Saturday we checked the weather - sunny and 65ish - good.....checked the internet for any demonstrations/riots/political get togethers - none listed.....good to go!!! We grabbed our hoodies, walked over to the train station and rode 20 minutes to Pioneer Square in the center of downtown Portland for lunch.
Pioneer square is known as Portland's living room and has events of some kind most weekend days such as concerts, food trucks, pop up shops, festivals and daily activities during summer and holiday seasons - over 300 annually. The square opened on April 6, 1984 sharing Portland's 133 birthday and is home to the historic Pioneer Courthouse built in 1875, a Starbucks and KGW News. The bricks used to pave the square were sold to raise money for construction and inscribed with the donors names. You can see people walking 'head down' trying to find their brick - a map of their locations was never created!!!
We love to eat lunch at the Tillamook Truck sharing cheese sandwiches, mac n cheese till we can't move! Joe wandered off and came back with a foot long Philly Cheese Steak that looked delicious but no room after all that amazing local cheese!!!
Stopped to take Pamela's picture with the statue of a man holding an umbrella and hailing a cab and rumored to be the most photographed man in Portland. The Square was a very inviting place to spend a couple of hours on a sunny Saturday!!!
The Square has the cleanest and most technically forward restroom in the Information center on the lower level through the waterfall. The bathroom is gender non specific and well managed by security ensuring you are pleased with the experience - frankly we were amazed! Everything is 'hands free" including the dryers on each side of the faucets. We had tried to use the Starbucks restroom which had an out of service sign on the door by cleverly purchasing a water and then asking for the code. We were informed the bathroom was out of order - like the sign says - and to go use the public restroom downstairs. We were nervous and almost didn't - choosing to look for a restaurant or department store instead but necessity made us adventurous and it was a delightful surprise!
We try to explore several new blocks on each visit to Portland and this day we found the candy shop - Rocket Fizz offering over 500 flavors of sodas in bottles and 3,000 types of candy - some we hadn't seen since we were kids. Candy Cigarettes and candy poop with paper sticking out called "The Dog Ate My Homework" were our favorites but seemed expensive to buy simply as a joke so we kept walking - trying to walk off some of that fabulous lunch! We were made very welcome at the Capital One Cafe by the manager who offered us various tasty coffee and coco drinks, various banking services and told us about the loft upstairs offering space and assistance for local 'start ups'. Interesting concept!
We barely walked in our front door when it began to rain - nice day - NAP TIME!!!
