All good things...

 

Wednesday 4 June 2025

Our last day (with an evening flight) was a disappointment from the weather perspective with lots of grey cloud and some drizzle - enough to disturb my hair. 

We had to be out of the apartment by 10am, but had been allowed to leave our luggage packed up there ready to go. We caught the bus (eventually - the time of its arrival kept changing) just beyond Nob Hill and then walked up a very steep hill to Washington Park to visit the Japanese and Rose Gardens. We then waited for the shuttle bus to take us up another steep hill, with a very garrulous driver who loudly praised Prime Minister's Question Time and generally all things of "the kingdom".

The delightful Japanese Garden came about in the early 1960s as a result of the then mayor's desire to grow healing cultural ties between Oregon and Japan, and the work of a Japanese agricultural professor; it has five different garden designs contained within its five acres. It's very tranquil and orderly - I noticed that any flowers there were (and it was fairly minimal bloom-wise) were either pink or white - no blousy reds or look-at-me yellows here (apart from some orange Koi carp in the pond). There's a tea house, cultural centre and gift shop (full of tasteful Japanese merchandise rather ironically made in China) and a little exhibition of ceramics.

We moved on to the Rose Garden, which is a big deal in Portland because of the big rose festival at this time of year. The scents were amazing, though sadly the rain had made a lot of the blooms a bit waterlogged and droopy. It was a shame we ran out of time to see more of Washington Park.

It was time to find some lunch as we weren't sure what time BA would feed us that evening, so without any sign of the shuttle bus back down we walked back down, past the very pretty park reservoir, felt a bit lost but followed our noses and ended up back where we'd started. It wasn't far to walk into Nob Hill so we ended up back at Papa Haydn where we both had burgers (our first in north America!) and Pinot Noir.

Uber back to the apartment, picked up bags, back into city with same driver whose English was very poor but he seemed to understand what we wanted to do, which was to be dropped off at Pioneer Square to get the cheapy cheap tram to the airport - very easy journey but annoyingly got caught yet again in Security with something suspicious in my carry-on which wasn't. We were well in time so spent our remaining dollars in a bar on some more of that nice Oregon wine - well, we wanted to be sure that we slept.

Flight was more or less on time just before 8pm Pacific time - BA now flies direct from Portland to Heathrow, which was news to a lot of people, but it's only 9 hours as opposed to around 15 when you have to have a stopover. We were pleased that our cunning check-in online plan to have a spare seat between us worked out, we were fed quite well, and I did manage to sleep a bit but watched a fair amount of stuff including a very weird semi-horror film called Sister Midnight. It's very sweary, in Hindi but the dialogue is very sparse so the subtitles don't get in the way and I found it quite compulsive viewing, even with a somewhat inconclusive ending - it starts out with the aftermath of a wedding, but romcom it's not!

Back to Blighty and wind and rain. Home about 4pm (TG for the Elizabeth line!) and toughed out the reasonably brain-fogging jet lag until 10pm with laundry and general sorting my life out. Great trip, but glad to be home and in my own bed - even if for at least four nights I kept waking up "Where am I? Where's the bathroom?" Six different beds in three weeks does that to a girl....

Some random thoughts. 

Wine from the Canadian/American north west coast is very good indeed if like it dry, which I do, though prices ranged widely in bars and restaurants, and glass sizes!

Even neighbourhood supermarkets have amazing ranges and choices of food - but how much goes to waste, and do they have systems for donating to food banks and the homeless? Didn't see any in action.

North American tipping customs and adding on sales tax at checkout both suck. Alcohol tax on top in Vancouver especially sucks!

Public loos were very clean to use but ALL the cubicle doors had gaps top and bottom so if it's privacy you're after, forget it. (Though they're big enough to dance in, if you're so inclined)

North west coast Americans we met seem to think Trump is an eejit too. Everyone was very nice to us when they heard we were from UK and we were thanked numerous times for visiting, especially in the US.

We shouldn't take our free museums and galleries for granted. Or our mainly free health service, even if we have to wait a while.

