Portland, Maine . . . In Winter???
In mid-March, Afegirls took a short mother-daughter weekend trip to Portland, Maine, where we discovered great food and good shopping in a cool town. Frigid temperatures could not deter us: we just bought hats and kept shopping! (We’re dedicated that way.)
Portland’s been on my shortlist for a while now:
- Within a two-hour drive? Check.
- Good food scene? Check.
- Good craft beer scene? Check.
- Good music scene? Yeah . . . but for an under-age participant, not so much.
- Cool shopping? Check.
- Outdoor stuff to provide a break from the above? Check.
For whatever reason, despite getting 5 out of 6 checks, after 17 years in NH, we’d never been. So, when Emma had a basketball tournament scheduled in the town immediately south, we thought about it for like two seconds, and made an Afegirl plan.
Unfortunately, we failed to take into account that the tournament was in late-March. While that means 80’s in Dallas, and 60’s in DC, it means 35 degrees — with wind-chill factor it feels like 22(!!) — in Portland, Maine.
Afegirls, however, are not to be deterred by a little cold weather. (AG2, after all, was BORN in NH. In December. Possibly in a snowdrift.) We simply bought (very cute) hats in a boutique, and continued on our adventure. With hands in pockets. (We WOULD have bought gloves as well, but they weren’t so cute. And, no, it never occurred to us to pack any of the 50 hats or pairs of gloves we have at home. It was kind of warm — like 45 degrees — when we left NH.)
Soooo, back to Portland. We were excited to check out a new city (or is it a town? This whole question is extremely confusing. Like the mountain vs. hill issue. We need Hugh Grant!!!). We opted against staying with the team in the unappealing town of Biddeford, ME (team bonding is over-rated), and instead booked the Courtyard Marriott in Old Port.
Okay, so we didn’t know Old Port from New Port (Red Port from Blue Port?), but some extremely brief research seemed to indicate that this was THE place to be for first-time visitors to Portland, ME. We actually weren’t disappointed.
A random Pinterest post had indicated that Commercial Street was THE street for shopping (I know, lots of article capitalization, but I’m just quoting here) – “bounce in and out of cute boutique and consignment stores”. Uh, not so much. On Commercial, we did find:
- Kiss Kiss Bam Bam (We love you, Robert Downey, Jr.!!): Actually, the coffee shop is called Bam Bam Bakery. It is two blocks down from the Courtyard and has THE BEST triple mousse cake. Also good lattes and mochas. Very distressingly, it’s closed on Sundays, causing us a mini-breakdown before we could get Yelp to work on Sunday morning.
- A pet store with RESCUE ANIMALS INSIDE!!!: So, there we were, walking down Commercial, excited to discover cute boutiques and hip coffee shops, and we stumbled across a PET STORE. It appeared to have cute “pet stuff” — tennis balls in the shape of a peace sign, organic dog biscuits, etc. — and, since we have cute pets always in need of more cute pet stuff, we were about to go in. But then, I looked through the window, and spied a woman cooing to a beautiful orange cat in a cage. I looked a little closer, and noticed the signs that they have actual animals, available for adoption, IN THE STORE!!!! Talk about near miss. Emma begged and begged, but I refused to go in, have that whole meet-cute moment, and fall in love. The perfect dog and the near-perfect cat already live at our house. Not going to upset that apple cart with a new addition! Em’s going to college in three years, and, I don’t care what she says, she can’t take a pet with her!!
Having dodged that bullet, we cut left, and eventually found a cool area with some great shops. And here’s where our intelligence just took a break for the day. Or the weekend. We went into the shops that looked the most appealing at the time, paying no attention to whether or not they were open on Sundays. I’ll just say that we lived to regret this approach. Shops we enjoyed:
Restaurants (other than Kiss Kiss Bam Bam, our first love) that we enjoyed:
- Paciarino— all entrees are pasta; the bruschetta app is awesome!
- Bard Coffee — great lattes, decent croissants, free wifi and OPEN ON SUNDAYS!!!
- Zapoteca — really good Mexican. Em discovered Mexican sodas. She likes them almost as much as I like Mexican beer.
On Sunday, we were feeling a little guilty over our eating-shopping weekend. (Okay, Emma played some basketball, but I just sat and watched that.) So, after Bard Coffee, then shopping, then lunch at Zapoteca, we drove down to the Eastern Promenade Trail. We took some great pics (She looks JUST like me!!), but the wind was too much and we didn’t get too far. We did applaud a guy who had just had his own Polar Plunge — the speedo and lobster pink look is HOT! And laughed at all the dogs on the dog beach that seemed to be doing everything they could to avoid going into the water–smart dogs.
Hope to go back in the summer when we can bike and kayak and do all of the other cool things that Portlanders do in the one month they can actually call summer.
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