Portlandia

Visited Portland for the first time last weekend!

It’s been at the top of my cities-to-visit list for a while and I’ve heard lots of great reviews, so I was definitely excited to finally go. Met up with a group of friends who flew up from California and we had an awesome time.

I’m a sucker for cities with great public transportation and Portland definitely fit the bill. Taking the light rail from the airport, we were greeted by some happy festival goers from the wine festival which was a fun welcome to the city.

Our first stop was Deschutes Brewery which had a great selection of interesting brews. Then a club/lounge that wasn’t unlike anything you could find in a big city.

But later we wandered to get Voodoo Donuts (I was underwhelmed) and accidently stumbled into a strip club. It was right next to Voodoo and from the outside looked like a divey bar. Oops. Portland supposedly has the highest number of strip clubs per capita, so I guess it was probably bound to happen anyway.

Saturday, after missing out on the food truck scene, we grabbed chicken and rice at Nong’s Khao Man Gai restaurant (they’re food truck was closed). Full and satisfied, I caught up with my old Epic friend Rozie and we went up the OHSU aerial tram where at the top, we were greeted by some awesome views of Portland.

All weekend, a goal of our group was to find hipsterland and I think we got close on Mississippi Street, where we just chilled at a taxidermy shop. Later that night, we checked out Powell’s Books, which was basically a giant library. The rare book room was really neat.

On Sunday, I fit in a nice little morning run around our neighborhood and in my quick loop, I surprisingly found a lot of animals. A few minutes to the left of our Airbnb, there was a stable that had horses in the mounted patrol (police horses). And on the other side, there was a pier like Pier 39 in San Francisco, except instead of seals, there were tons of ducks! When I saw that, I had an ah-ha moment about the Oregon Ducks.

The weather was quite moody, as we got touches of fog, clouds, sun, and rain during the weekend. But as the rain steadily came down during my run, I was literally breathing in breaths of fresh air. It felt great. I think I’m going to try really hard to fit a run in during my future trips, like I did here and in Austin.

To close out the weekend, a few of us got some Blue Star Donuts (amazing) and brunch before watching the Super Bowl in the Portland airport, which was an interesting experience.

Overall, I really enjoyed Portland. I think I was expecting a little more weirdness and hipsters everywhere, but there were still lots of interesting places to explore. Plus, all the trees and mountains made for a cool backdrop to a growing city.

p.s. New Jersey (I was there earlier in January) and Oregon are states #37 and #38 in the race.