Beginners guide to Portland
Last month I went to Portland, Oregon, to speak at PNSQC, a software quality conference, about the Impostor Syndrome. Before this trip, I didn’t know much about Portland, other than it is weird, hipstery and green (basically like Portlandia). Quickly I found out that it has delicious food and is a heaven for enthusiasts of micro-brewed beer. Here are the most amazing things I managed to do in my week in Portland.
The Neighborhoods
Portland consists of five quadrants (in Portland, 5 = 4), that is, five neighbourhoods that each has their own culture.
- Northeast is where I stayed in a homy Airbnb apartment surrounded by unique cute houses. Alberta Street is the heart of NE with its graffiti, local shops and art galleries. Alberta was by far my favorite street in Portland. You must stop for an ice-cream at Salt&Straw! A short walk from there, you can find the Rose garden, a small but beautiful garden worth checking out. Another gem in NE is the Kennedy school, which is a historical school renovated as bars, restaurants, a hotel, and theater. The bars are in different classrooms, one is called Chemistry and specializes in cocktails, and they still have the blackboard on the walls. It’s really unique.
- The newly restored and trendy Mississippi Avenue is in the North. It’s old school, with a modern Western vibe over it if that makes any sense. There I got the best pizza I’ve ever had at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty!
- In the Southeast you have Hawthorne Blvd. with vintage stores, tattoo parlors, microbreweries and a nice mini Powells bookstore.
- Downtown Portland is in the Southwest, and its best feature is the Tom McCall Waterfront Park where you can see Portlands’ eight bridges.
- I’m a far gone book nerd so Powell’s books in the Southwest (basically downtown) was like a heaven for me! It’s the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world, with impressive 6,300 m2 and nine color-coded rooms 😍 You could literally spend months in there, well, at least I could. Protip; look for books by local authors like Chuck Palahniuk, and you might find an autographed book without any extra cost!
Japanese Garden
Portland Japanese Garden is beautiful, with magnificent koi fishes and definitely worth the visit, despite the $14.95 admission and that it’s a little bit crowded. I spent a bit over an hour there, but I would have stayed longer if the weather had been better. I prefer this garden over the Japanese tea garden in San Francisco which is smaller and more crowded.
International Rose Test Garden
Across from the Japanese garden, there is this vast beautiful rose garden with free admission. The soil in Portland has the perfect PH value for roses, and during WW1, people from Europe sent a lot of rose seeds to Portland to save their rose seeds. From that the International Rose Test Garden sprung with now over 7,000 rose plants of 550 different kinds.
Forest Park
Forest Park is the largest urban park in the United States. I took a bus there from the Rose Garden and came in Macleay Park and walked Holman Lane and then back on the Wildwood trail and down to the Stone house. That hike was two and a half wonderful hours, where I didn’t see or hear anyone else most of the time. I only covered a small portion of the park; it really is huge.
Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls and Mt Hood
I went on a guided day tour with Wildwood Adventures which was a very fun and beautiful scenic route. The Columbia River Gorge has over 70 waterfalls, 20 of them easily accessible from the road, the others accessible by hiking. Unfortunately, there had been a terrible forest fire four weeks prior, so we only managed to go up to one waterfall and only got a glimpse of Multnomah Falls, the biggest attraction in the gorge, when driving by. Instead, we stopped at the Bonneville fish hatchery, which at first doesn’t sound interesting, but it actually was. There you can visit Herman the 70-year-old sturgeon.
Mt Hood is Oregon’s tallest mountain and is a landmark for Portland. To my surprise, there was a lot of snow there at the Timberline Lodge when the weather had been sunny and 15°C in the city. If you are interested in hiking the PCT, you can walk just a few steps above the Timberline lodge where the PCT trail passes. Unfortunately, there was so much snow so I couldn’t see it.
Simpsons
Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons, was born and raised in Portland. In the alphabet quarter in the NW quadrant, there are street names like Flanders, Lovejoy, Quimby, Terwilliger, Burnside, and Kearney. Sound familiar?
Portland is weird
Yes, Portland has a lot of hipsters and yuppies, and it is green and weird (in the sense that everything goes). But it’s also much more than that. It’s also arty and friendly. It has a great music scene; I got to see one of my favorite bands The War on Drugs play there. There are cute food carts with delicious food everywhere. There is no sales-tax in the whole state. But what I loved most is the care and quality people put into their businesses and personal relationships. If it weren’t for the rainy winters and spring, I wouldn’t mind being one of the 200 people that move to Portland from California every day. I didn’t manage to go to the beach, which I’ve heard is really nice, but that makes a great excuse to visit Portland again.
