Today we visited Washington Park, a huge urban park that includes the International Rose Test Garden, the Japanese Gardens, the World Forestry Center, and the Portland Zoo.
We started out at the Rose Test Garden, which is where they try out new types of roses and decide which earn the right to get an official name instead of just a number. As you can imagine, it's beautiful and peaceful (until 3 tourbuses of retirees show up), and smells wonderful. Luckily we were pretty much done wandering through it when they showed up.
Next we headed up to the Japanese Gardens, which is actually a collection of five separate Japanese Gardens -- the site is actually too large for a traditional Japanese Garden due to the typical landspace restrictions in Japan.
We had an extremely talkative guide that led us through the gardens, each of which was unique and serene. The flat garden was especially impressive -- the custodian that does the patterns creates them in solitude, with none of the guides ever having actually witnessed their creation.
Finally just before dinner we walked up to the entrance to Washington Park and saw the Lewis & Clark (who are all the rage here in Portland) Monument. As with virtually everywhere in Portland, the view was impressive.
You can see the rest of our pictures here.
Tomorrow: Airports, time changes, and waiting around!
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