Portland, Maine

And so we sadly departed Portsmouth to head up the coast into Maine and the main city Portland (not to be confused with the bigger Portland in Oregon).

 We were amused by this place on the way in, Planet Dog. There were a lot of pooch parlours here.

Portland was nice enough place to wander around. The hotel was expensive, but unlike the Hilton the staff couldn't be more helpful.

The main attraction in town is the Art Gallery. This is modern gallery at the front with a couple of much older bits of gallery space tacked on at the back. Overall a very nice little collection with some good American works by the likes of Winslow Homer. We didn't even have to walk here. The hotel drove us down in their courtesy bus.

Dinner was memorable too. For once, although we had scouted out a number of places to eat, we didn't eat in any of them. We wanted to eat early, but in our smart little area of town with all the best restaurants, the ones we wanted were either not open yet or already booked up and we didn't want to wait. Instead, given the rain, we just went straight from the little bar we had a drink in to an Italian we could see across the road. Excellent choice. The charcuterie and cheese plates that we ordered as starters were outstanding. A fine evening although were were both in bed ridiculously early. Our clocks hadn't adjusted yet.