Portland

Top things to do in Portland

1. 01

   Powell's City of Books - a full city block of shelves

   culture arts shopping 👍 Popular

   An independent bookshop taking up an entire block on the edge of the Pearl District, with colour-coded rooms, a rare book room upstairs and new and secondhand copies filed side by side on the same shelf rather than in separate sections. It is genuinely enormous and open late, and the closest thing Portland has to a civic monument; the printed floor maps at the door exist because people really do get lost.

2. 02

   Portland Japanese Garden - eight gardens on the hillside above Washington Park

   culture arts nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommended

   Laid out in the 1960s on a wooded slope above the rose terraces, with eight distinct garden styles - strolling pond, tea, flat, sand and stone, natural - threaded together by mossy paths and a viewing terrace that frames Mount Hood on a clear day. It is often called the finest Japanese garden outside Japan, and it is at its best in autumn when the maples turn and in steady rain, when the moss lights up and the crowds thin.

3. 03

   International Rose Test Garden - terraced beds looking over the city

   nature wildlife scenic 👍 Popular

   Set up in Washington Park during the First World War as a safe haven for European rose varieties, and still a working test ground where new cultivars are grown out and judged. Thousands of bushes step down the hillside in terraces with downtown, and on a clear day the volcano, behind them; June is the peak of the bloom, the gates are open year round and there is nothing to pay.

4. 04

   Forest Park - the Wildwood Trail through fir and fern

   nature wildlife scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   One of the largest forested parks inside any American city runs for kilometres along the ridge above northwest Portland, with the Wildwood Trail threading its whole length through Douglas fir, sword fern and dripping bigleaf maple. The classic short version starts at Lower Macleay Park and climbs a creek gorge to the roofless stone shell of an old ranger comfort station that everyone calls the Witch's Castle.

5. 05

   Portland's food cart pods - lunch from a parking lot, seriously

   food 👍 Popular

   Clusters of permanently parked carts on surface lots around the city, each pod a spread of a dozen or more kitchens - Thai, Egyptian, Filipino, Georgian, hot chicken, wood-fired pizza - with picnic tables and often a bar in the middle. The southeast pods around Hawthorne and Division run latest. The model works because a cart takes a fraction of what a restaurant does to open, so the cooking is far more adventurous than the setting suggests.

6. 06

   Lan Su Chinese Garden - a walled Ming-style garden in Old Town

   culture arts history

   A full city block behind a whitewashed wall, built around a lake with a teahouse standing over the water and assembled by artisans from Suzhou using stone shipped from China. Every view through every doorway was composed on purpose, and the whole thing is only about a hundred paces across. Go in the rain, when the courtyards drip and there is almost nobody else inside.

7. 07

   Portland Art Museum - the South Park Blocks collection

   culture arts history

   The oldest art museum in the Pacific Northwest, on the tree-lined park blocks downtown, with a serious Native American collection, Northwest and contemporary galleries, and a graphic arts holding that punches above the building's size. It is the reliable answer to a wet afternoon, and the elm-shaded blocks outside are a good walk in their own right.

8. 08

   Pittock Mansion - the view east over the grid to Mount Hood

   history scenic

   A chateau-style house finished in 1914 high in the West Hills for the publisher of the city's newspaper, restored as a house museum with its original lifts, heating and telephone gadgetry intact. Most people come for the lawn rather than the rooms: it looks straight down the length of the city with the volcano lined up behind, which is the fastest way to understand the geography.

9. 09

   Tom McCall Waterfront Park - the riverbank where a freeway used to be

   history scenic

   A long green strip along the west bank of the Willamette, created when the city tore out a riverside expressway in the 1970s and gave the land back as parkland, one of the earliest freeway removals anywhere. It carries the seawall promenade, a fountain children run through in summer, a grove of cherry trees at the north end that flowers in early spring, and a memorial to Oregon's Japanese American community on the same stretch.

10. 10

    Mount Tabor Park - an extinct volcano in the middle of the east side

    nature wildlife scenic

    A wooded cinder cone from the same small volcanic field as the buttes around it, laced with paths and stairs, with open reservoirs stepped down its flanks and a west-facing summit that is the neighbourhood sunset spot over downtown. Portland is one of very few cities in the country with a volcano inside the city limits, and this is the one you can walk up before dinner.

11. 11

    Portland Aerial Tram - the cable car up to Marquam Hill

    scenic

    Two silver cabins swing from the South Waterfront up to the hospital campus on the hill above. It was built as hospital infrastructure rather than a ride, which is why it is quick, cheap and full of people in scrubs, and why almost no visitors are on it. The terrace at the top lays out the east side, the bridges and Mount Hood in one go.

12. 12

    OMSI - a science museum with a Cold War submarine moored outside

    culture arts history

    The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry sits on the east bank of the river with a planetarium, a big-screen theatre and hands-on halls pitched squarely at children, plus a decommissioned diesel-electric submarine tied up alongside that you tour end to end through the hatches. The best wet-day answer in the city if you have kids with you.

13. 13

    Portland Farmers Market - Saturday mornings in the South Park Blocks

    food

    The city's flagship market runs year round on Saturdays under the elms at Portland State University, with Willamette Valley produce, Oregon cheeses, foraged Coast Range mushrooms, hazelnuts and a row of stalls cooking breakfast to eat standing up. Smaller neighbourhood markets run on other days across the east side through the warmer months.

14. 14

    Kennedy School - a brewpub inside an old elementary school

    nightlife music history

    A schoolhouse in northeast Portland converted into a hotel, cinema, soaking pool and several bars, with classrooms as guest rooms, blackboards left on the walls and a small bar in the former detention room. The same local family did the same trick to a 1920s movie palace on Hawthorne, where you can watch a film with a pint and a slice at your seat.

15. 15

    Alberta Street - the northeast arts strip

    culture arts food

    Thirty-odd blocks of galleries, murals, coffee, taco shops and vintage in northeast Portland, and the clearest place to see how the city's commercial life happens on neighbourhood high streets rather than downtown. It is also the sharp end of Portland's gentrification: this was the heart of Black Portland before the money arrived, and the displacement is recent enough that people still talk about it.

Getting to & around Portland

Know before you go