Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Bangor and Augusta

This is really just a place to share some photos but to also share a little love for the 3rd and 4th biggest (using that term loosely) cities in Maine.  So just a little background:  After coming back from our great weekend in Providence, Shel and I wanted to go out to a nice restaurant in Bangor and WE FOUND ONE, a New American Cuisine place on lower Hammond Street called Fiddleheads.  You may have seen my shares on FB and Foursquare, so I won't repeat it but the food was first rate, as good as found in a much bigger city; and the staff was wonderful.
Before our reservations we took a couple hours to walk Downtown Bangor, which I'm quite familiar with having worked there a lot but Shel had not really been.
Hannibal Hamlin statue

Public Enemy #1
I don't have any so-called skyline pictures but I did notice on Friday coming back home from Surry, driving up 1A and then 395, crossing the bridge on 395 between Brewer and Bangor that if you could get up there, you could get an awesome picture of the Penobscot River in front of the Bangor skyline.  There's got to be another place.  That would be a great panorama picture, which will be my segue to share yesterday's time in Downtown Augusta.
Yesterday we went to dinner at the Riverfront BBQ in Augusta, which has a great bar upstairs called the Gin Mill.  We ate upstairs, had a drink with the owner and enjoyed ourselves immensely.  Before we got to the restaurant I took a few pics of downtown, two of them with my new panorama app, which will explain the awkward nature of those pics.
Key Bank bldg. from one block above Water St

Kennebec River bridge from downtown

Old Federal building
There's a block of downtown behind this picture.  That's the Key Bank building again on the distant left and there's another half dozen blocks of downtown beyond.  The entrance to the restaurant is that glass area that goes all the way to the sidewalk in the left foreground.  A great spot for a skyline shot of Augusta would be from that bridge and that one, unlike 395, has a sidewalk.  Hmmmm.

PS  I actually took a picture yesterday from that 395 bridge over the Penobscot River between Bangor and Brewer looking toward the Bangor skyline but it didn't come out well.  Maybe because I was driving (shhhh), maybe because downtown is at least a half mile from this bridge and also due in part because of Todd's nose smudges on the passenger window.  I'll try again.  It would make a nice picture if it could be gotten.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks really nice out there. And not nearly as crowded as SoCal. Wish it was like that here.

Zebster said...

It's hard to get crowded when there's only 1 1/4 million in the whole state. These two cities have populations of 40 and 30k.
Thanks for reading. The drawback is that you can easily run out of things to do.

mamajoan said...

Great comments and pictures. We are fortunate to have as many places to visit and quality restaurants, etc. Also there are many more activities such as concerts, festivals, etc than there have ever been