Comfort Inn & Suites Scarborough

Along the way:

Heading to Portland, Maine (to visit Tom, Denise & Foster) we drove from Milton, through the Lewiston border crossing (N of Niagara Falls), through New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and finally into Maine, an 11 hour drive. Surprisingly, there are no orchards or farms east of the Niagara River – it's all bush.

Portland, Maine, United States jimcabay

Along the way:

Heading to Portland, Maine (to visit Tom, Denise & Foster) we drove from Milton, through the Lewiston border crossing (N of Niagara Falls), through New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and finally into Maine, an 11 hour drive. Surprisingly, there are no orchards or farms east of the Niagara River – it's all bush.

Portland, Maine, United States jimcabay

... our travels with you through this blog and hope it goes successfully. One of our audiences will be Sophie and Isabelle's classes...."hello fellow classmates/teachers". We hope to bring to this blog our personal experiences and reactions as well as some history and educational value. The girls would also like to challenge the classes with periodic questions about our destination to see if the classes can come up with the answers.

Overview

Portland has an amazing history that stretches back over 350 years, and this wonderful town has blossomed into the largest city in Maine. This close-knit community is second only to San Francisco when it comes to restaurants per capita. Old brick buildings and cobblestone streets still exist, and the blend of past and present in Portland is exhilarating. In addition to the prevalence of dining facilities, there are an unbelievable number of stores and shopping ...

... Second only to Kittery, Maine, Freeport has the largest collection of factory outlet stores. The outlet stores are unlike any other factory outlet mall. They are in upscale shops some of which are located in old Victoria homes. McDonald's is located in an remodeled Victorian farmhouse. We went into
LL Bean's, a New England based company, which is very popular with New Englanders. This is the parent store which is open 24 hours per day ...

... with a yard full of newly-built vintage-design boats. Beautiful. We stopped for lunch at a small roadside restaurant, and tried a "lobster roll". It was the meat of a 1# lobster, cold, mixed with a mayonnaise sauce of some kind, on a really nice roll split open vertically. It was "Way better than Wendy's".

We got to Kennebunkport mid-afternoon, and got settled into the motel, then off to the trolley. As is our practice, we took the ...

... just as well, as the welcoming sign on entering New Hampshire, carries the tag-line, "Live free or die." I see what they're trying to say, I think, but there are maybe other ways of saying it. I'm still alive so I must have been living free enough for the people of that particular state. Anyway, it all makes a nice change from my usual 9-5 desk job.

So aside from lots of driving ...

i never knew what a great city portland, maine is! it is beautiful and has great restaurants. what more can you ask from a city?

we pulled into the harbor just after sunset--there was a lot of traffic in the channel with fishing boats and shrimping boats and lobtah boats. we docked at a slip and went for an amazing dinner at Street (i highly suggest it!).

the next day we set sail around all the little islands ...

... to share was more than enough to stuff us silly. We sat and ate them in big wooden chairs next to the camp fire that was burning away in an attempt to stave off the chill of the autumn morning.

As the site is really nice and well cared for, even at this late stage of the season, we had decided to stay for another night and so waddled across to reception to book in. Then we waddled to the phone to call ...

... many more tears were shed as we waved everyone off. Tiredness making everything much worse as once again i had only 1 hours sleep. After saying goodbye we had to clear up the chaos the girls had left behind, and pack up our belongings. That night we all headed to the Econo Lodge where we hit Rack M Up for the first time all together since staff week. Many beers later we finally go to bed and the process of saying goodbye to our close friends began. xx