Over the weekend (Saturday in particular) I traveled across the river into Oregon to Portland for an excursion to the Saturday Market. To begin with: I can still not believe that they hold this event every Saturday. To begin describing what it looks like: Picture a street festival, with its many food vendors, craft shops, and entertainment acts. Now multiply that by an entire park and two side streets. Then schedule that for every Saturday. Woah. That's a lot of festival. But maybe I should back up for when I left:
I drove my car with a friend to the Vancouver downtown, and began the process of validating an all day/all zone pass. The deal for this was it needed to be validated in Vancouver, because... Well the pass was supposed to be for downtown Vancouver. Well I can get to downtown Vancouver pretty well by my own bus pass. What I was after was the "All-Zone" pass so I could use the MAX line in Portland. So I parked my car, and we ran out to catch the next bus. When on the bus, we validated it for an all day all zone pass. We rode for about two blocks then got off at the next stop. Yeah, kind of silly, but it got the pass validated for that day.
We then proceeded back to my car, and drove and parked in Northwest Portland in a residential neighborhood. From there we took the Yellow Line MAX into town, ultimate destination: The Saturday Market. Here is where things get tricky.
When we arrived in Northwest Portland and parked my car, I saw many old single family homes. There were some lawns that haven't been mowed for a while, and some boarded up houses. The main drag, where the MAX line was, had a couple of seedy looking businesses with the rest of the buildings being boarded up. It was kind of dirty, and some trash could be seen in some corners.
As soon as we boarded the packed MAX line, the train took off, and within 3 minutes the scenery changed. All of a sudden there were new posh apartment buildings, clean streets, and a nice green pathway for bikes and roads with no potholes. This lead to the Rose Quarter stadium, and the "gateway" to downtown across one of the many bridges spanning the Willamette River. We transferred stations, and the MAX crossed the river, giving a very good view of the downtown.
Downtown was a mixture of older buildings (but not old by east coast standards) and new skyscraper/hi-rises. The general feel of a developing downtown area. The Saturday Market was filled to the brim with food vendors, craft vendors, workshops, and music. It was like a yearly festival, that apparently happens every Saturday. The downtown area was such a mismatch of different cultures and feelings. It was truly where it seemed like the whole city came together in one huge mesh.
After the downtown excursion I traveled to Northeast Portland, around Alberta Street. Driving past the houses we came to the main drag... Wait. There was a main drag? There were cute independent shops and small grocery stores, with the basic necessities of life in non-chain mall stores. This seemed like it should be its own separate small city, and not incorporated with Portland, but the kind that people would drive to and from to get to Portland everyday, with some local flavor mixed in. But that position is reserved for Vancouver which is large and has the chain stores to accommodate the many people who live here.
Needless to say, the area, and the ice cream shop we went to (The Salt & Straw) had many strange flavors. One ice cream was olive oil flavored, and another was sea urchin and mint. There was also PB&J flavored ice cream, but what I got was the shaved woodblock chocolate with the bourbon & coffee flavor. The woodblock consisted of a chocolaty malt with shavings of dark chocolate and smoked sea salt, giving it a smokey flavor. Combined with the coffee and bourbon it was a Northwest timber flavor combined with the elegance of a strange mix of Southern and European flavor.
What a beautiful country we live in. One could spend a lifetime simply trying to get to know one region of this place.
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