My husband and I are spending the night in Portland in anticipation of having to be in Kennebunkport tomorrow for him to do a reading at the library there. So we're enjoying some time in Maine's biggest city, remembering what it was like to be young and living in places a little more cosmopolitan than Camden, Maine... Not that we don't love my hometown!

While Paul got a haircut at his favorite hair salon in the state, The Men's Room, I scored three awesome cashmere sweaters at Material Objects, my favorite consignment shop in the state. We had chai at Arabica and read the Portland Phoenix, learning about all the groovy events taking place around here that we were going to miss--Indigo Girls at Merrill Auditorium!--and joined the diverse crowds milling around the cobble streets and funky old brick buildings in the Old Port on a sunny Saturday on a holiday weekend. While I don't want to live here, sometimes I just need the social and cultural refreshment of visiting this small urban pocket in our largely rural state. The people-watching alone is a revelation, better than reading a fashion magazine.

For dinner we tried a fairly new Thai place near Longfellow Square called Boda: rich, Thai-style iced tea, crispy squid, skewers of figs wrapped in bacon, beef panaeng (beef with a curry and coconut milk sauce and jasmine rice), pork stuffed jalapenos, and crab fried rice.
Now we're in our room lying on the bed like beached whales, listening to traffic, sirens, and the occasional jet overhead, sated and happy from our few hours on the streets of the Port City.

City: traffic, noise,
food, coffee shops, buses, gulls,
ships, sirens, people.