Pedestrians are second-class citizens; though our Portland guide did say to us "you can absolutely jaywalk here if you want to", they tend not to in Vancouver or Seattle. Petrol is ridiculously cheap, hence very few electric cars around.

Travelling by train really is the most civilised mode of transport - but no surprises there!

My piddling little camera couldn't do justice to the magnificence of the Rockies - but the images will be etched on my heart for ever. 

Day trippers, not tippers

 

Tuesday 3 June 2025

Another untypically (or so we're told) sunny day, so we decided to take a sightseeing tour outside the city along the Columbia River Gorge. (Had we been in Portland for longer, we would have gone to the coast, but it was the kind of trip difficult to achieve by public transport in a day. Next time, if there is one.)

We took the bus back to Nob Hill to visit another branch of the St Honore, the lovely French bakery - my cafe au lait there was the best coffee I had in north America to be honest! We decided against paying $7 to enter the Peculiarium emporium of weird objects, which had looked like fun on the website but in acuality was a bit tired and tatty and had a grumpy owner, who seemed annoyed by us arriving at opening time because he wasn't already there to open up. So we had a wander in the city before a great value light Italian lunch at Pastini, as it was near the pick-up point for the tour. We were a mercifully small group, though one silly man in front of us was trying to video most of the journey through the windscreen on his phone with the driver's head and the passenger headrest in front in the way. We wouldn't have minded but he complained that it was a difficult task with the coach constantly moving...

The half-day tour cost over $90 each, so let's say we had reasonably high expectations. The driver of the van/guide was a hippy called Daniel (he said "alrighty" a lot, which grated a bit after a while), and during the trip he supplied quite a lot of useful information about Portland's history, geology and environment as we drove along the historic highway 30 which was actually built to enable tourism in the region. Aside from Mt Hood, Portland nestles beneath Mt St Helen's, an active volcano that last erupted in 1980 but according to Daniel won't do so again during his lifetime (bet there were a few Sicilians saying that about Etna...) 

Portland was largely populated by settlers from the Oregon Trail 1839 - 1869, and those who didn't make it as far at the Yukon during the Gold Rush. Many Irish and Chinese itinerant immigrants became forced labour on the railways via the notorious Shanghai Tunnels which formed the city's underworld (our equivalent would be press-ganged I guess), and there was a good deal of anti-Chinese feeling - but the aforementioned Henry Pittock employed Chinese domestic staff and his newspaper came out against the haters.

Anyhoo, a more enlightened Portland also appointed the first female chief of police, Lola Baldwin, but by all accounts she wasn't a barrel of laughs (dancing inevitably led young women into debauchery - who knew?) and ushered in prohibition in 1914. 

Our first quick stop on the Recreational Reserve of 14000 acres created in 1915 was Vista House, a monument on a promontory and currently under refurbishment, but erected in 1918 at a viewpoint with the Portland Basin to the west and Washington state to the east. It was certainly a camera-worthy scenic view. We then moved on to a number of waterfalls, driving along through forests of vine maple trees and Douglas firs (I saw a bust of Mr Douglas somewhere this trip, but damned if I can remember where). 

All waterfalls are pretty. These are no exception; though not Niagara or Gulfloss-like in their scale, they're surrounded by beautiful wooded areas and gush from volcanic basalt cliffs. The first we saw was Latourell Falls, followed by Shepherd's Dell (there was a Shepherd family, but not a sheep in sight). 

Wahkeena (translates as "most beautiful") Falls were at a viewpoint and a cross section of trails created by logger and philanthropist Simon Benson, but the most commercialised falls are the Multnomah which are the highest (600 feet+ over two different drops) and boast a large car park off the highway, gift shop, visitor centre, snack bar and loos. 

This was our final stop and it had been a very pleasant afternoon with much beauty to behold. However, Daniel then made it awkward when on the final half mile back into the city he brough up the subject of tips. He said that he and his colleagues (who presumably run the company between them, pay themselves and share the profits) are competing for the highest number of five-star reviews, and in order to continue doing a job that he loves, he needs tips. Lucy and I had agreen that unless the tour was exceptional, we wouldn't tip as it was pretty expensive in the first place at over $90 a head for an afternoon. As Lucy is also a tour guide, she's a pretty good judge of what's fair, and we'd had no hesitation in tipping the two walking guides we'd had in Seattle and Portland. 

