Portland Day

On Sunday we packed up from our airbnb in Beaverton and drove to Slappy Cakes in Portland. We discovered Slappy Cakes last year and love it.

Abe was very proud of his spiral pancake:

Lydia did the dog and Mary wrote “Love.”

After breakfast we drove to the Portland Art Museum. Ammon was asleep in the car, so I stayed in the car enjoying the fresh morning air and daydreaming while he slept for two hours. Abe took Clarissa in the carrier, and she slept on him while he and the girls explored the museum. The girls did their assignment of sketching and writing about their favorite pieces of art. Abe said they wanted to sketch and write about everything, so he had to start drawing boundaries about how much they could do so that he could actually move through the museum. The museum fed his soul (and mine, when it was my turn).

When it was my turn to go in, I felt so alive and happy and grateful. Portland has the best art museum we’ve seen in a long time. It was certainly better than Seattle and Vancouver! It felt like a feast. I took pictures of waaaayy yy too much art… I won’t post them all, but here are just a few:

This is Kehinda Wiley’s “Indio Cuauhtemoc (The World Stage, Brazil)” painting. He paints people of the African diaspora in grand poses from the European Renaissance. This was the first painting I stopped in front of, and it alone could probably occupy someone without kids waiting for them for at least an hour.
Dutch art. If I HAD to pick my favorite type of art, I might cheat and just say “everything the Dutch paint.” I love it all.
IT’S CLARISSA!!!!! I didn’t realize that until I was showing everyone the pictures I took in the car. When I showed them this photo, Abe exclaimed that both girls had stopped in front of this painting and said it was Clarissa!!! (This is “Nature’s Fan” by William Adolphe Bouguereau. He lived at the same time as the impressionists but was doing this instead.
This tree by Swiss artist Alexander Calame took my breath away. When I showed it to Abe he said this one stopped him in his tracks, too.
“Marine,” by American artist William Trost Richards, caught my eye. I know this is a painting of the sea, but I grew up by Lake Michigan and spent many hours sitting on the rocks by the lake looking at scenes that looked a lot like this. Light, water, horizon and clouds all together feel very familiar and deeply resonant to me.
This painting, “Peanuts,” by De Scott Evans was another one that caught my eye and that Abe exclaimed had caught his too when I showed it to him later. It’s not that big of a painting, but it’s very striking.
This painting is very large. It was so colorful and vibrant that I almost cried looking at it. And then I wanted to laugh because I found out it’s an American still life (painted by Severin Roesen, born in Germany but labeled “American”), and upon second examination, it was obviously Americanized–at least it looked like it to me. I feel like a Dutch painter would have painted something a little more restrained and elegant, whereas the still life with an American sensibility is ebullient, gregarious, dripping with so much dew that the flowers are practically sweating to grab attention, and overall completely in your face.
There was a huge exhibition on Paris during the Belle Epoque, and most of the paintings were full of fashion, parties, and industry. This painting was sobering in contrast. (“A Martyr: The Violet Seller” by Fernand Pelez.)

A few more things from the Paris exhibition:

It was a glorious experience. When I tore myself away, we drove to the World Forestry Museum.

They had a wild rapids “ride” :

The back of their museum was a water feature, which the kids loved.

My honest thoughts were that the forestry museum was interesting and had some great information, but it also had a slightly dated-feeling. On the other hand, we had the place almost to ourselves, so it was very peaceful.

After the museum, we caught a shuttle to the rose garden. We wanted to rewrite everyone’s memories of it after the wasp disaster there last year. To do that, I gave the girls my phone and told them they could each take pictures of the roses. They traded off and took pictures of each other whenever they switched so we would know later who took what. Here are some of Lydia’s photos (and poses to show these are hers):

And Mary’s:

Then we took the shuttle back, with Ammon chatting with the whole shuttle again (as he did the on the way up), and then drove to a restaurant I enjoyed last year, the Indian Bollywood Theater next to Eb and Bean. We ate soft serve at Eb and Bean afterward.

Then we drove to Powell’s books. I have not been to Powell’s since Mary was a baby. On that occasion, I vowed to spend more time there on the next trip. Last year I didn’t want to do it with four kids, so we skipped it. But this time was, um, heaven. It was pure bliss. Abe and the babies waited in the car while the two older girls and I explored and basically went bananas inside.

I spent waaaaayyy too much money on books that were deeply discounted (and a couple that were for the, er, heck of it.) I also took pictures of books I didn’t buy but wanted to add to my Goodreads To Read list so I can remember for the future. (It worked because I just added them now!)

And then we drove to Seaside! There was still light out enough to enjoy the Oregon countryside for a while before it got dark. It was so cozy to pull up to the darling Airbnb that we reserved months ago. It was adorable.

I have to end by saying how much I LOVED this day. It had books, flowers, art, museums, and nature. Can I do this day again every day????