Portland

Went to Portland this morning.

We got there in pretty good time and were parked and ready to hit Powell's in no time. Powell's, by the way, is a book store that covers an entire city block. It's something like 5 stories high and crammed to the gills with books of all sorts.

So anyway, we get there and start looking around. I get all geeky about the books I want to look up but can't remember what they were or who they were by. This happens to me all the freaking time. I go bounding from room to room and we make our selections. Unfortunately the place seemed to be populated with a few more rude persons than I recall there being before, so we made our way to the exit without visiting every room, which is probably just as well since we have very little play money at the moment. It's not like we'll never go back.

Then we ventured into Chinatown. I was all kinds of excited because I remember it being huge and bustling. It was bustling alright. Bustling with shattered memories. It was really kind of sad. The buildings were beautiful, but a great deal of them were abandoned. Okay maybe abandoned is too harsh of a term, but they were definitely empty and in various states of disrepair. It just wasn't as Chinatowny as I remember it being. Fortunately out here in the suburbs there are quite a few more Asian eateries than I recall from before, so maybe the culture is spreading into the populace instead of having a specialty niche area in downtown. Still, it was a touch disheartening.

It was freaking cold as balls and we were getting hungry so we decided to head home after about 2 hours. We only hit an extremely small portion of downtown, but I have to say with great sadness that it was disappointing. Had I built it up in my own head as some kind of Utopia when in reality it was just another city? I refuse to believe that. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind. I think I need to do more investigating. The good part is that I'm looking forward to further investigations, so that's a good sign, right?