We got off the bus, and Daniel basically demanded a tip by calling after us that he had a card reader if we didn't have cash to give him. His reaction when I politely declined to tip due to the cost of the tour and Lucy promised a good review was barely short of a snarl - and it set me against giving him a tip even more! 

We stretched our legs by walking to a Peruvian restaurant called Andina which had featured in a guide to Portland. The food was expensive but very good. We whiled away the time until the BA check-in opened 24 hours ahead of our flight, and then got an Uber back to the apartment with a driver who just grunted. He wasn't getting a tip either. 

Portlandian pedestrian perils

 

Monday 2 June 2025

After the exertions of the previous day, capped by nearly ending up wandering the NW Portland Forest Park at nightfall, I was in no rush to get out early, plus Lucy had booked a swim and foot massage across town that morning. After an amount of indecision and faffing about, I set off to meet her via two buses accompanied by long waits, only to discover that I'd been misinformed on her finishing time.

Rather than hang around any further, it was a gloriously sunny day so I decided to venture back across town to see the Pittock Mansion which is at the edge of said Forest Park and was built just over 100 years ago by (I suppose) self-made millionaire Henry Pittock. Born in London, Pittock grew up in Pittsburgh PA and headed west on the Oregon Trail at the age of 19 to seek his fortune. He found work as a typesetter on The Oregonian daily newspaper, and having been given shares in return for back wages, he worked his way up to own the paper and built a financial empire by canny investments, as well as being an outdoorsy type, one of the first group to climb nearby 11000' Mt Hood. 

He married fellow Oregon Trailer Georgiana, who had several children with him and became founder and fundraiser for a number of charities and cultural orgnaisations; together they planned and built their dream home with its panoramic hilltop views over the growing city. 

The house isn't especially large - only five full bedrooms for example -  but it's remarkable for its kind of three-cornered shape and the fact that it included an amount of what would be deemed as new gadgetry - a bit like a smart home would be today. For example, it had a new-fangled vacuum cleaner system in the skirting boards, the latest refrigeration and telephony, and the most up to date shower fittings, as above. Henry employed the best architects and builders money could buy to realise his vision.

The family moved in in 1914 but sadly Henry and Georgiana only survived a further four years. (Georgiana had already had a stroke leaving her with limited mobility, so Henry had an elevator put in. It also appeared that the white plague had carried off a few other members of the family.) The house passed down the family but had a relatively short life as their home, being put up for sale in 1958 and then being made derelict by damage caused by the Columbus Day storm in 1962. Its restoration to a museum in 1965 was the result of dedicated and skilled volunteers and some money from the city.  

It's a really interesting family home, and includes the cutest lodge lived in by Scottish chauffeur and general factotum James Skeene and his family from 1919 - 1958. 

But in case you ever decide to visit, be warned that it's a bit of a labour of love to get there without a car. The no.20 bus took me to the main road less than a mile from the house, but I then had to schlep up a fairly steep and zig zaggy hill along the road with no footpath until I got on to the Pittock estate. The walk is pretty, surrounded by beautiful sun-dappled woodland, but I had to hope that drivers didn't take the bends too fast or I would be roadkill. 

Walking back downhill was less daunting, but then I had to play chicken crossing the main road to the bus stop and wait in a tiny clearing with no crash barrier, with a 20' sheer drop behind me in the forest as an escape route should anyone (which was everyone) not stick to the 35mph speed limit and veer off the road. I was very glad to see the bus.

Fortunately said bus took me close to Nob Hill where I met Lucy having a glass of wine at Papa Haydn, a restaurant with a counter fridge full of huge cakes as its centrepiece. We had identified the street as an area for retail therapy together with a number of eateries, so after some browsing and a few small purchases, we checked out the restaurants, discovering that most were Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican or standard sandwich/burger fare; one we liked the look of was French, but also hideously expensive and quite possibly a bit pretentious. We finally settled on the Fireside restaurant and had some nice food from a mixed bill of fare, friendly service and wine.

