I spent the past week in Maine staying with my sister to visit with her, my nephew and my mother. In addition to obvious quality time with my sister and mother, I really wanted to have some bonding time with my little 20 month old nephew Xavier. And to not put them too much on the spot to entertain me (or me entertain myself) during the whole trip, I took advantage of my flexible work situation and decided to work while I was there. It ended up working out very well, I was very productive and also able to be present with my family all week.
Typically when I go to New England I fly into Manchester and spend some time visiting other family and friends who are still local, but this time I was on a shoestring budget and decided to simply fly into Portland and ask for family to pick me up. No rental car, no expensive detours. It had been years since I had flown into the Portland Jetport, so flying into such a small airport that only takes the smaller regional planes was my first adventure. I greatly enjoyed the Bombardier Q400 that I flew in on, it had propellers!
My mother picked me up and we began the drive 2 hours north to where my sister lives. She had a lot more snow than Portland does.
The week was spent mostly at Annette’s place, where I was sleeping, but we also had the opportunity to go over to my mother’s several times. She has a number of cats, one of whom was an older Siamese named Simon who I particularly bonded with:
I also got to hold George, my mother’s beautiful red-tail boa.
On Wednesday I took a long lunch to go with my mother to L. L. Bean. I had to exchange a raincoat that had begun to come apart (very unlike a coat from them!) and buy some other clothes. While we were in Freeport I also took the opportunity to have my lobster roll of the trip at Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine Kitchen:
Wednesday night it snowed, so we woke up to 8 inches of snow on the ground for Thursday, the first day of spring. Since I didn’t have anywhere to go Thursday this ended up being perfect for me – not enough snow to cause trouble, but enough to be beautiful! Annette did have to move her car for the plow truck though, during which Xavier showed me what he wanted for breakfast and we sat down together to eat it.
He’s so adorable.
Thursday night we made our way out to La Fluer’s Restaurant so I could get my lobster pie. Friday was another long lunch day where we went up to Augusta for a Chinese buffet and to do some shopping. My trip wrapped up Saturday with Maine barely letting go of me — it was snowing when the plane took off and we had to be de-iced.
In all, a great trip. I hope to do it again next year! More photos from my trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157642749270203/