Portland , Oregon

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Six nights spent in this great city in Oregon. Apparently it is often in the top few of best cities to live in the USA. Its easy to see why, there are loads of avenues , parks and the city is surrounded by forests with Mount Hood visible to the South.

The huge Willamette River runs though the centre the city which is littered with restaurants and unusual shops (amongst the usual ones), there is also the USA's biggest used and new bookstore (its the size of one city block).

In addition, all the public transport is free in the downtown area so getting around is easy. To top all of this off, they even show Premiership matches in the local bar so we were able to see Man Utd beat Charlton and see Chelski get thumped, ha. Portland is also the Brew Pub Capital of the US so there are microbreweries everywhere. There is even the Mission Theatre which is a Cinema / Brewpub so you can get a beer, burger and movie for $10, that’s about five quid. Why don't they do this in England? the only problem was that when we went the movie was the Da Vinci Code which was a bit of stinker, oh well.

Other activities include a visit to the Rose Gardens in Washington Park, not to be confused with the rose gardens in Ulverston. Here you can see 550 different kinds of roses with about 7000 different plantings, thats a lot of roses. I guess thats why they call it the rose city. The hostel offers day trips to the Oregon Coast and Mt St Helens which although we were tempted we declined as we are saving out pennies.

The hostel itself is quite good, we have been in a dorm and met loads of people from all over New Zealand, Japan, Romania the US and Switzerland. In fact the guy from Switzerland we have now met in four different cities in different parts of the US, Madison, Minneapolis, Seattle and now here, he is even in the same Dorm. Its a small world.

We are off to watch the Portland Beavers (ooh err!) Baseball Team play Las Vegas tonight at the local stadium. I don't think they are major league but it should be a good do, lets see what all the fuss is about. Lets see if it is just men playing rounders!, Go Beavers!

25/8/2006

Well the Beavers got beat 8 - 4, having actually led 4-1 for most of the game, the Vas Vegas 51er's kicked backside in the 8th Innings. As for Baseball, we are not converted , lets be fair to them the Beavers are not major league so its the equivalent of going to watch Stoke City play football. However, it was kinda boring, there were 3 consecutive innings where nobody scored a single point and there was just nothing to really cheer about. You could argue its more of a family day out as there are no angry fans and very little swearing or chanting etc. That said and done, it is men playing rounders (sorry).

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Photos

Mount Hood
Mount Hood looms over the skyscrapers

Bridge
Suspension Bridge

Comments

[stu]

is claire beavering away?
as claire wasn't in any of the snaps i assume she was beavering away elsewhere , did you pick any of the roses and present them to your beloved? thought there would be more info on the cement works where all the portland cement comes from!

[Dad]

Portland
I thought that everyone knew baseball was just rounders! At least it's a simple game that the americans can understand. Beavers are going down!