Two day itinerary in Portland OR

This is the two day itinerary I used when traveling to Portland for a weekend trip. It includes food recommendations, waterfalls, and city attractions.

Summary

Day 1

• Vista House

• Waterfalls

• Bridal Veil Falls

• Wahkeena Falls

• Fairy falls (optional)

• Multnomah Falls

• Horsetail falls

• More hiking (optional)

• Rowena Crest

• Voodoo doughnut

• Powell's City of Books

Day 2

• Pittock Mansion

• Japanese garden

• International Rose Garden

Day 1

Breakfast

We had breakfast at Elmer's. They have multiple locations in Portland, and they serve delicious American breakfast.

Vista House

On the way to see the waterfalls, you can stop by Vista house. The house itself has been closed since the pandemic. However, you will get a really good view of the Columbia River from there. There are a lot of free parking spots near the vista house as well.

On the way to the vista house, we also caught a glimpse of the snowy mountain from the highway, which I think is probably Mount Hood:

Here is the view from vista house:

Waterfalls

The following five waterfalls are close to each other and are along the columbia river

The order below is from the west to the east:

Bridal Veil Falls 

There is a 1 mile hike with a little bit of elevation to get to the waterfall.

The waterfall has two sections. It really looks like an elegant bridal veil.

Wahkeena Falls 

There is a 0.5 mile mostly uphill hike to get to this waterfall. Most of the trail is paved.

You will get a very refreshing mist when you get close to it.

Fairy falls (optional)

This waterfall takes a little bit more effort to get to. You need to hike a 3.4 mile round trip with 1500 feet elevation gain. This waterfall is very small (20 feet high). Feel free to skip it if you don’t want to do that much hiking.

Multnomah Falls

This is the most famous waterfall in Portland, and it definitely lives up to its fame. 

The parking situation is kinda tricky. There are very limited parking spots at the Multnomah Falls parking lot. You can try to go there first. If you are unable to find parking there, the alternative is to walk from Wahkeena Falls parking. It is a 0.5 mile one way walk.

You can walk to the bridge of the Multnomah Falls from a paved trail. In my opinion, the view from the bottom of the waterfall is better than at the bridge.

Horsetail falls 

This is the easiest waterfall to get to. The lower Horsetail Falls viewpoint is located just by the side of the road.

This is a very tall waterfall that falls into a big pond.

More hiking (optional)

At this point, if you are feeling adventurous and want to do more hiking, you can go to the Historic Columbia River highway State trail. It is a paved 8.8 mile out and back trail with 784 feet elevation gain. You can turn back whenever we want to.

Rowena Crest

After all the waterfall adventures, we went to this picturesque spot. It is 50 min drive from the waterfalls. It is a road with a bend that looks like a horseshoe. It is surrounded by beautiful scenery.

Dinner

For dinner, we went to a food truck called Bing Mi. They specialize in Chinese crepes. There are also a few other food trucks in the same area.

Evening

When I was doing research about things to do in the evening, I found two options for evening events: Glowing Greens and PDX night Makrte.

Glowing Greens is a pirated-themed course for mini-golf with blakc lights. The ticket is around $13.5/person and you need to book ahead of time.

We decided to go to PDX Night Market. On Google, it says it is open every Sat and Sun, which is incorrect. We went there and found out there is no market at all. Later on, we found out that the PDX night market is a quarterly event and only opens on a few dates of the year. You can check out their website for more details.

We ended up going to Voodoo doughnut and Powell's City of Books instead.

Voodoo doughnut

There are two Voodoo doughnut locations in portland: Old Town and Davis. 

• Old town one is located in the downtown area, so parking is very difficult to find. When we drove by, there was a long line of people waiting outside.

• Davis location is not in downtown. It has its own parking lot. When we went there, there was no line at all.

I would recommend going to the Davis location because of the parking and waiting situations.

We got a dozen vegan donuts and they are delicious:

Powell's City of Books

It is a really big bookstore in downtown. It is the world's largest new and used bookstore.

Day 2

Pittock Mansion

It is a beautiful historical house with spectacular views of the entire city . 

You need to get your ticket ahead of time on their website. It was $12/person when we visited in 2021. 

It is a self guided tour, so you can spend as much time as needed. People online say they typically spend 1.5 hrs there.

Japanese garden

You can get tickets online ahead of time. It takes about 1.5 hours to see everything in the garden.

International Rose Garden

This rose garden is free admission and is very close to Japanese Garden

Lunch

We got lunch at a Thai restaurant called Thai Bloom!.

We got spicy wings, seafood medley and Pad See Ew. They are all really delicious. The food is very spicy, so make sure you specify what spicy level you want. 

Other things to do

After lunch, we headed to the airport to fly back home. If you have more time, there are a few other things you can do in Portland:

• Witches castle (a two story stone house)

• Forest park (largest urban wilderness in the USA)

• McCall Waterfront Park

• OMSI (science museum)

• Lan su Chinese garden 

Note: all the prices listed above are from 2021. They might have adjusted the price now.