Leave the Path

Man the time is flying by. Already we’ve been here five days. We’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to write. I’m doing laundry at the hostel, now so let’s take a few minutes to catch up. (This is a picture of the NW Portland Hostel, by the way – it’s a great deal for comfortable lodging. It’s not as fancy on the inside but it’s clean, safe, and the location is absolutely unbeatable.)

Monday Kati went back to work. Emre and I got up early to take the car back to the airport-based rental place. Then we set about exploring downtown. First stop: Voodoo Doughnut where we purchased their signature dish. It’s a little dough man with raspberry filling which squirts out when you poke him with the pretzel. Perhaps a little morbid, but very tasty. Apparently doughnut violence brought out the most vicious in me.

Then we walked around for a while, just stopping in at shops that appealed to us. We went by Powell’s, the famously huge new-and-used bookstore. I know it’s a little blasphemous, but I wasn’t terribly impressed. There were a lot of books, but the selection of used books was surprisingly limited and the prices were not particularly good. Twenty or even 10 years ago this would have been an incredible resource for finding less common books. Today, though, it seems like a slightly less convenient and more expensive version of Amazon.com and similar book websites. Even on a Monday morning, it was packed, though, so plenty of people must love Powell’s.

On a whim we decided to go to the Chinese Gardens in Old Town. That was an excellent decision. The gardens were starting to bloom, the sun popped out from behind the clouds, and we had an excellent guide who educated us not only about the gardens and their history but about the philosophy and history of Chinese gardens and Chinese culture in general.

Aside from exotic and ornate plants, the garden boasts intricate wooden structures imported from Portland’s sister city Suzhou, China and masterful mosaic pebble pathways that reminded me of similar work at the Topkali palace.

Some of the flowers were blooming, even in March. My favorite are these little popcorn ball plants. There were several colors including this red and white variety. Plums and magnolias were also blooming.

My favorite plants were the “penjing” trees which are very much like bonsai. The ones in the garden were arranged as tiny forest scenes. At first glance they were really cute little trees, but later when a crouched down close to them I could really imagine myself in a tiny forest patch under this tree. These were truly works of art. (I tried to capture the same feeling with these super-closeups below. A more distant view of the second penjing is visible through the moon door in the first garden picture above.)

The buildings were very imaginative, as well. Each one was resplendent with intricate and highly symbolic wood work. My favorite was the the building on the North side. It’s the only two story building and it holds a tea house. The inside is decorated with exquisitely made, hand carved antique furniture and has the ambiance of another time and place altogether. We took our seats and each ordered a different tea.

The teas were served in an old-fashioned cup with the leaves and water together. Emre’s leaves sank so his was easy to drink, but mine floated and kept getting into my mouth with each sip. It’s hard to be elegant when you have to keep spitting out leaves.

Other than that little snag, though, our visit to the tea house was an incredibly positive experience. The second floor windows offered a slightly different perspective of the gardens, looking south. The garden is only one city block, and Portland block at that (Portlands blocks are smaller than NY or most other cities.) The garden is surrounded on all sides by the city, but from within it seems far more isolated and tranquil. The garden has several looping, crossing paths and millions of fascinating little details, so it’s easy to forget that there are skyscrapers just beyond the walls. From the second floor of the tea room, however, it was clear just how close the rest of the city is.

We left the garden in something of a trance, possibly due in part to having accidently skipped lunch. We met up with Kati and Jarrod and another friend Sammy (the only Portland native I’ve met so far) and we all trouped down to Hunan Chinese restaurant near Pioneer Square. We all shared a most excellent meal. When we came out, however, the sky had opened again over Portland and out walk to the streetcar home was under a cold, penetrating rain. Monday being Saint Patrick’s, we went out again that night. It was still raining, we didn’t find anywhere with live music, and we came home early.

Tuesday I got up and downloaded photos on my computer. I worked on my correspondences as Emre slept late. I looked a the clock at one point and saw that it was 10:30. Then 11:00 rolled around. By 12:00 I was reminded Emre to get up. We both got dressed slowly and stumbled out of the hostel by 1:00, each annoyed with the other for making us late. Then Emre looked at his watch. It was only 10:00. I had been looking at the clock on my computer which is still set for the east coast. I felt pretty dumb, but it was like we’d magically regained 3 hours of our morning so our our path to the tram line meandered a little more. We stopped to look at the big giant dome building near the hostel. It’s apparently a Jewish Temple and it’s gorgeous.

