japenese garden

japanese gardens

flat garden area

view back over portland

me in the garden

outside the garden

Wednesday 2nd June

Today was the last day at Portland and we had one thing that we wanted to do before we left. When we went to the Chinese Gardens yesterday we were actually looking for the Japanese Gardens. The Japanese Gardens in Portland is a 5.5 acre garden that has been open to the public since 1967. It is nestled in the scenic west hills of Portland just near the zoo. We arrived at the front gate where you can get a shuttle bus to the entrance gate. We caught the bus and rode it for the 2 or 3 minutes it took to get there. The garden was beautiful, the weather was overcast and was spitting a little bit of rain but this made the garden look awesome. There are 5 different sections to the garden that are laid out in true Japanese style. The garden had a spectacular view back over the city. We spent about 2 or so hours at the garden and then took the walking track back to the car. We were now heading for Seattle WA which was only around 260kms away. We stopped for lunch at Quiznos which is a little like Subway. Once we left from having lunch we hit the road only to get buckets and buckets of rain for the trip. In sections it was really hard to see and we had to slow down a bit as it got quite dangerous. Another car rolled which had been travelling in the opposite direction and almost ended up on our side of the freeway. We arrived in our motel at Tukwila which is about 20 kms south of the city, just close enough that it is an easy drive to get there to see the Space Needle. We set up our room and then headed out to the Westfield just across the street. Walked around there for a bit and then went to Ihop for dinner. After dinner we hit the cinema and saw Sex And The City 2. The movie was really good and we both really enjoyed it. Got back to the room and chilled out for a while before going to bed. Tomorrow we hit the city........