Viva La Diva : Happy Day After Memorial Day!

Hey guys! I hope you all had a great Memorial Day vacation. For Memorial Day weekend I went up to Portland, Maine. Shockingly enough, I had never been before. I was amazed at how beautiful the city and the Old Port was. And the food was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

I left Thursday afternoon.

Our motorhome.

We got to the Wassamki Springs campground about 3 hours later. We got our lot and started to put out the slides. Unfortunately, we almost hit a tree with the bedroom slide, so we had to get a new, more spacious spot.

After we got all of the slides out and hooked up, we headed out to the town to find a place to eat.

The Old Port.

We decided on a place called Boone's...because it was the only place we could find parking for.

When we walked in, it smelled wicked good and it was really busy, so we decided to stay. We got seated almost immediately.

The interior of Boone's.

I ordered the fried oysters and a side of french fries.

Fried oysters with a slightly lemony sauce that had a bit of a spicy kick to it.

Amazing french fries with pepper and ketchup.

For dessert I order a slice of blueberry pie that they make fresh every morning. It was delicious.

Blueberry pie with sweet house-made whipped cream.

The next day (Friday), we went to the city to do some shopping.

OOTD

The first store we went in was Cross Jewelers. Since I had never been to Portland before, I had obviously never been to Cross, but my grandparents (whom I was with) had gone many times and had bought many great pieces from there, so I was excited to go take a look.

After I got past the intimidating armed guard, I was enthralled with their selection. They had the most beautiful tourmaline jewelry I had ever seen. Definitely I must go place if your planning a trip to Portland.

For lunch we went to Gilbert's Chowder House. Apparently, they are known for having the best chowder in Portland.

I ordered clam chowder in a bread bowl.

Amazing steamers.

For as much as Gilbert's touts their amazing chowder, I didn't think it was anything to write home about. Was it good chowder? Absolutely. But it wasn't like "Wow, I NEED to get that again!" There just weren't enough oysters. It was more like a potato chowder with like five tiny clams.

We did some more shopping. I went into this wonderful Fair Trade shop. I bought a Lucky Pig, which was made in Chile.

We also got gelato (yum!) from Gorgeous Gelato. It truly was the best gelato I've ever had. It was so rich and creamy. The flavors were out of this world. I got a scoop of lemoncello and a scoop of expresso. The lemoncello was amazing, but not in excess. The expresso was to die for. I wish I had asked for a smaller scoop of lemoncello and have the expresso be the larger scoop.

Expresso and lemoncello gelato in a waffle cone.

Then I stopped off at the Holy Donut. They make their donuts out of potato, so I was a little unsure of what to expect. Turns out, it was the best donut I have ever had. I'm not really a huge fan of donuts, but this one was SO good! I had to get some to bring back to the motorhome (I would say to bring home, but we all know they didn't last that long).

When we got back to the motorhome, I settled in for some "What Would You Do?"

My WWYD watching outfit.

Saturday morning, we went to Cape Elizabeth. It was absolutely beautiful. For lunch we went to the Lobster Shack Restaurant.

The restaurant had an absolutely gorgeous view.

For lunch, we all had lobster rolls. I had never had a cold lobster roll with the mayonnaise before (only ever the hot buttered kind), but I thought it was delicious. The lobster itself was to die for.

Can I get a yum?

We also bought a whoopie pie because everyone knows Maine whoopie pies are the best.

We then went to a national park up that way (I don't remember what the name of it was). It was such a beautiful place.

There was this little boy learning how to fly his kite and it was just the cutest thing. I had to take a picture.

We headed back into the Old Port and went into a few shops.

I got a colored Alex and Ani because I thought it would be nice to have a pop of color amidst all of the silver.

For dinner, we went out and intended to go to Fore Street, but they were full until 10 and we were all hungry. We decided to go back to Gilbert's since I guess I was the only one who wasn't thrilled with my chowder.

We got another order of steamers for an appetizer and I got a small cup of seafood chowder. The seafood chowder was amazing. It was full of seafood and was seasoned very nicely. For my meal, I got fish and chips which was very good. It was a pretty big portion, too. I had leftovers.

Seafood Chowder

Steamers

Fish and Chips

Sunday morning, we went out for breakfast at a diner on the Bayside.

Sunday morning OOTD

Spanish omelet with home fries and white toast.

After breakfast, we went for a train ride along the coast line on this old train. It had beautiful old wood paneling all on the inside. The seats and lighting were all original.

After the train ride, we went back to the Old Port and went into this amazing place called Vena's Fizz House. It's a bar that serves all natural soda and mocktails; no alcoholic beverages. All of the drinks are made right in front of you. None of the drinks are typical soda flavors (for example you might find Lumberjack Love or Chocolate Raspberry Shrub as options on the menu).

I ordered the Chocolate Raspberry Shrub.

It was TO DIE FOR!!!! I might even go as far as to say that it was the best thing I had all vacation. I highly recommend going to Vena's if only because it's such a cool experience. But more than that, their drinks are so much better than you'd ever imagine. I definitely recommend the chocolate raspberry shrub.

When you finish in the bar area, you can walk down the steps into the shop area where you can buy the various syrups, etc that you would need to recreate the drink at home. Very cool.

After we finished at Vena's, we went on a hunt for lobsters. We wanted to get some lobster to bring back to the motorhome to have for dinner as our last meal before we went home. First, we stopped at a fish market down a side street on the harbor.

It was definitely a very authentic, port-side fish market. The smell said it all. While (of course) they did have live lobsters, they wouldn't steam them there. So we moved on.

On our way back to the campsite, we saw a sign for a candy store (Len Libby) and decided to take a detour to check it out. It was pretty cool. They had a life sized moose made out of chocolate.

We bought a bunch of stuff (dark chocolate nut bark, chocolate covered espresso beans, chocolate caramel sea salt truffles and various other chocolates).

We drove back to the motorhome and later my Gramma and I went out on the hunt for lobster. We went to Oceans Garden Restaurant because it was the nearest place to our campsite.

We had success. They had live lobsters there and we had them steam three. We went back out to the parking lot and searched for our car. Eventually, we found it. As I stepped into the car, I look down at the carpet and saw the lack of travel magazines. Hmm, I thought, someone must have brought them into the motorhome. Then I looked up at the radio control panel and thought it looked different from how I remembered it. "Gram," I said. "I don't think this is our car." We quick got out and sure enough we had gotten into the wrong car. It wasn't even the same kind as ours.

We went to Hannaford's next to get nutcrackers. They had good sized lobsters there, so we decided to buy two more. Then we made our way back to the campsite.

We set up dinner outside.