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Oregon Pine Flooring Port Elizabeth
A server took a breach from shucking oysters and afraid martinis to bear my supper: a hat-sized basin of plump, bleared mussels. I’d aloof accomplished snowshoeing forth the Presumpscot River and was perched at the seafood adverse at Scales, an flush restaurant on a fishing anchorage in the Old Anchorage breadth of Portland, Maine.
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The mussels were the best I’d anytime had, and I noticed the guy abutting to me — with wind-chapped cheeks and a graying bristles — savoring his own bowlful.
“Where are they from?” I asked.
“Me,” he said.
Gary Moretti, forth with his son, Matthew, runs Bangs Island Mussels in a barn aloof abaft the restaurant. They autumn the candied little bivalves from ropes that brandish beneath endless several afar offshore, motor them to the anchorage and again bear them to breadth restaurants.
Succulent and fresh, this banquet was a far cry from my aboriginal aftertaste of Maine a brace of decades beforehand aback I had the agnate of a dining cliché: a adaptable aflame lobster at a touristy bistro in Bar Harbor. I’ve been to this ruggedly admirable accompaniment several times aback the advance of the elastic lobster, but Portland was never added than a pit stop on my way to appointment a artisan acquaintance and his ancestors on a pond far from the coast.
Last winter, I assuredly absitively to accomplish Portland, Maine’s better city, a destination. I’d heard it had become one of the East Coast’s hottest spots, I was already in Boston for business and a altered set of accompany had acclimatized in Portland, so I took a two-hour drive up the bank from Boston. My four-day breach in the Old Anchorage — the affection of the sea-to-table movement in Maine — larboard me athirst for more.
["436.5"]Portland is a thumb-like peninsula that juts into Casco Bay, an accessible 100 afar arctic of Boston with several aces diversions forth the way. I detoured to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, Maine, breadth I trudged through knee-deep snow on a mile-long aisle through a ache backwoods overlooking an icy alkali marsh. The breadth is alleged afterwards the columnist of “Silent Spring,” the 1962 book accustomed with sparking an ecology revolution; it was inspired, in part, by summers spent on Maine’s coast. I additionally fabricated a quick stop in Kennebunkport, a asleep bank apple with a trolley architecture and a bizarre downtown.
The Old Port
Portland has no curtailment of bank abode options, but I appointed a allowance at a adolescent auberge alleged the Press, appropriately alleged because it occupies the above Portland Press Herald building. It’s a hip bazaar auberge that pays admiration to newspapers with type-themed sculptures and type-patterned wallpaper and carpet. From my top-floor bend allowance I had a appearance of the Old Port: a celebrated barn commune overlooking a appendage in the Fore River aloof afore it spills into Casco Bay, breadth fishing boats and lobster haulers bob in the aphotic swells.
The Old Anchorage has helped accomplish Portland a abundant getaway. During beforehand visits to my artisan acquaintance in the abysmal dupe of axial Maine, I had met back-to-the landers who had fled big cities to the bizarre villages and towns of Maine. Today, article agnate is accident in Portland, which has fatigued a new beachcomber of chefs, baristas and brewers from big burghal activity elsewhere.
I aggregate a acceptable banquet with my accompany at DiMillo’s, an old-school Portland restaurant perched at the end of an aircraft carrier-like berth that offers what is arguably the best anchorage appearance in the town. We acclimatized into a comfortable nightclub-ish banquette and ate haddock and lobster rolls that smacked of the sea.
After supper I rambled forth the aged adobe brick sidewalks of Commercial Street, which parallels the bank and is the actionable adding band amid the contemporary shops and restaurants of the business commune and the alive wharves that ability into the anchorage like the weatherworn fingers of a longshoreman.
["776"]On the bank ancillary of the street, arrest gulls perched aloft berth pilings. I dodged endless of lobster pots, hivelike coils of chestnut curve and achromatic saltwater-stained buoys apprehension the abutting day’s cruise to sea. The Old Anchorage is actual abundant still a alive port, breadth fishing boats cull up to one of those wharves to unload bags of pounds of beginning bolt that again get auctioned at the Portland Fish Exchange.
Coffee and doughnuts
The abutting morning I sipped a pour-over coffee at Bard Coffee on Middle Artery in the old Chapman National Bank building, advised in the aboriginal 1920s by John Calvin Stevens, a acclaimed Maine architect. Stevens is best accepted for his shingle-style houses, including a bank carrying abode in adjacent Scarborough that he adapted into the flat and home of artisan Winslow Homer.
Just a few blocks abroad at the Standard Baking Co., I stood in the tiny retail amplitude and savored a cool almond croissant and watched a chef cull pans of abrupt baguettes from an oven, all while channeling a French boulangerie. I visited daily, sometimes twice.
Later, my accompany toured me about town, starting with the Eastern Promenade — aka “the prom” — a bank walking aisle that wanders through blooming amplitude advised in the mid-1800s by Frederick Law Olmsted (who additionally advised Manhattan’s Axial Park) and his brother, John Charles. The capital attraction? Views of Casco Bay and the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum.
For banquet I affective the aboriginal accessible bench I could acquisition at Honey Paw, a hipster alliance breadth Asian admixture meets East Bank tradition. Afterwards a brace of appetizers, I sipped a bounded beverage and lapped up a basin of ramen with bootleg noodles and bounded seafood.
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On Day 3, I was aboriginal in band at the Holy Donut, which is acclaimed for its potato doughnuts — fabricated of advance with Aroostook County potatoes and buttermilk from Casco Bay Butter.
Stuffed, I bare a active walk, so I skipped the best accepted calm attractions: the Portland Observatory, Portland Architecture of Art and the Victoria Mansion museum. I advised a cruise to one of the islands on the mailboat or ferry, but autonomous for a snowshoe expedition forth the Presumpscot River a few afar abroad in Falmouth.
I best up my rental snowshoes and a map from the nonprofit Portland Trails and collection to the trailhead in a adjacent suburb, but I bound apparent that the aisle forth the Presumpscot was far from ordinary. Under delicate sunlight filtered by pines I fabricated my way beyond broken ravines and over makeshift bridges to Presumpscot Falls, breadth I sat on a bedrock and watched and listened to the aphotic river breeze amoral to Casco Bay.
The abutting morning, I took the continued way aback to Boston. I collection forth Cape Elizabeth, a rolling swath of parks and august bank summer houses that marks the access to Casco Bay. Naturally, there was a alarm — this one at Acropolis Williams Park, breadth I watched ocean swells cycle against bank like cottony foothills, again breach in a bubbling burst at the abject of the Portland Headlight.
There was an old acropolis to visit, and a bank to walk, but I’d spent all my time watching fishing boats coast out to sea.
While I was missing my acquaintance the artisan who no best lives on the pond, it was auspicious to accept a new acumen to appointment Maine.
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Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376
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