A Weekend In Bangor, ME
In early January, Monica and I took a long weekend trip up to Bangor, ME. I hate the cold weather so you may be wondering why we went to an even colder location during Winter? I don’t know. But we have fun going on weekend trips to different places and my best friend Marty had recently painted the inside of a brewery in the town over from Bangor, Orono.
So we went up on a Thursday and stayed until Sunday and we had a blast. They have a casino in Bangor called The Hollywood Casino Hotel. We went there after we got there Thursday night. We gambled for a bit and then made our way to a nearby bar called “Seasons Lounge and Grill” where we had a few drinks and some food. Say what you want about chicken fingers but their chicken finger and fry basket was killer. After a few drinks we called an Uber and went back to our hotel. Oh funny story about Uber up there. We went during college vacation (unplanned) and all the bars and restaurants were dead all weekend. This area is filled with college kids so it’s super quiet otherwise. Anyway, the Uber who brought us to the Casino earlier in the night was the same guy who picked us up later.
The next morning we went to a breakfast place called ‘Governor’s Breakfast.’
This place was great; a real classic diner feel. The service was very friendly, food was delicious, and prices were reasonable. After this, we explored Downtown Bangor and did some window shopping.
Downtown Bangor was pretty cool. Definitely an old town vibe with small thrift stores and antique shops, but a nice change from a city like Providence where we live now.
We even bought some wine in this antique shop that was made right in Maine. The wine was made by Savage Oakes and it’s called Ruffed Grouse, actually a very good wine.
We kept walking around the town and I shot a few photos of different areas and the sunset from our parking garage.
Later on, we went to a few breweries, one being Sea Dog Brewing Company which was great. They have a ton of beer that can accommodate anyone’s beer preference. That night we went to dinner at Woodman’s Bar & Grill in Orono. The owners of that restaurant also own Orono Brewing Company, where my friend Marty painted the inside. Woodman’s had some amazing food. We highly recommend it. We had pulled chicken egg rolls as an app, Monica had the buffalo chicken salad and I had the Patty melt burger. All delicious. After dinner we went to Orono Brewing Company in Orono, ME. Here’s what the inside looks like.
Marty did an incredible job painting the inside; I highly recommend following him on Instagram, as well as Orono Brewing Company.
The next morning we got coffee at this tiny diner, like real tiny. They didn’t have different flavors of coffee, no lattes, no espresso, just hot or iced coffee, black or with cream. It was very old school. Bangor has a small mall, for those of you that have never been, think like a smaller version of Warwick Mall or Walpole Mall in Mass. Small and very quiet. Then we got lunch at this bomb mexican place. It was called Las Palapas and it was right by the mall, super good food, huge portions, and great service.
I had never been to a trampoline park so we went to one of those, I felt like a 10 yr. old kid again. We bounced around for about an hour and then went back to the hotel. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time so I slept great that night.
But anyway, that night we went to dinner at this place called Blaze in downtown Bangor. We had some chicken wings for an app and these wings were probably the best chicken wings I’ve ever had.
Blaze is known for it’s wood-fired pizza so we of course tried the pizza. We got this one with ham and bacon and sausage I believe? And arugula. I forget the name but it was super super good.
We finished it off there with one of the adult milkshakes which was delicious.
We went to a few different bars after this and had a great time. What was great was everything is very cheap up there, so at one bar we each had 1 or 2 drinks and we each had 2 shots, so about 4 drinks and 4 shots, and the total was $48 I think, which down here would have been much more expensive. The next bar we went to was $18 for 2 shots, a beer, and a cocktail, unbelievable.
All in all, it was cold but it was a great time. If you’ve never been to Bangor and you like exploring and seeing new places, it might be worth your weekend. It’s a long drive, about 4 and a half hours from Providence, but it was a fun time. I don’t think I could entertain myself for a week but a 3 day weekend was just enough time to see what we wanted and not get bored.
Hope you enjoyed this article! If so, leave a comment and pass it along. Thanks for reading.
Mike
What's On My Home Screen?
Hey friends. I thought this might be a cool post, hopefully you do too. I’m going to show you what my home screen on my phone looks like and go through some of the most important apps I use. Hopefully this could help show you some apps that might help you!
