One of the first big cities I traveled to in America outside of Pennsylvania state was Portland, Oregon. With a population of 600,000 in the city, you see fewer people there than in a city like New York or Philadelphia. It's a unique place with its extraordinary cleanliness and greenery right from outside of the airport. It's got these cool Light Rails connecting the rest of the city like downtown and stuff to the Airport and other important places. It's the only public transport we used to get around in those few days we were there. Portland's apparently like other west coast cities especially SFO, I've heard. Maybe it's sort of a miniature SFO, only much lower in its coolness quotient because San Francisco is San Francisco. Anyway, it's a city that has still retained so much of the hippie-culture from the 1970s. You find people randomly sitting together on the pavements of a busy road, from seemingly diverse places but coming together having one significant element in common, their love for music. Loose hair let down, sometimes with braids and sometimes without, colourful apparel, smoking secretly and an instrument of some kind in their hands. Even in downtown Portland you find cyclists finding their way hurriedly, getting from one place to another. Bicycle is a 'normal' mode of transportation in Portland. Portland also has these bizarre graffitis asking everyone to 'Keep Portland Weird'.
This city is located on the banks of the Willamette River which runs for about 187 miles entirely in Portland. So having this peaceful river by its side, gives this uniquely gorgeous city even more character. You find walkers/runners in the evenings with or without their dogs breathing in fresh air from the vast open spaces in and around the banks. Portland is surprisingly known as the 'City of Roses'. Why I find it surprising is because you see a lot of trees around in the city but not necessarily trees with flowers.
Portland also has this Lan Su Chinese Garden right in the middle of downtown Portland. Okay, not quite EXACTLY middle but you get the drift right. It's a tranquil place with little waterfalls here and there giving the soothing sound of flowing water. It's a pretty huge property spanning atleast 40,000 square feet with the background of skyscrapers. You feel all zen-like inside and it could quite be the meditation home you rightfully need in the midst of all the corporate insanity.
Portland also has what I think might be the largest and most skillfully designed book store. It's sectioned based on colours; each colour representing a particular genre of books you'd find. It feels like an overwhelming maze at first, but with the direction map in hand and a few minutes into the store, your literary senses pull you through and get you where you wanna be.
Like every large city in the US, there has to be atleast one whacky thing that made it so big it features on the 'top 10 things to do/see'. And for Portland, it is doughnuts.
Yup! This place called 'Voodoo Doughnuts' is started by two old time friends; one with great business acumen and the other with his incredible web of social networks. This place has an insane number and variety of doughnuts that literally make you go nuts. Chocolaty, Chocolatier, Chocolatiest. Dark, Medium, Milk. Vanilla, Butterscotch or plain chocolate. Hell, they even have meat on their doughnuts. And the most incredible of the lot are the sizes. They could pretty well be of a 3 cm diameter. Oh and, there is a half mile long queue at this place at any given business hour - which by the way is 24 hours. So we got our doughnut at 12.30am and relished the Oreo flavoured one to its last bite on a cool, sea breezy night in the city of Portland that we definitely wanted to keep weird, just like the Portlanders do.
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