My daughter and I took a trip over Memorial weekend to Oregon and over into Washington. It was something I was looking forward to but it turned out to be so much more than I had ever anticipated. It was a vacation/spiritual retreat. We arrived in Portland on Thursday and the retreat didn't begin until Friday evening so at the last minute we decided to spend the night in Portland and see as much as we could before driving on to the retreat. I want to say that Mt. Hood was very impressive as we were coming into Portland. I live in a land that is mostly flat with a few hills (and I love it) but mountains are always very impressive to me.
I googled seeing Portland in a day and ran across a blogger who is afraid to fly. She was driving and trying to work in seeing 6 states in a certain amount of time and asked for suggestions to see Portland in a day. She had wonderful suggestions and it helped us to decided what we wanted to see. I found it interesting that half of the people commenting on her blog mentioned a book store in Portland named Powell's. They said," you have to go there." One man said," every time he is in Portland he doesn't miss a chance to go to Powell's." That really got my curiosity up and I ask my daughter if she would want to go there and of course she did. She loves books too. But we couldn't imagine what could be so special about a book store. I'm here to tell you, if you ever go to Portland, Powell's is a must. It is a block long and three stories high. It has a rare book section that you have to get permission to go into, a coffee shop (of course), and book shelves from the floor to ceiling and some unique and funny gifts. You could literally spend days in there. We only had a couple of hours and I had to keep telling myself, I was flying home and my suitcase couldn't weigh over 50 pounds. I purchased several unique books for Dutch that I hadn't seen and said to myself I hope I can return someday. It had a wonderful vibe!
My daughter said, "Portland reminded her of a mini New York. You find a place to park and then walk everywhere. We took a trolley and covered most of the city. They have a small China town with an impressive Chinese garden and also a rose garden. We didn't get to tour those but it looked beautiful and everyone said to see them. We met a lady at the bookstore who told us the drive to the Oregon coast was just an hour and a half. The day was too far gone when we found that out. We both wanted to see the Oregon coast and assumed it would be much further than that. We buzzed in and out of a lot of unique shops. We walked our legs off and then had dinner at a seafood restaurant. The restaurant was marginal not outstanding.
The weather in Portland is conducive to growing beautiful flowers and plants. What we in Oklahoma break our backs to achieve, comes naturally for people in Oregon. The interstates were covered with beautiful flowers. It just amazed me! The city is unique and has a beauty all its own but the people are not very friendly. I was taken back when we were on the trolley ride and two little oriental ladies got on the trolley. They were standing right in front of us and I smiled at them and they stood there with blank faces and just looked at me. Can you imagine smiling at someone and the smile is not returned. I think that is very sad for them.
Pictures of Mt. Hood and downtown Portland and Powells. I'll tell you about day 2 tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment