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Me and the excavator on the long flight home. (Taken with Instagram at Gate E18 - Schiphol Airport (AMS))
I've moved to Portland, Oregon from London and am keeping a diary. I am interested primarily in enjoying Portland, as well as politics, music, art and culture.
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I am in Berlin
I seem to be doing a lot of travelling this year. Last Sunday I was with my mum in Astoria and this Sunday I am in Berlin. It was Berlin’s turn to have its hottest day of the year so far so me and my dad drove to a particularly nice lake on the outskirts of the city. After a stroll we found a quiet spot on a log under a shady bow, and enjyoyed watching Osties swimming in the lake, kids, beer, dogs and all. Then we wandered along the road to have a traditional German lunch - it’s asparagus season - on a floating platform on the lake. Berlin is basking in the sun - next stop London tomorrow - and it looks like the good weather is following me there too.
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A day-trip to Astoria
It was 90F on Sunday, the hottest day of the year so far in Portland so it felt like a good day to visit the coast. People always recommend Cannon Beach or Manzanita when we enquire about good Oregon seaside spots but having visited both I wanted to explore somewhere new.
Astoria, was recommended by nobody, but my interest was piqued by a very nice article I found in the New York Times http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27overnighter-astoria.html?pagewanted=all - and I’m so pleased we visited. In an alternative universe we want to up sticks, buy a cabin there and hide out in the dunes in the state park just outside the town.
It’s a very atmospheric place and felt extremely remote and even a bit creepy despite the blazing sun. The drive was only two hours but we felt like we’d landed somewhere in the outer Hebrides, there was something faintly akin to Summer Isle where the Wicker Man is set.
Maybe it was the street we parked on that lent it this air - a street full of funeral parlours and crematoriums, more than one Lutheran church and American gothic 19th century villa’s - all peeling paint and oranate wooden porches, swings rocking empty in the breeze. Or maybe it was the packed market just down the road, selling intricate dresses for dolls, hand carved ephemera, and hordes of inconsequential bric-a-brac with a pirate shop opposite.
In the morning we walked for an hour each way up and down the boardwalk looking out over the Columbia River estuary. We stood under the Astoria bridge and shouted to one another, just about hearing the echo’s over the din of the lorries above. The boardwalk itself, with a trolley car that meanders from one end of the town to the other, was scruffy, with dandelions creeping up on either side of the tracks, and along the walls of disused warehouses.
It was clear that whilst Astoria had been built in a grand fashion it had fallen at some point into decline, the canners and loggers having moved on. In this sense it reminded me a bit of Helensburgh (or Dumbarton?) on the west coast of Scotland, once grand, but now faded. The big and emphatic difference being that Astoria has been rediscovered. What this meant was that we were able to find a very nice place to eat lunch. And alongside the wind lashed crumbling buildings, many churches, buildings for the Finnish brotherhood and tumbleweed were new breweries, indie cafes, deli’s, smokeries and tattoo parlours.
After lunch we drove to the Pacific ocean, Sue our dog went wild in the sand dunes, we plotted a move to Astoria and then we drove home, taking the scenic road down Route 101 stopping at a Subway in Seaside (more like Largs, also West Coast of Scotland) for a pee and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
