Astoria: Movie Landmarks, Cannery & Column Tour with Pickup

4.92

(155 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

First thing I noticed was the smell—seaweed and wood smoke, kind of tangled together as we climbed out of the van near the Astoria Column. Our guide, Sarah, handed us these little paper gliders and grinned like she’d done this a hundred times. There’s something about seeing the Columbia River from up there that makes your legs feel lighter, even if you’re still catching your breath from all those stairs. I didn’t expect to laugh so much just watching people (me included) try to launch those gliders into the wind. It’s silly but somehow perfect.

We rolled through neighborhoods that felt both grand and a little worn around the edges—Victorian houses with peeling paint and wild rhododendrons. At one stop, Sarah pointed out a house used in The Goonies. There was this guy on his porch who waved at us like he saw tour vans every day (maybe he does). We got our photos with the famous jeep from the movie—my friend tried to quote a line and totally blanked. Nobody cared. The whole thing just felt easy.

I liked how nothing was rushed. At Hanthorn Cannery, you could hear sea lions barking under the old pilings while we wandered through what used to be a fish plant—now it’s part museum, part coffee shop, part wine bar. I tried a pastry at Coffee Girl that tasted faintly of cardamom and salt air. Some folks went for wine instead; I just sat by the window watching ships move slow on the river. It started drizzling but nobody seemed bothered.

Sarah had tips about where to eat later (“Skip the tourist chowder place—go two blocks up for real crab.”) She gave us pamphlets but honestly it was her offhand stories—about shipwrecks or how locals still argue about which movie scene was filmed where—that stuck with me more than any brochure detail. I left feeling like I’d seen Astoria sideways: not polished up for postcards, but real and kind of stubbornly proud. Still think about that view from the top of the column sometimes, especially when it’s gray back home.