Day
6: Monday, 8/27—Belfast to BostonDay
6: Monday, 8/27—Belfast to BostonAfter breakfast on the hotel’s back deck, overlooking the water, we wandered back into the town of Belfast. We admired the public art around the town—many colorful and inviting sculptures—and walked out to the end of the dock on the harbor. Then we poked into a store or two on the main street before driving south on Route 1.
The Puffin Project has a brand-new visitors’ center in Rockland, Maine, with a nice movie about puffins (and a very devoted puffin-loving scientist) and fun free puffin exhibits. Robert crawled into a puffling burrow, and I sat in a bird blind, and we all learned more about Atlantic puffins (formerly we had been solely Pacific puffin people). Robert even treated me to a puffin cookie cutter (I’m going to make a flock of puffins for Halloween) and puffin socks (look out, Valentina!). Next door to the mini-museum is a cute little bakery, which was good but not great. It was much better for sweets and pastries than bread, as the baguette we tried was doughy, but the chocolate heart cake moist and flavorful.
Sprague’s
and Silver Moon CreamerySprague’s in Wiscasset was our lunch stop: a lobster roll, which was quite good (though not as good, in Robert’s mind at least, as the one from the restaurant in Belfast the night before—he is, though, he admits, biased toward the hot-with-butter style of lobster roll), a crab roll, some clam fritters, and a shrimp and haddock chowder (which was delightfully pale pink).
Dessert was the best ice cream sandwich I have ever eaten, at Silver Moon Creamery (at Smiling Hill Farm). We sampled their cheese curds and their flavored strawberry milk before buying a small glass bottle of coffee milk (really excellent) and the ice cream sandwich: two soft, moist brownie squares on either side of a wonderfully creamy and rich chocolate chip ice cream. I devoured the ice cream sandwich in the first few seconds of a stroll through their farmyard, where Robert petted the goat and the small horses.
Back
to BostonWe made a quick stop
at the Albacore submarine in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on our way back to Boston,
but we didn’t actually tour the boat (though we did like the Navy man’s
recording in the garden, explaining the history of the boat, and the pictures
of how they got the submarine beached here were pretty incredible). My parents
had visited before, and Dad’s former company (EDO) had made the sonar
system for the sub, so they knew quite a bit about it.
We managed to make it back to Boston by 4:30, skipping rush-hour traffic, and
after unpacking and relaxing at home, we walked down the block to Petit Robert
Bistro for a very nice end-of-the-trip
dinner.
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Created: 8/28/07. Last Modified: 8/28/07.