Portland - Day #3

Branelle presented her paper this morning and did a great job, as usual.  The title was “International Space Station Urine Monitoring System Functional Integration and Science Testing”.   I wrote a little rap/hip-hop tune for her to lead off with that I titled “Let’s Talk About Pee”, but for some reason she chose to go a different direction.  Her talk was at 8:30am – a little early for me but since we were on Pacific Standard Time I figured it was like 10:30 back home so I got up and attended. 

After her presentation, Nel headed back for more conference stuff and I headed out to the Portland Art Museum.  The Streetcar and MAX portions of Portland’s public transportation system are free in the downtown area.  The Streetcar has a stop right at the museum, so I hopped on that and headed over.  Museums - aside from the greats like the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Prado - are something I can usually do without.  However, Portland had an exhibit called “The Allure of the Automobile” which seemed interesting to me.  It turned out to be a small but fantastic collection of some of the most expensive cars you will see anywhere. 

1961 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta

What really surprised me though was the rest of the museum.  The works were OK – it’s Portland, so they aren’t going to have a collection of classics like New York, etc. – but the buildings themselves, especially the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, were very nice, even though they were a bit compact and confusing.  The modern art collection was of good quality, and was even better displayed.   The entire place has a nice feel.

Admiring some of the automotive art in the Jubitz Center

After hanging out in the museum for a couple of hours, I headed back to the Marriot to have lunch with Nel.  I tried my luck with a bus for the first time.  It didn’t really work out very well.  I got a little closer, but still had to walk about 5 blocks and didn’t really save myself any time.  From the hotel, we walked a couple blocks to Carafe – a little French Bistro.  I had the Croque Monsieur, which is basically a ham & cheese sandwich that’s encased in cheese and baked.  I jokingly reminded Nel in my most snobbish voice that “I have had the Croque Monsieur at the Café Du Paris in Monaco, so I wasn’t expecting much here”.  In truth, this one was much better!  Carafe did it the correct (but not necessarily the healthiest) way – completely covered and baked with rich cheese.  

Nike is based in Beaverton just outside of Portland.  We weren’t planning on going to the campus on this trip but we decided to head to the Nike Outlet Store in Portland before dinner.  This was by far our most ambitious outing to date.  We took a bus for the first time on the trip.  We got there, but I’ll state this again – I HATE public transportation.  The Nike Outlet turned out to be just like the ones we have back home…only smaller and more expensive.  Don’t waste your time.

We left the Nike Outlet via the #77 bus and headed across town for dinner.  We had eaten at a restaurant called “Nel Centro” on Sunday night, so to complete the Nel double we dined at Café Nell tonight.  We ate outside (it’s still so novel to us to be able to dine comfortably outdoors in July) and really enjoyed it.  The food was great!

After dinner we caught the streetcar to Mio Gelato for some – can you guess? – gelato.  It’s across the street from Powell’s City of Books so with no other plans for the evening we headed in to roam around for a while.  Powell’s is in danger of becoming obsolete, but that’s kind of its charm.  It feels like being in an old library.  We sort of made a game of looking for vintage copies of some of our favorites and actually bought a 1914 edition of a Dickens classic.