At this point, and at risk of teaching an elderly relative to suck eggs (I coincidentally bought a card game at the Pittock shop which reveals the origins of weird phrases like that - am keen to find out!), if you visit the US one of the great things about Portland is that the price you see is the price you pay - no sales tax added on after the fact. However, the weird custom about tipping (if you're not given the opportunity to add it via the card reader) is that they take your card away to charge you for food, and then bring you a receipt and you then write the amount of tip on it and sign, (you do get a copy) which is a promise to pay it - you just have to hope they don't add a 1 at the beginning or a 0 at the end.....

Sunday strolling around sunny Portland

 

Sunday 1 June 2025

We had an early start in order to meet for a walking tour to discover Portland - always a good orientation - and to our surprise we were the guide's only clients, so we had a super discursive tour where we could ask lots of questions and he could take us off the usual tour route to show us bonus interesting locations. Leo was a really nice anti-Trump guy despite the man bun and the slight whiff of BO, and we learned a lot about the city. Plus he took us to a really good French-style bakery called St Honore to get coffee before we started.

Some architectural stuff. Portland is notable for its relatively short blocks - this was a wheeze by the city's planners in order to sell more valuable corner properties. Its nickname is Stumptown, after the number of stumps left after trees werre felled to make way for buildings, and the wide sidewalks were created in order to allow ladies wearing hooped skirts to promenade without incident. In the late 1960s, the Clear Vistas initiative capped the height of buildings (there are far fewer skyscrapers than say Seattle) and deemed that people should be able to have an uninterrupted view of five blocks in any direction. This is helped by many of the buildings having white terracotta fascias, though Portland also has a lot of buildings featuring decorative cast iron mouldings (second only to NYC), which apparently you could buy easily and cheaply by mail order in the early years of the last century when much of the city was developed. Some of the theatre/cinema buildings are especially attractive, with lots of neon!

One of the most beautiful buildings we visited was the Meier & Frank building - apart from the Muji shop on the ground floor, it's also home to the lovely Nines Hotel. 

Inside, there was some fantastic art, some of it the result of a public art initiative that dictates that for every new development, 1% of costs should be devoted to including public art. The hotel has some cracking pieces, and it also has a lovely rooftop fusion restaurant called Departure, where we ended up eating later that day - pricey, but excellent.

Currently much of the public art in the city is inspired by the annual Rose Festival (it's known as the Rose City). This annual celebration of the fragrant one came about when Portland's kind of First Lady (afraid I forgot to write down her name) set about saving rose varieties via cuttings from Europe, which may otherwise have been extinguished by trench warfare in WW1.

Portland came to prominence as one of the end points of the Oregon Trail, when settlers from the east sought pastures new (literally, land). A fabulous mural on the side of the Historical Society features two explorers who came from St Louis Missouri (to take advantage of something called the Louisianna Purchase) and the young native American woman they recruited as their translator and guide. Sacajewa married York, their black general factotum, and became the first woman in the state of Oregon to vote in 1808. (They're beneath their white masters in the mural below.)

Another prominent woman is Portlandia, who features on the Portland emblem and is the queen of commerce. There's a huge, magnificent modern sculpture of her atop the entrance to the city's administration building. The sculptor, Raymond Kaskey, based her on his wife who was a pro tennis player, and doesn't allow images of her to be reproduced for commercial purposes as he has the copyright - even though public money made her. She's the second largest copper repousse statue in the US, after the Statue of Liberty, and is waxed annually. This makes her bird dropping and weather proof!

Initially Portland contained 10 men to every woman. This made women especially vulnerable to unwanted male attentions in public, so Chapman Park was created as a women-only public space at that time, and even the gingko trees encircling it are the female of the species. There are a number of squares in the city known as parks (though Director park actually doesn't have a single blade of grass present) and Pioneer Square right in the centre is an amphitheatre-style hub for food carts, and is a place where people can meet and hang out, play Connect4 or table tennis, or listen to music. 

