Today we decided to explore the neighbourhoods our waitress from the other night told us about. We started by catching the tram uptown to Powell's Books. This is a massive bookstore selling new & used books. It is 4 levels & takes up an entire city block. They appeared to sell every book you could possibly want including foreign language & audio books. We particularly liked the children's section. There were so many Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys books!
After spending quite a while in Powell's, we got on a bus up to 23rd Street. This is a few blocks of boutiques, cafes & eateries. We spent some time going in & out of the shops, picking up little things here & there. One of our favourites was All for Paws which sold everything you could possibly need for a dog of any size. They also had a bit of cat stuff.
We stopped for lunch in Kornblatts New York style deli which was delish.
The area around 23rd St is known as the Alphabet District. This is because the street names move in alphabetical order. It was a pretty swanky neighbourhood with big, grand looking houses. It reminded me of Woollahra.
One of the creators of The Simpsons (Matt Groening) grew up in Portland so some of the streets in the Alphabet District are names after characters in the show - Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy, Van Houten & Burns(ide).
After spending a few hours here we caught the bus back down into the area known as Old Town. The waitress told us this wasn't a particularly nice part of town - usually where people went to nightclubs & lots of homeless people. She was right. It was full of sleazy topless bars, lap dance bars & odd people. But, it is also home to the huge lighted Portland Oregon sign & Voodoo Doughnuts. It was only afternoon so the sign wasn't yet lit & didn't look nearly as impressive unlit. So, we went to Voodoo Doughnuts. I have never seen so many unusual doughnuts in a variety of sizes with flavours including bacon maple, Oreo, Captain Crunch, M&Ms & peanut butter. They are all in a revolving cabinet & the flavours are listed on a board on the wall. There is no way of knowing what flavour most of them are. But, people were coming out with boxes of them. We just chose one safe one each - Oreo for Robyn & chocolate cream for me.
The sign still hadn't been lit so we walked over the bridge near it. We got some good views of the city from there. There is a huge number of bridges in Portland, actually 8. This is because the Willamette River cuts the city in half. Most of the bridges are pretty ugly in my opinion.
We got to the other side & found a pizza shop with a bar so we sat at the bar & had a drink while waiting for it to get dark. We left just after 5pm & by now the sign was fully lit. There is a deer on the sign & they have added a red nose for the Christmas season.
We had decided to have dinner at Huber's tonight. This the oldest restaurant in Portland, established in 1879. The house speciality is the traditional roast turkey dinner. So that is what we had. When it gets dark early, it feels much later than it really is. It also gets much cooler when the sun goes down so it is easier to stay out rather than go back to the hotel & go out again. We have officially joined the grey brigade & were halfway through dinner at 6pm!
Today started off very foggy but the sun eventually came out. It was really nice in the sun & Portland got to a top temperature of 5 today. Tomorrow is forecast to be wet from about lunchtime.