Sunny Portland: A Photo Guide
EDIT:
I now see that another Portland resident had the same brilliant idea as me today... I spent my entire day on this thread though, so I hope you enjoy this as well.
Today I grabbed my Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6 and walked out the door into an uncharacteristically hot day. Although Portland does indeed have very dry summers, (for comparison, the only MLB cities that get less rain than Portland during the Baseball season are in Florida and Arizona), it doesn't usually get this hot until sometime in July.
But as I glanced at the thermometer and saw that it was 88 degrees and climbing at 1 PM, I packed two bottles of water and left my house at
70th & Glisan to take as many pictures of the city as I could, including one (below) of the single cloud in the sky when I left my front door.
I'm going to section this up into areas of interest, and I'll try to include map locations of the major groups of images.
Bicycles
Portland is a very bike-friendly city. On a day like today, it's very apparent.
Bike parking is everwhere in Portland, and it's often used. Especially on days like this. The availability of parking leads a lot of people to
use bikes (imagine that) to get around town. And get around they do.
People are always passing you by on a bicycle if you walk around town, and I've actually found that, ironically, there are certain areas that are more dangerous for pedestrians because of
bikes instead of
cars.
There's a large variety of bicycles around town, especially on the
East Bank Esplanade and Waterfront Park. This is partially because bikes are available for rent right in waterfront park:
Along with the option to buy of course:
But the biggest reason for increased bike riding (besides the weather) is
good bike singage.
The River & Its Bridges
All of us here at SSP appreciate architecture a bit. Portland's bridges offer a large variety of engineering and architecture that most can appreciate.
I even got a few pictures of the bridges in action.
But the water itself was thoroughly enjoyed by many.
Parks & Recreation
I'm just going to let these pictures speak for themselves.
Transit
There's lots of transit in Portland we have busses...
Light rail...
Streetcar...
And even a trolly that runs on Sundays...
Public Art
There's lots of public art in Downtown Portland, and not all of it is planned.
This chalk drawing stretched for about 300 feet of Waterfront Park. It's a tribute to servicemen (and women) lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 12 months. As best as I could tell, each one of the symbols represents one soldier, using the symbol of the religion they respectively subscribed to. Mostly crosses, but a few stars of david and crescent moons in there as well.
Then there was more official public art of course.
This truly unique piece of public art was found inbetween the Greyhound station and Union station (serviced by Amtrak). The sculpture depicts an eye, which you can get behind and look through.
Architecture
Artistic Photos
These are some random photos that I took with more of an emphasis on artistic merit than information.
So, there we have it. My day in Portland. I have a LOT more pictures... I took almost 400 of them today. But I have a basic Flickr account, and I already had to cut it down.
I'll probably go our and take new pictures in a few weeks. I missed the entire east side, the Rose Test Garden, the Japanese Gardens, the inside of the Chinese Gardens, PGE Park, Memorial Collesium... there's a lot more to see. I'll save it for another day.
Linear Mode
