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Downtown Portland

When the girls and I were in Oregon last weekend, we spent some time in downtown Portland. We went to Powell's, which we all like. The girls like it when I tell them how much money they can spend, and they especially like it if it's a nice large amount.

Abby got a big book of a series I've never heard of, called the Cheetah Girls. It kept her busy all the way home!

After Portland, we went to the Chinese Gardens. It was very pretty and peaceful, set in the midst of downtown. In the middle of walking around, we stopped at the little teahouse, which was full of expensive and hard to pronounce teas, with super-fancy descriptions. I had a cup, and was instructed about the proper way to drink it, with two hands, and using the lid of the cup as a sort of strainer as I drank.

I found many gorgeous photo opportunities at the gardens. The orange tree is one of my favorites:

I thought this one was nice too:

Many more are available here.

We took a few minutes to drive through the area around Multnomah, where we lived when the girls were born. We knew that the house had been taken out, but we got a good look around. They took down the whole row of tiny houses that lined Glisan Street, and built a big brick building back from the street a bit, and the place where the houses were is all dark green grass.

Also while we were in Portland, we stopped at Coffee People to get me one of the Black Tiger mochas that I always used to get before going to work at the bank. Earlier, I had been quizzing the girls about what they remembered about Portland, and they don't remember much. Abby remembers LaDonna, their beloved babysitter, and Lindsey, LaDonna's daughter. Katrina says she doesn't remember her at all. They both, however, remembered that they always used to get gummi bears from Coffee People. Katrina's one remaining memory of Portland... gummi bears.

On our way out of town, we stopped at a 7-11 to get Slurpees, as it was really hot. There the guy gave me the news of how badly the UW lost to Ohio. And then my Slurpee cup leaked. That wasn't too bad, except that I forgot to take it out of the cup holder in the car when we got back to camp. So the next morning I had a huge puddle of cherry goo all over the cupholder in the car.

Posted by Rachel at September 5, 2003 11:10 PM