Connecticut
and Maine Trip |
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A few miles north of
Camden, Maine |
Monday, April 22, 2002 |
| Rented car -- brand-spanking-new,
bright-white Corolla Toyota (For your interest, Lew - at
Enterprise, they were an hour late bringing a new car
from Dulles Airport due to an accident on Hwy. 66, but we
all kept smiling.) It is 410 miles to our destination, Branford, Connecticut. We stopped at the Palisades Shopping Center for Best Buy, Barnes & Noble shopping , and grabbing a Falafel and barbecued lamb at the Food Court. This large unusual-architect shopping center is 1-1/2 hours from Branford in non-commute hours across the Tappansee Bridge -- otherwise 3 hours. We hit it just right this time. We arrived at Motel 6, where we most always stay in Branford. They usually don't see us until the next morning. Watched CABLE TV (which we don't have at home)three shows I wanted to see 1) Hannity & Colmes 2) Greta Suskerin and 3) O'Reilly Factor back-to-back. Got to see what Sean Hannity looks like; Greta's eyes finally; and O'Reilly had a replacement all week. I missed not seeing them Saturday and Sunday night. |
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Tuesday 23rd |
| Had great breakfast with the
folks. The person we were to have a meeting with had a
detached retina and was operated on Wednesday. So, we all
went to our motel and studied some papers; then drove
about 65 miles to the Foxwoods Casino, Ledyard,
Connecticut.
John's mother is now in a wheel chair at the casino and we get to buck the long restaurant lines. We had a lunch of special mediterranean sandwiches. My father-in-law had a container of mustard with his sandwich, and I asked for some for myself. The young waitress said, can't you share with him? I said that I didn't want to ask him to share his food with me. She said she thought it odd that "I" didn't want to share and thought it was a shame to waste food and thought it odd that I would ask. But she brought me some anyway so John and I really tried to eat ALL the mustard so she wouldn't think us too wasteful <grin>. Since we never gamble and John's father does often, he gave me $10 worth of quarters for my birthday tomorrow, but I lost them easily in 5 minutes which should cure anyone from gambling. Besides, it's sooo boring. We spent the time waiting for him to gamble wheeling the mother around the casino looking at the pretty uninteresting shops. She used to gamble too, so John and I would be left on our own to wander the halls waiting for them to finish. But now Ermah has forgotten that she liked to gamble and hasn't much patience with the wating game, so the time has grown shorter that we are at the casino. We returned to Branford, dropped off the folks to rest up for dinner. We drove to Costco in Milford to pick up some apples and cheese and their special Tuscan Balsamic Vinegar. As they have more wines there than any other Costco and we read that they were getting some good Beajulois, we thought we'd find a few that we liked. Costco-Milford is putting in a gas station - more lucrative than wine, I suspect -- and Connecticut cannot have a service station and retail wine at the same location. We went to Tommy K Videos, where we usually pick up a foreign film or two. We found four to buy. Our lucky day! We picked up the folks and drove over to our favorite Pizza place in East Haven, TOLLIES. The owner was shot and killed in the 1960's, but it has remained in the family. The pizza is inconsistent there, but usually is very good and sometimes they have chosen a special selection of wine for their patrons. I had my favorite dish there, escarole et fageole (escarole & beans) and a garlic (without cheese) pizza. I tried the Cappola (the Godfather) wine, but it was not to my liking. I have never liked California wines as their barrels give away the California taste; tasting the barrel before the wine everytime. |
Wednesday 24th
- my birthday |
We headed out early from Branford without our usual breakfast with the folks toward Maine this morning. At Westford, Massachusettes, we picked up some more foreign films at a small Blockbuster. We were tempted to stop again on the way back to see if we had missed any. |
| Our destination was Perkins Cove along Shore Road, wanting to eat at the "Whistling Oyster" open year around, but it is no longer a restaurant, now a souvenir place. We took the mile-long promonotory walk 80 feet above the ocean called the Marginal Way. You can see the town of Ogunquit here and the crescent-shaped strand of beach three miles long. It is a public beach. There were the usual few tourists and the locals taking the walk. |
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You can see the three-mile crescent-shaped Ogunquit Beach in the background. |
Our hotel |