It's also a place where homeless people congregate, though not in large groups. As in Seattle, we were rather distressed by the numbers of poor souls wandering around with their entire lives in shopping trolleys, or shouting at no-one in particular as they staggered down the street. Leo assured us that support programmes had been set up, but with mental health and dependency systems being underfunded and too little, too late, the battle was being lost. Certainly there was no evidence of a Streetlink presence. Again, we weren't hassled and there were very few people begging for change, but I have to say that what we saw in the US and to some extent in Vancouver was far worse than in the UK.

After parting company with Leo, we had an iced coffee in a place that had a Halloween vibe, then went to the Art Museum which features a restored version of Monet's Water Lilies and had a lovely exhibtion of Japanese prints and ceramics (lots of Japanese shops and eateries in the city). It's in the process of expanding to include a Rothko wing as the city seems to be claiming him as its own as he lived in Portland for 10 years after his family emigrated there from Latvia and before moving to NYC. It also had an exhibition of psychedelic posters from the 60s and 70s which weren't really to our taste as the style is very repetitive and most of them featured idealised and sexualised images of women.

We then headed to the small but perfectly-formed Chinese garden which is a little oasis of tranquility. We got separated initially as Lucy got straight on to a tram (called a light rail there!) which she rightly believed to be going where we needed, and in my hesitation the doors shut so I had to catch her up. 

We moved on to the Portland Wine Bar where we enjoyed sampling more Willamette region wines, and got chatting to some friendly locals (one of them had visited friends in Crystal Palace more than once - of course!) who recommended Departure as a place to eat, and there we went to enjoy a brilliant view, more delicious wine and for me, some very tasty halibut.

We had booked to see the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Portland Centre Stage in the Armory building. It was a nice space and the seats in the balcony were fine at $25, but the director had obviously been inspired by the NT production of the show last year and decided to camp it up to the max. The set and costumes were lovely, but it was as subtle as a flying mallet and just a bit too hysterical and screechy. Lucy snuck out early and after a few nod-off moments I decided to do the same at the interval- it had been a long day. My self-congratulation at finding the bus stop was somewhat marred by Mr Google giving me the long way walk home on alighting (I had lost GPS) and ending up a bit lost in the dusk - thankfully I only took one wrong turn, and the area we were staying felt very safe so I didn't panic. The pic below is the bus which has a glowing red interior at nightime - weird.

I was also delighted to be asked for directions by two young guys in a car while waiting for the bus, and on apologising for being a visitor so not having a scooby, they asked where I was from and on replying London, the retort was "that's the greatest city in the world, but welcome to Portland!" 

Onwards to Oregon

 

Saturday 31 May 2025

A sunny (sadly it didn't stay that way) farewell to Seattle started with an Uber trip to the very pretty Pacific Central Statiion to catch the 0955 Amtrak Cascades to Portland. 

It was one of those trains where you get on via a little plastic stool like the kind you use to help your kids use the washbasin (because the platforms and the train steps don't work together - someone should really have been sacked for that), lug your suitcase up several steps, stash it on a big shelf so it's completely out of sight and then go upstairs to your seat which is allocated to you with a piece of paper handwritten by the conductor and stuck on the overhead rack - no digital reserved signs here. The seats were reclinable, comfortable and with loads of legroom, there was a decent snack bar and a nice coach with a long "viewing window" (including its own tour guide), but the train was quite scruffy with very tiny loos and far from smooth - really rickety at speed. The conductor/guards are really helpful though, and lots of information comes clearly over the tannoy. With a name like Cascades, I'd expected some rather lovely scenery, but was informed that didn't really happen until California (the train was ending up in LA) - shame. 

We arrived in Portland early around 1.45pm, again at a very attractive station, and ordered an Uber to take us to the apartment as public transport looked a bit challenging. Have to confess my heart sank a bit - it really wasn't very pretty around the station and it all looked rather grimy and gritty, not in an interesting way. Once we got closer to the apartment, the area was very suburban, leafy and hilly, and it appeared to be a long way from anywhere useful for anyone on foot. Our Air BnB was actually the basement "granny flat" of a house at the end of a cul de sac - minimally furnished, though with a well-equipped if slightly strangely-arranged kitchen and very poor sound insulation - although the area is very quiet, the family living above is surely a herd of small elephants.

