Davis. Voodoo Doughnut’s original location, Chinatown, and the large/main Powell’s Books location are all in the west side of Portland. You can tell whether you’re in the west or east side of Portland based on what side of the Willamette River you’re on. It (the river) splits Portland into West and East. Street addresses with NW, W, or SW in the address are west of the river. Street addresses with N, NE, E, SE, are east of the river.
Used to go to Portland for an in the water boat show… and then there was golf at Pumpkin Ridge… and enjoyed the place a lot. Your luck with the weather is absolutely remarkable. I’ve never seen a lot of sunshine in that city.
that green store I mentioned on (I think) your fb post is in the pic of the chinatown gate. it’s on the corner, past the gate, by where the silver suv is parked.
looks like you got the Portlandia experience checked off. Redneck upcoming?
also, your friend eats a lot of chicken.
For a great breakfast you gotta hit Mother’s Bistro and Bar. This place gets packed and you’ll probably have to wait but the food is excellent with generous portions. The salmon hash is killer!