^^View of Portland and Mt. Hood ^^Early morning fog on the beach
As pretty as growing up in the country is, I’ve always been a city girl. Most of my family is based out of Portland, and I’ve been visiting Portland my whole life. I remember driving over the river at night, and seeing the city all lit up…..almost brought a tear to my eye to see a place that had more than 5 stoplights.
Anyways, I digress.
Point is, if you’re ever visiting Portland, there are a million different things to do. Unfortunately, I never discovered this until I was able to leave my college campus and thus had the ability to get out of my college campus bubble. And after growing up in small towns, Portland is the perfect-sized city for me. It has a very small-town feeling in Oregon’s largest city. Everything is within a 30 minute drive (without traffic of course. Unfortunately, anytime you want to drive somewhere, you should add at least 15 minutes to account for the random accident or overturned semi on the freeway), and the beaches, mountains, and lake are all within an hour of the city.
For example, Portland is host to OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, one of my favorite places to visit as a kid), the Oregon Zoo (which is home to one of the world’s leading elephant breeding programs), the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team (#4 in the Western Conference!), Forest Park (one of the West’s largest urban city parks), plus Portland is the headquarter city for Nike, Adidas, and Intel. Not to mention the fabulous shopping areas…..and not having to pay sales tax. That’s a big motivation factor for me.
Portland is growing on the national map, too. Did you know that the newly-released movie Coraline was produced by Phil Knight (owner of Nike), using one of Portland’s own up-and-coming production studios? The movie Twilight was also filmed in and around Portland. And older classics such as Free Willy, Goonies, Stand By Me, The Ring, and The Shining were all filmed in and around Portland. Rumor has it that Twilight’s Robert Pattinson used to hang out in downtown areas such as Powell’s bookstore during filming downtime.
Until recently, I never knew about half of the things I could do in Portland. Well, actually when I reached my senior year of college and had nothing better to do on weekends than homework, I finally had my motivation to get out and explore. The Internet is always a great resource, but I was able to pick up a free copy of Urban Pages, which is basically a city guide that highlights every area/neighborhood of the metropolitan area. Now, if I ever find myself with nothing to do, I just open that up to a random page and try to find something that I can do for cheap. With the current economy, price is one of my main factors to consider, and Portland has some really good deals for people on a tight budget.
Long story short, my city is pretty cool. And I didn’t know about half of the things it had to offer until I finally got up and tried to find something to do. Which is apparently a lot easier than I had anticipated.
So go find something new to do today!
Point is, if you’re ever visiting Portland, there are a million different things to do. Unfortunately, I never discovered this until I was able to leave my college campus and thus had the ability to get out of my college campus bubble. And after growing up in small towns, Portland is the perfect-sized city for me. It has a very small-town feeling in Oregon’s largest city. Everything is within a 30 minute drive (without traffic of course. Unfortunately, anytime you want to drive somewhere, you should add at least 15 minutes to account for the random accident or overturned semi on the freeway), and the beaches, mountains, and lake are all within an hour of the city.
For example, Portland is host to OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, one of my favorite places to visit as a kid), the Oregon Zoo (which is home to one of the world’s leading elephant breeding programs), the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team (#4 in the Western Conference!), Forest Park (one of the West’s largest urban city parks), plus Portland is the headquarter city for Nike, Adidas, and Intel. Not to mention the fabulous shopping areas…..and not having to pay sales tax. That’s a big motivation factor for me.
Portland is growing on the national map, too. Did you know that the newly-released movie Coraline was produced by Phil Knight (owner of Nike), using one of Portland’s own up-and-coming production studios? The movie Twilight was also filmed in and around Portland. And older classics such as Free Willy, Goonies, Stand By Me, The Ring, and The Shining were all filmed in and around Portland. Rumor has it that Twilight’s Robert Pattinson used to hang out in downtown areas such as Powell’s bookstore during filming downtime.
Until recently, I never knew about half of the things I could do in Portland. Well, actually when I reached my senior year of college and had nothing better to do on weekends than homework, I finally had my motivation to get out and explore. The Internet is always a great resource, but I was able to pick up a free copy of Urban Pages, which is basically a city guide that highlights every area/neighborhood of the metropolitan area. Now, if I ever find myself with nothing to do, I just open that up to a random page and try to find something that I can do for cheap. With the current economy, price is one of my main factors to consider, and Portland has some really good deals for people on a tight budget.
Long story short, my city is pretty cool. And I didn’t know about half of the things it had to offer until I finally got up and tried to find something to do. Which is apparently a lot easier than I had anticipated.
So go find something new to do today!
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