p e n g u i n d e v i l

So we’re back from Maine. We never actually made it to the coast, in fact the getting and coming wasn’t too great. But the day that we spent there was quite nice. And on the trip there we passed through a beautiful, foggy area that I must hike around in sometime, and I train that I must take. It was called Crawford Notch.

But anyway, Portland. I feel like we would rather have spent the last few years living there than in Big Portland. It was just a cool place. The old town seemed quite old. The sidewalks were bricks that must have dated from somewhere in the 19th centry, lots of nice old buildings and, though it only shows a population of 63,000, it felt a lot more citylike than that. In a lot of ways, it felt more citylike (at least “east coast city”) than Big Portland, which is many, many times its size.

But to counter my impressions of my last visit, the Old Town/Shopping district didn’t seem irritating like I had though it did, places have Veggie options on the menus, there are a good number of places to grab a beer and even micro-breweries! There were some good stores too. We found “Books Etc.” a “new book” store downtown that, while small, had a good selection and “Yes Books”, a used book store that, while disorganized (one of those “books stacked on the floor” kind of places), seemed a fun place to browse and they had a nice history section. It once again led me to wonder if the “Powells phenomenon” has really drained Portland of good, old books. Also, and I thought quite exciting, we stumbled on a little basement music store, “Bull Moose Music”, that I wandered around in and found not only a nice selection of new and used horror and Sci-fi DVD’s, but they actually had a “new and used” extreme metal section! While I didn’t find anything I needed, I imagine that it’s probably the only section like that in New England outside of Boston, so it’s good to know that it was there.

We discussed the notion of moving there, rather than Vermont… As it would be easier in a lot of ways, but I think we are still leaning towards the small town kind of community as where we want to settle.