Yesterday was my wife’s 25th birthday, and unfortunately I had to work in the morning. I promised her that when I got out of work we would go to lunch and a movie, but to kill time she decided to walk around Portland. During her ventures through the city, she stumbled upon our dream bookstore.

The Bookstore:

Upon entering the hidden shop, you are instantly hit with the musty smell of old books and leather, and you see nothing but small paths and rows of books. The bookshelves stretch literally from floor to ceiling and there are small ladders in the corners so that the patrons may reach the books at the top. The shop specializes in used and antique books and many of the books I found were from the 17th and 18th century.


Finding My Wife and Finding History:

Once I got out of work, I ventured through the winding path in the bookstore looking for my wife. When I finally found her, she was standing on the top row of a latter with at least ten books piled up on the steps and her nose deep in a book written during world war two. We left with a book on clock collecting written in 1917 and a journal full of newspaper and magazine clippings from world war two.

If you find yourself asking “why did Zach buy a book on clock collecting?”, the simple answer is I am a horologist for my day job and have a great love of collecting watches and clocks. As we were leaving the bookstore of my dreams, I found myself thinking that this is what I wanted the shop in ‘The Curious Tale of Gabrielle’ to look like and I vowed that I would come back and spend more time looking through all of the old books that reside there.