AN ARTFUL DAY

Today our plan was to go to the Boston Fine Arts Museum and then to the Trinity Church, Old South Church and Boston Public Library.  

We took the Blue Line, a sleek, new subway that runs from the airport to the middle of historic Boston, and transferred to the older, funkier green line

to get to the museum.  We made it to the BFA and we stayed there so long that by the time we got to Trinity, it was closed for the day. The BFA has a small, but interesting collection of musical instruments.  

This is probably why I just happened to meet my friend,  Arthur Haas from New York, in the gift shop.  He had been there and played the harpsichord today, and I missed it!  

Anyway, they have a really good collection of Impressionists,

a small collection of art glass,

some Tiffany and La Farge,

a lot of European pieces, and this interesting piece squeezed in one of the rooms.  

This is the room. 

I mostly wanted to go to Trinity to see the Lafarge windows, but we did see some of his work at the museum anyway. We went into the old South church, which is a beautiful building, there may be more interesting on the outside and the inside. And finally we went to Boston library, which is a real treasure. It has murals by John Singer Sargent, who I didn't even know did murals, and whose work I would never recognize by looking at the style. Then they have another set of murals by Edwin Abbe which tell the tale of Sir Galahad. 

I have been eating everything in sight on this trip and I noticed that I am getting tired, but I think it's just all the extra week I'm carrying around with me. Today I had a nice salad at the museum then we went to an interesting place for dinner which is kind of like Jack's urban eats . It was called Dig It. 

TO BOSTON WITH A WET STOP AT NEWBURYPORT

I just noticed that my last blog failed to upload.  And I know how much you've all been waiting for it😄. 

Yesterday we drove from Portland to Boston.  It poured down rain all day.  We wanted to stop in Newburyport, which is the oldest harbor in Massachussets. In the pouring rain, we stopped at the visitor center, which was a chamber of commerce, and hence very different from the wonderful Maine tourist centers.  The woman at the counter cheerfully told us that even though it was raining, everything was open -- well, except for the museums, though that was more because it was Monday than because it was pouring down rain.  So we dutifully trudged from shop to shop, trying to stay a little bit dry.  Stopped at a coffee shop, looked at stuff hawked to tourists, and got soaked anyway.  

Did I mention it was raining?  I think they got a year's worth of Sacramento rain here yesterday.  We had a really good pizza, another variation on figs, prociutto and arugula with my favorite crispy crust.  Finally arrived at our airport hotel around 7 pm.  When we got up to our room and I took off my shoes, my feet were so wet they looked like I'd need swimming for several hours.  

Today we're going to turn in the car and then we're off to see the tourist sites of Boston.  John has done all the planning for this. All I have to do is go along for the ride.

Boston.

We returned the car this morning with only one false move at the roundabout, then took the blue line from the airport to downtown, stopping along the way to buy a Charlie card. I love that name, from the old folk song Get Charlie off the MTA.  It's still cold today, but not raining.  

We spent the day following the Freedom Trail, which hits all the high points of Boston's history. --Boston common, old state house, various burial grounds, including traditional patriots such as Paul Revere, Ben Franklin's parents, and more quirky ones like Mary "mother" Goose.

We went to a concert at Kings Chapel , had lunch at Union Oyster House,

longest continuously running restaurant in America and actually good, though overpriced, food. John had a cannola at Mike's Pastry in North end,

which is the Italian neighborhood.  I met a hurdy gurdy player in the park

and we talked shop for awhile.  He's a very interesting guy, check him out on Facebook, Donald Heller. We friended each other on FB because he's going to send me some hurdy gurdy information.  After that encounter, we headed to the old North Church, (the one if by land, two if by sea" church, then we walked across the bridge over the Charles river and saw the park where he started his famous ride, then walked down and saw the USS Constitution,

known as Old Ironsides, which was just returned to Boston two days ago after being worked on for a few years.  Not open to the public to board, though.

While John was pigging out on cannoli about 20 minutes after we finished lunch, I had walked around a little and decided I wanted to have dinner in this Italian neighborhood.

