Headin' Down South

We spent almost every evening last week debating about whether or not to go to Bangor on Friday night and get in some Christmas shopping on Saturday morning. Thursday night, we finally made up our minds to go. We made our reservation and decided to leave as soon as Luke got home from work on Friday.

Well it was snowing when he got home so we raced around trying to get everything ready so we could leave. The drive down wasn't that great. There was already a lot of snow stuck to the road and it was sleeting. There were a few cars in the ditch and we passed a number of plows (I still don't think there was enough snow to warrant plowing, but this is Maine - they do things differently here). I don't know what time we left, but we made it to Bangor by 8:30. The last 45 minutes of the drive, there wasn't any snow at all, but it was POURING rain, and windy!

After depositing our stuff at the hotel (Motel 6 - wouldn't recommend it. I'm nearly positive they were pumping cigarette smoke IN through our bathroom 'fan'), we went out to get something to eat. The Seadog Brewery is our latest favourite. It was crowded in there because, well, Bangor is a university town, the Seadog has good beer (supposedly....of course....), and it was Friday night. I had a big ol' juicy burger and some of the craziest ginger ale I've ever had - it burned! Luke had a giant tuna steak burger. Yum! Then 'home' to bed.

Saturday was a great! First, we headed downtown to find this bakery I'd found the address for online - The Friars' Bakehouse. Well, Friars they were indeed! Dominican monks, complete with brown habits, sandals,....and the requisite SUV??? We're not sure if they were actually supposed to be open or not, but there were lights on and people inside and goods in the case and hey! They're monks! They're not going to tell us to leave are they? We got some scones to take home (the richest most cranberry-filled scones we've ever eaten) and we each got a cinnamon bun for breakfast. But not just any cinnamon bun. Nope, they gave you a choice: Venial Sin-ammon buns (just icing) or Mortal Sin-ammon buns (nuts too). Hah! Monks with a sense of humour even! (We went for the mortal sin.) Then when we were getting in the car to leave, we spotted two monks getting into an SUV across the street. *gasp* I saw part of the monk's bare leg! Is that allowed? Or the better question, aren't they at least allowed to wear longjohn's in winter? It was COLD out! (LK, we'll defer to you, our Seminary Student Friend, for confirmation about Official Monk Attire.)

Then on to the mall. Got some Christmas shopping done, ate some pizza at Sbarro's ('Non-punks need not apply'), and had Starbucks. Oh Starbucks. How wonderful to have commercially prepared espresso again. (Yes, it's true. It's nowhere to be found up here.)

Our last stop was the natural foods store. Now that was a store! I've never seen so many foreign products under one roof before. Lots of things we'd never heard of - or at least never dreamed we'd have the opportunity to buy (though we didn't). Sweets imported from India, fancy preserved lemons from China, and lots of packages with writing in other languages. It was a great!

The drive home was much more pleasant. The roads were dry and hardly slippery at all until about an hour from home. And then it was cold too, but we stopped at Tim Horton's to get tea for the rest of the drive home. Overall, a very enjoyable trip 'down south.' But the moral remains: when in Maine, always travel with a raincoat!