We just returned from a quick trip to see family in Oregon.
I grew up in Oregon in a tiny logging town, in the middle of no where, part way between Portland and the Pacific Ocean. All my family still lives in Oregon and the Portland area. I am the only “odd one” that moved away.
My parents, my sisters, most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins all still live in the Pacific Northwest. Because of this a yearly, or at least semi yearly, visit is a must.
I miss my family, friends, and the beauty of Oregon and vacations to Oregon are something I always look forward to. Plus, Oregon is a great place to visit. It has a great mix of the city, the ocean, the mountains, waterfalls, hiking, and so much more.
And it has Powell’s City of Books bookstore, which is what we are going to talk about today.
Powell’s City of Books in Portland is on many people’s must see list. If you are a book lover, than I am sure it is on your list if you ever visit Oregon. You may have even visited it already. The store is huge.
Their flagship location is the largest new and used bookstore in the world. It takes up an entire city block and contains around 1 million books. It is pretty much a one of a kind bookstore.
It is a must visit if you are visiting downtown Portland or that part of Portland. However, I will totally admit that we avoid that area of Portland when we visit Oregon.
Maybe avoid is not the right word. It just isn’t where we spend our time. My family doesn’t live in that area so it is out of our way to go there. And between traffic and other things, visiting that part of Portland is time consuming. Portland traffic is a pain. Just saying…
We have so many other things to see and do and people to see that making a special trip into the heart of Portland is rarely on our vacation to do list.
However, we usually end up spending a great deal of time west of Portland because we have so many family and friends there.
And there is a great Powell’s store in Beaverton, Oregon, that is often forgotten about and not promoted much. I am sure it is not on very many must see lists. However I think it is a great store to visit. We almost always try to stop by the Beaverton Powell’s Books if we can when we are in Oregon.
The Beaverton location of Powell’s is not a city block and doesn’t have a million books, but it is still a big bookstore with a massive collection of new and used books. On our visits to Oregon it is a great fun stop that is not far out of our way and doesn’t take a huge amount of time.
The selection is great. We always find books to buy and books to add to our wish list. It is a big bookstore, but not in an overwhelming way like the flagship store can be. It is like the perfect size.
It has a book on just about every subject you can think of without having an overwhelming, I don’t know where to even start looking, amount of books.
The history section is probably our favorite section. It contains so many books. Grace and I both came home with several books and a huge list of books we saw that we want to read in the future.
We love visiting bookstores on vacation. I am pretty sure we are not alone on that. If you love books like we do, I am sure you love to visit bookstores when you travel as well.
When I visit a used bookstore like this on vacation, I always try to find unusual books. The kind of books that I wouldn’t see just anyways. A more rare or random title.
For this trip, I had a mission. I wanted to find some books for my Books For Every State Reading Challenge and I was successful. I found more books than I could possibly bring home. I had to narrow down the stack and only bring a few home.
In all my trips to Powell’s over the years, I have always just bought books. I have never bought any of the bookish stuff that they sell. This time I decided to change that though and I picked up a t-shirt along with my books.
Grace and I even managed to take a selfie, which is something that we rarely do. But when you are at a great bookstore on vacation is seemed like something we just had to do. Even if it was at the end of a very long and tiring day and neither of us wanted our picture taken. 🙂
Do you love to visit bookstores on vacation? Do have a favorite one that you enjoy visiting?