Day 22 - Boston, MASSACHUSETTS to Portland, MAINE

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Well it was time to save and publish another few days of blogs so if you have not been following on your own you might want to resume from Day 18 posted a few days ago.



Alarm went off at 7.45am and I headed straight to the window and I saw clouds with what appeared to be a resemblance of blue sky as well. Yippee. We did most of the packing last night and we had minimal breakfast supplies in the room to save some time (the delicious OJ we had bought at Newport with a Yoghurt I grabbed from breakfast yesterday).



I was a bit freaked out last night when I was unable to upload any photos to my blog as without images it’s just a ramble. But I tried again this morning and all is good again.



As we are not scheduled to arrive in Portland until late this afternoon we’d planned on doing a Portland city tour for tomorrow morning but both operators I had been monitoring only had 1 seat left so we decided to book a trolley tour for today in the seaside village called Kennebunkport which is on our way to Portland in lieu. We have seen this town on YouTube live webcams we have been watching for the last 3 years whilst planning this trip.



We set off by 9am and the plan was to get to the northern side of Boston without tolls and avoid the renowned city congestion and we got lucky with an easy passage across the city and soon after we decided to track down a diner for late breakfast / brunch. We had our usual google maps route set up on the car entertainment display using Apple Car Play so we tried to find a restaurant by simply adding a stop on the route and google offered 5 suggestions. We ignore the first one and the second option came up with “Nick and Andy’s Breakfast & Lunch”. Who could not refuse a name like that so we added the stop and google instructed us to take the next exit.



What we did not realise however was that google maps then made us go straight back on the i95 southbound (essentially a U-Turn) and drive for 7 km to a town called Danvers (we had not considered the diner might be actually behind us on the route !) Not a problem as it was nice diner. Kerry had 2 slices of texas french toast with extra blueberries and I had 2 eggs (over easy this time) and combined with bacon hash, it was delicious. There was a waitress here called Donna and Kerry was adamant that she sounded just like Buddy’s sister on the TV show Cake Boss.



We’d left the diner around 10.30am and within 30 minutes we had crossed the border into the state of New Hampshire and ticked off our 48th state visited and state # 8 on this trip (only 2 more to go !). I had stopped for gas a town called Seabrook and the gas pump wanted my 5 digit zip code which I don’t have (our post codes are only 4 digits in the land of oz) so the attendant just helped me out by allowing the pump to be activated and for the first time it let me fill up the tank and with the price being $3.29 per gallon it was around the cheapest we have seen. Every time I have used my Qantas Travel Money card at the bowser it seems to turn off automatically after around 4 gallons (around US $15-).



The drive today has been pretty amazing with lots of vibrant fall colours of yellow and orange and the peak foliage is yet to come. We would soon cross the state border into Maine at a place called Kittery. Where we stopped at the welcome centre for a quick break. This is our 49th state visited and state # 9 on this trip (only 1 more to go now being Vermont !). We then drove along highway 1 the coast road and passed through quite a few seaside towns which had lots of hotels so this must be a popular spot in the summer time and saw a quaint town called Ogunquit and we arrived in Kennebunkport around 15 minutes before our 1.00pm trolly tour was due to depart. It was a bit of challenge to find car parking here as there were tourists everywhere but we managed to get on board just in time.



We did a one hour highlights tour which was really interesting and saw the Bush family estate which has been the summer home of the Bush presidential empire here and where George H W Bush hosted Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev and George W Bush hosted Vladimir Putin (I bet he regrets that now !) and Nicolas Sarkozy the former French President.



After the tour we strolled around the Dock Square village next to the Kennebunk River and shopped for souvenirs as this is a very tourist town with lots of tourist buses / coaches coming and going. We stopped for a coffee and had a blueberry crumble cake (sold as coffee cake ?) at the Coffee House. I found a licence plate for $17- in one of the shops but it was not the best version so I took a risk and let the opportunity yo secure a Maine licence plate go here hoping to find a better one in Portland tomorrow.



The weather was much better today, fine and sunny around 22 degrees and hopefully the cold has gone for good. We probably stayed in Kennebunkport for 2 hours all up and it was a lovely town albeit geared to tourists (that is what we are !)



It was a further 45 minute drive to our hotel called Tru by Hilton which is about 15 minutes from downtown Portland and not far from the airport and we chose this as it’s a newer hotel and it was way too expensive to stay in downtown for my liking. It also had a shopping precinct nearby called Maine Mall and a Cracker Barrell restaurant right next door.



Once we arrived in South Portland around 5pm we checked in and then we drove across the road to Dicks Sporting Goods to try and get some more cheap DSG socks but they had none there (bugger !), so we went to Macy’s and searched the Last Act section for sale items and I bought an authentic Adidas T-shirt for $4.93 plus tax. What a bargain !



We have been to many Cracker Barrel’s over the years due to their relaxed country themes and it was a short 2 minute walk from our hotel and it only took two songs before we heard a Keith Urban song being piped through the building. We did the obligatory walk around the gift shop which had some nice Christmas stock and then went to the host to be told it was an hour wait !



So we sat out the front porch on the rocking chairs for a while. Eventually we hear “Andrew, party of 2” and we’re in after a 40 minute wait. The place is only about one third full so clearly they have staffing issues to not be using the whole restaurant.



I don’t recall them serving alcohol before but Kerry ordered a Sangria and I ordered my first Budweiser on this trip. For meals Kerry ordered Southern Fried Chicken with biscuits, white gravy and 2 sides (mashed potato and coleslaw). I ordered the Sirloin with biscuits and 3 sides being dumplings, green beans and steamed broccoli as we’ve had very few vegetables so I’m trying to be good occasionally.



It took a long time for the meals and drinks to be served and despite asking for my steak to be cooked medium / well it came out looking quite different and had blood oozing out when I cut into it so I told the waiter and he offered to replace it which just added to the delays and when he gave me a smaller piece of steak about 10 minutes later as a replacement he just gave me the steak which was not overcooked and tough and hence my vegetables were now cold (you’d think they would replace the whole meal ?). I’ve not made too many bad choices with meals but this was a big disappointment. Kerry took home one of the pieces of chicken in a bag to go and I enjoyed that back in the room so all was not lost.



Apart from leaf peeping and ticking off our objective of visiting all 50 states there is one other goal here in New England and that is too spot a Moose which has eluded us so far and today we spotted some evidence of what looked like Moose poo on the highway so fingers are crossed!

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