Recommendations on things to do, places to eat? Anyone been before? I'll be staying in downtown Portland for a conference in a few weeks.

downtown portland has free street cars if you stay in the downtown area on them. We had a great time just using them and getting off when we saw a place that looked good to eat. There are a lot of good breweries in the area if you have a car (or if that even interests you). I was only there for one night but really enjoyed it...

If you don't want to leave the general downtown area I'd try to get in some breweries and go to Powell's City of Books. If the weather is nice you can go to the international rose test gardens, chinese gardens, or take a long stroll down the waterfront park.

If you will have a car and some free time there are a ton of great day trips such as the Columbia river gorge, wineries, Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, etc. IMO it would be a travesty to visit the Portland area and not take at least a quick drive up the gorge.

If you want anything more specific tell me what kind of stuff you like/want to do (i.e. drink beer, hike, etc.)

[This message has been edited by corndog04 (edited 4/28/2009 8:51p).]

Doug Fir Lounge

Thanks everyone!

Any specific breweries? Restaurants besides the ones listed?

I'll be there for a conference during the day so we won't have much freetime for leisure activities. I wish we did!

Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl District.

Multnomah Falls and hike to the top

Go the the Deschutes and Rogue brewpubs. Although their main breweries are in other parts of the state (Bend and Newport respectively), you'll enjoy the same variety and freshness as their home bases.

Henry's 12th street tavern is a great restaurant/bar in the pearl district.. only a few blocks from either of the brewpubs above or Powell's bookstore that I mentioned previously. They have as good of a selection of local draft beers as you will find (on the order of 100). This is probably my favorite place to go to in the area due to the beer selection and reasonably priced good food. Waitresses aren't too hard on the eyes either.

so as mentioned before: you can take the streetcar from downtown to the pearl and up to NW 23rd (all within 15-20 minutes)

downtown:
Higgins, Jakes,- can't go wrong
Al-Amir (lebanese food) fun on Thur-Sat nights.
Hubers - spanish coffee, nightlife
VQ - one of my favs
Portland City Grill - 30th Floor - Great for the Views
Voodoo Doughnuts

Pearl District:
tons of restaurants but some of my fav.
Jimmy Maks - Live Jazz - Great food.
Rogue Brew Pub
BridgePort Brew Pub

23rd Street/Nob Hill:
Up and down 23rd and 21st street.
Tons of shops, bars, food.
JoBar and Papa Haydn : can't go wrong
Ringside : IMO ; Best Steak House in town.

Heading to Portland next week for Aggie Soccer.

CDub-

You should get in touch with the A&M club up here - I know they are planning on having several people meet up pre-game. The host school is throwing some sort of "Texas BBQ" pre-game shindig.

is downtown the best place to stay? do you guys have any hotel recommendations? Right now I am using hotels.com as a shifty guide. Looking at the Paramount.

A girlfriend and I are heading up over Easter weekend. I'm coming up alone that Thursday morning and plan to find a coffee shop to work remotely for about half of the day and play that night, and she will meet me Friday morning.

[This message has been edited by 713nervy (edited 2/28/2012 7:28p).]

I have used priceline in the past and just down 4 stars downtown. But downtown is where you want to be, West side of the river.

Hotel 50 is at the base of Morrison Street bridge. Good location downtown next to the river.

Ringside Steakhouse on Burnside. Jakes on Burnside.

Portland has the most strip clubs per capita of any large city in the US...just sayin'...

My wife and I stayed at The Nines in downtown for her birthday - great location and great hotel. The rooftop bar/restaraunt is awesome.

Departure is the restaurant at the top of The Nines...it's awesome up there.

and Montage has good food and excellent mixed drinks.

[This message has been edited by aggiespartan (edited 2/29/2012 9:55p).]

Hotel50 is a very good call. THey did a remodel a few years back and the place is pretty nice now and usually at a good price.

Anything other then hotel fiddy for recs? or is the general concesus that its the spot for two 20-somethings (who have been let off leashes) to stay for a few days?

Any of the hotels downtown will be fine. Theoretically, you won't be spending that much time in it anywhere.

Hotel 50 is downtown, but it's on the edge...it's not like in the middle of everything, but everything is very accessible with the train.

