My first full day in Portland started with a visit to the Oregon Historical Society. I'm a sucker for these types of museums, visiting them in every city I visit when time permits. They tend to vary in quality. The Oregon Historical Society only had a few exhibits, with mixed results. The third floor was devoted to an "interactive" exhibit called Oregon My Oregon. I think interactive must mean sit down and watch a film or listen to music or actors read diaries. And there is nothing wrong with that--the diary entries they read were quite good ones. Multimedia might be a better word than interactive however. Their interpretive panels provided blunt information, such as explaining why John Fremont has an "undeserved" reputation as a daring and innovative explorer, calling reservations concentration camps, and so on. Compared to the Chicago Historical Society, which I visited in January, the OHS did not have nearly as many exhibits or artifacts (CHS was very over simplified). I think they did at least a somewhat better job of interpretation, but everything was still geared towards kids. They did have a nice exhibit on the New Deal in Oregon.

I thought about going to the art museum, but just was not in the mood. There was a small farmer's market in the area (called the cultural district, I think). I bought a fresh falafel plate and ate it outside. The falafel was good, but the pita bread did not seem that fresh. But a nice lunch nevertheless. I then took a long walk along the waterfront park before finding a coffee shop to relax for a bit.

I stumbled upon the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center while heading towards my walking tour. This museum was small, but excellent. Most of the exhibits explained the internment camps during World War II and the experiences of the people who were forced into them. In two days, the entire Japanese neighborhood in Portland was gone, and it became Chinatown (still is called Chinatown, though I learned very few Chinese people live in this area and the real Chinatown is fifteen minutes away). They had an amazing oral history exhibit. I think some of the other museums I have visited could learn a thing or two from this one; granted, I do not know much about the concentration camps or Japanese-American communities, so maybe there was more for me to learn, but I thought this was a very well done museum.

I went on a walking tour next. The tour focused on Portland's underground--topics such as shanghaiing, prostitution, myth-debunking, crime, etc. The tour also took into the tunnels of Portland, such as they were. Anyway, I know very little about Portland's history, so I cannot verify that the tour guide was telling the truth, though he claimed to be an unemployed historian and that he sought to be as accurate as possible, so I'm guessing most of what he said was reasonably true. So I do think I learned a lot and it was very enjoyable. The goal of the tour was to point out Portland is not some perfect oasis--it has problems and a dark side like every other place. It was especially interesting to learn about the Oldtown/Chinatown area, which had a number of homeless people and it not really a Chinatown. For example, one alternative medicine shop we went into in Chinatown was owned by a Iranian. You get tax breaks if you open up Asian-themed shops in this district.

I also visited Voodoo Doughnut, which has amazing doughnuts, including a voodoo doll doughnut which is in the shape of a body and comes with pretzels to stab the doughnut with and then it oozes the filling, or you can just rip the head off as you imagine the person you hate the most. Heh. They also do weddings here.

For dinner I was starving and stopped in at the first Thai restaurant I found, a hole in the wall kind of place. It was delicious.

Today I'm heading to Powell's and hopefully hitting a couple of brewpubs. There is too much to do here, so I'm being selective and not trying to rush through everything.