This is a continuation of my prior post on Portland, OR, which you can read here.

I have to mention that we left temperatures approaching 100 in Austin. The weather in Portland was incredible. Highs from 70 to 75, and lows in the 50’s. It was nice to have a brief break from the Texas heat!

Pride Parade

The weekend we were in Portland was the weekend of Gay Pride. There was a parade, a 2 day festival and numerous other events. We were looking forward to seeing how they celebrate in Portland. We have been to Pride events in Austin, Miami/Fort Lauderdale, New York and San Francisco. Well, Portland did not disappoint. The Parade lasted at least 2 hours. There seemed to be a group for everything. There was also a significant involvement on the part of the police and elected officials (including the Governor of Oregon, several Senators and Representatives, the Mayor of Portland and numerous other political figures).

The festival was located in the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. There must have been 250 – 300 booths. It was quite impressive. We hope to be able to give some suggestions to the people that do the events in Austin so that we can improve it – because it needs to be improved (though our parade was great this year).

We have noticed that the people here in Portland are very strange. I know that’s funny coming from the “Keep Austin Weird” city, but Portland seems much weirder than Austin. For example, at the stroke of midnight on Saturday night of the Pride weekend, there was a nude bicycle parade. There were about 3,000 bikers that rode through either completely naked or very close. This is apparently a very Portland thing (so much so that a recent court case on indecent exposure for doing something similar was thrown out due to the “well established precedent” of naked bicycle events in Portland).

We also noticed a very significant homeless problem. Everywhere we went seemed to be filled with homeless people begging for money. I understand that there is a homeless problem in every city, but it is really major in Portland (like as bad as in San Francisco). There are also large parts of the downtown area that are very “edgy” (in other words – run down). I did not always feel completely safe or comfortable here, which is very unusual for me.

One of the other things that we went to in Portland was the Saturday Market. It is a sprawling street market with hundreds of booths offering all kinds of goodies, including lots of art work made by the people manning the booths. John and I really enjoyed this. We spent all morning Saturday looking through all of the booths.

Haystack Rock

As I mentioned earlier, we called Martin’s Gorge Tours to take us on a tour of the Oregon Coast. I was going to rent a car and drive myself, but it turned out that the rentals prices were extremely high (like $100 or more for a 1 day rental) and it would have been fairly involved to get the car and then get back to our hotel afterwards, as we had to go to the airport to rent a car. It worked out so much better, though. Martin is very knowledgeable about the coast and about some neat, out-of-the-way places that most tours miss. He took us first to Cannon Beach and to the famous Haystack Rock (this is a spot that everyone goes to, but when you are there it is very obvious why everyone goes). It is a marine park that also has tons of nesting birds in the spring. We saw puffins, seagulls, common murres, cormorants, oystercatchers and even one bald eagle. I sat and watched the birds for a long time, as I am a bird lover.

Oregon Coast

There also was all kinds of sea life. The beach we were on was actually only there because the tide was low. In high tide, it would have been completely under water. There were little ponds everywhere that were filled with hermit crabs, anemones, mussels, snails and all kinds of other goodies. There were starfish everywhere, hanging on to the rocks. It was sunny, but windy and cold on the beach. We were prepared for it, though, so it was an immensely enjoyable time.

From there we went on to some other great spots, including Hug Point, Oswald West State Park and Manzanita. Our last stop before returning to Portland was in Tillamook at the Tillamook Cheese Visitors Center. They make some of the best Sharp Cheddar cheese I have ever tasted. You can tour the facility to see how cheese is made, as well as how ice cream is made. This was also a lot of fun, even though it was filled with literally hordes of visitors.

Our last day in Portland was a half day. We had a mid-afternoon flight, so we did not have time to do a lot. We did manage to cram a lot in during the short time we did have. We walked all through the Pearl District. This is an old industrial section of town that is slowly being renewed. Lots of people are moving into old buildings that have been turned into condominiums. I know it sounds like it would be awful and just a repeat of what is happening in just about every city in America these days. But it was actually very nice. The buildings have a lot of character and they have done a magnificent job in keeping green spaces everywhere.

Tanner Springs Park

One of the parks we saw is called Tanner Springs Park. It is actually a man-made wetlands, recreating what was there before the area was settled. They did such a great job with this small park (it is one city block). They used recovered items from railroad construction to build a fence on one side and it is very attractive as well as being very interesting. It is not big, but it is definitely an oasis in the middle of the city.

I will not say that Portland is a city that I will run back to as there are many other places I still want to see, but I am glad that I was able to visit. There is a lot that is worth seeing in Portland and I definitely enjoyed it.

I want to specifically mention three restaurants that we “discovered” in Portland. The first is Al-Amir. It is a Lebanese restaurant. It is not in the nicest area of town, but it is a moderately upscale restaurant with a great menu and really good food. The prices are not that high either. It will cost about $20 to $25 a person to eat dinner.

Another restaurant we really enjoyed was Alexis Greek restaurant. Again, it is not in the best area of town. But the food was spectacular. The service was also very good. I had a combination lunch plate that included souvlaki pork, grape leaves, spanikopita (spinach pie), Greek salad and a few other Greek specialties.

Finally, we also went to a restaurant called Mother’s Bistro and Bar. We had walked by it on our way to Al-Amir, so we decided to take a look at the menu. We ended up eating dinner here. They have a pretty large menu. Included on the regular menu are pirogues, matzo ball soup and a chopped liver appetizer. Another cool thing was their rotating “mother of the month” menu. I don’t know if it is mothers of staff members, but whatever it is, it is neat. When we were there, it was a Chinese menu.

I definitely recommend each of these restaurants.

To see some of my photos of Portland, Mt Hood and the Oregon Coast, click here.