Hanging Out in Portland
Woman in the Middle | September 24, 2014Portland, Oregon, was an interesting place. As Californians, it did not feel completely foreign, which is probably very distressing for those in Portland to hear. I am sure they want Californians to stop moving to Portland. On the other hand, unlike all of the cities near me, Portland had a real downtown, with lots of tall buildings, and that felt different.
We went on the Best of Portland Walking Tour. David was our tour guide and we enjoyed him. We had a fairly large group, in spite of the fact that it was a Wednesday in September. Because it takes a bit more time to move large groups of people, the tour lasted 2 1/2 hours, instead of the 2 hours and 15 minutes that had been mentioned. The tour did not include any stairs and was mostly flat. It was a very interesting tour which talked about Portland history but also Portland today, its politics, how they revived downtown and its public transit system. I expected the history but the other stuff was a surprise. I am on my city’s planning commission so I was very interested in all that stuff, but just wanted every one to know, for good or bad, it was not 2+ hours of history.
Portland has a lot of public art and that was fun to see. Oregon passed a law which requires any project over $100,000 to put 1% of its cost towards a public art installation such as a mural, a mosaic, or a statue. I think it really does something for a city to have so much public art. Here are a few of the things that we saw:
Portland is home to the world’s smallest park, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Here is it, in the middle of the street. Below is a photo looking at it from above.
Our favorite thing to do on vacation, besides sleep and eat, it to go to a used book store. Well, Portland has an amazing one by the name of Powell’s. Seriously. Amazing. We went there two different times while we were on vacation because once was not enough. We spent about five hours in Powell’s over those two visits. We bought way too many books and then had to figure out how to get them into our carry on luggage (because I refuse to pay to check bags if I can avoid it). Outside the main entrance to Powell’s there is a column that has a different saying in Latin on each side.
I am assuming this one means “Seize the Books.” If anyone knows Latin and I am wrong on this, let me know. But what ever it says, we certainly did seize the books!
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