thim@maine

Read Me

2006-05-31T23:09:00.000-07:00

Like my previous Florida Blog Spin-Off.. here's my Maine Blog Spin-Off :) Maine is a beautiful place and we spent most of our time at this beautiful cottage in Bar Harbor. We visited the amazing Arcadia National Park and had loads of lobsters.. and I piled on 1 - 2 kgs.. oh no! But anyways, just enjoy the pictures :)

Use your back button as per Florida Blog to get back to the first page to navigate!

May 30th - The 13 hour way back.

2005-06-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

We checked out of our cottage at 9 am and decided to go for some wildberries breakfast before we left. Wild blueberries are a trait of Maine too.

Here's a shot of Ting and I at the restaurant. Yes, I ordered 2 pancakes, how uncharacteristic of me. Naturally I couldn't finish it all :P

I particularly liked this sepia shot that I took of the 4 old people sitting in the restaurant. If only I had a wide angled lens and I was sitting further away from them... But nonetheless, I still think it gives a pretty nostalgic feel to the whole place.

The menu!

As we moved on, we drove straight for 3 hours then we decided to drop by Portland, Maine's biggest state. Yes! I've been to the 2 main portland cities! One in Oregon and one in Maine! West coast and East coast!!

Portland has very beautiful streets, a french feel to it. Classy, sophisticated and colorful!

Ying, enthralled by an alleyway.

That's me, infront of some monument to prove that I was really in Portland, Maine!

Ting at some bookstore.. So nice!

We wanted to go to the 37,000 sq feet market but apparently it was closed cause it was a public holiday. We trudged like 30 mins to it lor!

We stayed for a while and then we were on our way.. we had around 8 more hours to go... On the road we saw this really weird car.. looks like a spider.. and I took a quick shot of it...

We drove straight through and had a take out at Wendy's. However, we got a little bit lost and came home slightly later. But we were safe!

Here's the mess, (just Ying's, Ting's and mine)... crazy isn't it? :P

That was our trip to Maine!

May 29th - Day 2, Lobsters and beer and wine and pickups

2005-06-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to wake up at around 8 in the morning but in the end all of us only woke up at what.. 10 am? Hehe, but hey, at least it was considered a pretty good rest. The first venue to go was to visit the Bar Harbor Light House. Light house these days .. Just like when I went to cape may, I was at the light house.. too bad I didn't bring the camera then.

Anyways, here are the photos of the day!

Zhang Yi looking all cold as we trudged down to the light house...

Cute Ting! The "Just woke up" look :P

That's me trying to look cute.. I think I look better from the side.

This is the light house.. the closest that I could get to it... not the authentic, old fashioned light house that you would expect.

Anyway after looking at the lighthouse, we decided to make our way down to the Lobster Pound for lunch. Apparently in Maine, the best places to eat lobsters are not the restaurants but the Pound. A pound is like a really casual place where you serve yourself and sit out in the open to enjoy a steaming plate of lobster. Pounds usually have their own lobster catching team of "lobsterman" (think fishermen.. i came up with the term myself). So the lobsters you eat are what they caught!

Take a look at this photo of a really HUGE lobster.. this is the large lobster.. prolly around 1 kg? Eeks.. But we didn't eat so much.. we had 1 small lobster each.. around 12 bucks for one (freaking cheap) and we were super full.. can't imagine how the people around us (they were all eating the 1kg lobster) could finish it.

We ordered corn and crab chowder. Absolutely delectable.

Mussels too! The taste of the Sea..

Here's me with my lobster. Not large but I thought it was enough!

Ting and a lobster!

The carnage. The aftermath.

View from outside the pound. Thurston's Lobster Pound. Check out the lobster cages.

After lobsters, we decided to satisfy Ting's crave for beer and what nots. We went to the bar harbor brewery and tasted like at least 5 kinds of beer (root beer inclusive) I am not a beer person, so I ended up pouring all the extra beer into ting's cup. :P

Here's a shot of ting outside the brewery.

This is me. The reason why I'm so cuddled up is because there were too many mosquitoes around me and I was trying to protect my face and my body. Damn I hate those mosquitoes!

After the brewery we went to the winery and the girls went crazy buying alcohol again. Hehe at least I'm ok.. I only bought a couple of beers as gifts. I bought myself Root Beer though! Root Beer is the best beer on earth!

After the winery, we went back to bar harbor (which i affectionately term it as ba' ha' ba') and then ting was itching for some kind of trekking. So we left ying and yi at downtown and we ventured up cadillac mountain to look at the sunset.

That's me climbing up the mountain (yeah right :P)

A shot that I took of thing, overlooking the sea. Beautiful

That's us! I was really cold. Damn, but i love the weather! I like it cold!

A picture paints a thousand words.

As the sun started to set... too bad we couldn't see the sun proper cause it was too foggy. But nonetheless it was amazing. So romantic.

After Cadillac mountain, we went back to downtown bar harbor and met the rest. We went to this restaurant called Route 66. We went in cause I was feeling hungry and the restaurant looked pretty cool. Like a picture taken out from the 60s. It was cool, the toilets had year book pages from the past plastered on it. The place even had a little train running around the ceiling. Too bad I didn't take enough pictures. Too cold and hungry.

