Sorry that I didn’t post this one over the weekend… I was buried in potatoes. I had the arduous chore of making potato salad for my family’s Easter dinner. That meant chopping 10 POUNDS of ‘taters, roasting them in the oven, and then actually making the salad.
At any rate, here is my final post about my trip to Maine that, even now, seems a distant memory though I only returned one week ago. Ergh.
As I arrived in Freeport, home of L.L. Bean and, apparently, every outlet store known to man, I was a bit disappointed. The town’s center had such huge potential to be adorable, but to me it looked like someone took the “cute-ness” of Gatlinburg, the outlets of Pigeon Forge and smooshed the concept together to create the little town. It was basically cute storefronts for Gap Outlet, Coach Outlet, Nine West Outlet, etc. And of course, the L.L. Bean campus took up half the town, but it was incredibly impressive. They have at least four buildings open to the public, including a HUGE retail store, an outlet and a hunting/fishing store.
But on to the nicer stuff… I spent Saturday – Monday at the Brewster House Bed & Breakfast there in Freeport, and the home and the hosts could not have been more pleasant – plus, the breakfast was as good and gourmet as it comes! As in Ogunquit, I stayed in a home that was built in the late 1800’s, and it was gorgeous. If you’re ever up Freeport way, I highly recommend staying at this B&B – the owners are some really neat people, too!
I drove down to Portland on Saturday evening for an interesting dinner at a place called Hugo’s, where one of their menu items is called Pig Head Tangine, and it’s not a figurative dish, people. Blech. Anyway, I had some odd dishes that were surprisingly good. Beet and horseradish risotto sounds pretty disgusting, but I wanted to lick my plate when I was finished! But I digress. The main reason I brought up Portland was that I attended a performance by the Portland Symphony Orchestra that night, A Tribute to Henry Mancini, guest conducted by Bill Conti, who has directed the music at 20+ Academy Award ceremonies, wrote the music for Rocky, Falcon’s Crest, Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey, etc., etc. They performed Conti’s music until intermission, which was lots of fun because he’d tell stories about his experiences in Hollywood between songs. The post-intermission, all songs were devoted to Mancini’s work. I have really loved Henry Mancini’s music since I learned to play the Theme from Love Story on the piano back in high school. I think many of you would be surprised to learn that you know a lot of Henry’s music, you just didn’t realize he wrote it. He wrote the music for The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Hatari!, all of the Pink Panther movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (including the song, Moon River), High Time, Love Story, Charade, theme song for the TV show What’s Happening!!, and so much more. If you haven’t listened to his music, I highly recommend checking some out on iTunes. My personal favorites of his are Moon River, Theme from Love Story, Baby Elephant Walk and Frish Frosh. I thoroughly enjoyed this evening at the symphony and was impressed that, for such a small town, Portland would have such a wonderful symphony.
Here are some more pictures from the trip – btw, make sure you click on the photos to see the full size, because the tiny preview pictures just don’t do them justice!
Brewster House B&B (second story bay window on the front of the house was my room!)
Portland Coast
Around Freeport (some of the quaintest little homes!)
Oh, and one other thing that I noticed, all through Maine, was that they keep their Christmas decorations up through March! LOL – guess Tennessee has something in common with those Yankees, after all!
