Three Days in Portland

Wednesday

I was even more excited about this trip than I usually am before vacation. For one thing, I’d waited for it for so long. We’d planned to visit Portland 11 years ago to see the lighthouses, but we’d had to cancel. This year I decided it was time to reschedule! I hadn’t added any lighthouses to my list in a while. The other reason I was excited was because Maine was so different from our usual Caribbean vacation destinations. I was ready to see new scenery, eat new food, and enjoy some cooler weather. But as our plane landed at Portland International Jetport, the captain announced that it was sunny and 87 degrees. So much for cooler weather! :-)

We picked up our rental car and made the short drive to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn Portland Downtown Waterfront. It was a comfortable, friendly hotel and the location was perfect, right on Commercial Street across from the Casco Bay Lines Ferry Terminal. Our room was on the 5th floor with a great view of Portland Harbor and the ferries coming and going.

By that time, we were starving so we headed down to the wharf and walked up and down the rustic, 19th-century piers lined with fishing boats and lobster pots. I was amused by the seagulls, which were about twice the size of the Laughing Gulls we have at home. Maine seagulls were more like turkeys! We had lunch at Luke’s Lobster where we shared the smoked pollock dip and a lobster roll. It was my first lobster roll, and the lobster was fresh, tender and sweet. Yum!

From the restaurant, we could see the Portland Breakwater Lighthouse on the other side of the harbor. We decided that we should go ahead and visit some of the lighthouses that afternoon since we weren’t sure how long the sunny weather would last. We walked back to the hotel to get the rental car, then drove over the bridge to South Portland. Our first stop was Portland Breakwater Light (also known as Bug Light). The lighthouse was just 25 feet tall and had Greek-style columns and ornate roof edging. Only a mile up the road from Bug Light was the Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse. This lighthouse was built on a ledge 900 feet out in the harbor, but in 1951 a breakwater made of granite blocks was added, connecting the lighthouse to the mainland. Seeing the lighthouse up close was a bit of an adventure because we had to hop from block to block to get to the end of the breakwater. I’m not very confident when it comes to climbing on rocks, so Ron had to help me a few times. But I made it! Two lighthouses down.

Portland Breakwater (Bug) Light

Spring Point Ledge Light

That night we had dinner at the Porthole Restaurant & Pub on the waterfront and hung out for a while listening to the live music. We thought we’d explore the shops in Old Port afterwards but everything except the restaurants and bars seemed to have shut down early, so we settled for cups of gelato from Gorgeous Gelato and then called it a night.

Thursday

Weather forecast – high of 96! I woke up at 5 o’clock, and the sun was already rising through the wispy clouds over the harbor. Summer days in Maine start early. Since we were awake, we figured we might as well get up and get going before it got too hot.

For breakfast, we shared a plate of blueberry pancakes from the hotel’s restaurant, and then climbed in the car for the 20-minute drive to Fort Williams Park and the Portland Head Lighthouse. When we got to the park at around 8 o’clock, the air was still cool and filled with the scent of the beach roses in bloom. Portland Head Light is the oldest lighthouse in Maine, built in 1791. I’ve also read that it is the most photographed lighthouse in the US, although I don’t know how you could verify that. It was definitely photogenic, standing 100 feet above the water with rocky cliffs on both sides. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow liked to visit the spot, and it may have inspired his poem "The Lighthouse":

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare! (1-8)

There’s something magical about a lighthouse.

Portland Head Light

Next, we drove south to the Cape Neddick Lighthouse in York. We thought we’d see more scenery if we took Highway 1, but we mostly sat in traffic. In Scarborough, we passed a candy store with a sign that said it was the home of Lenny, the life-sized chocolate moose. I wish we had stopped to take a picture. We have some odd tourist attractions in Florida but no chocolate mooses!

When we got tired of driving 20 miles an hour, we detoured over the I95, which wasn’t scenic but was a lot faster. Once we got to York, we got off the highway and drove along the rocky coastline dotted with beautiful beach houses. The Cape Neddick Lighthouse is also called Nubble Light because it sits on a small, rocky island called the Cape Neddick Nubble. We took lots of pictures, bought a few souvenirs from the lighthouse gift shop and headed back to Portland.

Cape Neddick (Nubble) Light

By the time we got back, we were hungry and thirsty, so we decided to stop at the Allagash Brewing Company for lunch. I’d read that they had a really good food truck there called Bite into Maine. And they had beer too, of course. :-)  Portland has more breweries per capita than any other city in the US so we had to visit at least one of them. The Allagash Brewery had a large, shaded outdoor area with a bar and picnic tables. Ron sampled the Allagash White and the Clementine Kolsch, and I had a nice cider. We placed our lunch order at the food truck – a Maine-style lobster roll (with mayonnaise) for me and a Connecticut-style lobster roll (with warm butter) for Ron. We both ended up liking the one we’d chosen the best. The lobster was piled into hot dog buns, but they weren’t like any hot dog buns I’ve ever had before. They were toasted and buttery and delicious. I was a big fan of the lobster rolls! I also had my very first whoopie pie.

Before dropping the car off at the hotel, we drove to the Portland Observatory in the East End. The observatory looked like a lighthouse, but it was actually a signal tower, the last remaining one in the US. Captain Lemuel Moody had the tower built in 1807 so that he could see ships before they reached the harbor. When he identified a ship, he would hoist the sailing company’s flags to alert merchants in town about which ship was arriving. At the top of the tower there was a wonderful breeze and great views of Portland and Casco Bay, well worth the 104-step climb.