We headed up the coast to Portland, checked into our hotel, about 5:30 that evening. When we pulled up into the parking lot of the hotel, we found that it was a gravelly-unpaved parking lot that looked onto our hotel which we were told later is rough part of Portland. We sensed that and were very reluctant to even check in, but as they had our money, we thought we'd better take a look. The hotel was very European and our room had ceilings at least 10 feet high, beautifully wallpapered, painted and decorated, a fine chest of drawers, two fine beds with chenille-type bedspreads, crocheted shams, colored sheets, mirrors decorated with strands of flowers, an old sewing machine set up, two fine chairs with a nice table, colored towels and washcloths, home-style bathmats each day, double shower curtains decorated, and other refinery. There was coffee and tea 24 hours in the lobby with book shelves and other homey decorations and friendly, efficient, professional clerks. We stayed two nights. |
A walk downtown and a wine tasting |
| We headed downtown walking -- the concierge told us the streets were safe at night. We probably walked 5-6 miles total. We walked into LeRoux, a kitchen-supply store, and discovered a French wine tasting. There were grapes, other fruit, cheeses, breads, etc. and they were generous and eager with their pourings. The wine was quite good. |
My usual disastrous birthday dinner |
I should give up on trying to find a restaurant for my birthday dinner. I can't remember in years when I had a good birthday dinner. We were looking for a restaurant I had seen this particular one on the web. It sounded pretty good. I was thinking it was similar to the one in San Francisco, the Des Alpes in North Beach. There was no similarity. I had a Sicilian lobster dish with tomatoes/dried tomatoes over linguini at $15.95. Horrors! The local draft brewery beer went to waste and John's fried "fresh" clams equally priced were only half- finished. We were walking back when we saw a Starbucks hoping to wash out our mouths with, but walked in just as they were telling us it was closed. A guy at the table asked us to join him not realizing this, but we walked together for a ways and talked. It happened that he was a world-traveler and had been to many of the same places we had been and had even known the judge that married John and me in San Francisco (whom I had sat in his court). He said that he had been an attorney in San Francisco and partied with Melvin Belli, knew where we lived in Marin County, California as he had lived in Sausalito on a house-boat, and he had done some painting and pointed out to us a studio he had had there in Portland. We enjoyed his company, he told us his name, but as it was late, we didn't pursue the conversation any longer. |
A prelude to our trip to
the Portland Museum of Art tomorrow |
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Thursday 25th |
Portland, Maine |
Portland
Museum of Art |
| We walked (even though our legs and hips were tired from the long-walk the previous night) to the Portland Museum of Art. The portion of the museum that we spent the most time in - the architecht was by a student or employee of I. M. Pei and reflected his style. The information lady told us about the museum and was the most enthusiastic supporter of the arts that I have ever encountered. When I asked about John Marin, she said that she had not heard of him; I thought everyone had heard of him, but she said that I might like William Thon who is exhibited there. William Thon - who died 2000 - contributed $4 million to this museum. It was worth the trip discovering him. His was an interesting life. There is much to be found by searching on the web for William Thon. We saw one John Marin painting at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME. |
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William Thon |
Ever the genealogist |
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| We started to drive the 5-lighthouse tour, across the Casco Bay, starting at Cape Elizabeth, but decided to not take in anymore lighthouses after viewing the one that is the second-most photographed lighthouse in the U.S. The wind was terrific. Not many people were there, but I can imagine what it is like in the summer months. During the time we were in Maine, we saw only two licensed cars from New York, one from New Hampshire, and ours from Virginia. We ate at the recommended LOBSTER SHACK. It looked closed, not one car in the big parking lot, but as soon as we parked there, other people came in, too. I had already-picked fresh lobster. Very good. John had fresh fish, too. |
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The second-most photographed light house in the U.S. at Cape Elizabeth, Maine |
| We decided to drive up to Freeport about a 30 minutes trip to visit L. L. Bean since it is open 25 hours a day. We stopped along the way at the DeLorme Retail Offices and got a demonstration from a pleasant sales clerk of their different software programs. However, we didn't know that the outlets (except L. L. Bean Retail) were closed at 6 p.m. and we only had an hour to shop. I found a lemon reamer to replace one that John had misplaced 18 months ago. And a dress-of-sorts at L. L. Bean. I'm certainly glad that I was able to buy/replace one piece of clothing as John left a glad-bag of dirty clothes somewhere that had slacks, shirt, a new bra and a pair of shoes in it. He had a scare at one point thinking he had left our laptop. |
