During Christmas break, I took a trip to the great state of Oregon. By great state, I mean the 200 square mile area known as the Portland area and its surrounding area. Because I know that most of the 5 people that read this thing have never actually been to the city, I have created a sort of short guide based on what I saw during the 3 days that I was there. Now keep in mind that I have been there many different times before. However, a lot of these times were based on the fact that I had driven down with my parents and therefore didn't have a lot of room to explore on myself. I plan to correct this soon and will write a blog based on those experiences.
I started my trip by taking the MAX train into the city, starting in Hillsboro. For those that don't know what a MAX train is, it is a mass transit train that is about 40 miles long and goes from one end of the city and surrounding areas to the other. It is very handy for when wants to travel the fifteen miles into the city, but doesn't want to deal with driving downtown and struggling with things such as parking. The train is fairly clean, and a round trip day pass is usually around a dollar. The train itself was fairly clean and quiet. Didn't see much on the trip into the city, but being as I did pass by a couple of apartments, I did see a naked dude getting undressed in front of his living room window.
After about half an hour, I finally arrived in Downtown Portland. From there, it was about a 5 block walk down to my destination for the day, Powell Books. For those that don't know, Powell Books is a huge 3-4 floor book store. To give you an idea how big it is, each floor is about the same size as a standard size Barnes and Noble that you would find in any gentrified shopping area of any major city. As an English major and nerd like me, just this short description should show why I would be so inthraled by the place. Want to find books on how to jerk off, why there is an entire section of shelf based on that. Love Sci-Fi? Why that section, plus every type of roleplaying game and graphic novel take up an entire floor. Maybe I just like extremely rare things, but my favorite room was the Pearl room on the top floor. This room is the rare book room and if you have ever wondered how interested you could find something based on the fact that it is in a glass case, well come here ot find your answer. From a first edition Lewis and Clark expedition report, to a text book on the orient from 1495, you never knew that you could be so hypnotized by really old books. While I could have spent much longer browsing, I only had an hour, as I honestly didn't have much time.
After that leaving the bookstore, I spent awhile walking around the surrounding area, though I definatly didn't have any money or time, it was fun to just browse. For those that don't know, Portland has one of the highest densities of bars in the United States. Browse any beer aisle and many of the choices that you see will have a brewery or ale house in the city. In a lot of ways, the city reminds me more of Bellingham than Seattle. It has more of a smaller feel and ther e are a lot more artist galleries and places to eat and gather then Seattle, of which you could probably go broke just looking into the window of a sandwich place. One area that I will have to hit up when I go down there next time is this huge parking lot I found that had tons of food trucks. While many places will have one or two taco trucks, this place had anything from tacos, to thai food, to authentic chinese food. I forget what the place is called, but one place that you should try to find is this authentic chinese buffet I went to a few years back. How autentic was it. Three words; Fried Chicken Feet.
After about three hours of walking around, I had to leave. While I didn't even get close to seeing everything that I wanted to. I got enough of an idea to what I want to go to next time i'm in the area, which is hopefully soon.
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