Portland, Maine

When my sister Kathy invited me to join her on a short trip to Portland, Maine, to celebrate her October birthday, my first thought was, NO. Wouldn’t three days away undo the fragile, familial eco-system I work tirelessly and maybe even a little sanctimoniously to maintain?

The Basics
Drive Times
Boston, Mass: 2 Hours 
Hartford, CT: 3 Hours 
Stamford, CT: 4.5 Hours 
New York, NY: 6 Hours 
Population​: 67,000

Where We Stayed
​The Airbnb: Historic Brick Row House
Number of Bedrooms: 2 bedrooms. 1 with an awesome king bed, one with 2 twin beds. 
Number of bathrooms: 2 - one upstairs attached to the master, one downstairs. 
Good for families: Yes, but with some things to know. It's a wonderful apartment but there is a very intense windy staircase that would be impossible for my 2 year old. Also, the bathroom is unusual with this huge sunken in tub that you have to kneel down to use. Honestly, it's a great tub, I used and enjoyed it, but it could be a little challenging with kids or with anyone with mobility difficulties. However, I would go back and simply block the stairs and have the 2 year old sleep down stairs and my older child could sleep upstairs in the bedroom. I probably wouldn't bathe her lol. 
How was the host: Excellent. So easy to work with and helped us check-in but had he not, check-in would have been a breeze. 
Was it clean: It was spotless. 
Did it smell?: Not at all! 
Would you stay here again?: YES! I would love to stay here again. It was easy to Uber or walk to everything. A great property! 

Where We Ate and Drank
American Bayside Cafe: Crab Cakes and Smoked Salmon Bagel Platter.
​Rosemont Market: Red Dragon Cheese, Sopressata, Prosecco, Fox Family Chips.
Street & Co: Mussels, Pasta with Lobster.
Tandem Coffee and Bakery: The Loaded Biscuit.
The Honey Paw: Vietnamese Crepe, Pork and Crab Mee Goreng, Fry Bread, Honeycomb Soft Serve.
Vena's Fizz House: All of it.

Where We Shopped
K Colette: Home goods, beauty and bath, cook books, design, gifts (unfortunately, this store is closing in April, 2018).
Judith: Beautiful and unique contemporary women's clothing (not mentioned in the piece below but a beautiful shop).
Company C: Home goods, rugs, candles, and more. 

What We Did
Portland Schooner:  Beautiful sunset sail on an over 100 year old schooner.
Artist Visit and Tour: Amanda Hawkins, thriving landscape artist living in Portland. 

The Whole Story
When my sister Kathy invited me to join her on a short trip to Portland, Maine, to celebrate her October birthday, my first thought was, NO.  Wouldn’t three days away  undo the fragile, familial eco-system I work tirelessly and maybe even a little sanctimoniously to maintain?

The truth is, the time away will do just that - I’ll return to mountains of laundry, dirty dishes cascading from the sink, and no milk in the fridge. But there are other truths - including that it will take less than 5 hours to get things back on track and that I needed this trip and this time with my sister.  
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Kathy and I are the bookends of our family, the oldest and youngest in a brood of six with 17 years between us. She and my parents have their own history in Portland, having lived here for a short time when she was about 7, along with my brother and sister. During our trip she will periodically insist that a street corner is familiar, a gift shop was once her school, and other tricks of the mind. This nostalgic confusion is magnified by the fact it has been more than 5 years since we lost our parents (2 separate illnesses within two years), so fact checking isn’t an option. It is both surreal and easy to imagine my youthful parents with their first small children in Portland. It is a lively, vibrant city that would accommodate and support a young family nicely. I’m both mystified and moved by the time they had here.

Unlike my sister, who moved a lot with my parents, I grew up in one place just 25 miles south of New York City. Now that I’ve relocated north, I am in constant search a decent bagel, and our first stop, Bayside American Cafe, and their smoked salmon bagel platter did not disappoint. The salmon, smoked in house, is sweet and smokey and easily flaked for optimal salmon/caper/tomato/creamcheese/onion ratio, ensuring a perfect balance of flavors with every bite. We also ordered the crab cakes, a celebrity on the menu, and rightfully so. They are light, crisp, meaty, fresh and flavorful.  Inspired, my sister shared a story about eating Crab Cakes with our mom at the Cellar in Macy’s in New York. Having dined there myself countless times with my mother, I can picture it easily. It brings on the "happy/sad" that is a part of our lives now. 

We follow up breakfast with shopping at K Colette, a beautiful boutique featuring a collection of artisan soaps, home goods, candles, throws, cookbooks, dinnerware and much more.  I love of shopping in stores like K Colette, where each item included has been examined and evaluated for your sacred introduction, never taking your time, curiosity, or creativity for granted. Instead of the guilt and fatigue I usually suffer after shopping, I walked out feeling invigorated and excited by my purchases. ***Since pubslishing this post, I was very saddened to learn that K Colette will be closing it's store in April of 2018. 

