Portland; Saturday, 30 March, 2024

I tried for a bit more of a lie-in, but was awake a little after 6, which was annoying as the first thing I had planned for the day – a cruise on the Willamette River – wasn’t due to start until 11am, so I had a lazy start, a long shower and even longer breakfast before finally heading out of the hotel just after 10am to head down to the boarding point.

I was there by about 10:20 so I was naturally the first person in the queue that only took about 5 minutes to form behind me. In the end the boat started boarding just before 11am, so I was only waiting around for about 35 minutes.

The cruise took in the stretch of the river back up stream to the small city of Milwaukie (named for it’s much bigger sibling in Wisconsin), and then back to Portland, with the final stretch being alongside the historic waterfront – taking in 8 of the city’s 12 bridges.

Back on dry land I quickly stopped off at the Mill Ends Park, the worlds smallest city park occupying the space that previously housed the footings for a streetlamp, but today it’s got an official sign and is maintained by the city. From the park I headed up into town and stopped off for a bite to eat before heading over to the bus stop near my hotel to catch the bus back up into the hills and Washington Park to explore a few more parts of the site.

Part of the reason for heading up there was because the views across to Mount Hood were even clearer today than they’d been yesterday so I wanted to get some more photos from up high looking the 50 miles or so across to the peak. I wandered back down through the Rose Garden – currently not more than lots of twigs as the roses don’t start blooming until May – and then onto the Lewis and Clarke Memorial which is housed at the top of the main entrance into the park from the city.

I picked up the bus back down into town and headed back to the hotel to freshen up for a little while before heading out for dinner.

After dinner I headed further into downtown, over to the Chinatown area of the city to go on a Haunted Underground Shanghai Tunnels tour. The tunnels were created by the building owners knocking through the basements of various buildings over time and at one point in the early 20th century stretched for many blocks in all directions, but rebuilds and blocking up of cellars over the decades since have closed down much of the space so that only a handful of areas still exist, and only one is open to the public.

Along with being storage space the tunnels were also used for more illicit activity – including brothels, gambling and drinking dens – assisted by Oregon implementing prohibition three years ahead of the rest of the country. One of the other uses of the tunnels was to hold men who had been Shanghaied. This was the process of, usually, drugging men so that they could be sold off to ships captains, by the time they came round the ship was far out to sea so there was no means of escape.

The building that the tunnels are under is now used by a brewery (who also run a pizza restaurant), so at the end of the tour there was also a small tasting of some of their beers down in the tunnels before I returned to the surface and headed back to my hotel.