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.....