P-Town Silliness

Portland has a special randomness that is delightful. If you look, there are interesting stickers, signs and/or graffiti almost everywhere. Take a mailbox for example. Stick some eyes on it and voila – an interesting inanimate object!  There are also messages to be found tacked onto telephone poles that bear important life reminders: Even a birdcage in a store has cute little signs: Speaking of birds, they were on everything, which is apparently very Portland. Of course, there are the stickers and things on the backs (or even fronts) of signs and on various poles around town. This one was pretty pervasive: There were also lots of Kurt Russell stickers and stickers with realistic teeth photoshopped in: Here are some other ones:

Portland wins when it comes to this kind of thing with San Francisco and Toronto coming in tied for second. Get with it Denver!

Soaked in Beer and Coffee, Drizzled with Salt

It’s Sunday and raining. We’re laying drowsily on Curtis’ couch in NE Portland. We have a few hours before our flight back to Denver and we are pooped.  A few days of walking, eating, drinking, and looking around will do that to a person. Eating and drinking take center stage on any Portland trip – in the three days we visited the damp, northwestern city we had 19 occasions to eat and/or drink.

Friday was the most full food day. It started at Ken’s Artisan Bakery for quiche, cappuccino, and a cinnamon-glazed cinnamon roll.

This fueled our trip up the hill to the Japanese Garden. The winding trail through the park took us through the rose gardens, which were still plentiful with mist-laden roses:

We also encountered Phyllis the banana slug on the path!

I loved the Japanese Garden. We spent over 90 minutes in the wonderful, gentle drizzle strolling quietly through the mossy terrain. Many of the maples and other trees were turning yellow, red, and orange and there were stairs made of stepping stones that descended deeper into the gardens and leaf-strewn paths that took us back out again.

The whole trip was soaked in coffee and beer – Portland does both extremely well. On our way out of the gardens we popped into Coffeehouse Northwest for surprisingly soothing cappuccino that was beautifully made:

This was followed about an hour later by lunch at Bridgeport Brewing and dessert of mini pumpkin whoopie pies and fleur de sel chocolate chip cookies at Two Tarts.

After meandering through the Pearl District and getting totally overwhelmed at Powell’s Books, we spent some quality time at the Hostel reading and napping. Vacation is so fantastic…The napping just prepped us for Friday, part 2.

With dinner reservations at Le Pigeon, a seriously cozy restaurant in the southeastern part of the city, we showered and hurried across the Burnside Bridge. Over candlelight we shared a bottle of Willamette Valley pinot noir and enjoyed Pumpkin Agnolotti with brown butter consommé and parmesan (me) and Lamb Shoulder with yogurt spätzle, sausage, and persimmon saffron chutney (Seth). We didn’t get dessert per se, but super tasty, gourmet chocolates came with the bill.

Burnside Brewing was on the way back, so we stopped in to try the award winning (Great American Beer Fest 2012) Sweet Heat, which is a wheat beer brewed with apricots and Jamaican scotch bonnet peppers. It was just the right amount of heat – worthy of an award in my opinion. Also on our path was Voodoo Donut, home of the maple bacon donut – see below to the far left of the photo:

One last Friday night stop – Rogue Brewing! Just five or so blocks from the hostel, we couldn’t pass it up. I had the mocha porter mixed with their chipotle ale from the tap, which mixes to make a mole beer – such a treat.

We slept very well Friday night.

Rail~Volution 2010

I’ve just returned from Portland and four wonderful days of Rail~Volution, a conference that brings transportation professionals together once a year to “Create a national movement to develop livable communities with transit.”  Two thumbs up to the organizers – it was an excellent event.  I learned a lot and met some good people.  The folks from Pittsburgh, Vancouver, and Portland were my favorites (other than the Denver crew that is).

So I’m going to share a few photos from a few jaunts around Portland.

As always, I love the random and sometimes silly stickers and paintings on signs, cars, and walls. Denver seems to be lacking in this area and I know because I’m on the lookout.

