Portland Fun

Candice and I flew into Portland very early in the morning, so we had the whole day to explore before the auditions.  I will try to give you the condensed version of our travels since knowing me, I could probably write a whole novel about our one day of exploring Portland, OR.

One of the first places we went was Old Down Town. This was where china town was located, and (according to the lady at our hotel) it is "saturated with restaurants and shopping!"

Well, when we stepped off the Max (that is their rail system) we ran into several bums, got asked for spare change a few times and found two unions and kind of found China Town.  It was quite deserted, however there was a parade of great Danes with their owners that passed us by. I know...it was random! It didn't take us long to decided we weren't into old, but that we were into new!  So we headed back to the Max to go to New Down Town Portland.  Maybe you need to know someone who can show you the cool stuff in the Old Town because on our own we didn't get very far.

On the way into the "new" city we randomly found an awesome music store which is where I found this fabulous mandolin!  I know what you are thinking...why did Kat buy a mandolin?  Well, little did you know that I have been wanting one forever and have been looking at them and hadn't bought one yet because the ones that sounded the best were over $600. And that is a little extreme for a beginner.  So when I found the one in Portland it sounded great and was a very good price compared to what I had been looking at in Salt Lake.  So I couldn't leave without it! As you can see I am very excited about it!  A little scary excited now that I am looking at the picture!

We rode the Max and the street car all over Portland!  We found this awesome mask store, called Mystique, in the mall!  It was fantastic!! If you want to check out some awesome masks you can go to their website www.mystiquepdx.com.  Anyway, the owner of the store was awesome and let us take pictures and try on the masks!  We even got a picture with her because she was so cool, but we took that one on Candices camera.

While in the mall a very nice girl in a very cute jewlery/craft-ish store told us to get on the street car to go to some other cool places.  She also gave us a way better map than the little one we were trying to use that the hotel lady gave us. (We think the hotel lady just wanted to see if we would make it back alive from China Town!)

We got on the street car and to our delight discovered an Aerial Tram!! We knew the minute we read those words on our map that this had to be our next destination!  So we found the Aerial Tram and bought tickets to ride it up.  We had no idea where it was taking us or what its purpose was, we just wanted to ride it. Well, for your curiosity...it took us up to a hospital that must have had some kind of historical background or something...(we didn't take the time to find out because we just wanted to walk around the outside of the building because it was cool - and it was a great view!)

Us on the tram ride...

            

Pretty pictures of Portland from the top!

This hospital happened to be the location of our favorite find, and I would have to say, one of the best moments of the whole trip!  Don't judge me!  We weren't quite sure what to think at first either, but we came to love this fantastic statue we found!

                                              

In case you were wondering, the bunny man is holding a sad dog.  At first we were confused...

                                                

Then we felt a strange sympathy for the statue!

And then of course...because this is me and Candice we are talking about ...it pretty much just got ridiculous!

Yes, I am laughing out loud right now...it just doesn't get old!

After the wonderful moment that we had with the bunny man and the sad dog, we knew we had to go back. The music store guy was holding my Mandolin for me and the store closed at 6.  We headed back to the store and as I was purchasing my Mandolin we ran into another fellow Auditioner for America's Got Talent! 

We sat and talked to our new friend and his Dad for a bit and exchanged random info that we had found online.  We were really glad that we talked to them, and it made us more excited for our next days adventure!  After I bought my Mandolin we went to Target (which happened to be right on the way back to our hotel) where we bought lunch and snacks for audition day (since we had no idea how long we were going to be hanging out there.)

We got back to the Hotel, got everything ready for the morning and crashed!

And if you haven't already read it, our second day of adventures - Audition Day - are posted on the post previous to this one labeled, America's Got Talent Auditions.

I hope you enjoyed reading about our Saturday adventures in Portland!