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| Portland viewed from the Washington Park |
I was chatting with a mate the
other day about his travels and we came across an interesting point in that
there are places you just love without any real reason behind the fondness.
Most of the time you fall in love with a place because of the people you meet,
or the things you do or see, but some places you like just because you like it.
There is no real rhyme or reason to it, it’s just that.
There have been a few of these
places so far on our travels, Tallinn and Riga come to mind, but they are few
and far between and none more so than Portland.
We didn’t do anything in
particular that was great, but we had one of the best weekends of our trip to
date. Yes we were in town for the Oregon Brewers Festival, and although it was
good it wasn’t anything I would recommend to others to get involved in. It
sounds tastier than it was – over 100 craft breweries putting their reputations
on the line in America’s Mecca of craft brewing (yeah I had you at 100
breweries) but we found we had a better time at the plethora of local
breweries.
Sampling a few of Portland's finest, with a few of Perth's finest
I should point out that we spent
the weekend in Portland with some good friends and it may have just been that Nic
and I were so excited to talk to people other than ourselves, that anywhere
would have given us the same vibe but I think Portland has something to it that
you just can’t put your finger on.
For starters there is Portland’s
slogan, albeit I don’t think the locals are too fond of it, ‘Keep Portland
Weird’ but maybe it is that. We had heard rumours of Portland’s weirdness but
we actually got to see one of its more eccentric characters in the flesh, and
it seemed we were the only ones to find this even slightly out of the ordinary.
I ask you, would a man riding a unicycle down one of the main streets of town
wearing a Darth Vader mask pique your curiosity? What if that said guy was
doing just this whilst playing the bagpipes?
Shit, I nearly fell over, but most
people didn’t even raise an eyebrow. In fact I think they probably thought I
was the weird one chasing the guy down the road trying to get a photo of him!
Apparently he is somewhat of a regular sight, often changing his instruments
and costumes (a flute and a tutu have been noted), but always keeping his mode
of transport the same. I suppose the unicycle would be one of the only people
carriers around where you always have your hands free!
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| The myth? |
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| The legend! |
There are the number of eclectic
suburbs to wander through, and the even more numerous breweries to quench your
thirst at, but if someone asked me whether Portland is worth going to I would
give them a resounding yes, but if they pressed further as to what to do in
Portland I really wouldn’t be able to give much more of an answer than ‘grab
some mates and enjoy it!’
To be honest we may have enjoyed
Portland so much because we spent a fair amount of the weekend just chilling
out with some good friends, drinking delicious beers and talking a fair amount
of shite (three of my favourite things), which was a fair change from the
previous 8 weeks of practically being on the move every waking moment. But
Portland has an allure to it that has to be experienced rather than read about.
