Portland - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 435

Fashionable NW 23rd Ave brims with clothing boutiques, home-decor shops and
cafes. Restaurants - including some of Portland's finest - lie mostly along NW 21st Ave.
This is a great neighborhood for strolling, window-shopping and people-watching. Park-
ing is tough but not impossible.
Just east of Northwest, the Pearl District is an old industrial precinct that has trans-
formed itself into Portland's swankiest neighborhood. Warehouses have been converted
to fancy lofts commanding some of the highest real-estate prices in Oregon. It's a great
place to walk around, checking out upscale boutiques, trendy restaurants and Portland's
highest concentration of art galleries. Every first Thursday of each month, many galleries
extend their evening hours and show off new exhibits ( www.firstthursdayportland.com ) .
Be sure to visit the Museum of Contemporary Craft MAP GOOGLE MAP (
503-223-2654; www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org ; 724 NW Davis St; admission $4;
11am-6pm Tue-Sat, to 8pm 1st Thu of every month) with a fine, growing collection of excellent
regionally made crafts, especially ceramics.
The Pearl is bordered by NW 9th Ave, NW 14th Ave, W Burnside St and NW Lovejoy
St, though it's creeping northward toward the river.

Northeast

Most of Portland's east side is residential, but just across the Willamette River the mod-
ern Lloyd District is like an extension of downtown. Here lies the nation's first full-
blown shopping mall, the Lloyd Center ( www.lloydcenter.com ; 2201 Lloyd Center) , along
with the twin-glass-tower Oregon Convention Center MAP GOOGLE MAP
( www.oregoncc.org ; 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd) and the Moda Center MAP
GOOGLE MAP (Rose Garden Arena; ;

503-235-8771; www.rosequarter.com ; 300 N Winning

Way) , home of the Trail Blazers.
Further up the Willamette, N Mississippi Ave has experienced an amazing revival in
the past few years. Run-down buildings have been transformed into trendy shops, cafes
and restaurants - with the main anchor being the ReBuilding Center ( 503-331-1877;
www.rebuildingcenter.org ; 3625 N Mississippi Ave) , a cool recycling warehouse full of donated
housing materials where you can find nearly anything building-related. Amnesia Brew-
ing ( Click here ), which makes excellent beer, is also based here.
Northeast of Mississippi, creatively spunky NE Alberta St is another success story.
The stretch between NE 15th and NE 33rd Aves has revamped itself from a ribbon of va-
cant buildings, dubious bars and drug dealing into one of Portland's hippest streets. Des-
pite the gentrification, it's still ethnically diverse and home to small art galleries,