Arrived into Portland Wednesday evening on the Amtrak Cascades train. After my earlier comments about American trains this one, disappointingly, didn't have the acres of legroom that you usually get. However, it did have leather seats (even in standard class) and showed a film during the journey so it is not bad considering it only cost me $44 to get all the way from Vancouver to Portland!For my first day in Portland I headed out to Powells' bookstore. This is the largest independent bookshop in the US, taking up a whole block. I found that, had I been in Portland earlier the day before, I could have attended a Guardian event on the elections there. Never mind! After that I went to the Museum of Contemporary Craft, which had a great exhibition on using everyday items in unexpected ways, including a display of cotton reels which, when you looked at it through a glass sphere, became a classic Campbell's soup tin!
After lunch I walked through the Tom McCall Waterfront park. Now this, apparently used to be an expressway - it sounds very green that it is now a park until you see that there is still a fairly large road next to it! Then, to continue with the book theme of the day I visited the central library in the afternoon, before going to the movies to see "W" - a surprisingly sympathetic biopic of George W Bush by Oliver Stone.
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