Wicked Fun in Old Portland

Today I had the pleasure of traveling with Mark again. We started the morning off with Jamba Juice smoothies in Terminal 5 at JFK. The ticket agents were kind enough to give us #AYCJ luggage tags. Our flight was on time, and lasted 50 minutes. Before I could finish my blog entry about New Orleans, I was already in Portland, ME.

After a quick stop at Hertz, we headed to the LL Bean flagship store in Freeport where we spent over an hour trying on fleecey and cloggy things. I purchased a new travel backpack to replace my heavily worn and ripped open Hawaii Walmart pack, and we headed to Old Portland to walk around and get lunch.

We stopped at Meredith Alex Designs to look at her amazing gallery of intricately designed theme dresses (and to ask directions). Meredith was kind enough to give us a map and point out the most important sections: breweries and lobster houses. We headed to the Portland Lobster Company on the water for some beautiful sunshine, lobster rolls and Shipyard Pumpkin Ale. Mitch Alden, local guitarist and songwriter (Now is Now) serenaded us with some awesome covers and originals.

After lunch we took a ferry over to Peaks Island and back to get a view of Portland Harbor and the beautiful houses dotting the coasts of the small islands. Back in Old Portland, we walked through cobble stone streets and had brews at Gritty's Brewpub, the oldest microbrewery in Portland.

We dropped off the car back at the airport and were treated to #aycj pins by Cynthia and the staff at the Portland airport! The flight home was quick. One of the flight attendants was a retired firefighter from the Bronx, and he and Mark talked shop. The guy in the isle across from us started hurling into a tall, white kitchen trash bag. I hope he was just air sick and didn't have Swine Flu. We were back at hone to watch the Giants pull out a win in the 2nd half.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]