Portland, the "City of Microbrews"
10 Nov 2005

Arriving in Portland and the Northwest bought back memories of a grunge era. Day and night it rained in Portland during our trip. I quickly realized what brought the heavy punk/rock fusion of the 90s was clearly the effect of the weather on these people. Cacti would not do well in Portland. Greg and I bundled up, donned the rain jackets and made the best of the weather. The night we arrived we searched for nearby restaurants and hit the jackpot with a brewpub 2 miles away. We have made a habit of stopping at a brewpub nearly every week to taste test their fine selections. The bonus was the food! It slowly dawned on us that this was not a quiet place. As we savored our food we noticed lots of little people, not dwarfs, but children! Tons of them. In fact we were the ONLY table without children. I had to do a double take, then I asked Greg "This isn't Chuck-E-Cheese is it? We ARE at a brewpub, are we not?" He was just as surprised as me. Little people running around everywhere. The pub even had a play area near the glass that overlooked the coppertanks. It was nearly 10pm on a thursday night.

The undeniable major difference between the Northwest and Texas is that it's green here. Portland is one of those cities where you are more likely to find trees than concrete. The city is surprisingly vibrant with nature. As Greg and I arrived he joked that it's the "City of Bridges." Ignorant of the sarcasm I replied "really?!" Bridges can be found in every direction, Portland boasts such a variety of unique bridges that it's our opinion that it SHOULD be renamed such.

Something else that Portland has a startling amount of is Brewpubs/Microbreweries. I was thrilled when we found a list and map to do your own brewpub crawl. We started immediately. We hit "Rock Bottom", "Laurelwood", and "Rogue" and attempted another 4 or 5 only to find that they don't open until after 4pm! We rounded out the day by hitting another Portland favorite the "Portland City Grill" on the 30th floor of a pink glass skyscraper. To our astonishment there was not even one table available when we arrived at 4:20pm. We quickly grabbed the last two seats and started eyeballing people about to leave. We watched the sun fade behind the nearby mountain, barely breaking through the fog and rain before it set. One hour later and up to our eyeballs with alcohol we left without even getting a table. We took the bus down to the trendy old part of town to watch a movie in an old theater (which was also owned by a brewpub.)

The next day before leaving town we drove to Multnomah Falls. Some would know this place if they watched the David Lynch TV series "Twin Peaks." The trees were pink and yellow, green and orange, every color of the rainbow. The waterfall splashed down so hard that even without the rain coming down we were drenched upon return to the car. Overall Portland gets two thumbs up.