Day 7

I had worried that a walking tour of the city would be all old news by day 7 of our time here--but we learned so much! It was very fun and informative and tiring!
This is Mill Ends Park, the smallest city park in the world. Funny, huh? And this is a solar-powered trash compacter that signals the routing station when it's full. Like it's from the future or something! Apparently the city of Portland was named after Portland, Maine--from which many of the original settlers came. "Boston" was another possible name for this city, but they flipped a coin--and "Portland" won. Have you seen a building like this whose windows open? We thought that was cool.
And these are especially cool. They are drinking fountains, but they call them "Benson Bubblers," after Simon Benson, who was instrumental in Portland's early construction. They run clean water from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., 365 days/year. There are about 50 of them around town.This is what daycare looks like in the urban setting. We saw about 4 groups of pre-schoolers like this, walking toward the big city park and around town.
We've seen this drummer twice around town. Recycling paint buckets has never seemed so cool.

We ate at a great cafe for lunch.

Today we said goodbye to the B&B and hello to The Nines! Beautiful! So swanky. So fun. Tomorrow to the wineries!