 Of course, being stuffed with cannoli, he wasn't very interested in dinner, but I persuaded him to try this cute little restaurant on a side street.  It had great food, but only two waiters, one of them practically as old as I am, taking care of twelve tables that I could see, and I think a few more in the back.  The old one probably owned the place.  After dinner we walked back to the subway, went to the airport station, took a shuttle to the terminals, and then called our hotel shuttle to come pick us up.  I will have to look more closely tomorrow, but it seems to me that the subway stops are very difficult to find from the street.  We couldn't even find the one we had ridden to town, and we knew exactly what corner it was on.  

It's only about 10 pm, and I can hardly keep my eyes open.  And because I spent all day with John, even though we walked 8 miles, I never worked hard enough to get any credit for exercising.  

OUTLETS AND INLETS

This morning we went to Freeport Maine, which is the home of L.L. Bean. So when we looked at the tourist map it look like it was a cute little town with a lot of interesting little things in it but when we got there it turned out that it's just a big outlet mall. It's tricked out to look like a town with streets and individual shops, but basically it's just a bunch of outlets.

The L.L. Bean stores were really quite fantastic.  They have five or six buildings that comprise their campus. I think the whole thing is about as big as my high school was. I got a pair of shoes and John got a shirt. We aren't really L.L.Bean types, for me because they don't really fit very well and for John because he wouldn't buy new clothes unless his are falling off in shreds. 

Anyway when we got to Freeport, we stopped at this bakery that we had heard a lot about which was called When Pigs Fly. But we had gotten up so early, unintentionally, that they weren't even open yet. So we went and had breakfast. And breakfast was at Linda Bean's Tavern.

John had blueberry pancakes that practically floated off the plate, and I had a brown bread egg sandwich with venison sausage that was absolutely delicious. I don't know what the brown bread was, it was kind of sweet and when I asked later at the bakery they said they thought it was like what you get for canned bread.  I have never bought canned bread, so I have no clue what that is. But if it is, it's delicious. We did make it back to the bakery.  Bought a loaf of cranberry blueberry lemonade bread.  And a Heath bar chocolate chip cookie that remains to be eaten.

 After we left the L.L. Bean store we decided we were going to go to Boothbay Harbor. But after we drove as far as Bath, and realized it was still another 36 miles we decided not to go there. As luck would have it we found a Maine  tourist office. Now the state of Maine runs these tourist offices, which are really, really good, because the people in them are very friendly and very well informed.  The woman running this one told us about two other places we could go to, because we wanted to go to a beach, which were closer and more beachy than Boothbay.  (we had been looking to go to Boothbay because they had a cool horticultural garden there. ). So we went instead to Popham State Park beach, which was really a nice beach.

A lot of beaches in Maine  don't have any sand, but this one did. And it had a rocky point at the end of it that you could climb up on granite rocks. And when you got up there it was like you were on the top of the world, even though it was probably no more than 20 feet above the beach. But that's a big hill in Maine.

We stayed at the beach for about 2 1/2 hours, including the hill climb. It was really a wonderful day. On our way back we stopped at a clam place and had clam chowder and a strawberry, spinach and goat cheese salad. I had a blueberry ale which was surprisingly good. John had a beer called smiling bastard, or maybe it was smiling Irish bastard. Not as good as my blueberry ale.

We also managed to make it at 5:55 to the whoopie pie store and get a couple of whoopie pies for tonight's dessert.

We will need them to make us happy while we're having to consolidate all our junk because tomorrow we turn in the rental car. 

Right now the plan is that if we leave early enough in the morning and it isn't raining, which is actually somewhat of a big if, we are going to go to Newburyport, which I think is in Massachusetts, but it might be in New Hampshire. Then we will turn the car in in Boston, and spend three days there before we come home. I am very sad to leave Maine. I would probably stay here for the rest of our trip except we changed the car reservations and made hotel reservations in Boston, and it sounds like too much trouble to change all that to stay here another three days. And I know I will like Boston once I get there.

