A friend came to visit us (all the way from Israel!) and my roommate and I decided that was as good of an excuse as any to pop up to Portland, Maine for a visit.

Portland has a well-deserved reputation as a beautiful seaport town with a great food scene and lots of cool things to do.  We were only there for an afternoon, but we had a blast and can’t wait to go back!

We spend a good amount of time just strolling around and enjoying the sights – this seagull on the church was one of my favorite sights! (Like most of New England, Portland has some gorgeous churches.)

We stopped by Maine Mead Works for a tasting and tour – here is part of their fermentor system.  The tour was a very informative 15 minutes and it was really cool to see behind the scenes!

Bottles of their mead, lined up and waiting to be labelled (by hand; it’s a small, local operation.)

The meads we tasted!  I’m not a huge fan of mead, but the flavors were fun to taste and Anna ended up buying one to take home to our friends because she enjoyed it so much! On the right – the apples are starting to ripen in our part of the world!

I did buy a jar of honey at the meadery – I love honey and I love buying local honey! The best thing about this – it’s from a hive of one of the meadery workers who has a little urban hive in Portland; she jars the honey and sells it in the meadery.  That was such a cool story!

And, finally, a beautiful little ship/water scene.  The seafood here was amazing and there were all sorts of amazing things to see and do – 6 hours just wasn’t enough!  We’re definitely going back soon!