Portland Observatory

Back at the hotel, we cooled off for a little while and then Ron suggested that we take the ferry over to Peaks Island. The Casco Bay ferries run between the six main islands in Casco Bay and are used by the locals who live on the islands, but a lot of tourists ride them too as an inexpensive way to get out on the water. We walked across the street to the ferry terminal and bought tickets, but it wasn’t until our ferry was pulling away from the dock that I looked back and saw the big storm clouds forming over the city. Hmmm, that was ominous. I wondered if we should just stay on the ferry and come right back, but Ron thought the clouds were moving away from us, so we got off at Peaks Island to explore. What a neat little island! If we’d had more time, it would have been fun to rent bikes and spend half a day there. Unfortunately, we hadn’t walked very far when it started to thunder, and we decided we’d better find some shelter. We just made it to the Island Lobster Company when the skies let loose. We watched the storm from the bar, and by the time the ferry came back at 5 o’clock, the rain had almost stopped.

Casco Bay Ferry

That night we had dinner at Gilbert’s Chowder House, sharing the seafood chowder in a bread bowl. Afterwards, we wandered down Commercial Street until we heard live music coming from $3 Deweys and popped in for a drink. The duo was playing rock music from the 90s – Guns and Roses, Goo Goo Dolls, Bon Jovi and Creed. They were really good, so we ended up staying until they finished for the night.

Friday

Weather forecast – high of 75 and cloudy. I woke up to the sound of the long blast of a ship’s horn and looked out the window to see a blanket of fog over the harbor and a tiny cruise ship pulling into the terminal. I was glad the ship wasn’t any bigger. Old Port isn’t very large and I couldn’t imagine what it must be like when three or four thousand people descend on it at one time.

It was the day for our Harbor Lights and Sights cruise with Portland Discovery. We had breakfast at the hotel, then headed to Long Wharf where we boarded our boat, the Islander, for the hour-and-a-half boat ride around Casco Bay. The thunderstorm the day before had broken the heat wave, and it was chilly out on the water. As we rode south, passing the two South Portland lighthouses, our guide pointed out Fort Preble, which sat behind Spring Point Light. The fort had survived the War of 1812 and the Civil War but was damaged during the nor’easter of January 2024 when the water level had risen over 14 feet. We sailed along the coastline all the way to the Portland Head Lighthouse. From there we could see Ram Island Ledge Light, alone and desolate out in the bay, and Cape Elizabeth Light in the distance. I think you could stand at any of the Portland-area lighthouses and see another lighthouse.

Portland Discovery tour

Ram Island Ledge Light

As we headed back north, we wove between the islands – Cushing, Peaks, Little Diamond and Great Diamond. Our guide told us that Maine has more coastline than any other state, but that is because they count all the islands. There are over 700 islands in Casco Bay alone. The captain took us by a small, rocky ledge where seals sometimes sun themselves. There weren’t any seals on the rocks, but we did spot one swimming close by. I saw a seal! Or at least a seal nose. :-)

eagle

The guide also gave us lots of interesting facts about lobsters. We learned that lobsters can live as long as 100 years! It takes about seven years for a lobster to reach adulthood and only 2% will survive to become adults because when they first hatch, they float, making them vulnerable to predators. After a few weeks they get heavy enough to sink to the bottom. Female lobsters carry their eggs on their abdomen for 9 to 11 months, and older females can carry up to 10 times as many eggs as younger ones. The guide said that lobsters only mate with other lobsters their own age and joked that it’s not like Las Vegas where the 70-year-olds are running around with 20-year-olds.

It was lunchtime when we got back into town. Ron was ready to eat something other than seafood, so we had burgers at Butcher Burger and then wandered through the cobblestone streets of Old Port. In 1866, a devastating fire swept through Portland, destroying 1800 buildings and leaving 10,000 people homeless. When the city was rebuilt, the wooden buildings were replaced with fireproof brick or granite. I loved all the Victorian-style brick buildings filled with cute shops and restaurants.

Love Locks

It was still mid-afternoon and we had a few more hours to explore, so we decided to take the car to the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse. I didn’t think we were going to have time to visit that lighthouse, so I hadn’t done my research. I knew you could only view it from a distance because it was on private property, but I thought you could see it from Two Lights State Park. That turned out to be incorrect, which we realized after we’d already paid the park entrance fee. Oops... It was a beautiful park anyway, with trails and benches high over the water, overlooking the rocky cliffs. The rocks looked almost like petrified wood, but they were actually formed from layers of quartzite and phyllite. While Ron climbed down to the water, I talked to two helpful Maine ladies who gave me directions to the lighthouse viewing spot, which was less than a mile down the road. We drove there, took a bunch of pictures and then headed back to Portland. We’d seen six lighthouses in three days!

Two Lights State Park

Cape Elizabeth Light

Saturday

Weather forecast – 65 degrees and rainy. Time to go home. :-)  At the airport, Ron had one last local brew and I had one last whoopie pie.

My goals for this trip were:
Eat a lobster roll
Try a whoopie pie
Visit a brewery
See lighthouses

We did all of that and a whole lot more!