Portland: books, roses and Japanese gardens

Powell's City of Books, the world's largest independent bookstore by retail floor space, occupies an entire city block on multiple color-coded floors, with over one million new and used volumes mixed on the same shelves.

The International Rose Test Garden, in operation since 1917 as a safe haven for European varieties threatened by World War I, today hosts over ten thousand rose bushes and offers a clear view of Mount Hood from above when the sky is clear.

The Japanese Garden in Washington Park, considered among the most authentic outside Japan, alternates a zen garden of stones and raked sand with a traditional tea pavilion built by Japanese craftsmen.

The Pearl District, a former railroad warehouse zone redeveloped from the 1990s onward, now reunites art galleries, craft breweries, and the food carts that made the city's informal dining scene famous.

A Japanese zen garden and a bookstore as big as a city block tell the same story about Portland's civic attitude: to dedicate space and care to things that elsewhere would be considered niche.

The food carts of the Pearl District, informal and temporary by nature, nonetheless show that this same care doesn't need permanent buildings to make its mark.