Portland - What A Day

February 4, 2009 - Today we walked Portland. The city is very manageable and we covered most, if not all, of downtown. The Willamette River runs through the city bisecting the east and west part of downtown. From our walk we can safely say the west side of the city is the more interesting/vibrant part of downtown. We were very lucky in with the weather today with a beautiful sunny and 60 degree day. Our hotel is right downtown and made everything very accessible. To start off the day we walked through Old Town (Chinatown) to the Chinese Gardens. The city formed a public/private partnership with local oil & gas firm converting a city block parking lot into a traditional walled Chinese garden. The results were beautiful and definitely worth visiting on a nice day. Venti, I am posting most of these pictures for you so I hope you enjoy.

After the garden we walked down the river to the university district (Portland State) and then walked back up through the financial district. As I said Portland is a very manageable city and can been seen in a day. Here are a few more pictures of some of the better buildings we passed throughout the day. All in all the city is decent. Our advice would be to have something specific to do when you come to Portland.

Last picture for the night. Most of the city electric transformers are covered with this metal cover, I thought it was pretty cool.

Hope all are well.