Portland!

Oh how we loved touching down in Portland! After spending a good part of the day in the San Francisco airport  we were ready for a cool city to explore. Only, we can't say we have seen the city. Yet. We were so enamoured with our accommodation and its local neighbourhood that we have just relaxed here. Check it out:

It is the kind of house that keeps revealing itself: up and down and out the back, down the side. It has an amazing intensively planted garden and miniature goats right out front and, as it happens, right outside our window too!

Kelvina welcomed us warmly even though she doesn't know us at all - our connection is through her partner Arif and we have never met him. He very generously replied to a passed-on email I sent some months ago, offering us a bed, some bikes and also helping me set up some meetings here. How nice is that?! 


As it turned out he had to be in Somalia at the time we were coming so we dont even get to thank him in person. We are very grateful though :-)


The local neighbourhood is a fascinating mix. We walked about 10 or so blocks to buy veges - well, I walked, Dylan skated. The first thing I noticed is no front fences, steps close to the foot path and photovoltaics on rooftops with productive gardens overflowing onto kerbs. My kind of place!

Footpaths are sometimes non-existent (as is the road in places!) and are used as an extension of the house for both work and play, with portable basketball hoops positioned over fences and on verges so the road can be used as a court. Driveways look like entrances to a wilderness, and garages are frequently reclaimed from cars (where we are staying it is a music studio and  home movie theatre! Or maybe that is the basement...anyway any driveway has been reclaimed by goats!). In some places it feels like the deep countryside, yet one block away cars are backed up in rush hour traffic. 

Houses are all kinds of colour schemes and where there was grey it often came teamed with orange and red (sometimes together :-))! In fact orange is very popular. That and hot pink... it's great - a neighbourhood with personality :-).

Albeit one that is changing... there are a few manicured lawns and flash cars, as well as areas of more run down flats. There are still gangs and shootings here we are told. Yet the mix is cherished by some, and I love that they use their public spaces to say so: both in words and also by having their producing gardens right there on the street front. 

 It is probably not all that surprising that the residents have other views to share too...

We look forward to hearing more about human need here in Portland over the next few days. Like so many before us, it is fabulous to be in such a cool town. We feel very at home here. 

Denise