Maine Part 1: Portland

Last week was our amazing week-long Maine vacation! We've been looking forward to this road trip since April when we first booked it, and it lived up to all our expectations. I'm not sure where to start, so we'll just go from the beginning. We decided to drive - and thought Saturday should be a safe bet for traffic. Not so much. Our route took us through 7 states and took 9 hours - almost 3 more than planned due to traffic!

Welcome to town!

But once we got to Portland, it was worth every second. Our B&B was an amazing old Victorian home within walking distance of everything in the city - after our drive, we parked the car and let it stay there for a couple nights.

Our fabulous B&B

Views of the harbor

Portland was a very fun city with an interesting music, food, and craft brew scene. Right on the harbor, it had great views too. We had our first lobster meals in Portland...Mike tried to have lobster at every one and was close with a lobster souffle for breakfast one day! The shopping in town was great - lots of hilarious lobster themed items. Gotta love the lobster jokes. :)

Mike's first lobster - mmm! The first of many. This little guy held his own lemon in his claw.

I couldn't believe the live music scene too. On Saturday night we caught multiple live performances. The best was nearly indescribable: a folksy, bluesy big band type group that included a full bass and actually had people spontaneously dancing. The music was so great we stayed right up until the end of the set!

Portland is also known for it's craft beer scene (Mike was only a little excited about that!).  We checked out a few local hot spots including Shipyard Brewery. They make a blueberry beer in the summer, and I was officially hooked! It was just a taste of the blueberries to come...

The coolest ice maker ever! It melted a block of ice with heat and weight into a perfect sphere.

Mike's drink with the cool ice sphere.

New Wall Art!

While we were in Maine we picked up a bunch of new art, so Sunday was the day to put it all up! I think it turned out pretty well. And yes, the lobster is in the kitchen. :)

On a random other note, last night Mike and I had Scrapple for the first time. Apparently, it's the PA version of Spam/Mystery meat. We went out for burgers and our server couldn't believe we hadn't had it - let alone heard of it! So, he had the cook whip up a slice...well, now we can say we had it! I'm going to keep it in the past tense...yuck! Mike didn't mind it so much, but it's definitely not going to go on the regular dinner rotation! 

New arrangement above the couch

Dining room

Lobster in the kitchen!

Finally got the top picture framed and up! We got this one in Manayunk with Mary and Steve.

Weekend at the Jersey Shore

We had our first weekend at the Jersey Shore the first weekend of August. It was so much fun to spend a weekend at the beach!

We stayed in Wildwood which was a classic boardwalk shore town, just a few miles up the shore from Cape May.

Mike did a great write up on the 50's style B&B we stayed at:
http://www.relaxingthetravelitch.com/2013/08/home-away-from-home-summer-nites-b.html

We of course went to the beach for a bit, but I couldn't believe how busy it was! We had to maneuver to find a spot for the two of us on a very large beach, but it really was an experience like nothing we've had before. The boardwalk in town was extremely fun - and great people watching. It was filled with families having a great weekend.

View from the top of the Ferris Wheel

We also drove down to Cape May on Saturday to take in a whale watching cruise. The whales were elusive, but we did manage to see quite a few dolphins, and had a great time on the water! Cape May was a beautiful old coastal town filled with Victorian mansions, and I'm excited to go back and explore it more in depth.

The Cape May harbor - you can see some jellyfish in the water - we couldn't believe how many there were!

Dolphins!

We also had some of the best crab cakes to date! We're loving the seafood out here. :)

Weekends around town

We've had a couple weekends in the past month that we actually stayed in Philly (not many, but a few!). It was a great time to partake in seeing more sights of the city. We went on a food tour a couple weekends ago in Manayunk, which was an incredible time! Mike detailed it in his blog: http://www.relaxingthetravelitch.com/2013/08/happy-belly-manayunk-food-tour.html No need to recreate the wheel here. :)

Two weekends ago, Mike's buddy Kurt came to visit town. It was so much fun to have a visitor! They were in Baltimore for an Orioles game on Friday, and came up to Conshy on Saturday. We went immediately out to Ponti's - our favorite cheesesteak place in town. We followed that up with an evening in Manayunk and even went to a spot we learned about on our food tour. Sunday we did some touring. While the boys checked out the Penitentiary, I went to the Rodin Museum, and it was wonderful! Its the second largest Rodin collection after Paris, and there was a great tour going on that I could walk around with. It's reminding me of how many amazing museums are in this town that we need to visit!

The real excitement came when we brought Kurt back to the airport. Philly set a new record rainfall and we were smack dab in the middle of it! We got 8+ inches of rain in 4 hours (previous record was 6" over 20 hours during a hurricane...) and the epicenter was the airport! Luckily we left early, and Kurt got out safely, if a bit late. Nothing like a big goodbye from the city to send him off!

No pics this time...but I promise some more on the next update!