Day 16 - The City of Roses

Line at Voodoo Donuts - RIDICULOUS

We started the day with a driving tour of the downtown section of Portland. The downtown section is on the Willamette River and there are a ton of bridges connecting the downtown area to the eastern suburbs. Our first stop was to check out the legendary donuts at Voodoo Donuts but it was Saturday morning and apparently everyone else had the same idea as the line was too long. It may be a cult favorite but there is no way we were waiting an hour for donuts. Next stop was the Portland Art Museum. Not a bad collection and they were having a special exhibit on the Tuileries Garden in Paris, which was interesting. And for contrasting culture, one block away they were holding the BMX Streetstyle event. We stopped by to watch them warm up and saw some pretty amazing skateboarding.

International Rose Test Garden

The official nickname for Portland is the “The City of Roses” and we discovered why today. There is a park in the western suburbs, high above Portland, that contains the International Rose Test Garden. The garden contains over 7,000 rose plants of more than 500 varieties. Portland has an almost perfect climate for roses and hence many new varieties are tested in the garden. It is a beautiful park to walk around in, but also it seems many people come there for photographs. We saw two young girls having their Quinceañera party photos being taken there. Did I also mention there is a reasonably large Hispanic population in Portland?

View from Ardiri Winery

Finally we drove into the Willamette valley to do a little wine tasting and some sightseeing. In the early 1800’s, this valley was widely know for its fertile land and was the main draw for people taking the Oregon Trail who came out to farm the free land in Oregon. Today it is more widely know for wine and there are many wineries, similar to Napa and Sonoma valleys in California. We stopped at the Cooper River Winery (some of their wine is available in Pennsylvania) and the Ardiri Winery.

Today was bright, sunny and in the mid-80's, but there was still a bit of haze in the air so although you could see Mt. Hood from from the Rose Garden, it wasn't clear. Hopefully we will get a much better view tomorrow.