May, 2009

This is not a slight against Southwest Airlines, but this excursion cemented my desire to not fly again – too uncomfortable, too stressful. It’s weird, because as a kid I loved to fly. I loved to sit by the window and watch the wing and ailerons and flaps and such, and see the world gliding by underneath. Sometimes, after a family vacation, my grandparents would ask me what my favorite part of the trip was, and as a deeply nerdy child I’d say “the plane ride.” Now, it’s just constant worries about turbulence. I get that it’s safe and efficient, but some animal part of my brain doesn’t. And what’s the deal with airline food?

And a note to Albuquerque: I’m sure you’re a lovely city, and you made wonderful Weird Al song fodder, but your airport’s positioning relative to the surrounding mountains makes for some unpleasant air currents for Southwest flights making stops on the way to the Pacific Northwest. It would be nice of you to either move the airport or the mountains.

Anyway, it was evening when our 737 touched down at Portland International Airport. Prior to landing, as we descended through the puffy white clouds, our first impression of the area was that it was very green. Sure, we have grass and trees in Texas – at least, most of the year. We don’t have anything quite so intensely, lusciously green as the Pacific Northwest, though. Doubly because we left the Texas of summertime, when the grass turns brown except where people essentially spray paint it green (and that’s only slightly an exaggeration – this is the land of TruGreen ChemLawn, after all). Peering down out of the plane, it was like looking into a box containing nothing but Forest Green crayons.

Upon landing, we stepped into the clean and well-lit terminal and made our way to baggage claim. It was our intention to spend the entirety of the trip without renting a car, so we headed downstairs to our first real encounter with the Portland we’d come to see: the MAX light rail train.

There are several MAX lines, and the Red Line runs right into the terminal at PDX. It makes it extremely easy to get to and from the airport, so riding it was a no-brainer. We settled in and headed off towards downtown Portland. Along the way, we noted that the Red Line stops at an Ikea – an Ikea with light rail access? This was a dream for us, being Ikea fans from the land where getting to the big blue Swedish megastore requires a long, terribly stressful drive across county lines.

As the Red Line rounded a curve, I got this shot of it.

A short time later, we pulled in to downtown Portland. Our stop was the Galleria/SW 10th stop, and along the way we passed through several other districts, including the Old Town historic district.

I grabbed this shot of one of the gorgeous historic buildings in downtown as we pulled in.

To be honest, I didn’t get a lot of photos at this point. After multiple flights on an airline who prides itself on not providing real food to passengers, I was tired and hungry. It’s a shame, because after the Red Line rolled up to the Galleria/SW 10th station and we got out, we saw within the first two minutes an image of Portland that we’ll probably never forget. As we walked north the three blocks to our hotel, we saw two guys walking cats. Leashes and everything. Now, I say “walking cats,” but know that cats do not, apparently, go for walks in the same manner as dogs. One was sharpening its claws and not moving forward all that much, while the other was basically being dragged along in fits and starts by its owner. Cats are not especially compatible with “walking,” I suppose.

After a few blocks, we arrived at what would be our home for the next eight days: the Ace Hotel.

The Ace is in a converted older hotel, located in downtown Portland on Stark between 10th & 11th, just next to the border between downtown and the Pearl District (the two are roughly divided by Burnside Street, which runs east & west and serves as the dividing line between Portland’s “South” blocks and their “North” blocks). The Ace concept is very different from your typical modern-day hotel. It’s designed as a home for travelers who want something unique, funky, and affordable. You won’t find beige striped wallpaper and floral print bedspreads here. It’s minimalist, hip, and probably the most affordable place to stay in the heart of downtown Portland.

The Ace has rooms with only a sink, with three rooms sharing a shower/bath in the hall, but we elected to pay a little more and get a room with a full bath.

Here’s the view of the room we wound up in, which was on the west side of the building looking out over the Stark & 11th intersection. As I said, about as far from a traditional modern-day hotel as you can get. The wall behind the bed was covered in pages from an old novel. The one complaint we had was the bed, which was a little on the firm side.

As I said, very minimalist, but we loved the funky weird style of the place. It had loads more character than the typical corporate hotel chain. They even let you open the windows, which is increasingly rare in mainstream hotels, which are typically just plate glass.

One of my favorite parts of our room at the Ace was the view:

Here, we’re looking out at the 11th & Stark intersection. The Pearl District rises down 11th, on the right, while the northern edge of downtown surrounds the intersection. Across the street is the Mark Spencer Hotel, while I believe that just behind the trees on the right is the headquarters of one of our favorite Mac software developers, Panic.

It’s a classic urban view – not concerned with the skyline, but rather right there amongst everything, the windows filled with beautiful density. The soundtrack drifting in from outside is the sound of the city – vibrant, bustling, full of life. I even like the fire escape, probably because my first experience with urban living was in a downtown loft with a fire escape out the window and I’ve always enjoyed having that bit of clutter outside.

Here, we’re looking out the other direction down 11th. The Portland Streetcar has stopped outside to pick up and let off passengers.

At this point, I decided that it would be well worth the effort to maybe find some food, so we headed out onto the streets of Portland on a cool Saturday evening.

