Hello from Amsterdam

It's been a little while since San Francisco.  Since then I've been fortunate to visit Portland, Oregon; Fox Island in Puget Sound; Seattle; New York; London and Amsterdam.  However I've skipped through most of these places with the exception of Portland, so I'll start there and mash all the others into another post - so we don't all fall asleep!

Planning the American leg of the trip, I was always most excited about visiting Portland; home of fixie-riding hipsters and micro-brewery heaven.  I wasn't disappointed.  If you told me tomorrow that I had to go back for the rest of the year, I'd probably be down with that.  Here we go:

Sightseeing in Portland

Portland is an old logging town with an average-to-troubled economy and, until the recent influx of hipster art kids due to cheaper rents, nothing to set it apart on the map.  Because of this, Portland doesn't have many great 'sights' to put on a t-shirt.  (A walking tour on my first day illustrated this beyond any shadow of a doubt; "...and that's why they decided on this design for the city's bus stops" doesn't make for gripping material.)

The city is better experienced by just hanging out.  Its motto is 'the city that works' - generous bicycle lanes and free public transport in the inner city make it easy to get around, and the best microbreweries and vintage stores in the world make it pretty easy to spend a week milling about.  Not to mention Powell's, the largest independent bookstore in the world, and Stumptown coffee - served everywhere and single-handedly busting the myth of vapid American coffee.

Main street of the Hawthorne district, SE Portland

Neighbourhood houses, Hawthorne

getting their hipster-craft on, vintage store, Portland

Stumptown Coffee, Hawthorne

Oreo and peanut-butter encrusted heart attack at voodoo doughnuts.

Airbnb Portland hosts

My first week in Portland was spent with Ross and Gracie - two flatmates living in the humble-but-hip Hawthorne neighbourhood of South-East Portland.  I ended up with Ross and Gracie via my now-favourite website, airbnb.com.


Ross is a teacher and painter.  Gracie is a doula (midwife) and ex-interior designer training in physiotherapy, who quilts.  With this mixture of interests they proved to be fascinating hosts, and their house was just beautiful.

Ross and Gracie - air bnb hosts extraordinaire

My hosts held a dinner party the second night I stayed with them - it was great to talk to local people and learn about the Portland scene.  It turned out one of them even knew a cycling friend of mine from high school - just to remind us how small this world is.

From meeting Ross & Gracie's friends, I figured that everybody here basically has three jobs. A bread-winning job (teachers, bike mechanics, djs, IT guys...), a 'keeping an eye on the scene' job (interning at a hip online magazine, running an art collective...), and their creative work.  

I'd heard that everyone in Portland was super creative (the Portland hipster stereotype has even spurned the hilarious Portlandia tv programme).  On meeting these people I was struck by how genuine their creative passions were, and how supportive they were of each other's pursuits (even if they did keep terrariums on their dashboards and burn incense in their trucks...).

Ross, Austin and Patch - aka instant friends! Another reason why airbnb is so awesome when travelling...

More new friends

As well as enjoying time with Ross, Gracie and their friends, I also had the pleasure of meeting up with a woman I'd corresponded with since the beginning of my trip.  Some of you may recall from NZ conversations that I wanted to use this trip to visit a few liberal churches along the way, to see what they were up to (sussing out whether there's anything useful left in the old church, or whether I have to widen the search and start sussing things out unaided, so to speak.  I'm hoping for the former, as baby-with-the-bathwater is not my preference...) Through www.tcpc.org I got in touch with Deshna Ubeda, who recommended places to check out along the way.

Deshna lives in Portland (two streets over from Ross and Gracie as it turned out...), and we met up a couple of times while I was in town.  I was impressed to meet someone unashamedly ditching what didn't work for her and living life her way. I read through a children's curriculum Deshna put together in her work for tcpc.org, which is basically a guide for parents in the position of "crap, I don't believe most of the guff I was brought up with but want my kid to have some kind of appreciation for life and tools to deal with its curve-balls".  Impressive stuff.

And of course, in another show of outrageous American hospitality, Deshna called her parents (half an hour after having met me) and instructed us all that I was travelling up to Puget Sound to stay with them on Fox Island.  Win! Preachers' kids forevs.

After a final dinner at Chez Ubeda of vegan fare and far too much wine, I regretfully packed my bags and headed for the Amtrak train up to Tacoma, on Puget Sound.  Portland was the first place I was truly sad to leave, and I hope to visit again.


The week-and-a-half blissfull chillout also proved a good idea for the whirlwind of travel that was to follow, but more on that in the next post - thanks for bearing with me!  'Til next time,


Sarah x