Intel put me up in a corporate apartment, with a rental car (that didn't have an ice pick!) The most novel thing about Portland is that it calls itself the Rose City. The climate is very conducive to roses. Actually, it was the opposite of Arizona, where my rosebushes died because I traveled too much to water them regularly.
There's definitely a lot of tree-hugging going on :-) There are a LOT of microbreweries, but alas, I'm not much of a drinker. I'd say Portland is a good place to raise a family, but not so nice for single people. You'd have to go up north to Seattle for that. Or south to San Francisco :-)