Portland, Oregon - Part One

Portland, Oregon is becoming our favorite U.S. city to visit. We were there last year in October for the first Machine Quilters Expo West, and returned again this year. The focus at the conference was learning about the Intelliquilter system, but we had plenty of time to wander around town, visit yarn shops, and eat far more yummy food than is good for us!

This is probably my favorite photo of our visit. We were headed into downtown for dinner and caught the Max train at dusk. The combination of the sky, train, architecture of the station, and the convention center towers really amazed me when I saw it in the camera. Another 30 seconds later and I don't think the sky would have had any detail at all.

Dinner at Bridgeport Brew Pub. Mussels for Linda with a rasberry infused vodka. Cottage Pie for Ernie with a pint of Porter. When the waitress asked if we knew what we wanted to order, we replied that we'd known for a year what we wanted to order!

Our Max pass meant that we could go anywhere that was on the Max train streetcar routes. That meant we were able to visit 5 different yarn shops. I think Portland may have the highest ratio of knitters in the population of anywhere we've visited (at least it felt that way). We met one knitter as we were heading for downtown on the train and she was headed for the same shop. In the photo, Linda is wearing the new sweater that she had finished the day before the trip. We found some wonderful Madelintosh yarn for Linda's next sweater project as well as some Opal "Starry Night" that Linda had been seeking for socks.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this year and we heard lots of comments about how wonderful it had been, but this sign at twisted shows that Portlanders have a certain fondness for rain (last year we learned a new weather forecasting term - "sun breaks"). The staff explained that the fall usually brings rainy weather, which is just the perfect thing for knitting.

Portland has quite a food-cart culture. At least one full block in downtown is surrounded by carts, and there are pockets like this throughout the city.

Portland has a very old-fashioned feel to it that I really like. This auto-parts store is not only in an old building, but this guy was in the back patiently rebuilding an engine. You won't find that kind of thing in your local AutoZone and you just sense that if you needed an engine, this was the kind of guy you wanted to be building it for you.

The converging lines of the train and streetcar lines really captured my imagination.

Of course, you can't visit Portland without spending time at Powell's City of Books.

Imagine and entire city block, 3 floors high, that all looks like this! Oh, and the technical books are in yet another building across the street. So many books, so little time...

I guess I just had a thing for converging lines on this trip. We wandered into this kitchen supply store as we walked between a yarn shop and the streetcar.

More from Portland next time...