This visit proved to be an eye opener. The few people we did see were cross country skiing through town....or the 911 respondents we called when we found a woman who had fallen on the icy sidewalk and had broken her wrist....or inside where rational people would be in weather like this! We did find many places to keep warm out of the weather: Powell's books (HUGE!!!), The Original (Best French toast EVER.),  Mother's Bistro, Little Bird Bistro, and Irving Street Kitchen (you MUST go sometime! Excellent!) Honestly....we really did eat a lot on this trip. And I highly recommend all of the places we went!

It was quite an experience to see what is normally a bustling, active, outdoorsy city become such an eerily quiet place. .....but we were not disappointed. It was an experience we will never forget, and in all the good ways. We figure we will never have the opportunity to see Portland quite like this again. We came across people helping other people out, like the transit system guys who helped a homeless man with frostbite from the streetcar get to a hospital, and the two young men on their way to work who helped us get the lady who had fallen into a warm building to wait for the paramedics, and the guys from Mother's Bistro who erected a tent in front of their building to keep the snow off everyone waiting for a table inside. People were just looking out for each other. But maybe that is just how Portland is all of the time.