This was taped to the greeter stand at Kenny & Zuke’s deli.  I enjoy stick figures and have been pondering the drawing’s origin – a small-breasted (and lop-sided), wild-haired woman throwing the horns with a seemingly complacent dog. It’s amusing.

These three were in various spots:

This is from the back of a Prius, obviously.  I was unusually delighted by it’s lighthearted nature.

There were also some less-random bits of art that I noted – tile work on a wall surrounding a park and a mural:

I ate at some of the food carts near Pioneer Square.  The weather was moist and chilly in the mornings until just after noon and I was drawn to the soup and grilled cheese cart.  The day I visited it was serving a Hungarian mushroom soup and a cheddar, gruyere, and goat cheese grilled cheese. So, so tasty and satisfying.

A few days later, Lacy (a friend and now co-worker) and I got a similar lunch at a food cart on Williams in Northeast Portland.  No food pic, but here’s a photo of the “cart.”

Right across from this cart was a walk-up window for ordering coffee.  It was aptly named a “ped-thru” as opposed to a drive-thru.

On Monday I took a mobile tour by bike of Portland’s green streets and bikeways.  The weather was amazing, the company was great (can’t go wrong with those that want to get on a bike!), and we saw some interesting and innovative stuff.  Near the end we took a break at a park and the tour guides had arranged for coffee and pastries.  The coffee was served by a coffee-by-bike sort of thing – Trailhead Coffee Roasters.  Quite good coffee but I did burn my tongue (user error). 

Walking around Portland in general was such a treat, especially this time of year.  The trees were turning and leaves were falling. We were so impressed by the size of some leaves we got these photos.

We also came across this huge elephant-on-elephant art in one park:

Finally, we rode and ogled at the streetcar:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Portland, I love you.

Portland y'all! - part III

Saturday, September 27, 2008: Day Three Portland

OK, so Saturday was good too but it was really overshadowed by Friday. In fact, by Saturday morning I was feeling a little...mellow. What better for that than a cappuccino?

Fairly close to the hostel was a bakery we'd been wanting to try, esp. because the associated restaurant was so good: Ken's Artisan Bakery. Arriving at about 8:30 am was the perfect time. There were tables available and a full case of yummy goodness (about 20 minutes later the place would have a line nearly out the door and no empty tables). We both ate some meaty items I'm not going to detail here (but they were wonderful - imagine a _____, gruyere & thyme croissant and a ______ & vegetable quiche). I will say that the peach and blueberry galette (pictured below) was not only beautiful but a delight on the tongue. As you can see our plates (in the background) are stacked - I was supposed to take this little treat to go but couldn't wait.

Next, we set out for the farmers market on the PSU campus. To tout Portland's superb transit, I must say that we had the option to take the free streetcar to the market. Yep, free - they have a "fareless square", which is actually quite large and all transit is free in this area. This is a picture of the cute little street car making its way to us.

Oh, we did stop at Stumptown coffee on the way. Sandy was saving himself that morning for this bit of caffeinated pleasure.
On to the farmers market! Last November when we were in town, the farmers market was just a few stands of this or that - nothing special. This time, however, it was a harvest festival of sorts. Of course there were the tables piled high with mushrooms, fat cucumbers, extra large garlic and leeks but there was also a guitar player with a microphone and a good sized group of watchers/listeners and a chef talking about cooking meat (while actually cooking it), and not one, not two, but three balloon animal makers. One guy was a true artist with those balloons - he made a turtle wrist corsage for a 4 year old girl.

Just a small portion of the weekly farmers market event:
Blackberries, little yellow tomatoes, and strawberries (organic of course):
Look at that burst of color (I'm obviously not referring to the coffee drinking white guy)!
such an amazing variety of tomatoes:The day was fairly uneventful after that, we walked to the Pearl District and through the Nob Hill neighborhood and fell in with the throngs of people out enjoying the sunny afternoon.


