Being our last day in North Conway we needed to get up early to make the most of our day as well as make it to our next destination of Boothbay Harbor for the Fourth of July parade.
Our first stop of the day was
Peach's for breakfast. Since we had pancakes the day before I wanted to try something different but since I couldn't decide I chose pancakes again, but this time with a different flavor.
I chose the Appel butter scotch pancakes. Oh my god! I love butterschotch and these were magnificent. Tart green apples with the really sweet and buttery chips, and with a bit of maple syrup it was great. Oh yum! But as always the portions are so huge that it is impossible to finnish it all.
Today Andy had the same as his Dad had today and yesterday, Sunny Side Up eggs and a breakfast plate.
Andy's Mom ordered the Apple Cinnamon Crepes with a yoghurt whip inside. It was like eating clouds! Yum!
Really if you are in the area make sure you visit Peach's for some great breakfast - all day long.
After breakfast we returned to the hotel to pick upp our bags and chech out. We did some last minute packing and swapping of items, such as throwing out our old sneakers (both Andy and I found a pair each at Famous Footware). I really loved my old sneakers, but the were getting really old and I've been looking for quite some time for new ones. The scary thing was that when I placed them together I found out that they look exactly the same... =}
Wheels up at 8.39 a.m. And it was around 20 C. It tskes a couple of hours to drive from North Conway to Boothbay Harbor, but it is s very scenic road thrpugh lots of beautiful little villages and breathtaking scenery. Since I took alot of pics with the SLR we'll take those later.
We stopped in at McDonald's in Windham (they have free WI-FI and usually good coffee)for some coffee, but realized thst they had the WORST coffee in the world. A regular coffee in New Hsmpshire is apparently black coffee with three sugars and three creams. So when my Father-in-law ordered regular coffee that is what he and Andy got. And they are of the kind that won't even call it coffee if it isn't BLACK and strong enough to have the spoon stand up straight in the mug. So they were dissapointed. And my Vanilla Bean coffee tasted like they had watered it down to nothibg. It was like drinking vanilla water. Yuck! Not even my Mother-in-law was happy with her strawberry-pineapple smoothie. All in all it was a crappy rest stop and we pretty much left there worse off than when we came in...
Thrn we continued our trip, first we entered the state of Maine and then, among others, through the towns of Gray, Freeport and Bath. Varying in size and location but all along the water and lovely landscapes. We found both indians...
And fallen down bridges along the way....
Since it's so close to the coast we drove past lots of swampland and very varried terrain. But since we wanted to make it to Boothbay Habror before the parade started we didn't stopp too many times.
Then we finally arrived in the picturesque town of Boothbay Habor. And I really do understand why my In-Laws have been telling us about this place. It is beautiful. Small streets with gorgous American colonial houses and lots of small boutiques with everything one expects to find in a sea side town.
Fisrt we found our little home for the night the Welch House Inn at the top of a hill with a magnificent view over the bay. My In-Law had lived there before so they were known to the inkeepers and welcomed back with opened armes. We parked our car and since it was still to early to check-in we walked towards town and tried to find a place to have some lunch. We stopped at small Shack called the Lobster Trap, that sold Lobster Rolls, as well as shrimp and crab rolls.
A lobster/shrimp/crab roll is a Maine speciallity(any kind of seafood makes Maine famous but eveyone has heard of Maine Lobster!), it is a hotdog roll stuffed with seafood meat, served pretty much like a hot dog. This place served them with chips and a dill pickle.
I have to admit that I was sceptical in the beginning, but boy it was good. Andy and I shared a lobster and a crab roll to see wish one was the best. I liked the lobster the best, it was really moist and tasty. Yum!
Then we proceeded towards town and made our way to the large street in town, pretty much where all the shops and restaurants are. We started by buying tickets to a Whale Watching safari for early the next morning.
And then we made our way back and forth along Main St to see all that could be seen.
We entered all the shops and found lots of great clothes to brilliant prices as well as cute souviners, but we don'treally do the regular kind of souviners, but we can still look...One shop really caught my eye, The Bookstore, but it wasn't the books that I liked but all the little nick-nacks on the first floor. There was pretty much Everything one could have ever wanted to find. Also lots of other wierd and amuzing things. I found a lovely necklace and earrings, with starfish that I bought.
Since it was an extremly warm day we decided to have Ice Cream at the Ice Cream Factory, which is supposed to be one of the best Ice Cream places in Maine. They do have soft served but their speciallity, why people queue out the door, is their flavored homemade ice cream. There were 30 different flavours and combinations of those, lots of toppings and just too much to think about... But I found one that sounded particularly yummy. Blueberry Cheesecake - one scoop. And it was good.... =}
After a few hours in the sunshine and 30 degree weather, we were pretty much beat. So we decided to go back to the Inn and check in as well as get ready for dinner. The parade had been cancelled but since we had already seen the one in Errol we were fine with that.
we checked in to the Inn and into the reslly great rooms. I loved our room, it had a great view as well as a really lovely homey feel to it. The weather shifted quickly and all of a sudden all of the bay was gone... The fog had rolled in...
But we took our cameras and some pre-dinner drinks up toward the fourth floue and the balcony and enjoyed a very cool drink with views over the bay.
As we were sitting up there the fog rolled in and out a couple of more times... But isn't the view spectacular?...
We wanted to have dinner at McSeagulls - a great Maine restaurant with lots of daily caught fish and interesting dishes. But since you can't book a table we made sure to be there when they opened for dinner to be able to get a table.
On a recommendation from my In-Laws we ordered the Exclusivly maine crab cakes - twin maine crab cakes encrusted with panko and deep fried. served with wasabi mayo, to share.
I've had crab cakes before, last time we were in the US, in Lake Placid, but these were so much better. Moist and tasty and the wababi mayo was brilliant! In the salad served with it there were some small round thing that looked like leeks, but were firmer in their texture and we had no idea what they could be, but it turned out that they were parts of a oyster, which I was to find out with my main course. I didn't think I liked oysters, but it turnes out that I like them grilled....
The choices of mains, made us crazy. Therecwas so much yummy food that I would have needed days to decide what to eat... But my eye was caught on the McSeagulls seafood platter - grilled seafood platter, 4 gulf shrimp, 6 scallops, 4 oz swordfish, 2 grilled glidden point oyster, grilled lobster tail. served with sweet potatoe fries + cole slaw.
Oh my good! This is the grestest food thst I've ever had. EVER HAD! It was sooooooooo good. I love grilled food and this was just the best. And even though I was worried about the oysters I was really possitivly surprised at how different they were from raw, which is kind of iiikky. Oh, I wish they had this where I live...
My Mother-in-laws Stuffed lobster tail - maine lobster tail stuffed with crab imperial and baked. Served with drawn butter and vegetables.
Andy's Seafood extravaganzza - lobster, shrimp, scallops and sauteed in butter, olive oil, shallots, garlic and fresh herbs, served with Alfredo sauce over pasta of the day. Very very very yummy!
Andy's Dads Lobster stuffed Hallibut, and baked. Served with baked potato and vegetables.
Oh what a dinner, the seafood was so fresh and tasty. Brilliant! This is probably my favorite meal so far. Ah....
After dinner we walked through the darkened and foggy city, and took the bridge over to the other side of the harbor. We wanted a little walk as well as trying to grabb a geocache. But as we crissed the bridge the gps's battery failed and we had to walk back empty handed. It was nice to have a walk through the foggy town. But on the way we found out that the fourth of July fireworks that were planned had been cancelled due to the fog and therefore we had to just figure that it just wasn't our day...
we retureded to the Inn and had some coffee before we said goodnight...
