Cool as a Moose*

We live in New England, which means that we are so close to a bunch of places. All these states up here are teeny tiny small. You can get to, like, four different states in 2 hours or less. We're doing our best to visit where we can and log as many experiences as possible, so a few weeks ago, we made up our minds and headed off to Maine for a few days. 

Welcome to Maine

Claire was very excited!

We decided to head to Portland, which is less than two hours from here, and we booked a place through Air BnB. We had a great time. It was very cold (7 degrees our first morning there...um, that's COLD), and we were limited in what we could do, based on Bearsy's time frame (naps and whatnot). I did quite a bit of research before we went, scouting restaurants and things to do. We didn't get to do everything (or even close to everything), but we had a fun time, anyway.

Seven degrees...that's cold, but the cold never bothered her anyway.

The bed and breakfast we stayed at was actually a full apartment, which was awesome. We took Claire's pack-n-play, and she had her own room. There was a kitchen, living room, and (rather cold) bathroom. We could sprawl all over---nice for the toys we took and the baby we took (she likes to scoot all over the floor). Claire goes to bed at 7:00, so we're pretty much done for the day by then. Knowing this, I packed a bunch of movies for Brad and me, and we took plenty of reading material...because that's how we roll.

The first night, we got dinner to go from a tiny little place called Hot Suppa. It was really excellent. A strange trend I noticed when perusing menus on Tripadvisor was that there are a shocking number of places that have quite a bit of Cajun food. I was not expecting that. That being said, we ordered an appetizer of boudin from Hot Suppa, and it was goooooood. It was gone in about 2 minutes. We also got chicken-n-waffle, Maine baked beans, tomato bisque, and macaroni and cheese. Most of it was gone that night...we saved just a little bit for the next day (a very little bit...).

We ate so. much. food.

Friday morning, we got up and out and drove around downtown Portland. It was a beautiful day, although quite frigid. We walked up and down several streets, popping into shops here and there. The first place we stopped was a very cute little candy shop, where the gal at the counter took great pains to talk us through all the different kinds of fudge AND let us sample 3 different kinds of fudge before we made our choice. Winner.

We had a yummy lunch at a pub called Gritty McDuff's (Claire was offered her very first kid's menu and crayons), under a deer head that was wearing a hat. We wanted to walk more after lunch, but it was encroaching on nap time, so we settled for a slow-ish walk back to the car (but not too slow...we were parked at a meter, after all. Welcome to New England, folks.). We ended up staying in for the rest of the night, eating leftovers and fudge for dinner. And watching Hairspray.

Bird-man.

Longfellow. He was a Mainer.

The Port.

Brad got something called a Lobster Melt, and he was totally smitten.

The next day, we were going to wander around some more, but we ended up sleeping, which was delightful. Instead of heading back into Portland, we headed out of Portland and made a stop at Fort Williams lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, which was a cool, we-feel-like-we're-in-New-England kind of experience. I mean...a lighthouse in Maine? That's pretty quintessential. We followed that with a super yummy lunch at the Local Buzz (coffee shop). We felt like such small town New Englanders. (And, the hot chocolate is made with Ghirardelli. YUM.). 

Fort Williams lighthouse.

We traded picture-taking services with some other Bostonians who were visiting. I love Claire's peering-over-the-Ergo-carrier look.

Apparently, Longfellow used to come here to think and write!

It was a really fun, low-key trip. And now, I can casually interject into conversation that I've spent a weekend in Maine and visited an awesome lighthouse. Pretty good for a gal who grew up in the South, right?

*I bought myself a t-shirt that says "Cool as a Moose." It's a great shirt. However, it's not as cute as Claire's shirt that says, "M is for Moose...and Maine."