portland

I arrived at Portland at 6 or so. As with Seattle, it was a piece of cake to go from the airport to the city. This time it was $2.35 on the train, which dropped me off a few blocks away from my hotel. I checked in, dropped my stuff off, and then headed to the hotel bar for dinner. I ordered a burger and a beer. As I ate, a man (white, middle-aged) came in and asked that one of the TVs be changed to one of the games in the WNBA championship series. I remarked, and both the man and the bartender agreed, that it was undoubtedly the first time in any bar that a WNBA game had been requested. After dinner, it was time to do some laundry.

The next morning I went off to explore Portland. It’s incredibly easy to get around the city thanks to the Free Rail Zone that covers downtown Portland. As the name suggests, you can ride any train within the zone (which included my hotel) for free. My first planned stop was Voodoo Donuts. I’d heard quite a bit about the place, which is perhaps most famous for its bacon maple bar: a donut with maple frosting and two small strips of bacon on top:

I ordered one and it turned out that a brilliant idea was even better in its execution. Amazing. I also ordered a doughnut liberally slathered with icing and topped with M&M Minis; but it turned out to be a cake doughnut (which I’m not crazy about), and the sweetness was overpowering. I took a few bites and put it back in the bag for a possible snack later, but I ended up giving it to a homeless guy, not because I like giving stuff to homeless people but because I probably wasn’t going to eat it anyway. After that I walked around and wandered over to Powell’s Books, a bookstore that takes up an entire city block. While I was there I got a text to meet a fellow AYCJer for lunch at Deschutes, a brewpub just across the street from Powell’s. Seth was originally from Massachusetts but lives in Las Vegas now. A huge Red Sox fan, he had actually been at the game in Seattle I was at. We ate lunch and had a few beers. I tried an Oktoberfest, which was okay but had a pretty strong flavor—maybe a bit too much for my taste. I then had a hefeweizen which was just okay as far as hefeweizens go. I ate a burger. The meat itself was fine, but the kaiser roll bun was very, very dry. And by the end of the meal I think the beers and the sugar from the donuts and the dry bread had combined and I was’t feeling great. Fortunately, the malaise passed. After lunch I went back to Powell’s, browsed some more, and bought two books for some airplane reading. I wandered around Portland a bit more.

Portland is famous for its food carts; there are several places where carts circle an entire block. I passed by some of the ones I had seen earlier, but most were only open for lunch. I didn’t see any good, cheap places to eat other than fast food chains, so I decided to head down toward the Portland State University campus (conveniently within the Free Rail Zone), figuring that any college would likely be surrounded by plenty of cheap food. I went into Hot Lips pizza. The workers were very friendly, the pizza was fine, and I ended up catching a lucky break with my drink order. I asked for a Widmer Hefeweizen. The cashier said they were out of pint glasses, so she’d give me a smaller glass and then refill it, and it’d probably come out to a few more ounces than a pint. Works for me. And I really liked the Widmer; I’d heard great things about it and thought about touring their brewery, but ended up not doing so.

After that I headed back to my hotel room to get some rest before an early train back to the airport. I have to say that I was really, really impressed by Portland and I’m very glad I went there. I definitely want to go back there sometime.