| In Freeport there is a mini-brewery by the name of Gritty McDuff's. They also have a Gritty's in Portland, but Freeport is where they make the majority of the brew. By this time it was starting to rain and getting ready to snow, so we could only drink one glass a piece because of driving. I had a most delightful meal of baked brie, sour-dough bread, baby greens, fruit drizzled with ambrosia, carmelized walnuts - ummm! with my draft beer pumped up cold from the basement. John had a buffalo burger which he said was pretty good, but he ordered it "well-done" (bien que) because of "mad cow." We had the most friendly bartender-waitress. At the end of the meal I asked her if she was French and she said, "how did you guess? I couldn't be any more French; here is how you spell my last name, Bourgeoise." She said she had 5 years of French in school, but did not know the phrase that the information lady at the Portland Museum told us about the one painting which she had insisted that we return to look at, nor the word for eye or eyes. {oeil is one eye. yeux is eyes.} A painting which included Abraham Lincoln that I couldn't see had much interest except it was possibly "a first of its kind." (Definition of "trick of the eye" - triomphe l'oeil - still life painting designed to make the viewer feel the objects represented are real.) I guess the key word is "design" as it was an "arrangement" of objects. |
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| Yes, it did snow after midnight with about an inch on the ground in the morning. It had also snowed Tuesday of this week and we heard it was to snow again after we left. No wonder there were no tourists other than ourselves. But it was crowded enough for me and I prefer the cold weather to the summer heat. |
Friday 26th |
James
Farnsworth and Wyeth Museums |
| We left Portland early to go to the James
Farnsworth and Wyeth Museums. We spent some time at the
computer reading the biographies and studying the
paintings of N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth so
as to enjoy them more. Actually I was disappointed to see that there were so few paintings of the Wyeths exhibited. There were no Winslow Homer's exhibited either although they own watercolors. I was excited to think I was going to Louise Nevelson's sculpture. It says, one place, "...owns a collection of Louise Nevelson's work second only to that of the Whitney Museum of American Art. and that "The Russian-born painter and sculptor grew up in Rockland." There was one painting and one sculpture of hers that I was able to find. I asked, then went back to look again without finding more. I wonder sometimes about the fact that the paintings are on-loan and/or in-storage and/or preparing for an exhibit. I just read that 100 William Thon's paintings were owned by the Smithsonian; however, at the same time, I see that only two are exhibited there. |
Second-Hand Bookstore |
In between view the exhibits at the James Farnsworth and the Wyeth Museum, we had a coffee at the Second-Hand Bookstore, which was quite active. The people looked mostly local. The girls working at the Museum Gift Shop were a bit amused when I asked them for a coffee shop close-by when I asked if they had "cats in it." I have visited a great many bookstores and libraries that are ignorant to the fact that many people are allergic and keep the cats around for "mousing" or the mistaken idea that book lovers are cat lovers. When I later asked them for the name of a "lobster" restaurant, I hoped they wouldn't think I was too strange, but they gave us the name of "The Landing" where I ate a fine lobster. John had fresh fish and said it was excellent.
We returned to our hotel, The Trade Winds Motel in Rockland is on or by the water and beside "The Landing" restaurant. Many people use this hotel for their parking spaces, so getting a place to unload is tight. Our hotel room was a bit smelly, and the clerk gave us another room which was quite large and nice, although a bit noisey until about 11:00, kids running the halls. |
Camden, Maine |
We drove to Camden, Maine, only because it is supposed to be one of the most picturesque villages along the coast and as we had decided that we would probably not vacation again in Maine, we decided to have a look. It was a bit crowded even at this time of year, and we took a look at the bay and had a coffee and the best biscotti's I've ever had (I had two.) Much of the Maine we saw was very much like the Seattle area and was not as exciting as we thought it might be -- except for the rocks. I would love to be able to paint these rocks to my satisfaction.
