Portland! Part 1.

As promised, although two weeks late (sorry!) here is the Portland post.
Day 1.
We headed out for Portland from a dark and rainy Seattle. Driving wasn't going to be easy considering we could hardly see in front of us which also meant that i saw little of the roadside. However i couldn't let this dampen my spirits so we drove the three hour drive on the Interstate with my eyes glued to the window the whole time, waiting patiently for any break in the weather. The interstate is a funny thing. It just goes and goes in a straight line, void of any personality. Four to five lanes on either side, vehicles moving all in one direction. I like a road where you can take in the scenery but on a rainy day it wasn't such a problem. After what seemed like a blink of the eye drive we were hitting Oregon state and crossing the bridge into Portland. I didn't really know what to expect. I have always wanted/dreamed of going to Portland and then all of a sudden i was there. While the weather had cleared some it was still an exceptionally grey afternoon.


We went to check into our hotel, the Ace Hotel. I highly, highly recommend this hotel to anyone. We stayed in one of the dorm style rooms so it only ended up costing us around $35 each a night. The place had character, was clean, comfortable and had stumptown coffee right in the lobby. 


Our lovely room at the Ace Hotel, we managed to mess it up in less than an hour.

After checking in we were approached by a group of people filming in the lobby. They asked if we would be interested in attending a filmed performance in one of the hotel rooms. Turns out it was the artist Pictureplane from Denver. We headed up to room 406 to watch him perform. I can tell you know it was a very strange experience. We all squished into a room where others stood around looking as dumbfounded as we felt. As a bunch of scenesters sat on the bed having a photo shoot we all kind of looked at each other sheepishly. Then out came the drugs, alcohol and whippets and pictureplane began his performance. As millions of cameras circled around we danced in the middle of the room, not sure what else to do. The scenesters got high and did scenester things. Pictureplane performed three songs and then it was all over. We left the room giggling to ourselves wondering what the hell we just got ourselves into. Overall it was pretty fun though.

                                                                                 Pictureplane perform.

It was then time for dinner so we found a cheap pub serving happy hour special food. I had some greasy fries and a little burger which were actually quite delicious. I'm always slightly uncomfortable in places where football is playing on the screen in the background so needless to say we didn't stay around for too long. Instead we went back to the room and got ready for a night out and about in Portland. I had done some research so had some idea of what bars to check out. There was one that was recommended to us from a person i met at a gig in Seattle. The bar was called The Tube and had an amazing happy hour where spirits (or well drinks, as the Americans call them) were only $2 till 10pm at night. We ended up staying here for sometime before meeting up with a friend of Jill's and heading to Dantes bar. Dantes were having a circus type performance which was extremely entertaining, especially the double jointed stripper who pulled out a cigarette from it's packet, lit it and smoked it all with her foot. The night ended off with a gypsy type band and gypsy type dancing.

                                                                       Some of the performers in the circus.

So day one of Portland was over and was a very interesting and enjoyable day. I was looking forward to waking up and getting stumptown from the lobby plus exploring more of the streets. I'll tell you more about that in Part 2 tomorrow.

xx