[Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago, and have been waiting to post until I got my photos back from Walgreen's so I could put them in. Apologies.]
I took this weekend off to take a trip up to Portland, Maine for some cycling, and it was great! For whatever reason, I seem to have some ingrained desire to always go as far north as possible (see: recent trip to Arctic Circle). I think it would be so cool to be a polar explorer. It must be that “seasonal-inferiority-complex” 
you get from living in a place like Texas, where we only have hot and hotter (okay, well maybe it’s not that simple).
Anyways, on Friday I caught a ride up to Portland with my boss Mark, who was heading up there for business meeting. He dropped me off at the Elms, the bed and breakfast I was staying at. The B&B was in this really old, creepy house, it looked straight out of a cheap 60s horror movie. It was very elegant and mysterious, like the house in Clue. I was in the top room, called the Bear Cave, complete with a mini-library and writing desk. Just my type of place.
But I didn’t stick around long and hopped on my bike. I found a sweet route online that swings by all the major lighthouses in the area. So after stopping at a CVS to buy a disposable camera (my digital died on me back in Italy) and grabbing a quick bite to eat at a vegan café run
by Seventh-day Adventists, I headed out. The tour was really neat. It took me by four lighthouse spread out over about thirty-five miles, along some really scenic roads through forest, beach, and marsh. The whole time I kept thinking how beautiful the area was. And not to mention the great weather, which was a strange combination between fog and sun.
I got back to my B&B exhausted and starving. After a much needed shower, I chatted with Scott, the inn’s proprietor, about the best place to get good seafood, and he promptly directed 
to me Jay’s Raw Bar. It turned out to be this little hole-in-the-wall joint in the old port area of the town next to a handful of real glitzy tourist traps. But it was the real deal, packed to the gills with locals speaking with accents so thick it sounded like another language. After waiting around for a few minutes I was able to grab a seat at the bar. Right as I was ordering a drink, Scott from my B&B sat down next to me! He had decided to take his own advice and come to Jay’s himself. So we ate dinner together, talking about Portland, and college, and travel, and whatnot. Really nice guy.
And of course, I had the lobster, and all ethical concerns aside about boiling your dinner alive, it was absolutely delicious. I’ve never had it before, so I couldn’t resist
since I was in Maine and all. I’ve thought about cooking lobster myself (it’s pretty easy), but I just don’t think I could actually put the poor critter in the pot. I would feel so bad, looking at his sad face as I dropped him in the boiling water, and then hearing him tink tink tink on the side of the pot until he had finally, uhm, expired. But having someone else do it is an entirely different story.
After supper, I headed back to the inn for some sleep, but not before grabbing a cone of ice cream. The next morning, I woke up in time for breakfast downstairs in the dining room, which was some powerful good bacon and waffles. I haven’t had a proper breakfast like that since being in Boston, and I had forgotten just how nice it is. I got to chat with the other folks staying there, who were all really nice. I like talking to strangers I think. It’s scary at first, but once you get over that initial awkwardness, the conversation tends to get along pretty well by itself.
After breakfast, I packed my things, checked out, and biked into town. I really enjoyed riding my bicycle everywhere, it was neat and different way to tour a city. I tried to drop my bag off at the Amtrak station, only to find that they don’t have any left luggage services. So I had to go across the street and check my bag at the Greyhound station instead. Greyhound 1, Amtrak 0. I took out my trusty Rough Guide to New England and selected a few choice activities for the day, including the art museum, the Portland Observatory, and book shopping. The art museum was quite nice, and I was able to get in with a free tour of the place, which was a double-plus. The observatory was also very neat. It’s actually a signal tower built in the early 1800s, used to spot ships coming into port. There were lots of neat history and facts about the area. For instance, before the modern era of telecommunication, people would walk up and down the coast near Portland at night during the dead of winter to check for signs of shipwrecks, so that they could then send out lifesaving crews. Amazing! I also visited some antique bookstores, and was able to buy some sweet postcards from the early 1900s. The 
store had boxes of them, some with messages already on them and some without. I felt like such a voyeur, reading these dispatches sent to friends and family long ago, but I couldn’t help myself. I hope that some of my postcards find there way into a bookstore some day too.
But alas, my time in Portland had to come to an end. After spending a few final moments on the docks, I reluctantly pedaled to the train station to head back to Boston. I don’t particulary know why I liked Portland so much. I mean, it’s not like it exactly has much to offer in the way of tourism, but for whatever reason the place just resonated with me. To be honest, the town felt like a prosperous Waco. And that may be why I liked it so much, because it reminded me of home.
