Portland, Oregon Help
 

We want to go to Portland, Oregon sometime in June or July and would like help with an itinerary. We are thinking of going only for 4-5 days (a long weekend) and would like to tour Portland, drive to the north coast and spend a nite and spend the day or nite in the wine country and back to Portland. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thx.

Which north coast are you referring to? The north coast of Washington? California?

I mean the coast of Oregon.

The most popular town on the north coast - for good reason - is Cannon Beach, but at that time of year, most hotels there have minimum stay requirements of 2-3 nights. You might not run into that hurdle in towns like Manzanita, and Gearhart, but choice of accommodations in those places is fairly limited. If you don't want to commit to the minimum stay, you can easily do Cannon Beach in a day trip; it's only 90 minutes from Portland. And days are long in June and July.

Same is true of wine country. There are a few nice B&Bs, notably Black Walnut Inn and Youngberg Hill, but both of these are less than an hour from Portland. So, even though wine country is pretty and all that, you'd have a bunch more options for dining and fun by making Portland your base.

You could aim for central Oregon Coast (Newport - Lincoln City) instead of Northern Coast. That way, you could hit the wine country on the way to or from the coast (out Highway 99W/Highway 18 for example). I really like Newport myself - not as quaint as Cannon Beach but still with character (plus the Oregon Coast Aquarium).

I agree with the Cannon Beach suggestion. Being such an easy day trip from here, you could easily work it in.

I will give my usual tip about visiting our wineries here. Either one of you be the designated driver, or hire a driver. The police have a very heavy presence in this area. Lots of people get caught driving after too much tasting, as well as for speeding (the speed limit around here really varies every couple of miles).

Just to throw a kink into your plans, you might consider doing a day trip to the gorge and seeing some of the waterfalls and such. Very easy day trip from Portland, and quite beautiful.

Thank you so much for the great advice. I'm glad you told us about the wineries and driving since we thought of stopping at a few on our way back to Portland from the coast. But with that in mind will probably book EcoTours and let them do the driving unless you can recommend another company to use. We will have to look into the Gorge and maybe have to extend our trip. We are thinking a couple days in Portland, a couple days somewhere along the coast and one day for the wineries and now maybe one day for the Gorge. Will have to see. Thanks again.

If you cannot find anything in Cannon Beach, I would recommend the Inn at Arch Cape in Arch Cape, Or,
www.innatarchcape.com
just 10 miles south of Cannon Beach. They have fireplaces and are close to the beach, less than a block..right off 101 so you are easily on the road and off to the wineries ..
In Portland you can stay at any of the popular and nice hotels in town or in one of the smaller places like the Inn at Northrup Station www.northrupstation.com
We always stay at the Monaco Portland which was the 5th Avenue Suites.. a Kimpton Hotel and very nice.
I would stay at the Westin or the Lucia also.
I agree with beachbum, The Black Walnut Inn is so beautiful, www.blackwalnut-inn.com/ definitely try to stay there!
And I also agree with mms, you cannot drive around sightseeing without going on the Historic Highway and getting a look at those waterfalls!
One after another!! Amazing!

Thanks for the good info Scarlett. We need to decide if we want to have Portland as our base or spend some of our days on the coast or in the wine country. I have lots of research to do on the hotels etc that you recommend. Can you recommend a good time to go to Portland - we are thinking sometime in June or early July? Thanks.

Early July is much better than June for visiting. We always say our summers begin on July 5th ;)

There are several companies that do tours of the wine region. Since we live here, we have not used them, so I can't say if one is better than another. A few to look at include www.winetouroregon.com, www.grapeescapetours.com, and www.orwinetours.com.

mms--so Portland summers start even later than Seattle! Ours begins at 1:00 pm om the 4th.

That's something to keep in mind then - we are coming from Arizona so need to find some cheap flights in early July. Thanks for all of your info - I just need to sort it out and figure out an itinerary.

enzian--LOL! When we lived in Seattle we used to come down here for the 4th of July...better chance of it being dry ;) Now that we are here, for some reason we always go back in June. Go figure.

I haven't personally been on any of EcoTours tours, but we have used them when we sponsored conventions here in town, and the participants all seemed very happy with them. They're small groups, which is nice. I was impressed with their programs, too - didn't seem to be filled with the standard stops at gift shops.

Not attempting to hi-jack so please forgive but...Scarlett, or anyone else....we are looking to possibly come to Portland over Thanksgiving this year and I have been researching hotels.

I just read the reviews of the Monaco on TA and was a little put off by the most recent one (sounds like it was written by a designer-snob..who knows?)...
we've never been to portland but would want to be close to public transport and within walking distance (if possible) of some sights/sites although we will have a car.

Any recommendations would be appreciated. We prefer regular hotels to B+Bs and thanks very much.

Hi Dukey,
We will be staying at the Monaco in a couple of weeks, we move there from this apt when we are leaving for Buenos Aires.
Overall, we have spent nearly 30 nights in the 5th Avenue Suites/Monaco and I have no complaints.
What has changed is the decor, the service and staff is the same.
We thought we might try a different hotel before we leave, so we did some research, even looked at the Paramount, where a huge noisy dirty construction project is going on..the Monaco still came out ahead ( for us).
The Westin , Paramount, Heathman and Governor are big old style and just plain hotel style hotels.
The Vintage, Lucia and Monaco are boutique, a little more specialized service .. or at least they try to do so.
The Vintage is just hotel rooms, the Lucia is nice but tiny rooms .. the Monaco still wins out over them all for us.

We also will have our dog with us, you will find most hotels in Portland accept dogs, some like the Heathman charge a fee, the Kimpton hotels do not.
The Kimpton hotels have free evening wine tastings for guests as well as coffee in the lobby/living room every morning..there is also a huge fireplace which makes the room c ozy, even if you do not like the decorating scheme/colors ( my husband lol)...
The hotel is on 5th Ave, the streetcar line is one 10th & 11th. So it is in a good spot for walking and hopping on and off the streetcar, no cars needed.
Hope this helps..enjoy Portland!