So first off, here’s my home screen.
So I have an iPhone X 64GB in Space Gray and it’s great, it does everything I need and I’m a big fan of it. I wish the battery life was just a little better but I do use my phone a lot so I can’t complain.
Most of these apps you probably all recognize; LinkedIn, Facebook, instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Google Maps, Waze, Uber.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I keep most/all of my social media on my home page because I use them a lot. I run a company, Focus Forward Media with a partner and we do video production, photography, and social media for companies. So I am managing our Instagram, our Twitter, our Facebook, as well as my own and some of our clients.
LinkedIn I keep up front because I’m trying to be more active there, I think of it as the Facebook of Business. It can be an effective way to interact with people you might want to do business with or see business news/headlines, connect with new people, etc.
Dropbox I keep up front because it’s how I get social media content to my phone. If I create a graphic I put it into Dropbox from my Mac and then take it from the Dropbox app on my phone. It’s where I put my photos too. Super helpful.
Nuzzel - Nuzzel is a news app I really like. It can log in to your Twitter or FB and it pulls headlines from top news sites, headlines from big accounts you follow and links to articles you might be interested in. From Nuzzel you can then share the article right to your Twitter or Facebook without leaving the app. It’s a great source in finding news so I’m a big fan of it.
The email app I’m using at the moment is ‘Email - Edison Mail’ I’m very picky with my email app. I use to use the Gmail App, and then switched to the iOS mail app. I liked the gmail app but it got to be too much for me and I wanted something simpler; hence going to the iOS mail app. It was very clean, very basic, and sort of text based in my opinion, which I liked. But after a while, especially after iOS 12, there came to be bugs with the notifications. For example, I would get a notification 10 minutes after I got an email even though that account was set to ‘push’ notifications. Another thing that annoyed me was I would get a notification for an email, I would swipe to open that email, but the email app would open in another account inbox. Then I’d have to navigate to that inbox for that email. So I did some research and found the Edison Email App. It’s actually very similar in look to the iOS mail app; it’s very clean and simple. It’s a bit more organized, faster, and the notifications work great. If you’re looking for a new email app I would recommend it! It can organize your emails into travel, packages (for deliveries), bills and receipts, subscriptions, entertainment, and security. It’s pretty sweet.
LIGHTROOM
Sometimes I’ll do a quick edit of a photo on my phone and the Lightroom mobile app is awesome. It has all the tools you need to edit on the go and more. If you’re a photographer and like to edit while traveling, it’s a great app and if you have an Adobe subscription, you can get it very easy.
FOURSQUARE
Foursquare is a cool app that can help you find places to eat and things to do in your area. I keep it to occasionally look for a new restaurant or bar, or to write reviews myself. If you like to review places, it’s a cool app because it can keep track of where you’re going and will prompt you to review places you’ve been. With every review you get points, levels, etc. it’s cool, check it out.
GPS
My GPS choice varies. I use to use Waze almost all the time, but often times now when I open it there’s bugs or it takes forever to load, or it says it can’t find the place I’m looking for/there’s no connection when I have no problem with service. So I’ve been using Google Maps more lately. I still use Waze sometimes but not as often. What’s your GPS of choice? I have almost never used Apple Maps because I hear it’s terrible but if any of you use it or love it, let me know, would love to hear your thoughts.
MOBILE BROWSER
Lastly, my mobile browser choice is Google Chrome as opposed to Safari. I’m curious to hear your thoughts, leave a comment here or shoot me an email on why you use one or the other (mike@mikeneilan.com). I don’t have anything against Safari actually, i just prefer Chrome and have been using it on desktop forever so naturally I use it on my phone. Any benefits to Safari over Chrome? Or vice versa? Let me know.
What’s on your home screen? Did this post help you find some new apps or make you think about your apps? Let me know. If you have any questions for me, my email is mike@mikeneilan.com
If you or someone you know is looking for a portrait photographer or is looking for wedding video/photo, send them my way, I’d be happy to talk with them.
Thanks for reading, have a great day.
Mike.