Hilton Garden Inn Freeport

... 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 ...

... words, I'd be lost for them. As it is, I had to content myself with saying, 'wow' and 'ooh' a lot. If I had a camera, I definitely would've taken some photos. But I don't, so I didn't.

That's kind of been me for the last few days really; stopping at places that sounded interesting and then trying to find a motel when I've started to feel tired. It's all been very liberating, which ...

we sailed into boothsbay in the dark (as usual). we only had limited lights, so it was a crew effort to communicate with chris who was motoring the boat in via GPS coordinates and autopilot.

"boat at 1 o'clock!"

"mooring at 11 o'clock!"

we successfully docked (at the wrong dock than planned but we docked none the less). we had hoped to get farther up the coast but the last few days had been light wind (cary said ...

... had no idea there were so many! but you can only see them by boat, and turns out maine has the longest coastline of any of the 50 states (i'm pretty sure this is what chris told me). some islands have lots of houses on them, plus a few stores, maybe a school. some kids have to take a ferry to the mainland for school in portland. but some islands are privately owned and have only 1 or 2 houses on them. if maine wasn't ...

On Sunday, September 13th, volunteers gathered in South Portland near the Maine mall for Volunteer Day. The mission for the day was to clean up trash, build a bridge, finish a kiosk and other tasks related to building walking trails for SP residents to enjoy. The best thing to me was the range of ages who participated -- from very young of 4 or 5 to young at heart of any age!

We were in Portland, Maine today. Not too much there. The old Portland burnt down completely in the 1600s and then was built back up through 1700s / 1800s. The Old Port looked lovely, proper New England style fishing port.
Paul had "lobster stew" ! Portland is famous for its lobster trade. Lobsters everywhere. Lobster clothing, Lobster toys, Lobster restaurants, big fluffy ...

... which you can drive to the top of, we got great views of the area and the surrounding ski slopes, we also got good views of the cliffs reflected in Echo Lake below. A few miles out of town are Arathusa falls; these are reached by a two hour return hike up a very steep trail. Within 10 minutes of starting this trail the heavens opened and we were drenched, the heavy downpour turned the trail into a mountain stream. Where others may have tuned back we ...

... it up - its basically a smear test. What was odd was her question: 'I am going for a PAP test later this month but I had sex a year ago, will this show on my test and should I have not done it' badly worded I know but that's websites for you. But forget all that... what the hell... someone had sex a year ago and they're worried that it will show on their smear test - whilst I really am not a gynecologist what the hell does it matter - I mean ...