Portland · Backpacking
ON A BUDGET
Cheap food carts, a light rail from the airport, and no sales tax on anything you buy.
Hawthorne and Northwest hostels
Two long-running hostels anchor the budget scene: one on south-east Hawthorne among the bookshops, one in the Alphabet District near the bars.
What a day costs
Bed 35–55 USD, food 15–35 because a cart lunch runs about 12, and TriMet caps the day at roughly 5.60 on a Hop card.
Getting around cheap
A Hop card caps fares daily and monthly. The MAX Red Line runs the airport to downtown in under forty minutes, and Biketown e-bikes cover the rest.
Free by day
Powell's takes a whole afternoon and costs nothing, Forest Park has thirty miles of trail inside the city, and the Saturday Market runs March to December.
Where travellers meet
The cart pods work as open-air common rooms — Cartopia on south-east Hawthorne runs late and seats strangers together under heat lamps.