I arrived in Portland, Oregon on Saturday night. I stayed with my cousin, Jaime, his wife, Dawn, and his kids, Olivia and Alexander. I hadn’t seen Jaime in 10 years! And I had never met Dawn, Olivia, or Alexander. It was really nice to spend time with them and get to know them.

Dawn had planned a whole itinerary for us for Sunday. We went to the Waterfront Park and walked by the river for a while. Then we had brunch at Mother’s Bistro. It was delicious! We walked around downtown for a bit and went to Powell’s City of Books. It’s a bookstore that spans an entire block. It was huge! I could have spent all day there looking through the shelves. After that, we walked around some more and got Voodoo Doughnuts.

That was the end of Dawn’s itinerary, but it was still early, so we went to Mt Tabor Park, where I had read there were amazing views of Portland. The views did not disappoint. Mt Tabor is an extinct volcanic cinder cone. We drove to the summit and the reservoir to see the views, but the park has trails that would have been cool to hike if I had stayed in Portland longer. As you can see in the picture below, the kids were pretty much done by this point (and the adults were exhausted too), so we went home.

On Monday, I went to the Pittock Mansion to see the view of the city and Mt Hood from there. The view is the picture at the top of this post. Then, I went to the International Rose Test Garden, which is used as a testing ground for new types of roses. There are 600+ different types of roses in the garden! It was beautiful and smelled amazing. I had never seen so many roses in so many different shades of red, pink, purple, yellow, orange, and white. Some of the roses there didn’t even look like roses. They had signs for roses that are particularly fragrant and it was cool to smell different ones. While they all smell like roses, they all have slightly different scents.

After the rose garden, I went to Cathedral City Park to get a view of St John’s Bridge from below and then I went back home, where I finally attached the new fender liner to my car. It looks great! All the driving I’m going to do this month will test whether I did it right or not.

The 3 nights I was in Portland, we had dinner as a family and then Jaime, Dawn, and I sat in the living room to chat for a few hours before we went to bed. At least 1 of their 3 cats was usually in the living room with us. My stay in Portland was quick, but very fun and full of family time.