Jojo September 23rd, 2008
We left our nice motel in Quebec today to head for Montreal. After a relatively short and especially boring drive there we arrived in the city, where the tourist information center is conveniently (not!) located right in the middle of this big city. This means driving through the whole of this loud and chaotic city only to arrive right in the middle, with one-way-streets in every direction, heaps of pedestrians and parking rates at about $6/hour…
So, we booked a hotel at the tourist information center which is located quite central (so at least we save the public-transportation). We have to pay $10/day just to have our car parked nearby on the hotel’s own parking lot and right across the street is a very fine selection of strip joints… We went down Sainte Catherine (the street our hotel is on), the main shopping street, and it was just awful. Not only are there only clothing-stores which repeat every 4 blocks, but the sidewalks are filthy, the streets are loud and lined with homeless people. To say the least, it was quite disappointing and I can only hope that the old part of town (and for our second full day here the Olympic Park) are better than what we saw today. Oh, I didn’t take any photos, partly because I was afraid my camera would get stolen, but also because there simply is nothing to photograph.
Jojo September 19th, 2008
Today we left Portland early, not wanting to see the city itself but rather visit Freeport early. In Freeport we first paid a visit to the Visitor Information Center where we chatted with two nice ladies who not only told us what to do in the city but also where we should stay when we went up to Acadia National Park. After that we started our little shopping tour, with the first waypoint of course being the L.L. Bean flagship store. You can sign up for tours too, but unfortunately they are offered only on weekends, so I didn’t get the chance to participate in the clay-shooting trip. Afterwards we looked at the shops around Main Street and managed to get some really nice bargains (think of stuff which is already cheaper in dollars than it is in euros in Germany, then take into account that the dollar has a lower value than the euro and finally consider the 30% discount on most of the items ;). When we were done in the city we went back to our car, which was parked next to the Freeport Community Center where they have cheap coffee and free internet (didn’t have enough time to write an article though).
At around half past one we left Freeport, since we had made a reservation at the Edenbrook Motel in Bar Harbor for two nights (and this is a place I can recommend without hesitation: cheap ($55/night), clean, big rooms, close to downtown, family-run). We arrived in Bar Harbor earlier than anticipated (didn’t visit the Desert of Maine). The lady at the check-inn explained to us that on Desert Mountain Island (the island Acadia National Park is on) there are free shuttle-busses, so we took one which took us to Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor itself is two things: a town with a very high density of motels/hotels and also a town with a lot of seafood restaurants. We walked around town until we found something not that expensive and had a nice burger with french fries (my 0.3 Budweiser cost almost half as much as the meal). Coming out of the restaurant we immediately realized that we were farther up north as it felt quite cold.
Jojo September 18th, 2008
Today we left Boston, as predicted, and headed for Salem. The drive there was short and pleasent, and we found a parking space directly opposite the visitor’s center. Salem, borrowing from the Freedom Trail, has its own red path which leads visitors through the city, although it is somewhat chaotic, often branching of in two different directions where it clearly should be going straight and not having many information points. At the end of the self-guided tour (which was still nice, although we got pretty sick of all the dozens of witch-museums/stores/nail-studios etc) we decided to visit the Salem Witch Museum.
After Salem we drove around Cape Ann, which is said to be of similar beauty like Cape Cod (I will tell you if that’s correct when we get to Cape Cod ourselves). This was definitely the best part of road we saw today, and with a speed limits of about 25-35 and virtually zero traffic we crawled around the peninsula and took everything in. After Cape Ann we continued heading north, with the intended destination of Portland, ME. We took Route 1, avoiding the I-95 and its turnpike-section in NH and Maine (we weren’t in a rush, and although Route 1 isn’t the prettiest, it was still nicer than taking the Interstate). We stopped when we saw the Kittery Trading Post, an outlet store very similar to L.L. Bean’s (although an employee assured me that the service in Kittery was way better). We got some nice things which were on sale, browsed their enormous inventory and had a look at some of the thousands of rifles and shotguns they had in store. Having gone through our first outlet-shopping-spree (Freeport is closing in too), we decided that we wouldn’t stop until we reached Portland and managed to get a room for the night.
So, now we are at the Motel 6 in Portland, quite tired, again, and without Internet this time, which is why you’ll be reading this post at some future point ;)
