The 10 Best Lobster Rolls of My Life (So Far)

Yankee Lobster roll looks like a prototypical lobster roll, but it didn't make the list.

Lobster rolls are a funny thing with me. The first time I had one, it was transcendendant. Fresh, tender, hot, buttery lobster — one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life.

And for some reason, probably because that best-ever lobster roll was consumed in Bar Harbor, Maine, a locale that's not easy to get back to, I continue to seek out that same level of perfection in other locations selling lobster rolls. I am often disappointed, and yet, unlike in the area of fish and chips (where I know the best best best ever fish and chips are served at the Ship Anson in Portsmouth, UK, and they have ruined me for life for all other fish and chips), I feel compelled to continue in my lobster roll superiority quest.

Let's talk about what constitutes a lobster roll. Traditionally, it was served cold, as a lobster "salad" roll, comprised of the less-desireable claw-and-other-bits meat and mixed with mayonnaise and perhaps some other spices or greenery. It was, essentially, a sandwich lobstermen could take with them for lunch while they were out doing their lobster thing.

Personally, and probably because that first roll I had was hot, I think it's time we moved beyond tradition. Because believe me, a good hot lobster roll beats a good cold lobster roll. Every. Single. Time. Sweet, tender lobster with a smattering of butter, all without any more manual labor than opening your mouth and chewing. Drool.

The trouble is, a lot of things can go wrong with a lobster roll. The bread is a common failing, and one that should be easier to get right. The top-split hot dog bun is best, buttered and grilled. Generally in my experience, restaurants fail when they try to depart from this. The lobster meat is another common failing. Although it's put on a bun and served as a sandwich, the lobster roll should still feature fresh, tender lobster. Many don't, unfortunately.

On a recent trip to Boston, I realized I'd passed more than 10 lobster rolls consumed, and perhaps it was time to start ranking them. I have hopes that some day another place will move in high in the rankings, but as I've tried many of the well-reviewed lobster rolls from D.C. to Boston, it's possible this is it unless I get back to Maine.

1. The Lobster Claw, Bar Harbor, Maine — A lobster roll should be relatively easy, but there are a lot of ways to screw it up. This place set the standard by doing everything right. Lobster fresh off the boat, cooked up in the back, and immediately plunked down on your roll with a side of butter. Pure lobstery perfection that started a quest. And sadly, perhaps no more, as it appears from Yelp that they're closed. Let us hope it's just for the season. I like to think someday I can go back to Bar Harbor and have another lobster roll this good.

Lobster roll and oysters at Abbott's Lobster in the Rough.

2. Abbott's Losbter in the Rough, Noank, Connecticut — Although the first hot lobster roll I had was in Maine, apparently the hot style is actually called a Connecticut-style roll. And Abbot's does a damn good job of it, although it serves it on a hamburger bun instead of the hot dog bun. It's clear the lobster is fresh, and cooked up fresh, and you get to enjoy it by the water. Wins all around, and enough to excuse the non-traditional bun, mainly because it's still the right texture and consistency, if not the normal shape.

3. Legal Test Kitchen, Boston, Massachusetts — I'm surprised a cold roll could rank this high on my list, but LTK does a lot of things right. The bread is the split, buttered and grilled hot dog bun, and the lobster meat, although cold, is clearly fresh and very tender, with just the right amount of mayo. There's a lot of meat, and eating it is a challenge that involves a lot of balancing; they should do without the piece of lettuce between the lobster meat and the bun and jam that meat in there a little more. Aside from that, though, I have no complaints.

The Daniel Packer Inn roll: so much potential, so many bread issues.

4. Captain Daniel Packer Inn, Mystic, Connecticut — The DPI got way too ambitious with its bread, putting some very good and more upscale (sherry butter and shallots, anyone?) hot lobster on a crusty bun that was nigh unchewable. With some nice, tender bread, it would have easily beaten the LTK roll, and might have even been ahead of Abbott's.

5. Luke's Lobster, New York, New York — A bit of a cross between a hot and a cold roll, this was served fairly close to room temperature with a bit of mayo and a bit of butter. It tasted better than it sounds, with fairly tender lobster meat on a classic split top hot dog bun.

6. Red Hook Lobster (tent), Washington D.C.-ish — I had one of Red Hook's hot lobster rolls from a tent they had at a festival, not from their line-around-the-block truck that moves around downtown D.C. I hope to rectify this one day and try the roll out of the truck, but for now, my impression of the roll was that, while it was nice that it was warm, the lobster meat had clearly been cooked beforehand and then warmed up. That is NOT the way to cook a hot lobster roll, and the meat ends up overly done and too chewy as a result.

Neptune Oyster's roll had tons of plate appeal, but didn't live up to it.

