A bookstore covering a whole city block!!

As I've already mentioned, Portland has great coffee, great beer and great urban planning (admittedly not on the outskirts) and the great outdoors. Anyone who knows me would be thinking how happy Nik must be! But throw in a book store (www.powells.com) that covers an entire city block (and has a coffeeshop where they encourage you to take books and browse) and can you imagine my excitement?!

A space the size of my apartment just filled with travel books. More literature than you could read in several lifetimes. Non-fiction section spanning topics you'd never realised could be interesting. Oh and they have the second hand books in with the new so there are some beautiful old hard back gems just waiting to be discovered. I was never much for candy but this was my metaphorical equivalent! I want to read them all and I want it now!

I have to say I was remarkably restrained but that is largely because my backpack was full of camping gear and I had a couple of public transport legs ahead of me that made my travelling library a logistical improbability. Might have been funny to see me tottering down to the Union Pacific Station with a tower of books stacked above my head!

So Portland, all told, is pretty cool. Benefits of a small city perhaps. It's out of the spotlight so it has been able to create a real character and authenticity that many larger cities fail to achieve in their attempt to please everyone. A fate not uncommon to humans also!