Arrived at John and Penny's early afternoon on the Friday to stay for two nights. John is one of my dad's first cousins - they are lovely and couldn't have been more hospitable. They live about 3 miles outside of a small town called Belfast, in an amazing house they've built themselves. And when I say built themselves, not in the North London sense of employing an architect to 'help' with the design, then employing some Polish people to build it - they actually did the work - e.g. building the wooden structure with wood from trees on their land. Their lives couldn't be more different to ours in New York and it was really incredible and special to see it. House is gorgeous, really spacious with a lovely fireplace in the middle of the main room which is perfect for the 'fresh' Maine climate..The house backs onto a lake which you can see from the kitchen & living room and off of that is a lovely deck. They have built a tennis court from scratch and John has a boat and is about to build a boat house to keep it in. THey're very sporty and active, cross country skiing on their lake in winter, sailing in the summer, running, playing tennis etc. They have an incredible lifestyle. First night we had dinner with them at home and the next morning headed out to see a bit of the countryside. Maine, in general, blew me away. Spectacular scenery around lakes and the ocean everywhere. Belfast, the town, is very pretty. I think like lots of Maine towns it's right next to the water and there's a lovely view of the coast as you come down the main street. Had a big breakfast...this is us, stuffed, shortly after..
Then headed to Acadia National Park. Saw some beautiful beaches - this was before Ruby stripped down to her swimming costume in the FREEZING cold and went purple.
Then drove up to the top of Cadillac Mountain, still in Acadia, to look at the view. Bit cloudy so the picture's not amazing, but it was beautiful.
We then went home, had a nice fresh lobster dinner which I didn't get a picture of (or partake in I had white fish knaina hora..) but Al was delighted. Then we left early the next morning to drive to Newport, Rhode Island.
Newport's an interesting place - it used to be the summer retreat for presidents etc and still has some incredible mansions and beautiful houses overlooking the water. Aside from oggling other people's nice properties and having some food in the nice restaurants, didn't strike me as alot to do there. We stayed in a lovely hotel though, way too nice to stay in with kids really, but Ruby was so happy to go swimming in the pool. We went out for a lovely early evening meal at a place called The Moorning. Ruby in her element..
Retrospectively it was an ambitious trip to do with a 3.5 year old and 6 month old. We covered about 1000 miles in 4 days so there was lots of car time..
But we did get to see some beautiful leaves from the car so that kept me and Al occupied, and the i-phone and Dora took care of Ruby.
