Tour Guide, Part I

A couple weeks ago my friend Nathan emailed me that his coworker is thinking about moving from San Jose, CA to Portland, and asked if she could get in contact with me. I'm always happy to talk about our new home and the greatness of the city, so I gladly obliged. Chandra flew up to Portland last Monday to get a feel for the area. Because I'm not working yet, I was able to show her around the city and share some of my favorite places. Our friends Todd and Caitlin came up a few days later, so I ended up visiting some of these spots twice in one week (more on their visit later)! I took Chandra to a McMenamin's pub and Multnomah Falls on Monday and over the next couple days we walked down 23rd St. (a long/fun shopping strip), walked through downtown PDX, got beers at the Portland City Grill, walked through Portland's biggest Rose Garden, took a hike through Forest Park, drove around Cathedral Park, and ate at Basta's Italian Restaurant.

I had been to all of the above places at least once before, except for the Rose Gardens. It's been on my "mental list of places to go and things to do" but I hadn't made it out there yet. Unfortunately I left my SLR camera's battery in the charger at home, so I was left with my little point-and-shoot for the day. Luckily the little guy has an awesome macro setting! 

The following pictures amount to about a quarter of my photo library from this day-- It was so tough to narrow it down for the blog. I hope you don't mind looking at a lot of flowers!

The array of colors throughout the garden was incredible...

As were the hundreds of varieties...These flowers were almost the size of my head!

These flowers were actually very small...

 Here are a couple of my favorite shots. I was lucky to snap these at the perfect moment, while the flowers had a little visitor on its petals. 

The picture above is one of my all-time favorites now. 

In this last picture you can see the city in the background. 

The garden was incredibly peaceful and of course very colorful, too. It turns out we went at the perfect time, as all of the bushes were in full bloom. I'll be going back soon with Nick with big fancy cameras in tow.