Let me relate a quick story before continuing...so when we arrived at our AirBnB, we were greeted by our lovely host, who showed us around. There's a white noise machine, and supplied ear plugs, because, as he suggested, the area of Portland we were staying in can get quite noisy at times. Even the seagulls can be very noisy, evidently.
Earplugs?! White noise machines?!! We possibly live in the noisiest neighborhood (there's a fire station, a police precinct, a hospital, ambulance parking, and who knows what else within like 5 minutes of our apartment), in one of the noisiest cities in the country. However, there are very few seagulls, though crows can be loud at times...so we got a good chuckle from that!
On Tuesday, friends from Worcester, MA came up to spend a few days in Portland with us - they stayed at a hotel located less than a 10-minute walk away, which, other than the walk back uphill to our apartment, was great. But we started out the day with a drive up the coast, to Yarmouth, Maine, an old mill town established in the late 1600's. We visited this place...
QuoteThe Yarmouth History Center, run by Yarmouth Historical Society, is located beside the train trestle above, having moved from the third floor of the Merrill Memorial Library in 2013.[20]
and I snapped a picture of the old train trestle...
using a silly app on my phone; it automatically puts date, time, and location right on the picture.
Dinner with our friends on their first night in Portland was fun. Yes, we started off with oysters (but without a picture), once again deliciously fresh and crisp and briny. We all shared a few appetizers to start, including these great squid:
There was also a less photogenic, yet no less fantastic, smoked mackerel paté, and a few salt-cod fritters. But on to the mains, where my buddy had...
this most wonderful grilled fresh bluefish - with a couple of fried baby artichokes thrown in for good measure. I got what I'd wanted...
A gigundo (like close to 2 lbs.) expertly steamed lobster. With a shell so hard, I could barely crack parts of it, even though they start it in the kitchen before it's sent out. Shit, even the coleslaw was good! (I don't recall getting around to the corn muffin). There was other food, but who cares after the squid, lobster, mackerel and bluefish? Scales - part of the same restaurant group as Fore Street, so unsurprisingly great service and food. Would return in a nanosecond.
Wednesday was cold, windy, rainy; in other words, perfect coastal New England weather, and great for some lighthouse viewing. No less than 6 lighthouses are located within a short drive of the city of Portland (Maine has close to 60 lighthouses!).
I mentioned it was cold, windy and rainy...
And one more (with raindrops on my lens)...
And a few more from around town...
Lunch this fine, rainy day was at another diner, this one more hipster-based, called Dutch's. Bake their own sourdough, nice sandwiches, etc. etc. I can recommend it, and dinner as well, which was at Central Provisions - a place we'd visited on a previous Portland trip. And a place where I failed to take any noteworthy pix.
The drive home on Thursday went well; that is, until I reached the NYC limits. From the Triboro Bridge, it took me an hour to go about 8 miles, as if the return home trip isn't annoying enough.
