PORTLAND and THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

For this instalment, we added two new members to our trip making us RANADEZ - RobAvivaNoahAaronDiane....Eva P. and Zane. Through no planning on our part, their planes arrived in Portland within 6 minutes of each other and we all met up at the airport.

Continuing on our theme of trailer park culture, Portland has a bunch of trailer park dining experiences - a series of trailers set up in defunct parking lots, each serving up delicacies from some other far-flung part of the world. We ate a mish-mash of Indian, Thai, Guamese, Southern BBQ and local beer that first night.

The next day was the Portland Saturday Market (which also runs on Sundays) where we got some artisan crafts....but much more interesting is Aaron and Noah's story. They were just wandering around the market when they stumbled on a sculptor who happened to have a TV crew with him. The boys inquired what the fuss was all about and before they new it, they were part of a documentary about the sculptor! You can see the show in September on K5 the Seattle NBC affiliate....and come to our house to see the grossly inaccurate sculpture of "their" face.

After the market we went to Powell's Bookstore,

one of the largest bookstores in the world (of course not as big as The World's Biggest Bookstore - in Toronto). It spans over a city block. Being a bundle of bookworms, we spent a couple of hours there reading and browsing.

That evening we were looking for a movie theatre when we ran into the Oregon Lindy Society's evening of dance with a live band in Director Square. The Lindy is kind of like the Swing, and so Rob and Diane were able to teach the younger generation (and refresh the older generation) and we spent the whole evening dancing to our hearts' content. It was neat to see that most of the people there were 20-somethings with hipster grooming: spats, bloomers, fedoras, bow-ties, suspenders.... dancing to music from the 1940's, and even the occasional Charleston. And they were good!!

The next day we took a MEDIOCRE, over-priced, hop-on hop off bus tour, that left us all unclear on Portland's history, purpose or existence (Wikipedia later proved to be far more useful). After the tour we ate our lunches and got a Bollywood dance lesson at the Indian Festival going on that day in Pioneer Square. We also watched dance performances from various local Indian Dance schools including an adorable class of little girls and equally adorable (although not so Indian) moms.

Since arriving in the US, Zane and Aviva have had the rude awakening that they are considered minors here. So the only two people who could check out one of the local breweries were Eva and Rob (Diane hates beer; Eva hates beer too, but she needed a place to sit down).

In fact, Oregon is quite surprisingly rigid about their drinking laws, so much so that we were also not able to go to the hipster movie theatre, The Living Room, since minors aren't allowed in after 7:00 pm because they serve beer. Oddly they're not so strict about other laws. The Mexican restaurant we went to one evening shared its restroom with a strip club. Imagine the shock that some of us had when we went to wash our hands for supper and saw a naked woman with full-body tattoos flying around on a pole!!


After Portland we headed to Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We saw a modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew and The Tenth Muse (which Aaron describes as "The Sound of Music" meets "The Crucible"), and we took a backstage tour on the last morning. It's really in Stratford's league.

Our lodgings for this leg of the trip were, as Noah describes, "Where chalet chic meets shanty town". Others in our group described it as The Weasley's house from Harry Potter.

Either way, it was way beyond vintage - cluttered with all kinds of old stuff, no door knobs on any of the doors, 100's of stuffed animals, books about Hare Krishna, the shower curtain fell down religiously, no curtains on any of the bedrooms, and one of the "bedrooms" looked more like a dog's bed. But we actually quite loved it - it was cozy and rustic, 5 1/2 km down a dirt road, with deer and other wild life hopping about the property and fabulous views of the surrounding hills. In fact, we liked it so much we had dinner and shmoozed there two of the evenings.

Now we're back to just RANAD (our Go-go Granny and Zane have each flown home), We're en route to Redwood National Park, but first we have to crack a coconut on the side of the road (of course!?). Talk to you soon! Here's some more from our interesting signs collection!