The Better Portland

Visited the flagship LL Bean store - bought nothing!

The last time we were in Portland, OREGON, Craig and I were dismayed at how dirty it was downtown and how dangerous it felt to walk around, even during the day. We tried to simply walk from our hotel downtown to the original VooDoo donuts (a Portland must) one morning, and it did not feel good at all (for context, we both grew up in LA and NYC, so not exactly unfamiliar/uncomfortable with downtown areas). We hear it’s only gotten worse in the last 6 years.

Enter, Portland, MAINE - a lovely metropolis of approximately 68,000 people. The downtown area was clean and nice and had lots of great places to eat and shop. We even drove through the industrial area and it had great graffiti art on walls and cute coffee stands. It’s my new favorite Portland.

We stayed in an airbnb a little outside of Portland, in the town of Yarmouth - a very nice suburb (kids, dogs, you get it). We used Yarmouth as a base of operations for the larger area. See the great ice cream revelation here. The town also has at least one great restaurant, the Royal River Grill House (note below that their special house Bloody Mary is served in a grey goose bottle 😱):

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They also had a super cute performance space tucked under an overpass - for all my thespian friends:

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As always, spent some time hiking - gotta get some exercise. The nearby lakes area has multiple lakes and lots of trails. We visited the Micah/South Loop trail, which had some amazing views from the summit.

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For more Maine photos, check out the other blog post and the gallery.