Welcome to Portland! Creative Itineraries for Visitors

by Laura Oppenheimer,
The Oregonian

Thursday May 22, 2008

Ah, Memorial Day.

Time to stash the parka until next year. Coffeehouses prop open their doors, festivals descend on Portland's waterfront. And weekend visitors arrive at our doorsteps, determined to experience Oregon before the rain returns.

Our first summer here, my husband and I hosted so many friends and relatives, we felt like we ran a B&B. Each guest flew into PDX armed with guidebooks and Internet research. "We've gotta see Multnomah Falls!" "Saturday Market sounds so cool!" "Is the Rose Garden still in bloom?"

We happily obliged. Multnomah Falls, Saturday Market, Rose Garden. Multnomah Falls, Saturday Market, Rose Garden. Lovely places. By September, though, we thought we'd puke if we had to visit any of them again.

We vowed to devise more-creative itineraries for guests -- and not just because we could lead Multnomah Falls tours blindfolded. There's an art to showing visitors what it's like to live in Oregon. To shop here and hike here and bike here, to eat here and hang out here. Now, visitors leave with a deeper understanding of our adopted home.

Read on for weekend agendas to suit three types of guests: friends, the family clan and parents.

Nothing wrong with mixing and matching these if you're hosting young-at-heart parents or a precocious 12-year-old. And you're welcome to squeeze in classic Oregon attractions. After all, they're famous for a reason: We're lucky to have them.

Keep reading for all the juicy details: Creative Itineraries for Visitors

Sunrise Yoga, Friday Morning, July 18th

Friday morning, before the craziness of the actual wedding begins in earnest, I would like to take a moment to breathe and be calm. So, at the Wedding Meadow Friday morning (specific time TBD), we will have a special yoga session with friend, realtor-extraordinaire & certified-yogini, Chelsea. It will be gentle and accessible for all-levels and I would love it if you would join us.


"The practice of yoga helps us experience inherent union, and building it into your wedding can help you return the focus to the deep meaning of your union, rather than the externals of wedding planning or anything else." ~ Julia Mannes, Yoga for Weddings

A note regarding the request for your attendance…

We love you. We want you to come (we wouldn’t invite you if we didn’t!) We are planning on a great celebration and a fun party. Also, Portland is pretty darn beautiful in July and this is a rare opportunity for friends and family to come together at the same time and place. And it is a really important day for us – a once in a lifetime event in fact! So it would be really wonderful to have you join us.

But we understand if you can’t make it. Gas is expensive. Flights are expensive. Hotels are expensive. We know money is tight and time is even tighter. We are genuinely trying to make this wedding simple, easy, fun & not break the bank – anyone’s bank! So if you can’t make it, or it is just too hard for the whole family to make it, don’t worry. Do what you can, and maybe that means you just send a flower and think of us on July 19^th.

(A preview of Brooke & Chris at the Wedding Meadow - site for the ceremony.)

The chi of Portland: High weirdness in Nirvana

(former Portland mayor Bud Clark pictured below!)

By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

updated 10:00 a.m. PT, Mon., May. 5, 2008

PORTLAND, Ore. - Acupuncture is not just for people. It's also for cities — if the city is Portland.

Adam Kuby has stuck a 23-foot needle into the ground down by the Willamette River and hopes to plant more, choosing locations where he figures the city's "chi," or vital energy, needs some help.

Unusual? You bet. Unusual for Portland? Not really.

For several years, Portland has been reaping praise from lifestyle magazines, from Men's Journal to specialty publications, as one of the nation's more livable cities, listed among the best places to have a baby, grow old, go for a walk, ride a bike, take a jog, breathe clean air, own a dog, take public transportation, start a business (green or otherwise), go out for dinner or not get mugged.

The praises don't stop. Swing a cat and hit 10. On second thought, don't. Portland is rated the third-most humane city in the nation.

But the magazines skim over Portland's quirkier qualities. They aren't bandied about, but they're not hidden either. To some, they make Portland even more endearing.

There's what's left of the 24-Hour Church of Elvis (online only these days), the Voodoo Doughnut Shop, nude bike festivals, the 5K Bare Buns Run in Forest Park and what was billed as the world's longest drag queen chorus line.

Public nudity is illegal in Portland, but in a state where live sex acts are protected as free speech, police involvement generally is limited to keeping order...

Read More!