Portland Oregon, Take One

What a week! I have a lot of things to post so they will be coming up short and quick. I was in Portland Oregon this past weekend and what a beautiful, liberal, green, forward thinking city! I was impressed by so many things that I saw in the city as I meandered through the down-town streets with my backpack on and the smell of several days of camping on my bones. I will post several things this week that I loved about Portland and my 3-day trip to visit my good friend Heather or (as some of us like to call her, H-Bag)

I was about 5 hours into my solo exploration of the downtown area yesterday when I decided I wanted to check out the Old Town/China Town District. It was neat to see the Chinese lanterns on the street and some statues sprinkled here and there along with what looked like some amazing Asian restaurants, but it definitely didn't rival the China Town of San Francisco so I wasn't so impressed.

Lucky for me though I happened by an eco-friendly store called Seven Planet right in the midst of China Town.

http://www.sevenplanet.com/index.php/

As I had some serious time to kill...I'd say another 5 hours before my red-eye flight to Chicago, I went in to take a look. There are a lot of different things going on when you walk through the doors oft his cute little store. There is the tea-shop... I was greeted by a well-dressed gentleman who offered me some complimentary fair-trade tea. I politely turned him down..as I already had consumed 2 large coffees prior to my arrival and we all know too much of some things is just not a good thing, especially when wondering aimlessly through a foreign city without a bathroom in sight, but I digress. Aside from the tea-shop the store sells fresh flowers, jewelry, clothing, house-hold goods, pet-goods, soups/lotions, food and books.

Everything in the store had the same eco-friendly labeling and the jewelry was made mostly by local artists. Most of the artists had used reclaimed materials in their jewelry, such as scrap leather, scrap fabric, pages from old books, rubber from tires and copper from old appliances. I really wanted to purchase some earrings from one of these old copper appliances, but after making my selection remembered my slight skin-sensitivity to copper. And it seems to me that reclaimed appliance copper could potentially be even more of a skin irritant than perhaps it's purist copper cousin. So..instead I bought myself a bracelet made from reclaimed belt leather...I will post a picture later!

I also purchased Mike and I each a Lunchskin to aid us in packing "green" lunches for work!

http://www.lunchskins.com/home.php?cat=



According to the LunchSkin website,
more than 20 million sandwich bags from school lunches go into landfills in the US each day! Yowsa! These fashionable Lunchskins replace those pesky sandwich bags...they can be washed, reused and they have a nice velcro closing to "hopefully" keep things fresh! I'm excited to give these a try and report back on how they're working!

I made my purchases and spoke briefly with the gentleman taking my money. I asked him if he could recommend a locally owned restaurant that was known for using locally grown ingredients. He pointed me to a place down the street called the Davis Street Tavern. The menu was a little pricey for a solo street wanderer on the end of her 3 day vacation like myself but I was lucky enough to walk in during Happy Hour! Horray! I believe my server may have thought I was off the street when I appeared backpack in tow and probably smelling like a wild mountain creature from having camped the past two nights in the rain...but regardless of the serious dreadlock that was forming on the back of my head, I sat in luxury, sipped my wine and sampled some great local fare on the corner of Davis and 5th in the lovely "green" city of Portland. I ordered myself a tasty Caesar Salad before digging into the best Fish Tacos I've ever tried.

Cheers to you Portland, I give you, your "green" store and your "local" fish tacos a thumbs up.