Let's get one thing clear right off the bat: This Lego city at the Festival of Trees is not an exact replica of Portland. Looking down onto the sprawling creation won't be anything like getting an aerial view of our city.

Still, the creators – volunteers from the Portland Lego User Group – included plenty of Portland-specific details that you can't help but love.

There was a miniature Voodoo Doughnut, a farmer's market and even a MAX train that circled on a set of tracks. The pièce de résistance of the building block city was the surprisingly realistic Providence Park, which came with Timbers Army fans and even Timber Joey himself.

See More: Photos from the 2014 Festival of Trees

Lori Clarke, one of the nine PortLUG members who worked on the display, said the whole thing took about 11 hours to put together at the Oregon Convention Center, not to mention the countless hours each person spent building at home.

Her own dining room table has been the construction site of the Lego Providence Park for months, she said, and she's even resorted to raiding her sons' bins of blocks.

"I like to say I spend my days making order out of chaos," Clarke said. She was talking about raising two kids as a stay-at-home mom, but that sentiment could have just as easily been about Legos.

So just how many blocks go into the whole city?

"I honestly don't know," Clarke said. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? She hesitated to even wager a guess. Each building is detailed, on down to the window panes and clocks. A replica of the Vancouver Library (which, to be honest, didn't look much like the real thing), looked to consist of thousands of blocks on its own.

Some buildings in the city are commercial sets, while others are what's called "my own creation" or MOCs. As Clarke explained the technical differences between building MOCs and designing custom creations, a group of wide-eyed kids reached their hands across the barrier to her Legos.

"Don't touch that!" she said, sprinting to guard what looked like Oaks Park. She moved with great urgency, but when she came back she was smiling. "It's a popular exhibit!" she laughed.

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB