Home Safe From the Land of Port

Cindy and I are home safely from our trip to Portland. Everyone we talked to about the trip assumed the same thing:

"Oh you have family there?"

"No, we're just going there for the hell of it." We reply.

The second, third, and fourth days in Portland went well. The second day was all about Powell's City of Books, as we are geeky freaky about books.

Have I mentioned yet that there are trees everywhere? There are.

We left the hotel hungry for breakfast, and not knowing where we'd eat. We just started walking toward the bookstore. We came upon a Baja Fresh across the street from Powell's, and cheerfully got our tortilla on. I had fish taco's, Cindy had a cheese quesadilla.

How cheese between two tortillas can fill someone up is beyond me. I must regularly devour the flesh of a recently living creature in order to survive.

We spent a good three hours in Powell's, and didn't see everything by a long shot. It's like Disneyland. You gotta spend two or three days to properly see everything. But who has the patience for that?

It's a great store. It's huge, and it has new and used books shelved together in a beautiful array of in and out of print stuff. Well worth the trip to Portland, just for the visit to this bookstore. We only spent about $75, which I think shows real restraint. Did I mention that Oregon has no sales tax? It's true!

We even bought Powell's t-shirts, which is saying a lot because we don't indulge in souveniers, ever.

I had a vague interest in the Portland Museum of Art - if just to do something beyond wander the streets of downtown. But I picked the wrong day, which was Monday, which is the day they are closed. Oh well.

As we wandered the streets each day, we took many pics, and it's a beautiful city, I gotta tell you. And five of the men we spotted were wearing skirts. They look mighty comfy, but I just don't know.

There were also a good ten folks wandering around with the vision-impaired white canes. I don't know if there was a convention, or if Portland is a visually-impaired friendly city, or what...

One thing I thought was cool about Portland was that there are water fountains on nearly every block. Not the typical kind you'll find anywhere else in the U.S. - these have four fountaining heads, each with their own bowl, and you can get your sip on at whim. And I did. It was cold and delicious!