When we got back to the hotel I went for my "power walk"  which my Apple Watch requires I do before I am allowed to go to bed at night, and when I came back to the hotel I met Janice and Mike from our trip and we exchanged ideas about what else we might do while here.  We may at some future time do a Road Scholar with them to Mount Rushmore and the Dakotas.  

KENNEBUNKPORT

Today was a beach day. The plan was to get up early and go to Kennebunkport. So the first thing we did was get up late. And I had spotted a bagel shop that I thought would be nice to go to for breakfast. Except I had failed to notice that it wasn't open on Saturday and Sunday. What kind of a bagel place isn't open on Saturday and Sunday?   So we decided to go on to Kennebunkport and we stopped on the way and got a breakfast sandwich at McDonald's. I noticed at the drive through that you could get a lobster roll at McD's for $9.  I wonder where e lobster comes from?  The usual price for a lobster roll seems to be from about $12 to as high as $24, but usually around $12. 

Kennebunkport is about 25 or 30 miles from Portland. It's an easy trip even if we had gone on highway 1, and made even easier because we went on the highway which is a toll road and cost a whole dollar. Of course when we got there, there was no on-street parking, not even if I used my handicap placard, which of course I brought with me. So we had to pay three dollars an hour to park, which is actually a bargain in these beach towns.

We did a little retail exploration, and then we took the scenic drive out to have lunch with the Bushes. We bought our lunch at a very cute deli in town, which also included a Whoopie pie.

Apparently these are a big Maine specialty.  We also visited this really neat little Episcopal church which is also out on Cape Walker (where the Bush compound is) and is entirely built from local stone and river rock. It looks very Arts and Crafts, bungalow look.  

And then we finally made it to the beach. Beaches in Maine are very different from beaches in California. On this particular beach it was about 60 or 70 feet to the water. But all the sand except the last 5 feet was so wet you couldn't put a blanket down. Everybody brings chairs to sit on at the beach.

 If you ever look at some of the romantic beach paintings by the Impressionists, it's because they are at beaches like this.  These reflections are very cool.  The water seemed relatively warm, warmer than California actually, but in fact the Atlantic in this part of the world is only about 55 to 60°. So this particular beach is apparently somewhat of an anomaly.

We were going to have dinner in Kennebunkport, but we decided to come back to Portland and go to this cute little restaurant down the street from our hotel called Bao Bao. It's a dumpling restaurant where most of the menu is Chinese dumplings.

And they are really good. We had scallion and pork dumplings, chicken curry dumplings that came with a coconut sauce, and a salad.  

John has not felt felt well for almost this entire trip, and he didn't feel well most of today either. So we have really cut down on the number of things we might be doing. Like, for instance, we were going to go out and get ice cream tonight, but he's too tired to go and his stomach is upset again.  The ice cream place is about a half hour walk,at least at the speed he's going, and it's uphill all the way back.  Frankly I think I can do without the ice cream anyway.  I feel like a turkey being fattened up for thanksgiving dinner.   I may not bring any of my clothes home, because I can't get into any of them anymore.

RETURN TO PORTLAND

This morning there was a beautiful sunrise at frigging 5:15, and I actually made John wake up and look at it. 

Today was a travel day and we had a four-hour bus ride back to Portland from Bar Harbor. It was pleasant enough but John's been sick all morning so he wasn't having a very good time. When we got here we collected the car and went to lunch at a pub, the Little Tap House, which we thought would have pub food, but was actually very farm to fork. John had a really good BLT, and I had a smoked salmon sandwich and zucchini tomato soup with fried Parmesan cheese.

A

Then we visited the Portland Art Museum. This is a smallish museum with a pretty nice collection. 

John came back to the hotel to rest and I went walking on Congress Street, which is a block away from our hotel. It's a pretty interesting hipster kind of street. It has a really interesting vintage shop where nothing in it is newer than the 60s. And it has a huge collection of mink coats. There are at least three shops which cater to the vinyl record crowd. 