We also stopped for brunch at Ken’s Artisan Bakery and I was thoroughly impressed. My croissant was crispy, flaky, buttery, sweet, salty and absolutely perfect. The decor was right, too. The big windows looked out on a street, the furniture was simple and rustic, and we could see bakers making pastries and kneading bread in the back part of the shop. We need one of these authentic boulangers in Chapel Hill.

Our eventual destination for the morning was the zoo. We walked down to the max line and rode it through a tunnel, to the zoo on the east part of town. The zoo was fairly empty. And at first it seemed that all the animals were still asleep. This black bear was particularly funny, sleeping sprawled out as if dead but occasionally letting out a big snore or using one paw to sleepily scratch an ear.

As the sun came out and the day progressed, though, they came out. The polar bears were some of the most interesting. One was swimming laps in his tank, at one point pushing off on his back and wooshing by the glass with a big paw on the glass. The other was playing volleyball with herself, tossing a ball way up into the air and then either swiping at it and hitting it against the rocks or letting it splash into the water. Through the glass we could see their hugely powerful bodies close up. Very cool animals and they seemed smart, or at least very curious.

There were lots of other great exhibits. Of course I enjoyed the penguin house. I also really liked these animals below, mostly because Emre kept referring to them as “donkeys in pajamas.”

The indoor exhibits were excellent, as should be expected in a place where it rains every day. The flooded Africa exhibit is home to a giant crocodile. The bat house has probably a hundred bats who were all feasting on fruit when we visited. Probably my favorite, though, was a giant tank with native animals of the NW Pacific coast. Most of the cool things I saw on the rocks at the beach included but they were all fully submerged and opened up. There was also a live kelp plant which, in life, had the size and coloration of a giant sea turnip.

Another excellent exhibit was the Lorikeet house where Emre proved the validity of his pirateness by attracting parrots to his shoulders.

Here are a few more of my favorite zoo pictures:

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at the grocery. Emre discovered a large selection of citrus including the illusive kumquat. He bought a couple pounds of them and then went home to eat most of them in a single sitting. He smelled like kumquats for the next 2 days.

I made another trip to that grocery later that evening. Kati and Jarrod came over and together we cooked a meal of pasta, extra-vegetable sauce, and fried eggplant. It was excellent but unfortunately the photos didn’t turn out well at all.

Wednesday we stumbled out of the hostel late, without any particular plan in mind. We walked to town, having just barely missed the streetcar. Then we walked around in town just exploring all the different districts. We bought a couple little gifts and Emre purchased a new hat from a self-professed haberdasher sandwiched between two fancy hotels in the Pioneer Square area. For lunch we stopped into a bistro. Our meals were far larger than we’d imagined when we ordered. Afterwards we walked along to river, which was lovely but freezing and probably doubly so with all the blood tied up in our busy stomachs.

Portland is a great city. People keep complimenting Emre’s handlebar moustache and asking tips on how to grow and maintain such a fine example. Moss grows thickly around all the trees but obviously most thickly on the north side – a boon to those of us who get disoriented easily.

We planned to meet up with Kati and Jarrod briefly before they hopped onto the train to Seattle. While we waited we read comics in Powell’s. I’m really glad I got to catch up with Kati after all these years. It’s good luck that Jarrod was in town, too. He seemed like a cool guy.They were in a hurry to catch the train so we didn’t get to talk long.

Our evening was dominated by the Cirque du Soleil show we had bought tickets for weeks in advance. It was as incredible as I imagined. The performers of all types are truly masters of their arts. The acrobatics were, of course, breathtaking, but the acting and musical performances were just as well done. The feel of actually being in a big tent with subdued lighting and a surprisingly small number of spectators was far different than the mood that the shows have on TV. We also sat in the middle of the front row which changed our perspective on the show. We had to crane our necks for the trapeze show, but we had a great view of the performers’ faces and the details of their costumes. I liked keeping track of which actors came back on stage in which costumes. A couple of times it seemed like acrobats flipping or tumbling in contraptions would just fall of the stage into our laps – but of course they never did. It was a great experience. The theme of this show is (I think) a dream by a dying clown and it was a very surreal event. We couldn’t take pictures inside and I’m not sure I can describe it adequately, but the show was amazing. And Emre with his moustache and new Indiana Jones hat looked like part of the act.

Today we’re regrouping and moving to another boarding house on the other side of the city. Emre’s run out to get some more pastries from that amazing bakery nearby. When we finish with laundry and packing and blog-posting we will go find our new home and then go back out to explore a different part of the city. After today we’ve only got two days left in Portland and I have to admit I’ll be a little sad to go.