Portland – Day 1

After a lovely lazy day, again sunny, with Bev and Dan yesterday (the boys played golf) we arrived in Portland about midday today and to our surprise it was quite sunny! I thought Portland (that’s Portland Oregon) was always rainy but apparently not. The flight was pretty quick and painless, 1.25 hours. We grabbed a map from the hotel and started wandering – first stop the downtown cafe of Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

We spent most of the afternoon wandering along the waterfront and getting the basic layout of the city, working out where The Mister needed to be tomorrow for the first conference. The city felt nice, and with the sun today a little bit like Wellington – in that sun is such a rare event that everyone was outside with their dogs and families enjoying the good weather.

The city is on a grid, very environmentally friendly (and friendly to the homeless as well it seems) and not too many chain stores – have spotted a Macy’s but no Bloomingdales. There are loads of bridges across the river, a tram that runs through town and lots of trees everywhere.

There was a knock at the hotel door in the early evening – hotel staff dropping off a ‘hangover kit’ for JSConf – they expect the conference attendees to party hard obviously! We went along to the opening night party – a room full of geeks and pirates including jugs of beer and some live parrots – tame enough that I was allowed a pat but I left pretty quickly when the one I was patting shat all down the skirt of the woman carrying her!! Pretty hard crowd to break into – hardcore geeks.