Portlandia.

Seattle was definitely interesting...but I'd forgotten how much the rain can put a dampener on everything. Ha.

 

And so we left Seattle, Portland-bound...but not without one last cuppa!

 

Driving South on the I-5...

 

 

Portland is a strange city as it's spread over the Willamette River, and divided into East and West accordingly. This means that there are quite a few bridges to take you from one side to the other. It's not called the City of Bridges for no reason!

 

 

From the bus we trudged to the hostel, the HI Northwest Portland. After staying at the City Hostel which was honestly brilliant, anything would be a step down unfortunately - this is just a standard hostel!

 

The Northwest district itself is really nice, full of Victorian houses - if a little bit far from downtown. Then again, Portland is a pretty compact city, so nothing is too far away - and downtown public transport is free, bonus!

 

 

 

We also arrived just in time for dinner - so we headed out for a burrito from Cha Cha Cha, a Mexican place in the nearby Pearl District...

 

 

And then made a little trip to one of Portland's most famous food joints - Voodoo Doughnut.

 

 

 

They have all kinds of weird and wonderful flavoured doughnuts, from Captain Crunch, topped with the multi-coloured (and no doubt e-number-filled) breakfast cereal, to the Bacon Maple (yes, the name says it all).

 

 

Josh went for the classic Voodoo Doll, complete with oozing blood (jam, of course) whilst I was pretty cautious (read:boring) and went for the Blueberry Cake.

 

 

 

I had a feeling this wouldn't be our only visit to Voodoo, so the next time I was to a bit more adventurous and went for the Maple Bar - Josh topped me by getting the Bacon Maple!

 

 

And so we awoke after a freezing night (as I was expecting from staying in a hostel - City Hostel Seattle, you lulled me into a false sense of security!) ready to see what Portland had to offer.

It's known as a very cool city, and we wanted to find out why! We spent all of the morning wandering around the city's downtown streets. Without any skyscrapers, Portland feels a lot like an English city - think Leeds or Newcastle.

 

The Portland Building, and Portlandia.

 

To shelter from the rain, we headed to the Portland Art Museum. Their special exhibition is currently Greek and Roman art - on loan from the British Museum!
Of the modern art, I always like to see the Van Goghs and Monets, and the photography exhibition was pretty good too.

 

 

Once the weather brightened up, we were just in time to check out something unique to Portland - food carts! They're becoming so popular in Portland with the lunchtime rush that the carts congregated in 'pods', which are scattered across downtown. Though it makes them easy to find, it also makes it very difficult to decide what to try!

 

I went for a Banh Mi, which is a Vietnamese baguette, with tofu, carrots, beansprouts, coriander and soy sauce. It was incredibly fresh, and for under $4 you can't really go wrong!

 

Afterwards we headed to another Portland institution - Stumptown Coffee, where we warmed up with a Chai Latte and Gingerbread muffin.

 

 

To round the night off, we went to the cinema downtown to see The Perks of Being a Wallflower - great film!