Sometime around 5:00pm we made our way to the Deschutes Brewery. I had what was basically a bowl of seasonal mushrooms in broth with chunks of bread and we both shared the beer sampler - the Jubelale was my favorite. Here is Sandy and the samples:


We adjourned to the hostel to drop off some stuff but ended up dozing lightly for about 1/2 an hour, then we headed out to the symphony! We saw Beethoven's Symphony No.9 performed by the Oregon Symphony with a choir at the Arlene Schnitzer concert hall (aka "the Schnitz"). This is Sandy enjoying a pre-concert beverage inside the place - it was stunning.

While I enjoyed the performance, I don't think I've ever sat through the entire 9th symphony before. It was longer than I thought it would be and the cheap seats were hot.

We went to a popular wine bar afterwards and then took one last trip to the Rogue Brewery (we did hit Saint Cupcake earlier in the day). At the hostel we were a giggly mess but tried to be as quiet as possible while preparing for our last night of deep, oxygen-enriched sleep in that playground of a city...

Portland y'all! - part II

Friday, September 26th, 2008 - Portland: the coolest place in America.

Friday we rented bikes from the hostel. This is awesome because, as opposed to renting bikes from a bike shop, at the hostel we could rent the bike at 8:00am and return it by 11:30pm! None of that "have it back by 6:30pm" crap. So, we set out at about 8:15 am headed for St. Honore Boulangerie. On our last trip in 2007 we attempted to get here, but it's a bit north of the hostel and, on foot, felt really far away - not so with the bicycle! My goodness, I've visited some bakeries in my day (it's a surprise I don't have a fatter ass) and this is in the top three!!!! This picture is from the case but it was not, by far, the most they had. Any narrative description can't do it justice (and I didn't get that many good pictures...). I can say that the Normandy Apple Tart and almond croissant are not to be missed.

We left St. Honore sufficiently powered up for our bike ride up to Forest Park. When I say "up" that's exactly what I mean - it was up hill the whole freaking way. But it was through an awesome neighborhood - you know, the kind I know I could never afford because I would never be able to afford the day laborers working on the landscaping, the addition to the house, or powerwashing the outside stairs.

For us Denverites, living in a dry climate, Forest Park was really a treat. It was greener than green and lush with moss. We followed a dirt and gravel path up and up and up but there were hiking trails that one could take (we did not). This is me taking a picture of Sandy while riding the "comfort bike" (the Jamis Explorer - I don't recommend it).


This is a picture of me.
This is a picture of a banana slug! I love these large, slimy creatures. They are like fungus, once you find one, all you have to do is stop and look around and you'll find a bunch more.


We rode about 3 or so miles into Forest park and then turned around and headed for Washington Park to visit the zoo. I am ashamed to have visited this zoo and do not recommend it to others - it has to be the saddest zoo I've ever seen.

However, I did see this Odwalla dispenser there. It's so fitting - the only place I've ever seen a smoothie dispenser is in Portland. I did see a beer dispenser in Spain but that's different.

This sticker on the bike rack outside the horrible place is great ("live free or drive")- oh, and this is a picture of the Jamis that Sandy rode.

We rode across the river to the Hawthorne neighborhood - this is me in front of City Bikes.
We ate lunch at Doug Fir. This is Sandy, eating a "Fir Burger" (ha ha).

We spent the rest of the day biking around the city to various neighborhoods in the Southeast and Northeast. We bought wine, we bought cards, we bought more pastry, we bought all kinds of stuff.

Biking in Portland was so insanely easy. I mean, I've heard about the bicycle infrastructure but now that I've experienced it...

They put bike lanes on busy streets (which is good) and on lots of them.

They put signs up around town that help you wayfind!
In case you miss the sign, they put directional markings on the pavement!!!

We got around Portland from Northwest to Southwest to Southeast to Northeast and back again with a free Portland bike map and these wayfinding devices.

Eventually we found our way to Roots Organic Brewery where we, and a gazillion other people, watched the presidential candidates debate. Afterwards we adjourned to the Bridgeport Brewery and ate a lot of food.


Friday was the best of the three days in Portland. The bicycling was so much fun and the weather was beautiful.