{"id":350,"date":"2013-05-26T09:59:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T14:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/?p=350"},"modified":"2013-05-26T18:15:34","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T23:15:34","slug":"worcester-way-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/worcester-way-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Worcester Way Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_6958\"<\/a>

Warm toffee pudding, at the Beechwood Hotel’s Ceres Bistro.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we make our annual journey to Maine, I do a lot<\/strong> of planning. We think and talk about it all year, and I start making reservations around the holidays (or even before) for the six-week trip that starts sometime after Bill\u2019s birthday, around the end of May. Bill and I are well-suited that way — he\u2019s the big-picture, \u201cconcept\u201d guy (\u201c…. and let\u2019s stop at Fallingwater on the way back!\u201d), and I\u2019m the hypernerdy detail person. This suits me fine, because Bill would settle for anything halfway decent, but I\u2019m particular: The hotel doesn\u2019t have to be fancy, but it\u2019s nice if it\u2019s at least interesting. Once we get there, I want to park the car and have dinner and a cocktail there. Good food required. Room service for morning coffee is a big plus, and wifi a prerequisite. I have a running list of B&Bs, inns and boutique\/historic hotels I keep track of year-round, and when it\u2019s time to make an itinerary, I link as many of them together as possible to make a little jeweled necklace of a journey — and we always like to try a slightly different route, especially on the way home, to ease the pain of vacation\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

We were almost ready to leave when Bill\u2019s Uncle Ralph passed away, meaning we\u2019d have to depart a little early and get to Maine for the funeral. Then we\u2019d double back to NYC, and take up our trip from there, returning to Maine again afterwards. Ralph had lived a long, full life, and his health had not been good of late. Of course, the trip would be full of the usual funeral rites — catching up with family & friends not seen in years (and in my case, meeting them for the first time), reminiscences, hard church pews, rain, a hymn you haven\u2019t heard in years, but realize you remember word for word.<\/p>\n

It also meant long, hard driving to get to Maine from Tennessee in two days. The first was 11 hours, the second would be about 9. We made it all the way to Wilkes-Barre on Day 1 to a well-run Hampton Inn (our emergency brand of choice when we\u2019re road warriors) with a sushi place nearby. Day 2 brought us to Harpswell, ME, where Bill\u2019s cousins Bert & Cilla teach us amateurs how to host guests with style and panache. Plus their house on Casco Bay, is quiet, secluded and beautiful. \u201cOur\u201d room and bath overlook the water, and the light starts coming in around 4 AM. As soon as we arrive, we always get out of the car and just inhale deeply — the entire state smells like balsam.<\/p>\n

After a sweet service for Ralph, we gathered with his family and neighbors, and later, Bert, Cilla and her sister Polly and husband Jerry all gathered for hot crab dip, steak, fingerling potatoes and grilled fiddleheads (they were at their season\u2019s height, and the best I\u2019ve ever had) at the house. Cilla and Polly, daughters of Bill\u2019s Uncle Bob (his mother\u2019s brother) are Bill\u2019s closest family, and it meant so much to see them all together that he quietly wiped away tears after Polly and Jerry left. Jerry and Bert had been combinations big brothers\/surrogate dads after Bill\u2019s father passed away suddenly when he was 12.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6931\"<\/a>

Bill, center, with his Maine family.<\/p><\/div>\n

We decided we\u2019d had enough long drives for a while, so picked a halfway point to New York City from Harpswell. Worcester worked fine. I didn\u2019t find anything in Select Registry or Historic Inns of America (my first go-tos), so checked out Trip Advisor. You\u2019ve got to be careful there — Trip Advisor is skewed to families and sometimes penny-pinchers who go crazy over cheap hotels with little value, and\/or golf or sports-oriented venues we don\u2019t care anything about. Also, just as on Yelp or Urbanspoon, anyone, including hotel managers, can post glowing reviews. But if you read carefully, you can usually tell when the praise is coming from real travelers who know what they\u2019re talking about. So I booked us into the Beechwood Hotel — a slightly quirky place with a big round section, a restaurant, Ceres Bistro, and 24-hour room service. The price was certainly reasonable — $160 for a king room at the last minute on Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n

Next door to UMass\u2019 medical school, the Beechwood is set back from the main road with an ambiguously marked drive, so we ended up taking a circuitous route around the hospital, where the very old, original buildings still stand. But once we stepped in from the still-unseasonably cold weather (low 40s, with rain), the Beechwood reminded me of those lively stagecoach stops you see in old westerns, down to the fireplace in the lobby. It was friendly, comfortable and exceeded our expectations at every turn. The young people who make up the staff were sweet, smart and chatty. Our room was upgraded to a larger mini-suite, and when we walked downstairs for dinner, we were well-tended by the staff. The wine list was terrific — we\u2019d never seen half bottles of our favorite rose champagne, Nicholas Feuillette, and the cognac included another favorite, Pierre Ferand, by the glass. And the food was far better than we\u2019d hoped for. My gigantic bowl of Portuguese fish soup boasted fat scallops, shrimp, cod, and linguica (Portuguese sausage) in a light tomato broth. Bill had swordfish with mango salsa. The manager who\u2019d chatted with us later sent over a complimentary dessert — outfitted with a lid, in case we wanted to take it up to our room. The warm toffee pudding didn\u2019t make it that far.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6955\"<\/a>

Dining room, Ceres Bistro.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s the next morning, and I\u2019m tapping this out with the room service breakfast dishes nearby. We\u2019re packed & ready, but watching the tail end of a John Wayne movie on TCM before we hit the road for NYC. But the Beechwood is a reminder that unexpected journeys can still offer up treasures, that surprise and improvisation can be welcome turns in a carefully plotted schedule. I hope some of the painstakingly selected, much more expensive inns I have lined up later in the trip will treat us as warmly as this one. Thanks, Uncle Ralph, for one last reminder to enjoy the journey.<\/p>\n

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When we make our annual journey to Maine, I do a lot of planning. We think and talk about it all year, and I start making reservations around the holidays (or even before) for the six-week trip that starts sometime after Bill\u2019s birthday, around the end of May. Bill and I are well-suited that way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kristareese.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}