[This message has been edited by aggiespartan (edited 3/1/2012 6:18p).]

Pine State Biscuits for breakfast - get the Reggie - EOT.


[This message has been edited by Adam Ag 98 (edited 3/2/2012 8:54a).]

All of their local beers are extra extra hoppy. If you are not a fan of that style, don't waste your money on their locals.

quote:

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All of their local beers are extra extra hoppy.

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All portland beers huh? All 6-10 beers from, what, 30 breweries? All hoppy.

Says milwaukees best light.

Oh great, here comes mr beer expert to set us all straight in our beer tasting. Shouldn't you be packing up all your crap and heading to Denver already?

quote:

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All portland beers huh? All 6-10 beers from, what, 30 breweries? All hoppy.

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Last I saw there were 40. so sad that i can't find anything besides tons and tons of hoppy beers.

TXAGChick06

The Hotel50 is good, but lots of other good places.

You might like Hotel Jupiter. It is next door to the Doug Fir Lounge. It is on the east side and typically I stay on the west side, but very cool boutique hotel.

Others on the westside of the river
The Benson
Hotel Vintage
Hotel Monaco

Make sure to have dinner or drinks at the City Grille, it is on the 30th floor and has great views of the city and river.

If all you can find is hoppy beers, you are not looking very hard. Most people in the NW prefer hoppy beers, but there are plenty that are not Hoppy. Just open your eyes.

MBL, doesn't take an expert to realize that characterizing all ~250 beers from one city as 'hoppy' is pretty ignorant.

Take warning everyone, if you don't like hoppy beers, stay away from american craft brews! Don't waste your money!

[This message has been edited by 62strat (edited 3/2/2012 2:26p).]

FTR, I don't like hoppy beers, but I've been very satisfied with the selection here.

Could you guys go discuss that somewhere else so that we can keep this thread useful? Thanks.

Appreciate the potential heads up on beer selection and all of the suggestions that have been given so far.

nervy, I know you said you weren't that into the outdoors, but is there anything you want to see here besides beer? it's a little difficult to predict what the weather will be like in April now, but like I told you, the 2 markets are nice. There is a pretty good art museum here. There is a nice science museum. Probably the nicest Japanese garden in the country is here. The soccer team is as pretty big deal here but it's almost impossible to get decent priced tickets. Trailblazers games are pretty fun and pretty affordable (they even have craft beers there). Again, food carts are a must (there are 2 big blocks of them downtown). Powell's City of Books is a really good bookstore (largest independently owned bookstore in the world).

Just about all of that sounds really great. I figured that we would probably do nature/markets/food carts during the day and maybe carts or fun dinners at night, then bottle stores/great beer bars at night. I don't particularly care so much about seeing every single brewery as much as I care to try as many new and unavailableto (to Texas) beers as I possibly can.

When I have a little more time this evening I will sit down and make a potential itinerary and post it for scrutiny.

PS you guys are really awesome.

Just fyi, the food carts are better for lunch. A lot of them are only open during lunchtime. Some of them are open late night, but I would definitely do a lunch or two at them, especially if the weather is good. Most of the places around here have really good happy hours too (think from about 3-5pm or 10-close).

In my opinion, you can't really go wrong with Belmont Station for a bottle shop (plus the people are super nice and really helpful there). There's another bottle shop called John's Bottle Shop or something but they are a little way out. Horse Brass will be a great bar to have a big selection from the region. Deschutes and Rogue are going to be a must downtown. Widmer is also a good one. If you just google "Portland beer" you will find a ton of stuff.

Downtownish, another great beer spot is Henry's 12th St. Tavern. They also have very good but slightly overpriced food. Maybe grab an appetizer and some pre-dinner beers then walk a couple of blocks to Andina for dinner - makes for a nice Pearl district evening.

If you like Irish bars Kell's is one if the tops in the country.

Deschutes is the best overall brewpub in town IMO but plenty of other good ones.

Nature/market/museum/etc. plus beer (or wine - love Oregon wines) during day. Drinking beer/wine/whatever (IHOGA that nights out always end up being more fun when we start with tequila shots) and debauchery after.