Hello Portland!

This weekend Craig and I decided to venture out and see a lot of the touristy places around Portland. We had been meaning to go check out all of these places earlier but with unpacking, errands, camping trips and barbecues filling up the majority of our weekends we never got around to it (but we made some new friends instead). We also wanted to make sure we still had the sunny summer weather in our favor! We started off today with a self-guided walking tour of Portland - from China Town to Old Town, from The Waterfront Park to The Pearl District and all over! We used the Frommer's Portable Portland guide book that we got from Craig's Mom which gave us a starting point, walking directions from place to place and then an ending point.

We started at the Lan Su Chinese Garden which is the largest classical Suzhou-style Chinese garden outside of china. I have no idea what Suzhou-style means but here are some pretty pictures:

 

 

Told we could get a foot massage if we walked barefoot - kinda hurt.

Here's hoping that opportunity is a JOB! :-)

When we were done strolling through the garden and it's gift shop (naturally) we walked down a few blocks and ran into hordes of people at the Portland Saturday Market which is held every Saturday and Sunday in the same place: Waterfront Park. It's basically your typical swap-meet style shopping under pop-up shade with craft vendors, food vendors, clothing vendors etc. with the main difference being several street performers. We made our way through the crowds and didn't really stop to shop - I am sure I'll be back there one day when it isn't a holiday weekend! We're not big on crowds that don't pay attention to where they are going. Neat thing about it though was that everywhere you looked, someone was walking their dog, riding a bike, or carrying around their boa constrictors (we saw a family of four in which three members had a snake around their neck - they were stopped at a booth to get lunch).  We also stumbled upon this guy (right), who wasn't too musical - he basically stood there and strummed the guitar with his one modified arm and occasionally blew in the harmonica - he's the only street performer we gave any money to (basically cause we thought he was pretty cool with his one arm). After we made our way through the market, we strolled along the Waterfront Park, passed up the Oregon Maritime Center & Museum (it looked abandoned so we decided to save ourselves the time and money of going in) and went on our way to find Mill Ends City Park (click the link and read about it, it's quite funny and interesting):

See it? It's riiiiight - there!

Ok, ok...here is me, just outside of Mill Ends Park (seriously).

We then stopped and grabbed lunch at Thirsty Lion Pub where quite a few college football games were being aired (of which us non-sports people were not really into). The atmosphere was loud, but it was still nice. We then made our way over to Pioneer Place and The Pioneer Courthouse Square - both just cool places to know where they are but nothing really too interesting. Pioneer Place is just a big mall and the Square is a place that hosts lots of conventions, free concerts and protest rallies. One cool thing about the Square is that it's all brick - just one of those neat architectural things I enjoy. We then took the free-rail over to Couch Street (pronounced Cooch - thought you should know) and checked out Powell's City of Books - you could get lost in this bookstore. They give you a map at the front that is color coded for each section of the store (crafts, technical, cooking, homemaking, fiction etc...). They also have entire buildings devoted to certain types of books, for example: the Home & Garden building is down one city block and around the corner. By this point in our day trip we were starting to get tired so we headed over to Pete's Tea & Coffee two blocks one way and three blocks another (we didn't realize that they had a location within Powell Books -oops).

While we were enjoying our drinks we saw this across the street (left). Yes, ladies that is a male model in underwear in front of the Under 4Men store. People were stopping to take pictures next to this guy who stayed in his statuesque form until the pictures were done and then seemed to be embarrassed once the people walked away. Our view was quickly taken over by four gay men who decided to sit in the window facing this fellow - giggling, of course!  The drinks we got at Pete's were nice and refreshing but did nothing to wake us up any - so we skipped over a few of the Museums & Galleries listed in the walking-guide and went straight over to Jamison Park - a good place to take your kids and let them run around in the water while you read a book and enjoy your coffee (not applicable to us, of course). Across the street from there was a neat wall that bordered (hid) a parking lot, I had seen this wall before and have wanted to snap some pictures of it so I was glad to have been passing by the area.

  

We then made our way over two blocks to Tanner Springs Park which would have been the perfect place to plop down a blanket and read a book from Powell's (had we bought one). I strongly suggest you read up about the park as it's too lengthy to add here but I thought it was a quiet and peaceful place and I enjoyed it's purpose and overall design. 

 

All in all, we had a pretty enjoyable day!