i love portlandia!

me beside the Willamette River
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The train trip from Seatlle to Portland was awesome! It was called the Coast Starlight so at least half of it went along the coast or water of some sort; rivers and streams. Once we went through a long tunnel and when we came out the other side we were right on the water. Lots of green too.

Getting off in Portland was very exciting, because it's the home of Sleater-Kinney! I knew I would meet some cool people there too. The hostel I was staying in was more like a house and has 3 stories and an attic, like the other old sytle houses in the street. We were in the 'bohemian' district, Hawthorne Blvd.

Portland Pirates, floating walkways and secret cymbals

Our hostel was like an old house with 3 stories and an attic, which was a nice change. I had the purle room with 8 beds - too many. In my room I met mostly American chicks who were really cool; one was travelling and the others were planning to move to Portland. I spent time having endless coffee, getting a tarot reading from one of the chicks, checking out the main street and taking a hungry hippo out to lunch.

Saturday me and Emily went to the Saturday markets. ON the way we checked out the floating walkway and then as we crossed over the bridge, we could hear these weird cymbal noises that seemed to be coming from nowhere! Portland likes to play these tricks on people as it's such a quirky little city. At the markets there was heaps of local art. We bought 'elephant ears' which were big doughy sugary flaps, then a pair of fork earrings each! (I got some use out of them the next day when unexpectedly I needed something to eat my tin of peaches on the train.)

That night a few of us went to check out a band - 'i could lick every sonofabitch in the house.' We shortened it to 'the lickers' as it sounds much better! I tried microbrews for the first time and on the way home we came across, out of all things, a plastic horse chained to the ground! We took pics of course and one is up on myspace.

Portland is a very sunny and nice-smelling city, with heaps of parks, flowers, trees, cool old houses and friendly people, of course very eco-friendly too. Our hostel had an eco-roof. Don't get me to explain what that is cos my little brain just didn't understand the influx of scientific explanations in my hungover state.

Portland ended with a Sunday brunch at the hostel and then I had to run off to the delayed Amtrak train. Did i say we also had a resident cat, Bailey?