Holiday to New England in Oct 2023: Day 2 – Kittery to Portland

The afternoon turned out to be way more exciting than the morning, including lunch, our first lighthouse and discovering Portland, Maine.

After Kittery, which was very attractive, we decided we needed some lunch, so Subway came to mind.

We found a Subway close by but the staff were not very friendly and not very helpful. One of the ladies had a cracking moustache as well!

I enjoyed my foot-long sub but Vick was disappointed to end up with a salad, with this particular subway not having any gluten-free bread options.

From Subway we headed up Highway-1 and did our first proper tourist attraction: The Nubble. That’s what it is commonly referred to.

Its real name is Cape Neddick Light. It sits at the north end of Long Sands Beach in the village of York Beach.

The lighthouse was not too busy and a lovely sight for these tourists’ eyes.

The view looking away from the lighthouse were quite nice too!

We found plenty of fishermen plying their trade in the north Atlantic sea, so it seemed to be a popular spot for the locals.

From Nubble, we decided it was time to check in to our hotel since we were both really tired. The first few days overseas are always a challenge in respect to dealing with jet lag.

We arrived in Portland at around 2:30pm and we left our car with the valet at the Hilton Garden Inn (no self-park available).

Our room wasn’t quite ready, but we received our keys 10 mins later.

Room 318 was a king deluxe on the corner of the building with a nice view of the harbour.

After a 90 mins snooze, we headed out for a wander around Portland to see what the town had to offer.

We were pleasantly surprised.

Portland is an attractive place, with a lot of personality and a good selection of restaurants and bars.

It looked like a good night out! If you are in to eating, drinking and being merry – who isn’t?

We headed back to the hotel and spent our $10 per person in the bar. Apparently we had $10 per person for each day we were here.

That meant we also were able to spend a further $10 on breakfast in the morning.

I wasn’t entirely covinced that was correct, but we were happy to go with it.

In the bar, we ordered some loaded potato skins since neither of us was that hungry, but we thought we should eat something to help our bodies adjust for the jet lag.

We got chatting with the lady looking after the hotel bar, who didn’t seem to be very conversant in leaf peepers. But she has met a number of groups of Brits all doing the same.

Overall, today has been an interesting day. We solved a number of technology issues including: being unable to hear directions on the Audi sat nav, the mobile dashcam shaking and Vick’s phone not charging.

We also saw some attractive little towns on our route. We expect more attractive sights in the days ahead.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to New England in Oct 2023