Here's a shot of Ting and I at the restaurant. We just anyhow ventured into this place and didn't realise that it was actually ranked no. 11 (which was pretty good) on the bahaba rankings. Apparently the lobster pound we went to was no. 33! Food here is really awesome.

After that, we went down to a pub to listen to some Jazz. Cover charge was 3 bucks and the used a Sharpie marker pen to draw my hand to signify that I've paid. Sheesh I can DIY it too. But then again, 3 bucks is still alright. There were 3 bands playing and I almost fell asleep during the first one. Hehe the second one was pretty cool. 2 white guys rapping gibberish. Princess from Chicago were their band name. One of the members was gay.. but damn, he was so damn hot!

We ordered some spanish drink which I can't remember what its name was. It had cut fruits in it. As the pub was too dark, my camera couldn't focus and this was the best shot that I could take of the drink. That's why I didn't take more photos.

We left 1/2way after Princess from Chicago started playing as we were all tired. On my way out, as I was walking, in Columbia jacket, track pants and sports shoes (how dorky can that get), a rather cute caucasian guy stopped me. He asked me if i was from Laos. I said no.. and he still started speaking to me in Laos (I believe) I kept telling him that I don't understand him and I gave him a fake british accent and told him that I only speak english and I don't speak Laos at all. In the end he reverted to English, he didn't have an american accent. he asked me where I was from, I told him I was from Malaysia and New York. After that I told him I wanna go and shook his hand and left... can't be bothered. Haha, that's the fun about being picked up. you can just feign an entire new story about yourself and leave feeling triumphant.

This sorta marked the end of this action packed day.

May 28th - Day 1, The Park and The Cookout

2005-05-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

Today was to be spent moving around the park and having a cookout outside our cottage at night... Yummy!

Here's a shot of Ting and I in the cottage... there's a kitchenette behind us where we could cook breakfast...

Ting, Yi and Ying at the door.. pretty cute decor..

I won't be putting too much words into this entry.. just posting photos and photos.. shan't spoil the beauty... so enjoy!

View of one of the islands around Acadia National Park

My foot. No, it doesn't stink.. just happenend that my shoe was wet.. stepped into water.. had to dry it...

Foggy Highlands. A falcon was supposed to be somewhere on that cliff.. they closed it because falcons are territorial and if we try to climb the cliff we might get attacked...

Sand Beach... Cold

Postcard worthy picture of Zhang Yi and I

Wow... only pity was that the sky was overcast

Me at Jordan Pond, the clearest, cleanest pond on the east coast (apparently)

I like this shot that I took of ting...

Our car.. a Chevvy Malibu

Is the water really that clean and clear? I didn't dare taste it tho, don't want organisms running through my tummy :P

I like this shot that I took of ting again...

Cadillac Mountain.. the highest point on the atlantic coast.

Nice view behind us.. yes I was cold

Lunch was Maine Lobster Stew that costed a bomb ( we at a restaurant apparently) but then we still didn't get enough of lobsters and got lobster ice cream!

Lobster Ice Cream at this place called Ben and Bills.. haha

We then scuttled back for our cook out.. Nice grill! Just that there were a lot of mosquitoes and I could have died.. knowing my adversion to mozzies. Hehe we forgot to bring lighter fluid and it was the guy standing at the back behind ting in the foto who lent us his... Nice guy!

Look at our food!

Dinner was great as we drank our wine and beer and chatted into the night.. as we were tired from our over night haul.. we decided to rest early for the light house, lobster lunch, brewerys and bars tomorrow!

May 27th - Day 0, The Overnighter

2005-05-31T23:22:00.000-07:00

Ying and I were off work at 2 pm and so we went on to do some logistics related stuff. Zhang Yi (ying's neighbor) came by at 5 pm but then ting was still not available. She was still tied down with work. Yi, Ying and I then went on for dinner at the Mall. Finally at 7 pm, Ting came by and she joined us on the ride. Yesh.. the gruelling 12 hour overnighter...

That's Ting looking all tired out...

That's me trying to look cute... we decided that we were going to take the graveyard shift and we sat at the back...

A shot of the mess that we had in the car... And that's like only 1/4 of it..

Both of us again

That's zhang yi taking the first leg... She's quite chio :P

Sister Ying!

We took a route that drove passed New Jersey Princeton... yup that's Princeton University behind the police car.. Ok I admit.. I didn't do too great a job taking a photo of princeton
Anyway we travelled on from 7pm all the way till 4 am (I took the last leg and was having a ball of my time playing with the cruise function) and we reached this place called Free Port.. it has the legendary L.L. Bean that is open 24 hours a day.. 7 days a week.. and so we decided to do a "been there, done that" thingy and went to check out the place...

Nice chairs at LL Bean... Zhang Yi decided to stay in the car to rest... we then moved on and reached our cottage at 7.45am... literally waking up the cottage owners :P But it's ok.. they said that they are open 24 hours a day and they were really nice people... Check out the next blog posting!