Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. My name is Katie and today I'm going to be talking about my two and a half week long vacation to Portland, Oregon. So I am from Washington DC and I have a bunch of family in Portland, Oregon. So it wasn't my first time going there, but it was definitely my first time as an adult. So that was really exciting and fun. I thought that I would make sort of like more of an informative video because I could just like post a vlog, but the footage was like so random and all over the place. I got some really cool footage, but not like cute like Instagram girl footage because I did dress like a 12 year old boy the whole time. So the first thing that I recommend you do in Portland is not actually in Portland at all. So you might be like, this is a terrible list. Sorry. The number one thing that we did on our trip was we actually stayed at night in Eugene, Oregon and we got up at like the crack of dawn and drove to crater lake. This was incredible. One of the coolest things that I have ever seen, the footage I'm going to put in here honestly, it looks a little bit fake. This place was incredible. We didn't do a whole lot of hiking here because there was not a whole lot of cloud coverage that day and it was so hot. So what we did was we drove around the entire perimeter of the lake and you get all of these incredible views of the mountains and the lake and seeing it from all the different angles was so worth it. So maybe this is not something that you want to do if you're just going to Portland for a couple of days, but it's definitely something to consider if you're going out to Oregon for a little bit longer period of time. Number two is shopping. These are in no particular order by the way. They're just sort of like what I thought of as I was making this video. So there's a lot of cool shopping in Portland, Oregon. A lot of cool thrifting and vintage stores, a lot of cool art galleries. And then one of the biggest things that you should check out while you're there is Powell's, which is a bookstore. And I want to say it's like the biggest indie, indie bookstore in America. I think that's what it's called. Oh, it's the world's largest independent bookstore. So this place was so cool. We could have spent hours in here. The best thing that I thought about this bookstore was that they mixed in new copies of books with used copies. So if you're looking for a book and you're wondering like, oh, I wonder if I could get this used. Like it's usually right next to it, which I thought was just like so awesome. That was very exciting for me because I love a used book. So I am not a huge like nature person. I don't enjoy bugs, but I will go on a good hike from now and again. So just like you know where I'm coming from. My friend, Andrea, is a biology major. So we did stop to look at many slugs that were on the ground. And I did be line it away from the slugs. But if you like slugs, you're in luck. So the first couple days of your in Portland, we went hiking in Forest Park, which you can get to by public transit in the city. It's really quick. And some of the trails even pop you back out into like the city. So it's really super accessible. So we did the Wildwood Trail. And then we also did a tour of Pidig Mansion. If you don't want to do a tour of Pidig Mansion, I still recommend like taking the trail up there because it has a really cool like overlook of the city that you can go see. I loved doing that. So number four are the Japanese gardens and the Rose Gardens in Forest Park. Actually, don't know if they're like technically in Forest Park, but they're right in the same area. So the Rose Garden is free and open to the public. And it is just huge. It's a lot of roses. As you can imagine. Lots of tourists, but it was still really fun. You get to walk through all of these gardens and different types of roses from different parts of the world. And yeah, it was just really cool. Then the Japanese gardens you do have to pay for. But I will say that it was definitely worth it. If it's a clear day, you can actually see Mount Hood from the Japanese gardens, which was really wild. And the garden was just so pretty and quiet and serene. There were even some people like meditating in there, which was kind of funny. I did wear my bird shirt. It's a pretty good bird shirt. I got a couple on it. Which I didn't say this earlier, but I bought this at the Audubon Society, which I learned what that was. I didn't know what that was. But it's a society for bird watching and bird care. And they had a shirt that said bird nerd on it. So I bought it because I thought it was funny. But I was approached by I want to say at least three different people who asked me if I did bird watching. Like very seriously. So number five, we have silver falls. This was probably, oh my gosh, I keep saying this. This is probably one of my favorite days. I want to say it's about an hour outside of Portland on one end. And you basically work your way through this trail. And there are just so many waterfalls. And it was so cool. One of the coolest ones that we went to, I don't remember what the name of it was. But if you walk the whole trail, you'll definitely run into it. But we sat right behind this one waterfall. And it was just so cool. It was just like, it was just like mommy of vibes. Like I know that that has nothing to do with that. But like as a 21 year old girl, I could pair everything in my head to mommy Mia. That's just what I do. And it was just so fun. It was just like a magical like little moment. All in all, just one of my absolute favorite days. Number six is cannon beach. So we went to cannon beach. And again, we were on a long trip. So this is definitely like if you have time in Oregon. You definitely recommend doing like a day trip or a bunch of like little day trips. It's, it was just like a really cute little town. Lots of good food. We kept going back to this one cafe. I think it was called Lazy Susan Cafe. Lazy Susan Cafe. Yeah. We went to breakfast there twice. And you can go see the big haystack rock, which was really cool. And the whole time we kept joking. Well, we kept making twilight jokes. Because we're in Oregon. Like what else are you supposed to do in your in Oregon? We used us pretending to be sparkly Edward in the trees because what else are you supposed to do? That, you know. We also kept joking that this town looked like twilight. And then we found out that the goonies and twilight were both filmed at this beat. So I actually walked down one day to like the end. And I don't actually know if this is where it was filmed, but it was definitely a cool walk out of fog that day. Which was really fun. So I don't know. I was just, I was loving the twilight vibes. I hate to admit it. I really hate to. Number seven. Okay. Local events. My friend Andrea started looking up local events. And I had never done this before, but I think it's a really great tip. So we actually found a lavender celebration. I had no idea what that was. We were like, we have to, we have to see why are they celebrating lavender? Like what is this celebration? We have to go. It turned out to be so cute. There were just like fields of lavender. Goodbye lavender products. We got some lavender lemonade and we sat and add around back chairs. It was so fun. We got like some cute old farm vibes. What I will tell you, the influencers don't tell you this because like they just like take like really artsy pictures and like fields of lavender like going like this. But there are bees everywhere. There's just a million bees flying in those lavender pictures. So just think about that next time you're like, damn, that person's life looks good. So number eight is Trillium Lake. And my family actually took us up here one night. And it was so spectacular. I never would have known it was there unless they took us there. And you can see Mount Hood from the lake and we just sat in like eight snacks. I didn't really take any video here because it was like I was hanging out with my family. But it definitely something you should check out. Okay. So number nine is going to be the historic Columbia River Highway. This took us through so many different cool like scenic views. And it shows you the Columbia River, which I learned. Okay. It's tourist. Separates the state of Oregon and Washington. Very cool. So we got to drive along here and we stopped a couple of different places where you could and got out and walked around. Very, very cool experience. And number 10 is food. So we ate at so many good food places. I am going to just list down below some of the best places that we went to. Some of them are a little bit more off the beaten path. If you have a car, you can get to them. But then also like if you're in the city, you can as well. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. I post new videos every week and subscribe and like this video if you did. And that's it. But thanks so much for watching. Bye bye.