Day 8 Portland: Japanese & Rose Gardens and Powell's Books

Next on our to-do list was the Portland Japanese Garden.  It was pretty but it would be something that I would probably skip next time around. 

 

Kellan liked looking at the fish in the pond.

 

The sand garden was pretty neat.  I wonder how often they have to re-rake the sand to make these designs?

Kellan dropping a penny in the wishing well.

Kellan riding one of the dogs at the front entrance...it looked like a dragon to me but apparently they are dogs...

Portland is known as the City of Roses and they have the oldest public rose garden and it has been here since 1917.  Now it has become an International Rose Test Garden.

Kellan smelling a rose :)  There was a $500 fine for anyone that picked a rose and of course Kellan wanted to grab at everyone that he could touch.  He had to stay in the stroller.

After leaving the rose garden we went to Powell's Books.  It is the world's largest used and new book store and it is enormous.  The building takes up an entire city block and I'm pretty sure if you are looking for a book...they have it somewhere in there.  I could spend hours just wandering around from room to room and at one point I actually got lost.  I left Kellan and Michael to go find a particular book in another room and when I went back to find them I realized that there were several rooms that looked just like the one that I left them in.  Eventually I made my way back but there was a lot of running in and out of rooms until I just happened to run into them.

This is the directory for the ROOMS where you find specific types of books...not the shelf where you find it...the ROOM.  There are four floors and I don't know how many rooms...so many that they had to color code them!

Daddy reading Kellan a hilarious book in the children's section :)  Kellan got two books to take home with him.

And mommy got 3 books to take home with her...

Kellan somehow managed to chew the spine off of this book before we even made it back to the hotel!

Finally, before we called it a night, we had dinner at Huber's, Portland's oldest restaurant.

One of their signature dishes was turkey and stuffing with baked ham.  That's what I got...I could eat Thanksgiving food year round.

Michael got some kind of salmon.

And last, a berry sorbet.

After this busy day with a lot of walking, we were ready for bed so that we could get up and do more exploring the next day!