Portland Day 2

Today the weather had changed – yesterday had been a lovely bright day; today it was low cloud and chucking it down. I drove down to the town centre over one of the many bridges that pass high over the river and parked on a meter in the town centre. The down-town area has long parks running through it so it is quite green and it clings to the side of a hill on one side and skirts the Willamette River on the other. I walked down through the shops and offices and found Powell's City of Books. This book store fills at least 2 separate blocks in the down-town area, its the largest book store I've ever been in and more resembles a library than a store. The books are arranged in coloured zones based on subject and each zone has it's own information desk to better help visitors/shoppers. I spent a good hour here browsing the hundreds of shelves and suddenly remembered I was parked on a meter about a mile away. I made my way back to the car with about 10 minutes left of the meter but at on point I wasn't sure I would find the car. The park which runs through the town and the buildings surrounding it are virtually all the same and there are 2 parks to add to my confusion I hadn't realised I had skirted one on my initial walk into the down-town area. The rain had started to come down heavy now so I took a drive out and up onto the Skyline Drive which cuts over the hill behind the town. The wind was really strong up here and loads of branches were being blown off the firs surrounding the the hill and I made for lower ground to get out of the rain and wind but there were some huge houses up on the hill which would have had fantastic views should the cloud have been higher. Back down in the suburbs I stopped in a small Coffee Shop and had a coffee and some excellent beef and bean soup. The Wifi here was brilliant (5Meg upload speed!) so I uploaded as many photo's as I could before the laptop battery ran out.