Blog: Trip to Portland
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Trip to Portland - Saturday, June 6, 2015
Because we haven't traveled enough this year, Priscilla and I visited Portland from last Friday until the following Monday. Actually she had scheduled this trip before deciding to schedule Hawaii, but that was besides the point.
So Friday morning, we landed at PDX. We liked how the airport was well-laid out and had lots of restaurants and shops - in some places it looked more like a mall than an airport. We made our way to the Alamo counter only to find a sign saying to go outside and wait for a shuttle. A shuttle came shortly and brought us to the Alamo lot a mile away, where the agent said we could choose any of the economy cars. There were actually only two left in the lot, and we picked a blue Kia Rio.
Our first stop was Forest Park, where we hiked 5 miles. I was really impressed by how much greenery there was everywhere. We had a late lunch at The Waffle Window, which we thought was just ok (the waffles weren't crispy). We went to Costco and got a cup of chilli and four salads, two of which we ate that night in our hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express.
Saturday morning at 11am, we met up with our tour guide Erik from the Secrets of Portlandia free walking tour. We met in front of the Pioneer Courthouse, and our first stop was the Pioneer Courthouse Square just across the street. The square is nicknamed "Portland's Living Room" and is the site of 300 events a year. We walked past the Teachers Fountain, where our guide explained that it's legal to swim in many of Portland's fountains, and they're purposely designed to be swimmable. We walked through the South Park Blocks and learned about the Abraham Lincoln statue there. We walked past The Heathman Hotel (which is supposedly haunted), the Portlandia statue (whose image rights are owned by its sculptor, so its image can't be used commercially), the Elk Fountain, and Mills End Park (aka Leprechaun Park), which holds the Guinness record for the world's smallest park. The park is a mere 452 square inches but continues to be the site for St. Patrick's Day festivities. People even get married here.
Food carts, the Keep Portland Weird sign and Voodoo Doughnut were our final stops during the tour. The tour was quite informative and we learned a lot about Portland's history and culture.
Afterward, Priscilla and I got food from different food carts - I went to a place called The Cultured Caveman, while she got a pita taco from a Mediterranean place. We walked to Powell's City of Books, a huge book store occupying an entire city block. We stopped by a coffee shop called Public Domain to get some coffee before hitting up the International Rose Test Garden, a public 4.5 acre garden which has 10,000 rose plantings representing 600 varieties. Minus all the people, what a beautiful and serene place! We had some really good Mediterranean food at Nicholas Restaurant, and ended the night watching the Starlight Parade on TV back at the hotel. Apparently lots of people set up chairs along the parade route in downtown, because when we were walking through during the day, we saw lots of chairs already set up where people had staked their claim!
On Sunday, we hiked around and saw the Wahkeena Falls and Multnomah Falls, just two of the many locations along the Columbia River Gorge. We parked right off the road by the start of the trail up to the Wahkeena Falls, and it was a short 0.2 mile walk up to see the falls. The water flows down in a series of steps, and you can get pretty close and get misty.
We then walked over to the lodge in front of Multnomah Falls; walking turned out to be a good idea because it was extremely crowded there with lots of people waiting for parking spots. It was very touristy with a restaurant, snack shop and gift shop. It's a short walk up to a bridge at the base of the falls, but you can continue the rest of the 1.2 miles to get to the top of the falls. The view isn't great from the top since there are some trees obscuring, but at a little over halfway up, you get a nice view of the Columbia River. Plus, the all uphill hike makes for good exercise! I really enjoyed both of these, but I think my vote is in favor (only slightly) of Multnomah Falls. It's a lot taller than Wahkeena, and the pattern the water makes is very distinctive. From in front of the bridge, you can see the main waterfall behind the bridge, as well as a smaller one in front. This was my favorite outdoorsy activity during the trip!
We had a restful remainder of the day and watched a lot of Shark Tank back at the hotel. We even worked out at the hotel's gym, which had only an extremely basic set of equipment.
It was raining on and off on Monday, but we managed to avoid most of it during the times that we were outside. We had lunch at a place called Shut Up and Eat, picked up donuts from Voodoo Doughnut Too (their second location, which had no line) to bring back home, and walked around a Catholic sanctuary called The Grotto. The gardens there are beautiful, and they have an upper level atop a cliff that costs $5 per adult to take an elevator up to. We enjoyed walking around up there and enjoying the view from the meditation chapel. Finally in the evening, we returned our rental car and boarded a plane back to San Jose.
Portland was a lot of fun, though on Sunday my skin started breaking out again like it did in Hawaii, only this time a week earlier into the trip. Perhaps I haven't had enough downtime from traveling, though us having walked around in the sun for a couple hours the previous day, and it being too warm at night, might've also had something to do with it. But I think at this point, I really just need rest. Aside from there being lots of fires at work to put out, June should be a restful month, and I hope to have some time to finish up some Yelp reviews and home repairs that I've been putting off.
