Me, Janie & Pady – thank you, photographer/waitress.
Janie and I set off quite early from Cape Cod after a hearty breakfast and fond farewells with our hosts Mike and Helen.
Janie drove the 90 minutes from Cape Cod to South Shore Plaza in Braintree, just south of Boston, where we had arranged to meet Pady at the American Cheesecake Factory.
It was lovely to see Pady again, after a couple false starts over the past few years, due to her unfortunate needs to abort planned visits to England, most recently in July.
A few hours flew by before our agreed departure hour arrived – 3:00ish, to avoid the Boston traffic on the way out to Portland.
Pady had carefully planned the convenience of the meet up around an easy to find and get away from location. But none of us had counted on an earlier than usual rush hour, on account of the Red Sox playing the Yankees in a play-off match starting at 6:00. Who knew?
What would have been a little over two hour drive became a three-and-a half hour drive, which Janie insisted on doing, pleading that I was better at navigating to new destinations, which might be true.
We arrived in Portland just as it was getting dark. We checked in to our lovely AirBnb apartment and then went in search of a local casual place, as we didn’t want all that much food after sampling “light lunch” and sharing a cheesecake with Pady earlier.
We found a quirky, casual place named The East Ender, which turned out to be a karaoke bar downstairs and a casual diner upstairs. The wailing from the karaoke bar had to be heard to be believed, but mercifully the sound didn’t much travel up the stairs. We were able to enjoy a light supper of caesar salad (Janie) and schnitzel (me).
One of the waitresses suggested that we might like to try our hands at the karaoke. When I told her that I could offer some Renaissance tavern songs, she said:
Medieval? Scary!
At that juncture, Janie and I saw our opportunity to leave and have a much-needed early night.
If you want to see all the photos from that day, click this Flickr link or the picture one below:
