New England Vacation 1: Portland, ME

It's time for the last installment of my vacation posts (until my next vacay in January!). We spent our last night in Portland, ME. We'd heard that Portland was a cute town w/ lots of great food. Apparently, it has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any town in the US! People must eat out ALL THE TIME. There were no shortage of great places to eat and drink but sadly, we only had 1 night, so had to choose wisely! Based on on-line reviews and lists of best restaurants in the US, we chose Street & Company.

Street & Company was on a cute little cobblestone street just a couple blocks from our hotel. (Thank god it was so close because I wore high heels. High heels and cobblestones DO NOT MIX! How did the ladies do it in the olden days?)

We started in the lounge w/ an excellent bottle of French wine recommended by the sommelier. I'm an avid wine drinker but have really focused on North America, South America, New Zealand, Australia and S Africa for my wines. Not sure why I ignored much of Europe. Actually, I know why- I feel like a d*****bag mispronouncing wine names when I order them and I don't speak French, German or Spanish.

Nonetheless, I need to learn more about French wines. We had a wine from Burgundy. For some reason, I thought Burgundy was a region and a type of red wine. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Burgundy is indeed a region, but they produce mostly 2 types of wine- Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. We had a Chardonnay, it was yummy!

Here's Adam enjoying his Chardonnay (right). You can get a feel for the restaurant in the background. It was "elegant rustic". The open kitchen smelled great and was fun to watch.

The food was excellent. For an appetizer we had eel unlike any either of us had ever had before. The texture was like canadian bacon and it even tasted a bit like bacon. Amazing.

I had lobster for my main course. When I choose the entree, I didn't realize it was the "bust open the shell and get the meat out yourself" kind. I think I have some sort of mild ordering anxiety disorder because when the waitress told me that it was the get-the-meat-out-yourself kind of dish, I got frazzled and said that's okay when clearly IT WASN'T because I was wearing white silk! My husband was kind enough to do the dirty work for me:) Delish!











We stayed at the Portland Harbor Hotel in downtown Portland, just steps from all the action;) The hotel was super nice- I wish we had more time there because their spa services looked really nice;) The bathroom was very pretty (I'm a sucker for nice hotel bathrooms) and had a separate shower and whirlpool tub. Here I am on the entry staircase:














When we got back to our room after dinner, we had little surprises on our beds. Turn down service! This service must be for the laziest of the lazy. Apparently some wealthy folks think the effort of folding back your own blanket to hop into bed is too much work so a paid hotel employee comes to do it for them! It was kind of cute though. The little chocolate lobster was a nice touch, though according to Adam it wasn't very tasty. I was so full of butter that the thought of one more bite sounded disgusting. In fact, I felt the need to bounce around the room a little bit, trying to work off some of the butter or "push that butter through" which Adam found super amusing. Yeah, I'm super classy- I ruined my turn down service by jumping on the bed like a 5 year old. But I had fun doing it, so it's all good:)

Our last night was a relaxing end to a delightful trip. And now, I'm off to plan our next vacation: Maui in January. Any hotel, restaurant and activity recs are appreciated!