So Friday morning, we landed at PDX. We liked how the airport was well-laid out and had lots of restaurants and shops - in some places it looked more like a mall than an airport. We made our way to the Alamo counter only to find a sign saying to go outside and wait for a shuttle. A shuttle came shortly and brought us to the Alamo lot a mile away, where the agent said we could choose any of the economy cars. There were actually only two left in the lot, and we picked a blue Kia Rio.
Our first stop was Forest Park, where we hiked 5 miles. I was really impressed by how much greenery there was everywhere. We had a late lunch at The Waffle Window, which we thought was just ok (the waffles weren't crispy). We went to Costco and got a cup of chilli and four salads, two of which we ate that night in our hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express.
Saturday morning at 11am, we met up with our tour guide Erik from the Secrets of Portlandia free walking tour. We met in front of the Pioneer Courthouse, and our first stop was the Pioneer Courthouse Square just across the street. The square is nicknamed "Portland's Living Room" and is the site of 300 events a year. We walked past the Teachers Fountain, where our guide explained that it's legal to swim in many of Portland's fountains, and they're purposely designed to be swimmable. We walked through the South Park Blocks and learned about the Abraham Lincoln statue there. We walked past The Heathman Hotel (which is supposedly haunted), the Portlandia statue (whose image rights are owned by its sculptor, so its image can't be used commercially), the Elk Fountain, and Mills End Park (aka Leprechaun Park), which holds the Guinness record for the world's smallest park. The park is a mere 452 square inches but continues to be the site for St. Patrick's Day festivities. People even get married here.
Food carts, the Keep Portland Weird sign and Voodoo Doughnut were our final stops during the tour. The tour was quite informative and we learned a lot about Portland's history and culture.
Afterward, Priscilla and I got food from different food carts - I went to a place called The Cultured Caveman, while she got a pita taco from a Mediterranean place. We walked to Powell's City of Books, a huge book store occupying an entire city block. We stopped by a coffee shop called Public Domain to get some coffee before hitting up the International Rose Test Garden, a public 4.5 acre garden which has 10,000 rose plantings representing 600 varieties. Minus all the people, what a beautiful and serene place! We had some really good Mediterranean food at Nicholas Restaurant, and ended the night watching the Starlight Parade on TV back at the hotel. Apparently lots of people set up chairs along the parade route in downtown, because when we were walking through during the day, we saw lots of chairs already set up where people had staked their claim!
On Sunday, we hiked around and saw the Wahkeena Falls and Multnomah Falls, just two of the many locations along the Columbia River Gorge. We parked right off the road by the start of the trail up to the Wahkeena Falls, and it was a short 0.2 mile walk up to see the falls. The water flows down in a series of steps, and you can get pretty close and get misty.
We then walked over to the lodge in front of Multnomah Falls; walking turned out to be a good idea because it was extremely crowded there with lots of people waiting for parking spots. It was very touristy with a restaurant, snack shop and gift shop. It's a short walk up to a bridge at the base of the falls, but you can continue the rest of the 1.2 miles to get to the top of the falls. The view isn't great from the top since there are some trees obscuring, but at a little over halfway up, you get a nice view of the Columbia River. Plus, the all uphill hike makes for good exercise! I really enjoyed both of these, but I think my vote is in favor (only slightly) of Multnomah Falls. It's a lot taller than Wahkeena, and the pattern the water makes is very distinctive. From in front of the bridge, you can see the main waterfall behind the bridge, as well as a smaller one in front. This was my favorite outdoorsy activity during the trip!
We had a restful remainder of the day and watched a lot of Shark Tank back at the hotel. We even worked out at the hotel's gym, which had only an extremely basic set of equipment.
It was raining on and off on Monday, but we managed to avoid most of it during the times that we were outside. We had lunch at a place called Shut Up and Eat, picked up donuts from Voodoo Doughnut Too (their second location, which had no line) to bring back home, and walked around a Catholic sanctuary called The Grotto. The gardens there are beautiful, and they have an upper level atop a cliff that costs $5 per adult to take an elevator up to. We enjoyed walking around up there and enjoying the view from the meditation chapel. Finally in the evening, we returned our rental car and boarded a plane back to San Jose.
Portland was a lot of fun, though on Sunday my skin started breaking out again like it did in Hawaii, only this time a week earlier into the trip. Perhaps I haven't had enough downtime from traveling, though us having walked around in the sun for a couple hours the previous day, and it being too warm at night, might've also had something to do with it. But I think at this point, I really just need rest. Aside from there being lots of fires at work to put out, June should be a restful month, and I hope to have some time to finish up some Yelp reviews and home repairs that I've been putting off.