Boston and Portland (Saturday, August 22nd, 2015)

We dropped our oldest daughter off at the airport this morning, so she could go see her husband for the weekend, and we will move our youngest daughter back up to school tomorrow.  It's always a bit of a struggle for us when our kids head back to school, and our house once again becomes very quiet, so we got on-line to see if we could find any cheap flights.  Not knowing where else to start, we started looking in Portland, Oregon.  We have never been to the northwest coast, so thought it might be fun.  Steve was able to find cheap flights, but rental cars were really high.  Finally, he called me over to look at this car rental he had found.  It was a great rate, but I quickly realized that it was in Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon!  So I suggested that maybe we wanted to go see the north east coast instead.  He laughed, and then said, "Why not!  Let's see what we can find for flights".  So he started looking at flights, and behold, there were cheap flights into Boston.  Score!

When we realized that we might be heading to the north east coast, we instantly thought of a couple of families that we know in that area, so we contacted both of them on very short notice to see if they might be available for dinner during the next week or so.  Both of them were available, and seemed excited that we were coming their way.  As we talked more with our friends, it became clear that we would need to head north out of Boston first, and up into Maine, so that we could see our friends in Maine first, then we could take our time getting back to the Boston area to see our other friends.

Our Maine friends, Tony and Sarah gave us a really nice list of things to stop and see on our way up toward them, so we started planning our route, and decided that we would spend our first night in Portland, Maine.  It is a good distance from Logan Airport, and will get us heading in the right direction, but as we started looking at hotels, we realized that even though everything else is cheap, hotels are not.  We decided to stay at the Holiday Inn by the Bay, since we usually get some perks at Holiday Inn because we stay with them so often, but it was going to be $400/night.  Yikes.  That's a lot for a Holiday Inn!  So Steve decided to log into his IHG account to see if he had any points that he could use to help out with the cost a little bit.  And to our surprise, we just reached our one year anniversary with them, and were being rewarded with a free night.  Could this be working out any better?  So we booked our hotel using our free night stay.  Let's hope that the rest of our trip goes this well!!!

We landed in Boston, Massachusetts at 4:50 ET, and found the bus for the rental car lots.  We had booked the car through the Budget Fast Break club (which is free to join), so we were able to skip the line at the budget counter and go straight out to the lot.  In the lot kiosk, there was no line at all, and we quickly got our car and headed out for Portland, Maine.  We were dying to see the ocean, so we took the long way to Portland, via highway 1A, which runs along the coast through the small towns of Hampton and Rye.  This was a more scenic route, but when we got into the town of Hampton, there was a seawall for quite a ways which blocked our view, but soon it was gone, and we enjoyed the view of the ocean as we drove along. 

The beautiful beach in Hampton, New Hampshire

 As we drove down the highway, we periodically saw signs that read "Watch for moose on roadway".  We got a kick out of this, but you see these types of signs everywhere, it's just the animals that change.  In Colorado, it's elk, in Arizona is burros, and in Maine is moose!   When we finally reached Portland, Steve was the first to get out of the car, and as he opened his door the smell of fish hit us like a freight train.  Wow, we're definitely not used to that.

It was dark when we got to our hotel, and apparently, we were the last ones to check in because the only room they had left for us was a smoking room.  In Colorado they don't even have smoking rooms as an option, so we really didn't expect this.  She asked us to go up and check the room out, and we had to admit that it was really bad.
We aren't used to cigarette smoke at all, so we asked them if there was anything they could do to freshen up the room, so they gave us two drink coupons to use while we waited for it to be freshened up.   We each enjoyed a complimentary drink and then they called us to go check it out again.  It was much better so we took it. The room had a great view, and was a great room except for the smoking issue.  

Around 9:00 we  took the hotel shuttle to J's Oyster for dinner.  It came highly rated on Trip Advisor and by the hotel staff, so we gave it a try.  It was an interesting place.  It was a small seafood shack right on the bay with both indoor and outdoor seating.  

J's Oyster with outdoor seating to the right and the restaurant to the left

 We chose to sit inside since it was cooling off for the night, and as we entered, it was a definite bar atmosphere. 

Some of the food was very good, and some was very average, which we found very interesting.  All of the entrees came with bread and a salad.  The bread consisted of a basket of soft white rolls and the salads had been pre-plated and stacked, with a prepackaged envelope of dressing on the side. Water was served in little plastic cups, and yet our beers were served in beer glasses from each of the respective brewery's, and the entrees were fantastic. Steve had boulibaise I had seafood casserole. Both were very good, with nice quantities.  Mine wasn't very healthy, as it was in a butter and white wine sauce, but Steve's was very healthy in a light tomato and wine sauce.  

We had a few leftovers, which we were excited to finish at another time. We chose to walk home, instead of taking the shuttle back, and on the way walked by a love lock fence.

We also stopped at an outdoor venue with a live band. It was very fun and the band was great. We got back to the room very late and enjoyed a great night's sleep!