Portland, OR. Rain.

Rain, lots of rain.

Walked around the city some more. Saw some more parks, and then started wandering over from the waterfront to the ‘Rose Garden’. Portland claims to be the city of Roses. I could have sworn other cities claim that, but I digress. They do have an experimental rose garden. Portland’s a small city, so everything is within walking distance. The garden was only 20 blocks away. What they fail to tell you is that the last 7 blocks are so are at a steep upward grade. It was raining, and we spent most of the day walking only to spend the last several blocks out of breath. We were miserable… and we had a wonderful time. Sometimes, you just have to be with the right person.

Another thing about Portland, they have the cleanest, public, port-o-pots around. First, the concept of public port-o-pots randomly around a city is weird in and of itself. They fact that they’re actually very clean, that’s just freaky.

So, wound our way up to the ‘Experimental Rose Garden’, saw all sorts of weird colored roses, and then, as we were soaked to the bone, we took the ‘Zoo and Washington Park Railroad’. It’s a little railroad that runs between the garden and the Portland Zoo. Since we had to buy a ticket to the Zoo anyway to ride the (dry) railroad, we stuck around and saw some animals. Elephants are big.

Took the metro back to the hotel. Got dry and warm again and wandered a little more around the hotel, where we grabbed dinner and spent the rest of the night.

Tomorrow, onto Seattle for a day and a half.