Day 16 Portland, Oregon

I got up a little early this morning, had breakfast and went out for a long walk about town. Portland's a terrific city and different than most. There's a million pubs, but they're all pretty much the same. I even stopped in an Irish pub and asked for a Guinness and the bartender said, "You won't be able to find any Guinness in Portland, because I've been trying for two years." Irish Pub? I think not.

Portland's an old and classic looking city, I think most of the buildings were built in the early 1900's. They're classy, ornate and well maintained. It's a really nice walking city with blocks and blocks of shops and store fronts to amuse oneself. Although it's a bit uncomfortable at times, because Portland has a huge homeless population; they're all over the place and sometimes create quite a disturbance. The city does admit they have a major problem but nobody bothers to do anything about it. You just deal with it.

The population seems to be very young, energetic, and like doing stuff together.  In restaurants there's always a couple of large groups of young people enjoying themselves. They also dress a little bit different here than they do back east. For instance, I think an Eastern European cab driver and myself were the only men to wear regular shoes. Everyone else wore either sneakers or hiking boots, and not a sole was hiking and hardly anyone running. Tom Mcan Shoes would go out of business in this town...Oh, I guess they are. I forgot, I'm a geezer.

Back to the rest of the day. I met Sylvia around noon and we walked around town  until mid afternoon (as I was getting tired by now). We went in a couple of stores, walked the waterfront and stopped for a late lunch at LeChon, a nice little restaurant specializing in South American food.  We had an appetizer of grilled octopus, chorizo, fried potatoes, salsa verde, and preserved lemon. I ordered the Peruvian roasted chicken, and Sylvia got the Pastel de Chocio, sweet corn, beef, peppers, and aji amarillo? ( It's kind of like a South American shepherds pie). A bottle of wine too. It was a really good lunch and we both would love to go back for dinner.

We didn't do anything else.

Portland Street Food Trucks

Typical Portland Hotel Lobby (Ours)