The first day after we arrived in town, Becca and I decided to check out the Saturday Market. Unfortunately, it was rainy, so I didn't take any pictures of that. It was pretty neat, though. Tons of wonderful hand-made crafts. But for me, the highlight was the food.
I love street food. And the Saturday Market doesn't just have your typical hot dogs and funnel cakes. There is a whole smorgasbord. For example, Becca had some delicious Ethiopian food, while I dined on a heaping plate of Polish delicacies including homefried potatoes, cucumber and tomato salad with dill, pierogies, and an enormous kielbasa with sauerkraut, mustard, and a fantastic horseradish and beet puree. I wish I had thought to take a picture of our food, but you'll just have to trust me that it was delicious.
After lunch and an hour or so of perusing local crafts in the cold rain, Becca and I decided to warm up with a coffee and check out Powell's books. Powell's is apparently a Portland staple. It is also the largest independent seller of new and used books in the country. The store not only fills an entire city block, it overflows into the next block for its technical book section.
While I love bookstores, I rarely buy anything. The combination of owning a kindle and amazon's lower prices on any physical book I want to buy have converted me, and I never go to bookstores anymore. Powell's, though, could change that. This bookstore is incredible. The sheer size and number of books makes it such that you could easily lose an afternoon wandering around and reading snatches from whatever caught your eye.
We only wandered for an hour or two, but I did end up buying a book. A real, physical one, and from a non-electronic bookstore.
I would love to have a Powell's Books in my neighborhood. I could easily spend an entire day there.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your blog---I am really enjoying it!
I like the idea of the Kindle for special circumstances like traveling light, but the smell of a book is just such an enormous piece of my attachment to it; that seems like too much to lose if you're simply reading at home.
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