There is also a big sort of antique mall called Portland Flea which was kind of interesting, and a place called Reny's which is a chain and has kind of an odd mishmash of things that I suspect is sort of like Marshall's carries, but more woodsy or something. Kind of hard to describe.

While I was wondering around I decided to check out a place where I wanted to have dinner, because I wasn't very hungry and it's a tapas place. It's called Local 188, and the tapas were really good. 

We also had some time to listen to a Brazilian style group called Choro Brasília, 

Part of a Summer park event sponsored by the city. Tonight we are in our hotel room trying to figure out where were going to go tomorrow, and planning on that being in Kennebunkport. I hate it when I have to do this blog on my phone, because it crashes every time I make an edit.  And I am so tired, I am making millions of mistakes, because I keep falling asleep.  The Internet in our room is mostly not on.  And for some reason, the iPad doesn't even want to accept the phone as a hot spot.  Tomorrow, I'm doing this in the lobby   

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

This part of Maine was settled by English then French then English then French people who kept wiping each other out.  It was a very unsafe place to live in the 1700s. In around the 1800s sometime artists started coming to Maine. They called themselves the rusticators, because they came up to Maine when there were no hotels are other lodgings and stayed with families and painted. Because Maine is really beautiful, people started coming up because they had seen these paintings. And rich people started coming up and building cottages, like the cottages at Newport Rhode Island. 

We started our day at Acadia National Park. This is the only national park made up completely by private donations of land, a lot from the Rockefeller family. So there are still private enclaves within the park. I bought my golden age park pass because they are now $10, and starting next month they will be $80. We took a little trip to the top of Cadillac mountain, at 1500 feet, the highest mountain on the eastern coast from Venezuela to Maine.   Beautiful views of the ocean and islands. And lots of granite to walk around on. 

We then went to thunder rock, a place where the ocean comes into a hole and when the tide is right, it makes a sound like thunder. The tide wasn't quite right, but it still made an interesting sound. 

We had lunch at Jordan Pond,  famous for popovers. The popovers are served  with the meal as bread. I had a buffalo burger, which was pretty good. Took a nice walk around the pond after lunch. 

Then it was on Sieur de monts springs. Native Americans considered these healing waters.   The Abbe museum, which is a prehistoric Indian museum here, is marginally interesting. The most interesting part is outside, where they have a wigwam built of birchbark. I've never understood how it was done, but it looks mostly like they use the bark of whole trees but put them sideways and overlay them like shingles. 

When we got back to the hotel we had about an hour before we left on a 1-1/2 hour nature cruise around some of the islands in Acadia park and the coastline near Bar Harbor. We saw some more seals, and a couple of bald eagles. When you leave the harbor area, or whatever the bay enclosure is here, and are out on the Atlantic, the temperature drops from what the land is, which was about 85 degrees today, to about 60. 

Tonight is our last night with the group, there was another lobster dinner, and we return to Portland tomorrow where we will be on our own. I want to go to Kennebunkport, which is supposed to be a nice town and beach, because tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful day, and then it might rain again. Never pass up a good day to go to the beach. I haven't even stuck my feet in the water yet!!!

SCHOONERS AND A BRIDGE TOWER

We took a sail on this boat, the Heron,

this morning. It was lots of fun, started out in deep fog and got sunny by the end. Never really enough wind to use sails and no motor, though.  We saw some seals sunning themselves on an island.

We also saw an unusual lighthouse, unusual by the fact that the house was closer to the water than the light tower. It turns out that's because they needed the lighthouse so desperately, that they built the house first so that someone could live there, and their job every night was to go up on the roof of their house and put a lantern up there. That went on for five years before they had enough funding to build the lighthouse. We had a lovely lunch of lobster rolls on board. 

After the sail, we headed for Bar Harbor. (Bah Hahbah. On the way, we stopped and went up the observation tower of the Waldo Hancock bridge,

the tallest observation tower on a bridge in the US. 

We had dinner tonight in Bar Harbor.   Wandered through the town and came back to my our hotel on the free shuttle bus, which is donated free by L.L.Bean (part of a fleet)