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This is very similar to where we lived in Washington State -- Vashon Island |
| Later that evening John wanted more to eat, so we crossed the street from the hotel and had a local brew from the local Rocky Bay Brewery. It was excellent. John had mussels. I even tried a taste of mussels, even though I love sea food, I only like the taste of mussels, clams and oysters; hate the texture. I just ate chips, salsa and a beer, not being hungry after the biscottis. We left early the next morning, and as the brewery did not open until 9 a.m., we couldn't pick up any "Rocky" beer to bring home. It will have to remain a memory. |
Saturday 27th |
This drive took from 7 a.m. until around 2:30 p.m. The ride back is never as interesting. |
We stopped again at another Tommy's Video in Branford, CT and picked up another eleven (yes 11) foreign films. The prices were good and we couldn't resist. I think we bought 20 foreign films on our trip. But it is never enough for us. |
We checked into the Motel 6 at Branford and called the folks. We went to their house to fix the tenant's bathroom drain which we had tried to fix last June and is still not fixed. It was a beautiful day, so I was able to sit outside on the porch while they worked (the folks' house has a cat and litter box in it). |
| We went to the Pasta Fair, an Italian Restaurant. New Haven and its environs is ethnic Italian, so Italian restaurants abound. I had Penne with Chicken & Rabe (gave my chicken but one piece to John) and John had Penne with Gorgonzola and Rabe, instead of asparagus which the menu stated. The portions were large enough that we should have shared one instead of two orders. We had a bottle of wine, which the hostess took back after opening the wrong bottle - merlot instead of chianti. It was good enough to buy ourselves at the local grocery, as we have seen it there. |
| Later we went back to the hotel for an extended visit, as we were leaving early in the morning before our usual breakfast get-together. We looked at family pictures that John had put on CD and showed to them. Ermah was interested to get home to her cat, so the evening was short. We went to Walmart and got a couple of pints of ice cream and mineral water and had our dessert, passed out in our beds from overeating, without watching Cable TV. |
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Yes, that's my handmade
sweater I bought in Norway in 1990. I have worn it
everywhere for 11 years. This trip is the first time I've
ever been complimented on its beauty |
Sunday , April 28th,LONG DRIVE HOME |
| This was the fastest we've ever driven home from Connecticut. We were anxious to get home. We usually stop somewhere for entertainment, but the closest we got to entertainment was buying a "Vegetarian Burger" which I saw advertised on their sign. Tasted too "meaty" for me. We stopped at Costco in Winchester to fill a prescription, but the pharmacy was closed. So our stop was unrewarded except for picking up a few essential groceries. The tornado and rainstorm was on its way, so we weren't able to pick up our emails on-line. It did a lot of damage -- was rated F5 in Maryland. |
Monday, April 29th |
Returning Rental Car, Unpacking, Washing Clothes, Going thru Mail, Grocery Shopping, Making essential phone calls, etc. are all the downside chores of a vacation, no matter how short or how long. |
Tuesday, April 30th |
Working "toward" getting back to the normal routine. |
Wednesday, May 1st |
Trip to Winchester for Doctors' appointments |
Thursday May 2nd |
Phew! Back to normal and answering emails. |
"SOME" OF THE 20 VIDEOS WE BOUGHT |
| Love After Love - My favorite actress Isabelle Huppert |
| Entre Nous - My favorite actress Isabelle Huppert |
| Belle de Jour - Catherine Deneuve - my second favorite actress |
| Thieves - Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil - my favorite actor |
| Autumn Tale - a favorite director - Eric Rohmer |
| Cries and Whispers - an old favorite Ingmar Bergman film - strangely dubbed by original cast! |
| Man of Flowers - an Australian director Paul Cox |
| Two Friends - a film by Jane Campion who did "The Piano" and "Sweetie" |
| After Life - a Japanese film by Kore-eda Hirokazu who did "Maborosi" |
| Toto Le Heros - winner of best foreighn film and many European awards |
| Day Trippers - American film which I had seen before and is very, very funny |
| ByeBye - French |
| Trojan Eddie - Filmed in Ireland with Richard Harris and Stephen Rea |
| Hanging Garden - Toronoto, Canada Film Winner |
| Nenette and Boni - France |
April 30, 2002 |