We soon discovered we were nearly 15 minutes' walk from the nearest bus stop (uphill on the way home!), which was a bit unfortunate as we had already downloaded and charged up Hop transit passes (as a senior, mine was labelled "Honored Citizen"!) We wanted to catch the Saturday market before it closed, so after a quick unpack we got another Uber into town - which took us back towards the station on the same depressing route, not helped by the fact that the Seattle sunshine had been replaced by dull grey clouds. The market wasn't too busy, and was populated by many "alternative" Portlandites with varying vibrant hair colours, large quantities of tattoos and piercings, selling stuff like crystals, dream catchers, donuts, dangly jewellery and small artworks - and a fair amount of old toot. Each to their own, but not really our thing. ("Keep Portland weird" is a prominent bit of graffiti around here.)

We walked on beyond and wandered around the Pearl District for a while, browsed in a few shops and then settled on Jake's Famous Crawfish restaurant for an early dinner (I had crab and asparaus dip, chocolate mousse and a couple of glasses of local Pinot Gris from the Willamette - rhymes with Dammit - Valley, which I've come to enjoy here). We did a quick shop in WholeFoods for some supplies, found the no.15 bus stop, turned down a request for monetary help from a clean and otherwise normal-looking junkie (who blessed me despite my refusal), and then after a short bus journey, found our way back to the apartment - sadly uphill in the dusk - for some wine and TV. 

Finally on Friday

 Friday 30 May 2025

We were lucky to have yet another dry and sunny day in Seattle, having been warned that we'd probably need cagoules on standby to cope with the frequent drizzle.

The guide book had suggested that Capitol Hill was a hip and happening high street, so we caught the bus from outside the apartment (so very handy) and took a walk up and then back down Broadway - it didn't really live up to the hype, unless we were looking in the wrong places. We had good coffee and croissants at a popular bakery called The French Guys, took a stroll through the Cal Anderson park, found the Jimi Hendrix statue (which we thought would have been better placed in the park rather than on the side of the street) and had a browse in the enormous Elliott Bay bookshop.

At lunchtime Lucy popped back to the apartment and I went to the Olympic Sculpture Park which is near the waterfront. I had a sandwich (a kind of avocado dog, which was tasty though as always dripping with too much dressing) and took in the view. The park is quite small and there's only a handful of sculptures, but it's a lovely location.

I walked to the Chihuly Garden to meet Lucy - it's right beside the famous Space Needle (see the opener to any episode of Frasier...)

We had booked a CityPass that got us into the Aquarium, the Chihuly and the Space Needle at a discount, though it was still $102 each. The Chihuly glass however, was worth that alone - one of my holiday highlights. My camera battery failed so I took these photos on my phone - the sculptures are placed inside and out, and it was good to watch some videos showing Dale Chihuly (now 84 and still active, and a bit of a local hero as he's from Tacoma just down the road from Seattle) at work with his team in Jerusalem, Venice and Finland. Having lost his sight in one eye and injuring his shoulder many years ago, he designs his pieces and supervises their production, but only does a minimal amount of the blowing himself. The advantage of this is clear in terms of the eclectic creativity of the pieces; the shapes, colours and scale of them is just incredible.

We had a glass of wine in the bar there before going up 47 floors to the observation deck in the Space Needle lift. Of course in its time (1962) it would have blown everyone's minds, though it seems quite ordinary by today's standards as buildings have got higher and higher! Still spectacular views though, but an eye-wateringly expensive experience if you choose to sit and enjoy the vista with a drink and some food on the revolving area though - $35 each before you even buy anything - and for some obscure reason the static Loupe lounge there closes during the summer months.

Our dinner was rather less pricey - we decided to try a place called Some Random Bar which was en route back to the apartment. It was a noisy Friday night kind of place but I had a refreshing Paloma, some very good seared tuna and a nice glass of wine (good Washington State wines here, big variations in price) before we headed back to pack for the final leg the next day, back on the Amtrak Cascades train (it goes all the way overnight to LA) to Portland, Oregon (not to be confused with Portland, Maine, which apparently was named first!)