a weekend in the city

prior to moving to corvallis, i never would have considered myself a city person. i love the outdoors, being outdoors, trees, hiking, all sorts of outdoors-related activities.

and then, a few weekends ago, brad and i went up to portland for the weekend and as we walked through the downtown, i said, "oh i just love buildings!"



[view of the city from the pittock mansion]


boston definitely turned me into a city person. really, though, i think it's an either/or situation: either i want to be out in the middle of nowhere, with only the trees, sky, desert, etc; or i want to be in a city with all the cultural richness that goes along with that. and the problem with corvallis, is that it's neither of those things. it's somewhere weird and inbetween.

so portland. is a wonderful city. it's quite small as city goes, but has great personality. brad and i basically did a little bit of everything - saw a show, ate delicious food, wandered through the saturday market, visited the farmer's market and ate massive amounts of raspberries (well, i did. my fingers were all red.), saw the art museum, shopped, ate at a brewery, gawked our way through powell's, went to washington park and through the rose garden. it was great. and even though it sounds like a lot, it really wasn't (for us, at least, given our prior travel record).

i barely took any photos throughout the weekend, but here are a few from the rose garden:



[sheer magic]


[jean giono]


the sheer number of rose varietals blows me away (about 550 in the garden). the garden is very, very impressive. we were just at the end of "rose season" too, so it worked out quite well that we got to see a number of them.