A couple of weeks ago the family decided to have a long weekend in Portland.  Now I’ve been there before on business but only really for the day and then I didn’t see anything of the city so this was a new location for me as well as the rest of the family.

We drove down to the city as it’s only really about two and a half hours from Seattle and Lisa got us a lovely suite in the middle of the city.

One of the primary reasons for the trip was that Lisa is really into crafting and has pretty much decked out the bonus room in our house as her craft room.  She has two large tables full of cutting tools, knives, tape and paper and is always busy creating cool stuff.  Well this weekend Portland was the home of a large crafting expo.  So the plan was for Lisa and Abi to hit the Expo for the day and for James and me to go out and check out the city.

Portland has a pretty good public transport system with bus and tram stops everywhere and the time tables were great.  So James and I hit the road on foot and headed out to see what we could find (with the camera of course).  The girls went off to their expo and brought, well what looked to like paper and glitter but they enjoyed it.

James and I decided to get some shots of the city and I captured the famous “Portland Sign” along with the large paddle-boat on the river.  They have a really old town hall too so I shot that as well.  Then we decided to head out to the Japanese gardens.  The trip there was fun but kind of a disaster.  We got a city map and it showed that the tram service took us to the gardens and as we were by city hall and a tram stop we took that.  However the map was a little out of proportion once you got out of the city as when we arrived at the last tram drop off (which was at the zoo) we found out it was another three mile walk to the gardens.  For those who know me that wasn’t going to happen!  Not to be dejected we got a tram home and grabbed the car!  Anyway we went to the gardens and they were really nice.  Not much was in bloom but we got some nice pictures.

After the gardens it was back to the hotel to meet the girls.

For those of you who don’t know Portland is famous for a place called Voodoo Donuts.  Which is rather unsurprisingly a donut shop.  What is odd is that it’s open twenty-four hours a day and there is ALWAYS a line of people outside waiting to get their donut fix.  I found this odd as while the donuts were nice, I didn’t think they were really anything that special.  Still, we went (of course) and I got some shots of that too.

One the way home Lisa found us a cool waterfall to visit called the Multnomah Falls which was really big! This thing was over six hundred feet high and very impressive.

So, what did we think of Portland?

Well we had a great time that’s for sure.  Shopping is tax free so that’s good and there are some really great sites to check out.  As a city they seem to be obsessed with food trucks, they are everywhere and while it sounds kind-a cool, most look pretty dirty and for me uninviting.

We did however have some great food (there are some nice restaurants there) and the kids had fun.

Rather surprisingly I found the city pretty dirty.  We found a lot of graffiti, and there are a lot of homeless people in the city, so that wasn’t too nice.  But that said I’ll definitely go back again, probably next time not with the family so I can get more pictures.  So well worth a visit.

Here are some of the shots from the trip: