My First Visitor from Another Time Zone

My law school friend Melanie traveled across three time zones to visit Portland (and me) over Easter weekend. (Family: flights also leave from Michigan!) She is not my first visitor (that was Angela http://alladither.typepad.com/ from Seattle), but she does hold the honor of farthest traveled.

We spent some time in the city one afternoon:

There are lots of cool bridges in Portland across the Willamette River http://www.portlandlogue.com/bridges/ , so we checked out a couple. We walked across the Hawthorne Bridge:

We also visited Cathedral Park underneath the St. John's Bridge http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?PropertyID=97&action=ViewPark :

Even though she really seemed to enjoy Portland, I'm guessing she was homesick for NYC. You may not be able to read it, but one of those directional signs informs you that Times Square is 2,443 miles away.

Deciding that I wasn't going to impress Manhattan Mel with the "cityness" of Portland, I took her to visit our waterfalls the next day.

Here we are all soggy at Multnomah Falls:

Here's another waterfall (I've no idea which one):

Finally, here's a shot that shows some falls (again, no idea). You can also see the Columbia River in the distance -- all of these falls are in the Columbia River Gorge.

I think I won her over with the waterfalls.

It was great to see you, Mel! Come back anytime.