PORTLAND, OR

SUNDAY

It's early morning as we drive into a sleepy Portland. We cross over Willamette River to the west side of town. Due to it being Sunday we find free parking throughout downtown. So we stop right outside the downtown Whole Foods and go inside for our breakfast. Once full of eggs, potatoes and coffee we continue to the street and walk to the next block down where the bookstore Powell's is located. This bookstore is a dream, the kind of store you only find in large progressive cities. It's huge and well organized, filled with a vast variety of volumes on all topics of interest. We scour over books on trails, waterfalls, hot springs, Lewis & Clark, and Central America. After a few hours into it we decide to move onto the next thing on our agenda... bike riding. This town is very bike friendly which helps us to easily maneuver around the grid layout of streets without aggravating the motorists. We ride away from the waterfront on W Burnside Street and follow it up to the entrance of Washington Park. Here we find the rose garden, several acres of well manicured roses of various sizes and colors. We parked the bikes and took a stroll around. The experience reminded Jeremy of his grandmother's rose garden at her home in England. We follow a path that leads us into a more wooded area. Here we find a fruiting plumb tree and so we collect a little snake for ourselves. Back on the bikes we continue further up the hill a few miles to the Japanese Garden and Arboretum. At each we again get off our bikes and walk the grounds exploring the mature trees & shrubs, many of which were flowering. We snack on wild berries and rest in the shade of a giant oak. Sometime around early afternoon we turn our bikes around, then race down the hill back into downtown and all the way to the waterfront. There are people everywhere as we weave our way around the boardwalk and through the streets. Both of us are now hungry so we return to Whole Foods and grab some grub of sushi & salad. We are feeling a little tired and want to find a quiet place for the night so we back up the bikes, get back in the car and slowly make our way out of Portland. It was such a wonderful day spent in this delightful city. And yet we barely saw what it had to offer. But time presses on and we have a commitment in Astoria to meet.