January officially marked my first year in Portland. Since starting this blog, I have lived in Spain, New York City, England, Italy, San Diego, and now Maine! It has been a crazy five years, but I am grateful that I’ve been able to experience so many amazing places—and even the not so great.

I’m not going to lie, the move to Maine was ROUGH. After almost two years in the blissful San Diego sun, arriving in the Northeast in January was a huge wake-up call. 

My first time in Portland and official move date was on the tail end of a work trip. I had been in Las Vegas for a work conference and came down with the flu, so I barely made it up the steps to the new place I’d call home. Throw in unemployment, a deployment, a canceled Eurotrip, and a pandemic to the basic stressors of moving (hello, no friends), and voila! The perfect storm of doom and gloom. 

Anyhow, now that those days are in the past (besides COVID, of course), I’m able to enjoy Maine a lot more. I don’t think I’ve had the “full” experience since oyster festivals, summer concerts, sailing tours, and all the other quintessential New England things are either canceled, paused, or modified. I’ve tried to make the most of it. 

Here are some activities and pieces of Portland and New England that I’ve enjoyed in the past year. This list by no means covers all of the wonderful moments that have happened or other things to do, but I find lists easier to create so here!

Eating

Portland is a bona fide city for “foodies”—or so I’ve been told. I like to think of it as a combination of classic New England fare and hipster food. There are so many small businesses/restaurants in the area that I want to try and we are working our way through the Portland Food Map to try them all. I can confirm that so far I have eaten my weight in lobster rolls and oysters. All delicious. Some goodies so far have been Baharat, Lena’s Portland Lobster Company, Terlingua, Duckfat, and Honey Paw.

Drinking

What goes better with eating than drinking??? In the blocks that surround me, I have access to multiple breweries, wineries, distilleries, and even kombucheries (who knew that was a thing?!). While this scene has been affected by COVID restrictions, the businesses/patrons have done their best at following the rules so that everyone can enjoy time outside, sipping a drink. Many of these places have live music in the summer, so that you can kick back 6ft+ a part, listen to the band, and feel a slight sense of normalcy.

Now that it’s winter, we don’t venture out to these places as much, but we did hit up Maine Craft Distilling recently and they have cozy little cabins to sit in.

Outdoorsy Things

I absolutely loved Portland in the summer. I started most of my days with either a run or a walk outside, and we usually ended it with dinner on the balcony. In addition to my daily running and biking, I also spent a decent amount of time fishing, playing pickle ball, and occasionally basketball. 

With all of the free time on the weekends, I went hiking, paddleboarding, kayaking, and all of the other outdoor/water things. 

Thankfully fall’s weather was still good to us, and we could continue hikes in the beautiful foliage and pickle ball matches at dusk. 

Hopefully I’ll get to explore even more this year before we leave Maine. I’m planning on making a bucket list of what I have left to do. I still want to make it up North for some more epic hikes, revisit Acadia, go sailing, and continue chomping my way through the local chowdah.