Portland is Oregon’s largest city and sits on the Columbia and Wiliamette rivers in the Pacific Northwest.

A thriving music, art and theatre scene makes Portland ideal for the creative community.

Portland is a good spot for those into cycling and hiking. The city has plenty of green space from parks to forests and mountains to explore.

Matt Groening, the founder of the TV show The Simpsons is from Portland.

If you’re that person who enjoys sampling independent coffee houses and microbreweries, or taking your laptop to work then you won’t be short of options.

Powell’s City of Books

I can imagine what a few of you reading might be wondering, what’s so special about a book store?

Powell’s is the largest independent new and used book store in the world. It’s so large that it takes up a whole city block, with over one million new and used books available. It’s been serving the city of Portland and beyond since 1971.

Ok, maybe special is the wrong word but I doubt anyone expected to read about the world’s largest book store.

For those of you that enjoy reading a book with a coffee, there’s a coffee shop in the store as well.

Washington Park

Washington Park has something for everyone you’d expect in a green space ranging from a zoo, forestry museum, rose garden, to tennis courts, memorials, archery range, amphitheatre and more.

I stuck around the Japanese Gardens area. It wasn’t too far from the bus stop and big enough to walk around and still not get lost.

I find it’s all about having a balance from having something planned to just taking a walk and doing nothing and decompressing.

Washington Park was a good place to do the latter.

Though it’s not far from downtown Portland, you feel like you’re in a secluded area such is the size of Washington Park.

Pittock Mansion

Pittock Mansion is a French Renaissance style mansion that was built in 1914 as a private home for London born Oregon publisher Henry Pittock.

Although Google maps will tell you that it’s a half a mile away once you get out of Washington Park, what it doesn’t tell you is how steep the walk is.

I’ve made some questionable decisions in my life and choosing to walk to Pittock Mansion on a “fuck it why not” mantra is something to add to the list.

The views of Portland were nice but jeez did I need time to recover from the walk. I’d say my fitness level is good but bloody hell that walk up isn’t for the faint hearted.

The 23 room mansion is now a museum with surrounding gardens if you want to do more than just enjoying scenic views of downtown Portland.

Swift Watch

Unless you have an interest in bird watching or know your species of birds, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t what the Swift Watch is.

Every year in the month of September at Chapman Elementary School, thousands of Vaux Swifts gather during sunset and fly overhead as they prepare to roost for the night in the chimney.

Around 2000 people watch over the course of the month on most days. So if you’re in Portland and have a free evening and want to check out Swift Watching, it’s recommended that you turn up at least an hour before sunset.

As long as you turn up before it begins then you won’t struggle to find a place to see the Swift Watch. As you can imagine, parking isn’t easy but there are buses which stop within walking distance.

The birds tend to circle the chimney between 10 – 30 minutes after sunset and take 10 – 20 minutes entering the chimney itself.

This is going to sound stupid but I thought there was points watching this where I thought it would get tight fitting all the birds in the chimney. I mean how deep can a chimney be? In recent times there’s been an estimated 10,000 swifts during one evening and without knowing any basic knowledge, one might be forgiven for thinking they would all struggle to fit in the chimney.

If you told me before I came to Portland that this was a thing, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. It felt like a real community event which are usually nice and a relaxed atmosphere.

Street Food

Portland is one of the great foodie cities I’ve visited and I’ve been to my fair share of places with thriving food scenes with over 500 food carts.

You can visit the travel Portland website and use the food cart finder, and filter the searches based on cuisine, trademark dishes and dietary requirements.

If you’ve just opened up a food cart, you can add it to the travel Portland website so people can find it.

Or you can just explore Portland and try whatever street food you come across. There’s more than enough food carts for you to get while you’re in Portland without needing to visit a restaurant.

Portland has a system for organising food carts into pods. These are a permanent collection of food carts with seating and other amenities which allows visitors to explore other parts of the location they’re in.

One place I got to enjoy up close was Jojo. The day I arrived they were opening a restaurant to go with their food cart and were having a soft launch.

My friend Anna, a Portland native who I met at Oktoberfest in Munich in 2018 had invited me. She knows the owner, Justin and she was attending the soft launch with her friends.

We’d been in contact about meeting for a catch up before I got to Portland. So what could be more perfect than meeting at a opening of a new restaurant?

First of all I’ve got to give props to Justin, the food was delicious! The staff, the atmosphere. Jojo ticks all the boxes. Anna was telling me how Justin pays his staff above average in the US and how well he treats them. You can tell they’re happy in the environment they’re in working for him.

It was great reminiscing about Oktoberfest and meeting Anna’s fiancée Kasey and her friends. It good to savour catch ups with friends who live abroad because you never how long it’ll be until the next catch up.

Scooter Tour

This was another “fuck it why not” moment.

A bit of a background to this, I was at a food cart having lunch and met a guy called Paul. He was a jeweler who had his own business in Portland and has worked around the world.

We got chatting about all sorts and he was curious about my travels. We stayed for a long time talking which gave a chance for our lunch to digest.

He kindly offered his electric scooter he keeps at his office to me so I tour around parts of Portland I hadn’t seen. I didn’t really know what to say.

The guy had no reason whatsoever to do this. It wasn’t even the fact he offered his scooter to make it more convenient for me to get around Portland, it was his act of kindness.

I had a tour of his office. He’s got a good set up and he mentors people looking to do the same thing as him. It’s great seeing people give back and help others.

I picked up the scooter and rode it wherever I could, through several neighbourhoods, and even did a little bit of street art hunting along the way. It was a good chance to explore areas I probably wouldn’t have had the chance to see, and give my legs a rest from all the walking I’d done before returning the scooter to Paul.

Even though they’re close to each other (by US standards), Portland isn’t really comparable with Seattle.

Portland is smaller than Seattle but feels like things are a bit more spread out. I found public transport to be good here so getting around wasn’t an issue.

Think of it this way, Portland is like Seattle’s little brother. You can mean that in terms of the size of both cities, and how easy it is to get in between them.

I liked Portland, it’s a foodie’s dream. You can spend a fair share of time trying anything and everything. I would come back just to get around a few more food carts.