Portland Is Oregon's Metropolis on the Columbia
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Portland Is Oregon’s Metropolis on the Columbia by Lee Foster The small-town but cosmopolitan aura, the friendliness of the citizenry, the lovely hillside parks (especially the Rose Garden in Washington Park), and the sweeping sense of history (Lewis and Clark’s expedition passed here) are dominant impressions of Portland and its people. If you ask Portland residents to sum up why they like to live here, they tend to say, “Portland is small enough to be friendly, big enough to have culture, and the great outdoors is close by.” Oregon offers many pleasures for the traveler, and Portland is the gateway. Oregon is an exceptionally clean and manicured state (the state parks are cultivated rather than wild gardens). Everywhere one is struck by the sparse number of people, an antidote for travelers from more congested areas (there are just over 640,000 people in the city.) Most visitors arrive by driving in on Interstate 5, north from California and south from Washington, or Interstate 84, which enters Oregon from Idaho. The Portland International Airport lies on the northern edge of the city. Portland History The most intriguing historical story of this region is the legendary voyage of Lewis and Clark in 1805 to the mouth of the Columbia River, charting a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The subsequent opening up of the Oregon Trail for pioneers and the taming of the Columbia River are further elements of the story. To see all this, make a trip west to Astoria and east to Bonneville Dam and the Columbia Gorge. The name Portland originated as a reference to one of the founders fond memories of Portland, Maine. Portland Main Attractions The downtown and the parks in the western part of the city are first suggestions for Portland explorations. The best view of the Portland skyline emerges if you walk along the path on the east side of the Willamette River. Walk out on the Morrison Bridge to get the classic view of the downtown skyline with the riverfront park below it. Stop and linger midway across the bridge. A barge may be passing, requiring that the bridge raise itself. River traffic is an essential part of the local economic activity. Later, take the path down to the Hawthorne Bridge, then possibly beyond to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). The views in the morning, as the sun rises, are superb. You see the clean skyline of the city, possibly with a blue sky background if you are lucky in this cloudy community. In the foreground is the Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the west side of the river, alive with joggers, walkers, and bikers. Portland is small enough so that you can enjoy these views with a moderate walk. Back in the center of the city, everything can be reached on foot. This is a good strolling town of moderate size. Portland will remind you of Seattle. Both have rectangular downtowns with grids of streets rising up hills from the water. Both have nearby mountains as scenic backdrops. Stop in at the Portland Visitor Center, Salmon and Front streets, for a map of downtown and some suggestions for exploring. Several theme walks present themselves. Portland is a city of fountains, so you might want to see the Salmon Street Springs (near the Visitor Center), then Ira’s Fountain, and finally the Skidmore Fountain. Along the way you could stop for a drink at the mini-fountains called Benson Bubblers, placed in the downtown by a city father who thought that pure water rather than beer would benefit the workers. Between these fountains are well-kept pocket parks in the downtown area, such as Terry Schrunk Plaza. For a cultural sites walk, proceed to the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon History Center, both of which are worth a stop. The Art Museum includes a permanent exhibit of Northwest Coast Native American art and the History Center boasts among its holdings a covered wagon from 1845 that made the pioneering journey to this new territory over the Oregon Trail. At the History Center be sure also to see the collection of Native American basketry and the Maritime Gallery, showing ships that worked the Columbia River. While walking, you’ll become aware of the attractive office buildings of the downtown area. Some of these offices, such as the Georgia Pacific headquarters at Sixth and Salmon, have elaborate sculpture accouterments. The Portland Building, with its mythical Portlandia figure, is post-modernist architect Michael Graves’ signature on the downtown area. The pinkish monolith known as the U.S. Bank Building is a further architectural landmark. Pioneer Square is the brick commons of the city, a focal point, where you might want to linger over a Starbuck’s coffee (Starbuck’s has the coffee house on this choice site and quite a few other sites in the city. When Starbucks won the rights to open a coffee shop at this choice location, it was only the fourth ever Starbuck’s location). From Starbuck’s Coffee you can survey the scene. On the steps at Pioneer Square, office workers will brown-bag at lunch time. In the evening you can sometimes catch a free concert. I took a guided walking tour through the downtown at 6 a.m. one morning and found it immensely informative. My guide pointed out many design details that I had missed while exploring on my own. The downtown trolleys have real-time arrival signs on digital screens, with the GPS device on the trolley. When I looked either way at crosswalks, I could see down vistas of six blocks or so, and that was a conscious effort of design to keep the facades of buildings uncluttered. The “blocks” are miniature, so don’t consider 10 blocks the same as in Chicago or New York. My guide showed me an abundant number of downtown sculptures, such as “Expose Yourself to Art” and “Animals in Pools,” an effect of the one percent rule requiring developers to fund public art. The Old Town area consists of a vigorous Chinatown and some rougher environs, but adjacent, near the Burnside Bridge along the waterfront, is a Saturday (and Sunday) phenomenon known as the Saturday Market, which is strong on crafts and food. The entire downtown area is easy to navigate, partly because a Vintage Trolley can take you on an open-air ride, including a jaunt across the river to get views of the city. Slightly away from downtown is an institution known as Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside. Maybe it’s the rain, which promotes reading. Maybe Portland people love learning and are inherently bookish. Maybe the proprietors are just crazy about books. Powell’s Books is right up there with the superlative bookstores of the U.S., such as Tattered Covers in Denver. Powell’s has acres of books and the technology to tell you exactly what they have to sell. If it’s in print, expect to find it at Powell’s. Some observers rank Powell’s as the largest bookstore selling new and used books in the English-speaking world. Until you can make a visit, numbers help convey the immensity. The store is open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, with 220 unionized staff putting in 7,500 hours of time each week. Over a million books on four floors are sold in 110 major categories, all gathered in color-coded rooms. The employees tend to stick around. As one local said, “If you work at Powell’s for 10 years, it’s likely you will be a lifer.” Powell’s specializes in having many different presentation of each book, such as the hardcover and the paperback of the same book. The store boasts depth in specialty books, such as Russian Bibles. The in-store restaurant is known as the World Cup Coffee Shop. Beyond Powell’s, 23rd and 21st Avenues have emerged as fashionable shopping and dining streets. Sample 23rd between Kearney and Johnson as a slice of this dining, antique, and boutique scene. Portland has its problems, as every big city does, but Portland also strikes a visitor as a fairly safe city for walking and exploring. Expect to find a few panhandlers on the economic and social fringe. Those on the economic fringe appear to be relatively well supported by the social system, meaning that fewer mental health cases are making their statements on the street rather than in institutions. Among those on the social fringe, be assured you will see well-pierced bodies, fluorescent hair, and skinhead toughness. Booking.com Culinary Portland The main culinary discovery of my latest trip was Toro Bravo, a Spanish tapas place with ample Northwest influences. I dined family style with several friends and we all found the food and service exceptional. The meal started with a “kisses” course of several kinds of olives, followed by a Charcuteria platter. Then came a tasty Radicchio salad and a Tapas course featuring octopus and sauteed chanterelles. The final meat course included roasted lamb and an incredibly large 45-ounce ribeye steak. The waitperson made some good recommendations for Spanish red wines. To gauge the current food scene in the downtown area, I joined a tour offered by Heidi Burnett of Forktown Food Tours, which is rated as the #1 Portland food tour on TripAdvisor. Heidi started this tour at Pioneer Square and walked us around for three hours in the central city area, providing cultural as well as food insights into Portland. We made six stops, all of which would merit a return visit.