Vacation Spots in Portland, Oregon
Vacation Places in Portland, Oregon
What To Do in Portland

Portland and Mount Hood

Popular Vacation Spots in Portland Oregon

1. 
   Portland, Oregon at Night
   
   
   Drink in the scenery. The Willamette River runs through the center of the Portland, while Mount Tabor is seen on the city's east side. Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood are visible from many places in the city.
2. Visit Saturday Market in downtown Portland for local food, arts & crafts and music. Portland is a shopping haven because there is no sales tax.
3. Smell the International Rose Test Gardens. It's free. Because the climate is ideal for growing roses, Portland is called the City of Roses. The Portland Rose Festival is held in June.
4. Portland is one of only three cities in the contiguous U.S. with an extinct volcano within its boundaries, Mount Tabor. The other cities with volcanoes are Jackson, Mississippi and Bend, Oregon. Mount Tabor Park is a vacation spot known for its scenic views and historic reservoirs.
5. Visit a park. Portland is famous as the greenest city in the United States. Forest Park is the largest wilderness park within city limits in the United States, covering more than 5,000 acres. Portland is also home to Mill Ends Park, the world's smallest park, a circle with a diameter of just two feet. Council Crest Park is the highest point in Portland. Tom McCall Waterfront Park runs along the west bank of the Willamette River for the length of downtown. It has 37 acres and is the site for many events and festivals are held.
6. Spend the day at Washington Park in the West Hills area. Here you'll find several wonderful vacation spots, the Oregon Zoo, the Portland Japanese Garden, and the International Rose Test Garden, the Holocaust Memorial, the World Forestry Center, and the Hoyt Arboretum.
7. Enjoy the classical performing arts. Portland offers the oregon Ballet Theatre, the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Opera.
8. Take in a stage play or live performance. Portland theaters include Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Miracle Theatre, Stark Raving Theatre, and Tears of Joy Theatre.
9. Get your groove on. Portland is home to many indie music bands. Kurt Cobain of the group Nirvana met Courtney Love here.
10. Watch a real film shoot on location in Portland. Hollywood films are often set and shot in Portland. Take a close look at recent movies like Extraordinary Measures, Body of Evidence, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, The Hunted, Twilight, Paranoid Park, Wendy and Lucy, Feast of Love, and Untraceable.
11. Take in a film. Many movie theaters in Portland serve beer during the show.
12. Portland Art Museum displays the city's largest art collection and a variety of touring exhibitions each year. With the recent addition of the Modern and Contemporary Art wing it became one of the twenty-five largest museums in the U.S.
13. Art galleries abound downtown and in the Pearl District, as well as in the Alberta Arts District and other neighborhoods throughout the city.
14. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is an interesting vacation spot with hands-on exhibits that explain the physical sciences, life science, earth science, technology, astronomy, and early childhood education. While you are there, take in a show at the OMNIMAX Dome Theater. The Kendall Planetarium at the museum is the largest planetarium in the Pacific Northwest.
15. While you are at the Museum of Science and Industry, tour the USS Blueback submarine, the last non-nuclear fast attack submarine to join the US Navy. It was used in the film The Hunt for Red October.
16. Portland is also home to Portland Classical Chinese Garden, created like a Suzhou-style walled garden. You know how well things grow in Portland.
17. Look at Portlandia, a statue on the west side of the Portland Building. The sculptor Raymond Kaskey created a hammered-copper statue almost as large as the Statue of Liberty.
18. Portland, nicknamed Beertown, is famous for its microbreweries. With twenty-eight breweries within the city, Portland is home to more breweries than any other city in the U.S. Brewers base their recipes on local ingredients, including two-row barley, over a dozen varieties of hops, and pure water from the Bull Run Watershed.
19. Take in a beer festival in Beertown. The Oregon Brewers Festival, during the last full weekend of July, draws over 70,000, making it the largest outdoor craft beer festival in North America. Other major beer festivals throughout the calendar year include the Spring Beer and Wine Festival in April, the North American Organic Brewers Festival in June, the Portland International Beerfest in July, and the Holiday Ale Festival in December.
20. Hit the shops. Portland is a vacation spot with no sales tax, so there's another incentive to shop. The major malls in the metropolitan area are Bridgeport Village, Washington Square, Clackamas Town Center, Lloyd Center, Vancouver Mall, and Pioneer Place.
21. Sports fans looking for vacation spots can join the locals at a game. You can watch the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer or the Portland Trail Blazers, a basketball team in the NBA. The Portland Winterhawks play ice hockey in the Western Hockey League. Portland also has its own cricket league, Oregon Cricket League. I've always wanted to learn the rules for cricket.
22. For an unusual vacation spot, visit a manufacturing plant. Intel, the computer chip giant, is the largest employer in Portland. But there are at least 1,200 other technology companies here. That explains Portland's nickname, Silicon Forest, a take-off of Silicon Valley. Other companies here are Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Yakima Products and Schnitzer Steel Industries. Nike, Inc. and Portland's Precision Castparts are Fortune 500 companies with their headquarters in Oregon.

Unforgettable Vacation Spots in the City of Portland

1. Stop in the Oregon History Museum for a look at times past. Founded in 1898, the Oregon History Museum has a variety of books, film, pictures, artifacts, and maps dating back throughout Oregon's history. Its collection is one of the most extensive collections of state history materials in the USA.
2. The Portland Children's Museum is a museum specifically geared for early childhood development. This museum has many topics, and rotating exhibits.
3. Stop in the Voodoo Doughnut shop in Portland, an unusual vacation spot. They make doughnuts with weird ingredients like fruit loops and bacon.
4. The Velveteria art gallery in Portland is dedicated to paintings on velvet. Elvis looks attractive on velvet.
5. The 24 Hour Church of Elvis is an art installation dedicated to pop culture. Its coin-operated displays dispense trinkets, fortunes and fake, temporary marriages.
6. Readers of children's books by Beverly Cleary will be familiar with Portland's Klickitat Street. It's the home of her fictional characters, Beezus and Ramona. The street is named after a local Native American tribe, the Klickitat. Nearby, Grant Park has the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden with statues of the characters in her books.
7. Powell's City of Books might be the world's largest independent bookstore. Booklovers will enjoy this vacation spot.The retail floor takes up 1.6 acres, and the building takes up a city block. It was listed as one of America's ten best bookstores.
8. The Oregon Historical Society Museum is a history museum housed at the Oregon History Center in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States
9. The Pittock Mansion is a French Renaissance-style home, a 22-room estate on 46 acres in Portland. It's open to visitors and offers panoramic views of Downtown Portland. It is also one of the best places in Portland for birdwatching. At least 80,000 people visit this vacation spot each year. Pittock Mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a setting for the TV show The Amazing Race, the movie Body of Evidence, and the movie The Haunting of Sarah Hardy
10. The Shanghai Tunnels are underground passages from Chinatown to downtown Portland, connecting the basements of many downtown hotels and bars to the waterfront. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette River to the basement storage areas, but tradition says they were used to "shanghai" or kidnap men as unwilling ship laborers.
11. Washington County Museum is a history museum at Portland Community College. Tthe original Washington County Jail built in 1853 is on exhibit here, along with many everyday items from times past.

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