It’s not just about beer. Portland is great.
After only a few hours in this little Oregon city I said the words I’d come to hear from a dozen more mouths over the next two days; “This is a really liveable city.”
It’s small. There’s no distinct, iconic landmarks, no great natural wonder, though it has a huge river crossed by three or four distinctly cool bridges and it‘s surrounded by rolling hills and tall, green Pacific-Northwest trees. There aren’t tourists thronging every street like the metro centres of all the other big American cities we’ve been to over the years.
But it’s brilliant. Guided by the former local, we walked through Pioneer Square with its clean streets, wide sidewalks and criss-crossed one-way streets that shared their way forward with an efficient light rail. We tracked through the Pearl, an awesome and eclectic reclamation project that has worked to turn old decaying industrial behemoths into clean, modern, hip social centres. On every corner there’s a microbrewery full of young people and every other street hides another cool specialty store.
We rented bikes and rode up and down a mountain, passing rose gardens, Japanese gardens and beautiful pine forests. We rode through neighborhoods, across the river, through Ladds Addition.
And we ate and we drank.
We smashed our way through the Portland Brew Festival and while I didn’t really enjoy many of the hop-heavy American beers, She did and it was three or four hours well spent. Besides, the night before I’d had a chance to smash my way through glass after glass of Oregon pinot at the Southpark wine bar (the Christopher 07 from the Dundee Hills was my favourite on the night of half a dozen). We drank at breweries, we ate burgers and pizza and fish and had better coffee here than anywhere else in this awful coffee making country.
And, continuing the great trend established in Ojai and then SF by Christopher, Marie, Jose, Leanne, we spent time with good people! Locals proud of their city with every right to be. Thanks to Joey, Bryan, Bryn, Skye, Craig, Katherine and Natalie for showing us your town.
But then again, I think you catch ‘nice’ from the water in Portland. I’ve never been to a place where more people are nice. Everyone. Including the homeless people. We got a wave from a baglady riding through a neighborhood and then, early this morning on the way to the train as we passed an old man talking to himself, he stood and shouted out… “Have a safe trip! Enjoy your travel!”
Unbelievable.
It’s a cool place and we had a brilliant time. Just a day and a half but we saw so much.
I could live there. It’s a very liveable city.
