I slept ok - Chris didn't sleep so good, and told me about a nightmare that demons were after him! When we woke up, he saw the table in the middle of the beds with my jumper on the top! He told me he yelped a little bit! Ha ha. (He was scared of demons in our room. He's going to brick his pants at the universal horror nights!). We put the furniture back to where it belonged. Something might have happened to a pair of legs on the table, and they might have fallen off the table! But we fixed it! We started our morning with a walk into the centre of Portland. I was looking for a camera as mine has crap in the lens. Couldn't find anything that I really liked so I will have to keep an eye out.
It was just before 12 and we decided to go and get something to eat. Another food court. Except this time the food was a lot nicer.
We had a few leaflets of stuff we wanted to do but we headed to the information centre to see what else they had. There was an underground tour that we wanted to do. We looked online and it said tonight's tour was sold out. I then checked with the information centre to see if this is something they can book? They said I needed to call them - so I did. They confirmed they had space on the tour, so we confirmed we could pay on arrival! We had it booked for tonight! Result. I am glad I don't take no for an answer.
We asked the old girl at the info place what else should we do while in Portland. She looked at us and said you'll want to visit the brewery district! I guess we look like we enjoy a beer! We already had this on our list to do. We walked along the river and decided to check out the Japanese gardens. Portland is twined with a town in Japan, and many years ago they sent people out to Portland to build a Japanese garden for them. It is the full size of block. It was pretty expensive to go in, but we managed to get in for student prices again. The line "We don't have our student cards because we are from the United Kingdom works every time!!" We walked around the gardens. And it did remind me a lot of being in Asia. The weather was nice and it was actually warm. We didn't stick around to long because the brewery pubs were calling.
We walked to the brewery district and found a brewery pub, that made its own beers on site. It made sense that we went for the tester beer selection. We got to pick any 6 beers from the menu and we would get about 100ml of each to try. Form this we could then order a pint of the one we liked the most. When they arrived at the table they looked good, none of them too dark like Guinness which suited me. However non of them were that nice, some fruity, some strong, and some just god damn awful. Neither of us ordered a beer from the selection we had picked. I though I would stay safe and have a cider and Chris went for a really dark beer that looked like Guinness, and in the menu said it had a chocolate taste.
My verdict of the cider was it wasn't very nice, and Chris said that he was enjoying his beer, I tried it and thought it tasted like coffee which resulted in me instantly disliking it. He had drank half his beer when we thought the beer tasted like the bottom of an ashtray! Not the kind of taste that people like when drinking beer. (I really wanted a cheery beer right now!) we finished these drinks a quickly as we could, chasing every mouthful with a swig of water. Paid up, and left. I think we will stick to beers we like in future.
We had only had a couple of beers (strong beers) and I was felling a little tipsy. After the beers we walked back to the bug infested motel and chilled out for a little bit. We were both a little hungry but decided to wait until after the haunted underground tour, as we didn't have that long until we had to meet up.
Our meeting place was close to china town and it took about 25 minutes to walk there. It was starting to get dark - we stupidly forgot our umbrellas (which we would pay for layer). We arrived a little early and met our guide Sadie - when we said we were on the tour she said she was in fact full this evening. We told her that we called and they just said pay on arrival. She was nice enough to let us on the tour! In total there was 13 people in the group. Most of them were from the USA and I think me and Chris were the only ones from another country.
The tour started at the old town pizza place where we all met up. Sadie told us a little information about Portland, and they are happy they have a weird and strange city. We headed to the basement of the pizza restaurant that used to be a hotel a long time ago. Portland used to have a tunnel network that linked downtown to the rivers. Also know as the shanghai tunnels. Except they have now all been closed off. We saw the entrance or start of one of these tunnels, but it was all boarded up! (This happened in the 1970's).
Anyway... Back to the tour we were on, we started in a small room in the basement of pizza place. No lights but everyone was armed with torches and electric-magnetic field devices. These EMFD for short! (I have kind of made that up!) were used to detect any strange things. When you put them close to metal or mobile phones they seemed to react. However they are also thought to go off when sprits or paranormal things are around. Not sure how much I believed in it, but I went along with it. We then all took our seats in this haunted place and Sadie started to tell us about the ghosts stories of people that had died in this hotel. Many people have reported seeing ghostly images and being spooked by goings on in this location.
The first story was about Nina; she was a lady that was living and working in the hotel as a prostitute she was about to tell the police about everything that when on at the hotel. But the night before she was due to report her information she was found dead at the bottom of the lift shaft.
Just as the story was finished another tour group came banging around the other side of the wall. That made me s*** my pants a little bit. During the story my EMFD seemed to go off and hit the red section meaning their we a high presence. I did get goosebumps a couple of times. Some of the picture that were taken down their had weird shadows, it looked as if you had caught the breeze on camera, however you can't see wind. We stuck around for while waiting to see something happen or maybe see Nina her self.
Sadie kept talking out to her and the other sprits thought to be in the building. She said "Nina have you found peace?" - my machine went straight to red, and then I got that feeling they someone had walked over my grave!"
I am open minded and don't really believe in all this, but it was entertaining being on a kind of ghosts hunt. Nothing came out of the shadows, no strange sightings, I would have loved to had seen something to prove me wrong. We were in the basement for about 45 minutes and nothing. It was time to move on, as we had a lot more to see.
We visited another hotel and was told about the owner that had build this hotel, who had been seen by hotel guests walking up and down the stairs. We also visited places on the streets where people had been shot, and our machines again went straight to red. Car parks that were thought to be ancient graves. Again I don't think I believe any of it, there must be other scientific reasons these machines go off. But it was very entertaining, I think Chris was enjoying it, I guess he's a believer!
We had been walking around the streets about half an hour being told about other ghostly stories, including a hunted car park, and haunted hotel and a location on a street corner where someone was shot. Our little machine when to red when we arrived here. The rain started to fall, light at first but was getting worse and stupid me had plimsoles on again. The last stop was my favourite! The voodoo doughnut shop, our guide Sadie had brought us all a free doughnut. It was a very popular place to come to in Portland. The queue was about 25 people in the pissing rain, people were lined up on the street, crazy! My doughnut was very good though.
Overall I did really enjoy the tour, it was good and I am glad I did it even thought I have ruined another pair of shoes, that are going in the bin!
We walked back in the rain to the Motel, it was about 15 blocks. Once back at the motel, it was time to get some dinner we were both pretty hungry at this time. Below the motel was a bar and restaurant. Chris went for a crocodile sausage pasta dish, and I had something a little less adventurous a BBQ burger. It was ok. We just spent the time talking about the tour!
It was nice to have a normal tasting beer, you can't go wrong with Budweiser.
Fingers crossed our second night at the motel doesn't have any demons, and fingers crossed no nightmares.
Boo.!