Portland Travel Answers

Mcmenamins operates a number of pubs around Portland. But I wouldn't call them dive cafe's. They take cool, old buildings and turn them into bars et al. http://www.mcmenamins.com/ While in Portland a few months ago I was impressed with the nightlife in the Pearl area around North East 21st Avenue. Karl

Portland is by far the most transit and pedestrian friendly large city on the west coast. The Tri-Met system which runs to the door of the airport and throughout much of the City and suburbs is a great place to get around. As far as dive bars; Stanich's is an institution in Portland. One of the oldest dive bars in town. They also serve hamburgers as well as drinks. It is located at 4915 NE Fremont St. Another dive bar is the Ship Tavern. Classic place and a great dive bar for young and old. It is located in the SW part of Portland at 7827 SW 35th Ave. Then for breakfast or just a shock go to Voodoo Donuts. A legendary place now with several locations throughout Portland. Best location is at 22 SW 3rd Avenue. Great donuts and atmosphere. Check this link page; http://voodoodoughnut.com/index.php

If you are on a Cascades train (not the Coast Starlight) they will have you wait in line for a seat assignment. Ask them for the "Water Side" of the train. The view from there should be enjoyed while it still exists as within a few years the passenger trains will no longer operate along Puget Sound and the view from Point Defiance to Nisqually will only be available to those in the cabs of freight train locomotives. Instead, the plan is to put passenger trains on the old main line through DuPont and Lakewood, giving everyone a great view of traffic on Interstate 5. The Friday trains usually sell out soonest, and the price goes up as the tickets get sold so the earlier you buy your tickets the better the price you will get. There are several hotels in the downtown area, and along the east side of the river. It depends a bit on what you would like to be close to, and what your budget is. There are some good points and some bad points to our transit system here. If you are used to the way they do things in Seattle you will like the fact that there is only one major transit district operating in Portland, with a few buses from C-Tran on the other side of the river. On the other hand, you will be disappointed in how slow everything moves here as we don't have the intricate network of express buses that operate in Seattle and surrounding areas. You will like the fact that we have a free rail use zone - at least for now (it will cease to exist in September) but you do have to pay for the buses. This is completely the opposite of Seattle, where the surface buses are free downtown and the light rail line through downtown must be paid for. Unlike Seattle, you can purchase a day ticket for any day of the week. This saves a lot of money if you are going to spend a lot of time on the bus. From Portland Union Station, there is a light rail line with stations two blocks south of Portland Union Station, at the south side of the Greyhound Bus station, which is one block south of the train station. You can take the Green Line trains (not yellow line trains) on this to the other side of the river, and there are several hotels right along this line near the convention center and the Lloyd Center. Red Lion, Doubletree, LaQuinta and a few others - so a variety of price ranges. If you take this line going the other direction, it goes into the core of downtown Portland and a number of other options including the Heathman, The Nines, and a number of others. Tell us a bit more about what you are looking for and I can make some better suggestions. There are a lot of options. There are also a number of night clubs in downtown Portland. I can't give you any good suggestions there, but I know that there is a crowd that favors each one for different reasons. If you take bus route #14 going east from downtown, you can get to SE Hawthorne and there are all manner of restaurants there, plus a few theatres plus some odd local stores. A few blocks north of there is Belmont (bus route #15) which has several other theatres. SE Division Street (bus route #4) is more of a nitty gritty type of area though it is starting to get a little more upscale. The core of downtown Portland is pretty walkable as it is fairly compact, and there are walkways on both sides of the river - a little bit like the walkway along the Seattle Waterfront only doubled on both sides of the river, and no real tourist stores. Also, the west side of the river is a long city park and the east side of the river is a narrow sidewalk. Saturday market may be of interest, and that is one block south of the Burnside Bridge on the west side of the river and runs from Waterfront Park west several blocks. It takes up open spaces on open walkways through that area, and is rather scattered around as some of it had to move to make way for a new parking lot.

thanks for the help everyone! so as it went, I had to travel further south to Albany for work, so public transportation was out. however, my wife was able to take the train from seattle to portland friday and I picked up her up at the station on my way back from Albany. we stayed in the Pearl District and visited a number of pubs and clubs, had a great time. Saturday breakfast at Bijou, visited some vintage clothing stores, found voodoo donuts (and a great oyster bar next door), and a farmers market. Very clean, fun city. :)

Glad you enjoyed the time...thanks for the response....let us know some of the clubs/pubs you enjoyed.. my daughter moved up to Portland and I am going more often now. Karl

I'm also visiting portland in few weeks. As I'm from India, I can't spend much. I'm looking for some best deals site. I found this one: salecamel.com/local_Portland.... Is this a good one? Please let me know or suggest me some other site. Thanks!

How long it will take if I wanna look at the entire [url="salecamel.com/local_Portland...]? I'm excited about my trip.

I'm not quite sure what that is, other than a link to some shopping network type thing.