“What would you do with one day in your city?”
It’s a question we get all the time. As bike tour guides and riders in this city where many of us have lived most of our lives, we have too many answers. Give us an idea about what you like best and we might be able to, after much agony and abbreviation, come up with an itinerary.
When I say “might” — of course we do, we do this every day. We make lists of the best coffee shops and parks and food trucks and places to get cheese or local wine or tater tots or vegan bowls or (yes, of course, always) doughnuts or Netarts Bay oysters or ramen. We stop at one book store, one chocolate shop, one coffee roaster, one extraordinarily authentic Asian garden, one university with an extreme self-consciousness about its history of whiteness and world-renowned department of urban planning.
Our goal with One Day in PDX is to answer this question every day and for every person a different way. If Portland is any one thing that is superlative; if it is any one other thing it is constantly improving itself. It’s weird, of course it’s weird, but it needn’t say so. I’m typing this with the dregs of an 80% fairly-traded dark chocolate mocha made with beans roasted in my childhood neighborhood and then delivered by bike to the coffee shop tucked around the corner from the biggest independent new & used book store in the country. A man with a big ginger beard and a neon-accented Giro helmet just rode up on his city bike and parked it next to mine. Records are spinning behind me and breakfast was two hard-boiled eggs raised on a farm in Washington whose kids I’ve seen grow up every week at the co-op farmer’s market. It’s raining but no one has an umbrella.
This is our favorite city at our favorite time in our lives. We’re aware of what’s wrong with it, of course, and we’ll talk about that a lot too. If Portland is yet one more thing, that is neurotically self-examining.
Come along. Examine with us. All posts in our “one day” category will give you a day or a part-day itinerary for the city.
We are on the most intimate terms with the city and the gorgeous and raucous places that surround it. We are the experts, the gurus, the students, the poets, the observers, the evangelists. Come along for one day in Portland — we guarantee you’ll want to extend your stay.
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