Up for our second day in Portland, we needed to find breakfast of course. A place nearby our AirBnB that had a decent set of reviews was Bernie’s Foreside. Pretty standard breakfast fare but served well. We enjoyed it.
Then it was back into the town proper to see what new adventures we could find.
While walking along the waterfront area where all the shops seem to be located, Maura spotted a lady selling these unique hats and decided she had to have one.
Without much else planned we decided to do a duck boat tour of the city from Maine Duck Tours. One was beginning pretty soon so we didn’t have to wait too long and only needed to kill a bit of time. Having been through these in the past we somewhat knew what to expect. It gave us a good overview of the city and some ideas for what to do next.
By then it was time to get a beverage and we had learned of Gritty McDuff’s which is one of the older pubs we saw around the area. We lucked into two seats at the bar and sampled a few different beers. Maura had a flight and I stuck to full pours.
One nice thing about Gritty’s that I wish more bars did is a mug club. It’s a great way to instill and reward loyalty in your regular customers. I would absolutely join one for a couple of places in Pittsburgh.
While on the duck tour we learned of Victoria mansion as we drove past it. Maura and I like taking tours of the old mansions and seeing what people’s lives were like back then. We knew we’d have to check it out even though it was a bit of hike from Gritty’s to get to it.
Along the walk we saw a police officer stop to inspect an enormous pothole that looked like it could eat a tire. He parked his car near it so people would avoid it.
The mansion is large and you can purchase your tour tickets in the back of the driveway at the gift shop. They also have a bathroom you can use if you needed one like I did.
Our tour completed we were hungry and looking for something great to eat. A buddy of mine that used to live in Portland recommended Otto’s pizza with a touch of jealousy that he couldn’t have any.
We both ordered a couple of slices and sat outside to eat it. We didn’t notice until it was too late that there was a place next door where you could sit down and order your pizza inside that also served beer. But we enjoyed out pizza in the sun and there was a slightly cool breeze that kept us from getting too comfortable.
We then proceeded to walk down the street and checked out a couple of shops. One of them was an old bookstore that looked like you could get lost in there literally. The other store was music shop that had some used retro games. I picked up a copy of Ducktales for the NES.
Without having much else planned we decided to get our car and see if we could find some breweries before dinner. One of the nearby ones that seemed interesting was Bunker brewing. At first we thought they might be closing because there seemed to be almost no people around. That didn’t turn out to be the case. We tasted a couple of their beers which were quite nice. Maura liked them enough to buy a glass from them.
Then we went on to check Foul mouthed brewing which was a bit of a drive from where we were. They were a nice looking brewery with a video game them throughout. The beers were ok but nothing that stood out too much to either of us.
About that time we decided to get some dinner so we headed back to the main part of town to see what was available for us to get some seafood. Being Sunday it seemed like most places had closed up early. We did find Andy’s Old Port Pub to be open however. They had a live band and the music was spilling out into the streets. We got a table near the front and enjoyed some dinner before heading back to the AirBnB so we could be back on the road in the morning.