Next we stroll over to  Rosemont Market to pick up provisions for a two hour sunset sailing trip we booked with Portland Schooner, a sea touring service I cannot recommend enough. At Rosemont, our butcher steers us towards the sopressata, her favorite, and a truly phenomenal Welsh cheddar cheese called Red Dragon. The cheese, made with brown ale and mustard seeds, has a smooth, creamy, slightly textured consistency. I don’t want to say it’s spicy - It’s more that it has the essence of heat, like sniffing a jar of mustard and then taking a bite of cheese. To round off our meal we throw in a bag of local Fox Family Chips and two mini bottles of prosecco. Fox Family Chips are easily the best bagged potato chip I’ve ever had - they are completely greaseless, lightly salted, and rich in potato flavor. I’ve since ordered a case from their website, that’s how good they are.

Now satiated, we head to what is possibly the best bar in Portland, Vena’s Fizz House. Vena’s is dedicated to the mixed drink, both of the alcoholic and non-alcoholic variety. The space is cozy, warm, and welcoming, with coppery hues and delicate strings of lights. There is a small, colorful shop stocked with bitters, tonics, copper straws, trays, and anything you might need to add that special touch to your next cocktail party or night cap. We tried 6 different cocktails here (don’t judge, we went twice), and all were delicious, hitting different notes of sweetness, bitterness, tanginess, and all with fizz. We relished in the setting, seated at the bar, serenaded by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Jackson Browne, drinking happily and enthusiastically, like good vacationers should.

After Vena’s we made our way to Street and Co., a Portland institution that has been welcoming diners for over 25 years. It’s bustling and packed, jolting us out of our Vena’s induced buzz. Street and Co. is serious dining, with the kitchen and their own pressures on full display. We start with an order of the mussels with garlic and wine, a simple dish that elevates a classic meal. Despite there being at least a half a cup of finely chopped garlic, there is not one bittered, browned edge to be seen. The sauce is soft, sweet, and smooth and just barely creamy. I don’t bother with bread dipping, opting instead for a good old fashioned spoon.

Next we have the grilled lobster with butter and garlic on linguine - another star dish. While cracking shells, we recall how our parents would terrify us by putting live lobsters on the kitchen floor. I am forced to ponder something - is it that lobsters are so delicious or I am such a monster that I can still eat them after these episodes? It’s the lobster, right? Full and in denial, we leave happy.

Our second day begins with a visit to Tandem Coffee and Bakery located on the West End of the city. Before it was cool to be suspicious of hipsters, one could easily appreciate that the owners of Tandem Coffee kept much of the original space, a gas station, in tact. We don’t question their motives or authenticity and just enjoy the end result - a bright, airy, and retro space. The  highlight of the meal is the Loaded Biscuit, a hearty buttermilk biscuit sandwich that oozes with a generous serving of european butter and strawberry jam. The biscuit, sturdy but still flaky, is topped with crunchy, distinctive sprinkles of sea salt that crackle with each bite.   

To round out our Portland experience, I did a search for #portlandmaine on instagram, looking for an emerging artist I could meet while in town. After scrolling through countless pictures of lobster rolls, I discovered Amanda Hawkins, a recent Montserrat College graduate who is working and living in Portland. Amanda’s work is abstract but influenced by nature. Her studio is spotless and arranged to support her process - works in progress, completed work, and meditative work each have their own space. I don’t recall seeing a drop of paint on the floor, and her art is equally disciplined, with lines so straight it’s shocking to learn she does it all free hand. Her paintings are beautiful, colorful, optimistic, and affordable - an ideal artistic representation of the city itself.

Our next meal is at The Honey Paw, a restaurant whose menu I have accidentally emailed my sister three separate times in preparation for the trip - that’s how excited I am. We both immediately comment on the music, recognizing none of it but enjoying all of it. We later discover it’s given the same care as the food, with the staff bringing in their vinyl favorites and taking turns as DJ.

We debate ordering the Vietnamese Crepe which is stuffed with fried mussels and other ingredients fairly foreign to us. Our server encourages us to go for it, and to this day, we thank her. With the crepe comes two small ramekins - a maple fish sauce for drizzling and some kind of special butter for spreading. All of it is superb. We cap the meal off with their Honeycomb Soft Serve dessert, a small swirl of ice cream topped with a hard chocolate shell and caramelized honeycomb bits. It’s delightful - simple, refreshing, crunchy and soft. We fight over it, freaking out the whole time.

The lunch is so good it’s a no-brainer to return for dinner. Seven hours later, we are greeted and remembered by the staff whom, I suspect, have fed others twice in one day before. We order the crepe again and now add the Fry Bread and Pork and Crab Mee Goreng. The Fry Bread, topped with chives, is served with Uni Butter, a rich butter flavored with sea urchin. I’ve been stung by a sea urchin before but I had never tasted one. This was a far better experience.

The Pork and Crab Mee Goreng is an elaborate dish of noodles, pork, crab, bok Choy, and a spicy and creamy paste, dolloped on the dish like a scoop of whipped cream. Upon mixing it all together you are left with a very hearty, complex, and wonderful dish that goes perfectly with a blustery Portland night. We leave The Honey Paw feeling like kings, especially as my sister has accidentally, again, ordered an Uber XL for just the two of us.

We begin our journey home the next morning, on Kathy’s actual birthday, with the obligatory stop at Two Lights State Park, a rocky shoreline lined with vibrant forests that deliver the Maine experience you expect. There are only a handful of visitors, and all of us are in awe of the glorious scenery. It’s a mild but crisp, cloudless, October day and as I stare at the glistening sea and crashing waves, I am moved and mystified to share it with a sister I’m so grateful was born.

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