Bike Around Portland Best of the city Bridges doughnuts parks and roses

Bike Around Portland Best of the city Bridges doughnuts parks and roses

It's all about the bike ride! Our approach is to spend more time riding, but always stopping to smell the roses! Start in the inner Eastside neighborhoods, where we will fit you for a bike and helmet, ready for a sweet 9-11 mile ride through a pretty residential neighborhood, to our favorite rose garden, into an art-heavy industrial district, across the sexy Tilikum Bridge, and onto Portland's waterfront. From there, it's a visit to Old Town/Chinatown, and pop into the Pearl District, before we head back over another bridge back to our shop!

You'll visit a total of five of the city's quadrants, ride over two bridges, and along the Willamette River. We'll visit a number of almost-secret beaches, read poetry written in the sidewalks and rocks, see public art of every shape, color and texture. And have you tried some of the city's best doughnuts? Now you can! (And no, we don't mean Voodoo.) All along the way, we'll tell the stories of the city we love.

Bikes, helmets and water provided.

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: 3345 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214-5046

After fitting for a bike and helmet at Around Portland Tours' shop, we'll head out to the streets of Portland for a slow-paced ride through the inner Southeast Portland neighborhoods. We'll ride into the Hawthorne District, past one of the original food cart pods, and one of the newest.

Stop At: Ladd's Addition, Between Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard and Division Street from 12th to 20th avenues, Portland, OR 97214

After taking off from the shop, we'll ride into Ladd's Addition, a pretty neighborhood designed in a labyrinth style, and visit one of the many rose gardens there.

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: The Solterra Building, 959 SE Division St #130, Portland, OR 97214, USA

We'll ride the bike path along the Orange line of the MAX light rail, which has a variety of beautiful art pieces, from word play along concrete barriers and in the sidewalks, to the gorgeous mural by Irish street artist Fin DAC -- a mural that must be seen to be fully appreciated!

Stop At: Portland Opera, 211 SE Caruthers St, Portland, OR 97214, USA

Around the Portland Opera building are a number of pieces of bike infrastructure and physical art. We'll stop and test one of our favorites.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Tilikum Crossing, Crosses the Willamette River, Portland, OR 97201

Our favorite bridge to ride across is the Tilikum Crossing, one of the most unusual bridges in a city focused around its Willamette River crossings! We'll take the slow route onto the bridge, get counted by the device that monitors the number of cyclists to cross each day and each year, and stop for photos and some history on Portland's newest bridge, and the only one like it in the world.

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Portland Aerial Tram, Marquam Hill Campus at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR

From the Tilikum Crossing we'll head to the South Waterfront neighborhood, past the docking for the Aerial Tram, Portland's newest mode of transportation, and learn why we have this beautiful bullet-shaped transport -- and how much, exactly, it cost us.

Stop At: Elizabeth Caruthers Park, 3508 SW Moody Ave, Portland, OR 97239-4517

Visit one of Portland's many parks on top of parking garages, and learn the feminist history of this important figure in U.S. property law.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Blue Star, Portland, OR

Do we love doughnuts? It depends what sort you're describing. We'll stop by Blue Star, one of the more culinary-inspired doughnut shops in the city, and you are welcome to try them out!

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: South Waterfront Greenway, 0848 SW Curry St, Portland, OR 97239, USA

One of our favorite hidden river spaces, the South Waterfront Greenway is one of the many links in the city's amazing river access.

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Poet's Beach, South Waterfront Park, Portland, OR

We could wax eloquent about Poet's Beach forever! This little sandy beach was created by the Human Access Project, a program that seeks to connect us more tangibly to the river, so we take better care of it. What’s more, the poetry along the beach, written by local students, captures our hearts and minds.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Riverplace, 1875 SW River Dr, Portland, OR 97201, USA

We'll head down the Willamette River, passing one of the most interesting housing and retail developments from the 1980s, and learn how this project attempted to change the course of urban design.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Front Avenue, Portland, OR 97205

We'll ride through the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, and learn how what it *used* to be changed Portland in a big way; and how our reluctantly hippie governor in the early 1970s changed it back.

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: Hawthorne Bridge, Main to Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland, OR 97204

We'll ride under the Hawthorne Bridge, and learn why this iconic structure might go up and down, with no big ship underneath it.

Stop At: Portland Saturday Market, 108 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209-4008

We'll ride past the space where the longest continuously running open-air craft festival is held, Saturdays and Sundays, March through Christmas Eve -- if the festival is on, we'll walk our bikes through.

Stop At: Japanese American Historical Plaza, Southwest Front Avenue and Davis Street, Portland, OR 97204

No tour of inner NW Portland is complete without a visit to this monument to the Japanese residents of this neighborhood, known for 50 years as "Nihonmachi," or Japantown, and their internment during World War II -- the nearly 4,000 residents never returned to this neighborhood.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Lan Su Chinese Garden, 239 NW Everett St, Portland, OR 97209-3957

The Lan Su Garden, one of the most authentic Suzhou gardens in the world, was a gift from our sister city in China. Since 2000, the garden has amazed and inspired visitors with its colorful plantings, its variety of fragrant and textural flowers, and its carefully-laid design. We'll walk around the garden and get a taste of the beauty that lies inside.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Pearl District, 404 NW 10th Ave # LL1, Portland, OR 97209-3184

We'll pop into the Pearl District to see some of our favorite art and parks before we head back to the shop!

Duration: 15 minutes

Stop At: Steel Bridge, Connects Northwest Front Avenue and Northwest Flanders Street to Northeast Williams Avenue, Portland, OR 97209

What better way to get back to the shop than cross the bridge that's unique in all the world (and among our tour guides' most oft-cited favorite)? It's an easy ride; smell the creosote, watch the big ships beyond!

Duration: 5 minutes