Across the street from the Ace, we passed this place – the Living Room Theater. Now, we come from a place where there are no indie movie theaters. The closest we have is the occasional art house flick at the local modern art museum. Portland has so many independent theaters that some specialize themselves in new and interesting ways. (This would prove to be true for more than just movie theaters, as we would later learn.) The Living Room features theaters with big, comfy lounge chairs & tables, and a full café and bar.

While wandering toward the Pearl, a streetcar passed:

It whirred past quietly and smoothly, a far cry from the loud CNG-powered buses back home.

We had set out without much of a plan – I hadn’t even pulled up a list of food on the Internet, and we had zero bearings at this point. We roughly knew where the Pearl District was, so we headed north. I was feeling a bit ill, mainly just run-down from lack of food and being crammed into the coach seat of a 737 for five hours, so I was impatient to find a place, sit down, and grab a bite to eat. We agreed, though, that we didn’t want to go to any sort of big national chain (which turned out to be an easy goal to accomplish, as big chains are few and far between in Portland).

Fortunately, just a couple of blocks from the Ace, we found something that looked interesting.

Rocco’s Pizza attracted us from the outside with its slightly worn, hole-in-the-wall look and its signs promising “cheap eats” and “vegan pizza,” so we quickly decided to head inside.

Inside, we found the sort of local pizza joint that we rarely run in to anymore back home. Rough-around-the-edges, some arcade machines against a wall, filled with eclectic people. The Star Trek poster sealed the deal, because both Steph and I are huge geeks/nerds.

We each ordered a slice of vegan pizza, not quite knowing what to expect (the description on the menu was very brief) but deciding to leave our culinary fate up to the Portland Food Gods. What arrived shortly on a thin paper plate was, to our hungry eyes, nothing less than a mountain of food.

The slices were packed tight with a dense conglomeration of vegetables. So many, in fact, that it was a bit of a challenge to eat. We dug in, and were rewarded with a very fresh and flavorful slice of unconventional pizza that did wonders for our tired state of being. We would come to learn that “fresh and flavorful” is a common refrain in Portland, because the city has a lot of farmers that grow the fruits and veggies used by the local restaurants. The city has an “Urban Growth Boundary” which prevents sprawl development and reserves land on the perimeter of the city core for natural preservation and farming uses.

While we were eating, a family sat down at the table next to us. A mom, a dad, and a couple of kids. The mom asked us about our vegan pizza and we struck up a conversation. We hadn’t been out and about for more than a few minutes at that point, and already we were chatting up the locals. It’s a friendly city.

Seated at the window looking out at the 10th & Burnside intersection, we saw that Rocco’s is across the street from a place that we already knew was a famed local landmark.

Powell’s Books is known internationally as something of a book lover’s nirvana. An indie, local establishment, it’s held down this block in what is now the Pearl District for years. Powell’s occupies a full city block and is up to four stories tall, and that space is jam-packed with new and used books, as well as comics and a coffee shop. (There are coffee shops on virtually every corner in Portland, though you’ll have to search to find Starbuck’s – most are independent and local.) This was one of the places we were intent on spending time in during our stay in Portland, and here it was just a few blocks from the hotel! As avid readers, this was great news for us.

After we’d finished our vegan pizza slices, we headed back outside. Night was falling on the City of Roses, and we decided to wander around a bit at random and get a sense of where we were before retiring back to the Ace to get an early start the next day.

Across the street from Rocco’s was the first of many public art pieces we would encounter. This one was interactive, as demonstrated by the chap in the photo. You could give the part in the middle a push and make the metal bristles on top move around. It’s called Pod, and was created by artist Peter Beeman in 2002.

We walked into a part of the Pearl District that we would later learn is called the Brewery Blocks.

The place was busy with people walking around, riding the streetcar, and riding bikes. We were struck by the interesting contrasts in architecture, with 100 year old factories surrounded by gleaming, sleek, modern developments full of apartments, condos, and offices. Every building had retail or a restaurant of some sort on its ground floor. It was the very definition of a vibrant urban neighborhood.

They even had one of these:

We would learn that Portland has tons of grocery stores, large and small, in the middle of its neighborhoods. This huge Whole Foods was our first encounter. It stood an impressive four stories tall and took up an entire city block. What parking there was was underground – most people walked, biked, or took the streetcar. It’s a very different way of life than we were used to back home. We found it very appealing to not have to be tied to a car for everything.

Finally, we decided to head back to the Ace and get some sleep, as Sunday would bring our first full day in Portland. There was much to see, and we wanted to be well-rested.

The Ace glowed in the steadily darkening night. It felt like we had picked the best place we could for our first visit – the Ace was virtually at the hub of Portland’s core, and it would be easy to get to most any other part of town from here.

On the way up, a bit of the Ace’s offbeat attitude from the elevator:

It became quickly apparent that the sign was correct. The Ace’s elevator was a bit on the pokey side, and at only four stories tall, the stairs were the preferred method of travel within the building. It turned out that the stairs were worth it, not only because they were beautiful old things made of dark wood, but because the Ace’s unique decor extended to the stairwells.

Next time, we’ll head out on a beautiful Sunday for a full day of exploring the neighborhood.