Welcome to Southeast, the original suburbs for those working in downtown Portland. You're on Hawthorne, the heart of Southeast. Ahead of you is Mt. Tabor, the neighborhood extinct volcano and park with historic water reservoirs. Further to the right and south are the wetlands of Oaks Bottom and the antique shops in Sellwood. If it's springtime, you see the dragon boats below, practicing for the Rose Festival races.

Southeast is a fairly simple grid of tree-lined streets and tidy bungalows. Homes here were typically built in the 1910s and 1920s, mostly one-story homes with an attic converted into a second story somewhere in the 1950s. Grander homes can be found in close-in neighborhoods such as Buckman, Laurelhurst and Ladd's Addition, or even the Woodstock area near Reed College. But throughout Southeast, many homeowners have restored their home's original charm with period touches and extensive gardens.

Yet Southeast mixes family with funky. Intersections such as SE 33rd and Yamhill are decorated to create a sense of community, to transform the intersection from a place to travel through to a place to stop and smell the roses. Hawthorne somehow marries the fine dining of Bread and Ink with the pub theater experience of the Bagdad. In Southeast, "fancy" can mean dining with white cloth napkins or enjoying a beer under arabesque paintings.

Or get outdoors. Southeast Portland has many greenspaces, including Laurelhurst Park with pathways winding around the lake and picnic areas, the rose gardens of Ladd's Addition, 160 acres of wetlands and wildlife refuge at Oaks Bottom, and of course, Mt. Tabor itself with an extinct volcano crater and historic water reservoirs. The Springwater Corridor meets the Willamette River trail in Sellwood to connect inner Southeast Portland to Gresham and beyond.