May 25 2007
Apartment Hunting and Baseball
It was hot today in Maine. I mean really hot. We saw a couple bank thermometers in the mid-90s. Today was about apartment hunting, so We turned on the A/C in His car and trudged on. Except for a few stops. Like the beach. We took a ride out to Prout’s Neck to check out our dream home (pictured above) and passed the Scarborough State Beach and thought we’d dip our toes in the water to see what it was like. The beach was nice, and fairly busy actually. But the water was decidedly not warm. We got in up to our ankles, but that was about it. Several intrepid souls actually got their whole bodies in, but I think we’ll need to be Mainers a while before we go swimming in May.
We did get to see several neighborhoods and a few actual apartments today. So far the most promising is an apartment on Spring St. in Westbrook, about 15 minutes from downtown Portland. The more time we spend in the Portland suburbs, the more we’re not sure we want to actually live in Portland. I think if we can find anything in Westbrook or Scarborough that fits our needs, we’ll probably jump on that. The Portland neighborhoods we looked at included Woodfords, Deering, and Libbytown. All of these are on or near Back Cove and are fairly nice. We have another viewing in Libbytown on Saturday, and got a lead on a place on Back Cove from a waitress in Old Port. If we’re going to live in Portland, I think it will be around that area. We took a look at some places in the East End and also one in West End and were not thrilled with the neighborhoods. I think if we didn’t have a dog, they might be nice. But we do, and so we need a place to walk her.
After our last viewing in Westbrook, we decided to head to Old Port for dinner. We got distracted on the way by all of the traffic heading to the ballpark for a Sea Dogs game. Having not been to a professional baseball game in years, we decided it would be a fun diversion, and Old Port would still be there when the game was over. Hot dogs and fries at the ballpark isn’t exactly dinner at a four star restaurant, but it was a lot of fun. We got seats out on the right field wall (the trouble with showing up 40 minutes before the first pitch at the start of a holiday weekend), but the view was quite good. We, along with the 7300 other fans in attendance, got to see the Dogs produce an eight run seventh inning that was more than enough to finish off the Reading Phillies. We’ll definitely have to catch a few games in August when we’re up here for real.
After the game, we made our way down to Old Port to catch some live music at Bull Feeney’s on Fore Street. This is the third time we’ve been to Old Port at night, and the second time at Bull Feeney’s. If you like live music and a great social scene, I highly recommend the second floor of Bull Feeney’s on a Friday or Saturday night. The windows were open, the funk band was jamming, and people were dancing and having a great time. We’ll definitely be spending some time there when we move up here. Very highly recommended if you’re into live music and good beer.