Day 2 – “They must be all stoned”

Outside our Airbnb

We had a late start. Our destination was downtown Portland. We are in the North East quadrant. The options for us were to take either the light rail or a bus. We chose to walk to the MAX line and take the train as it was about 15 minute walk. It was nice day, fine and it turned out to be reasonably warm.

The train took us directly to downtown and then it was a quick walk to our first destination the Portland Saturday Market which is actually held over two days and in park by the waterfront. On the way we passed lots of homeless people, some who had set up tents on the footpath. It was a very sad sight. Later that day we saw a person who was washing his clothes in a fountain and hanging them out to dry. Apparently it is a major problem in Portland as it is growing fast and there are not enough affordable housing places for those who need it.

The market was quite expansive and was selling all sorts of crafts and of course food.

One small section of the market

Bev clearly wanted to spend time browsing so I made a suggestion that I sit down somewhere and she could spend as much time as she wanted without me beside sighing every now and again. She thought that a marvellous idea. I found a nice place by a water feature to watch the goings on. The nice part was watching young children in the water getting quite wet. Less enjoyable was a guy haranguing the people there to put their faith in God. There was nothing inspiring about it and after a while security came along to ask him to move along whereupon he started telling us about his first amendment rights.

The uninspiring evangelist

An hour later Bev rescued me from the jazz I was listening to and took me to hear some more that was played by a couple, one of whom clearly had had a few issues and now had found another way to have meaning in her life. She was a very good singer in the Billie Holiday style. An almost smoky voice. Her fellow musician was a very talented cellist.

We then wandered the streets towards the Pearl district, another recommendation. Just as we got there we by chance came across Powells New and Used books. It was huge, taking up a city block and there were two floors of books. Who said books are going out of fashion. There were lots of people in shop and they were browsing and buying, some with a shopping basket full of books. I even bought one on the wines of Oregon (second hand of course).

Jazz in one part of the market

We had intended to spend half an hour there but it was an hour later that we found each other. Both of us could have spent more time browsing as there was so much to see.

These two were very good

We wandered a little further and as it was getting late and about time to got back to our apartment we decided to stop for a beer from a brewery as it is one of those things that Portland is known for. As we were making our way back to the train we found a brewery and stopped and had a nice drop. It was good to get off our feet. By the time we got to the train it was getting late so we decided to go to a restaurant called Garagiste. It is associated with a French wine maker.

The food was homely. Bev had a pork roast and I had bratwurst. The highlight of the meal was the wine we had with it, a Zinfandel 2014 which was ready to drink, very fruity without being sweet which went well with the food.

Throughout the day Bev had commented that "they must be all stoned". There were a number of people who did look that way and not surprising since marijuana is legal in Oregon. We came across several dispensaries and even found a little booklet devoted to the the weed in our apartment. I think the other reason was that people were genuinely quite relaxed for the most part.