Our friends who downsized from a big old Victorian in the alphabet district in NW Portland now have this view of the Fremont Bridge looking downriver.

While in the other direction there is the Broadway Bridge in the foreground, backed by the city’s skyline. The sidewalk you see here is part of a 40-mile loop trail for walkers and bicyclists. The water of the Willamette River is so high right now that parts of the trail are submerged, but that won’t last for long. We plan to bring our bikes sometime soon.

The condo building is surrounded by something like a moat. This is the view looking from the sidewalk out between the two buildings with the river in the distance and industrial buildings and docks on the far shore.

Down the sides of the buildings the water cascades down these concrete spillways. The reflecting pool in the last photo has similar levels that can be seen through the water, but not easily photographed.

The landscape designer was meticulous to the point that the first rocks in this dry creek bed had to be removed because they were the wrong color. These rocks are exactly the color of the sidewalk and nearly uniform in size.

I am normally not a petunia person, but I find the large blocks of bright red ones in concrete raised beds surprisingly pleasing.

After passing through a lobby with falling water on both sides (just in case we haven’t had enough rain) we made our way to our friends’ condo, where they have this view from their balcony. They can watch all of the river traffic and the loading and unloading of cargo ships across the river. If that isn’t enough excitement, the Portland Police’s horse barn is off to the left, where the horses are worked in the ring. They miss having a space to garden, but the low maintenance will make room for sailing getaways, etc. Looks like a pretty good life to me. Now I am off to spend the next three days of promised sunshine mucking about in the garden and loving every minute of it. To each his own, right?