day 2 – monday

After a long, restful night, we packed up and got ready to leave Ashland. The proprietess served our breakfast in the “garden room,” which was a bright, well-appointed room, with Victorian decor. We took off on Interstate 5, stopping along the way in tiny little places (Curtin, Cottage Grove, Eureka) until we reached the Portland area. We stopped for gas and again had to remind ourselves not to pump our own gas. It’s sort of embarassing to have the attendant do it for you, but that’s how it is in Oregon. We knew we were getting closer because it started raining. Portland has a nice skyline, but there are also some rather industial-looking bridges and overpasses that take away from the beautiful architecture of some of the monuments. We checked into our hotel and took the lightrail to the downtown area. It’s so neat that Portland has public transportation–not something we’re used to in L.A. at all. We walked around and explored the area (no sales tax! how great is that?), eating dinner at a cute French brasserie and then walking over to a movie theatre. We saw “Igby goes down” which we had missed when it had come out in L.A. Loved it. Then we took the lightrail back to our hotel and started planning our next day.