7. Neptune Oyster, Boston, Massachusetts — This one was rated well in the Boston foodie-verse, but did not live up to its rating, in my opinion. Problem number one was that, like Red Hook's, the meat was overdone and too tough and chewy. Problem number two was that they went with a brioche roll for the bread, and it couldn't stand up to the lobster and butter; it was mushy before I took the first bite. Oh, and problem number three is the $25 price tag. Now, I am as annoyed as anyone to read reviews about lobster rolls that complain about how expensive they are. It's a LOBSTER roll, people, not a turkey sandwich. However, for $25 that lobster should be melting in your mouth, and it wasn't even close. I do love the swanky-classic tiled interior of the place, but stick to the oysters here and go somewhere else for a lobster roll fix.

8. Tackle Box, Washington, D.C. — A fairly tender lobster salad roll, served on the classic bun if I remember correctly. Nothing to write home about, but not bad, either. I do enjoy the pseudo-beach-shack atmosphere, too.

9. J's Oyster, Portland, Maine — I had this one and the similarly unadorned Yankee Lobster roll within days of each other, but this one makes the list more on the strength of the J's Oyster ambiance than the roll itself. Yankee Lobster's definitely had more lobster, but I enjoyed my meal at J's more. And they did give you mayo on the side, so you could mayo to your own preferences.

10. Hank's Oyster Bar, Washington, D.C. — Another salad-style roll, a little too heavy on the mayonnaise, although that's preferable to completely unadorned (a pile of cold lobster is surprisingly untasty). Another place to stick to the oysters.

One-bagging it: Better with wheels

So after my last trip to Europe, one thing I didn't write much about was my attempt at one-bag travel. Well, it was at least what I would call one-bag travel; some purists would say that since I had a carry-on and a personal item, that wasn't technically one-bagging it. Whatever. I was traveling light, and I didn't check any luggage going out on my long-haul flight.

I got really excited about the idea of carry-on only travel as I was planning for my trip. I visited web sites like this one, and this one, and, knowing that I had a trip with lots of legs and travel on all manner of planes, trains, subways, and buses, I was sold.

The premise of one-bag travel is pretty simple — pack really light, and cut out "just in case" items. This is somewhat difficult for me, as I like to be prepared for anything. But when I began planning what I wanted to take on my trip, I found that I could still take the sorts of essentials I like to have (sewing kit, eyeglass repair kit, mini roll of duct tape, enough band-aids for minor surgery) and still have plenty of space in my suitcase. And I did cut out some of the more ridiculous always-prepared items I might have otherwise taken.

The primary way to fit everything into a carry-on is to cut down on your clothing and shoes. I planned to take only two pairs of shoes, plus an odd little pair of lightweight shower flip flop things, and I bought a travel clothesline, sink stopper, and laundry soap sheets to do some wash in the sink (I also planned to, and did, make use of the washer and dryer at our house in Ireland).

eBags Weekender (photo from Amazon)

I also asked for (and received) a new bag for Christmas, and based on the advice of the one-bag experts, I went with one without wheels, the eBags Weekender, a relatively inexpensive foray into the wheel-less bag world. This was a major mind shift for me, as I've always used wheeled suitcases, but I believed the arguments. They were, to sum up: without wheels, your hands are free; without wheels, you don't have to worry about cobblestones in Europe; without wheels, you won't have to worry about stairs; and wheel-less bags are lighter and have more interior space than wheeled bags.

I was all ready for one-bag travel. And then two things happened. One was that I developed a foot problem, and my podiatrist recommended taking my air cast in case I needed it (I did). The other is I came down with some sort of cold/sinus infection/plague just before I left. As a result, I was suddenly lugging around an unexpected air cast and small pharmacopia of cold remedies in my bag, which made it weigh a lot more than I was expecting it would.

(As a disgusting aside: sadly, none of the cold remedies cleared up my illness, even a z-pack...what finally ditched it was throwing up pure stomach acid when I had food poisoning. Nothing burns out your throat-schnoz-ear system faster.)

So, cue me with my heavier-than-expected bag, walking through the various transit systems of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The first annoying thing was that the chest straps that helped make it more stable also made it a pain to take off. So when I was waiting for the subway or on an actual subway car, I'd have to weigh the effort of undoing all the straps against the weight hanging on my back. But the second, far more concerning thing, was all that weight on my back. Turns out, my back is not that strong. As I walked through the endless tunnels of the London Tube system, my shoulders ACHED, and I began to long for wheels — even when I encountered stairs. Said stairs and cobblestones were few and far between when compared to the amount of regular, flat pavement.

The longer I went on my trip, the more unhappy I was about my bag. Everything else worked pretty well. I did laundry in my hotel rooms, and learned the important lesson that things dry much faster if you roll them in a towel after washing them. I discarded a book after I finished it, with a Bookcrossing.com marker in it. I used solid toothpaste and shaving cream sheets and Lush solid shampoo (okay, maybe that last one doesn't count...I use those every day).

I enjoyed not having a ton of stuff to keep track of, and not having to worry about carting around a steamer trunk-sized suitcase. I just really, really, wanted wheels, to the point where I thought about trying to find a store selling one of those collapsible luggage carts to start using on my bag.

Skyway No Weight Ultra (photo from Amazon)

So this year I decided to buy a lightweight wheeled bag. I lusted after the Zuca Pro, but went with the MUCH less expensive Skyway No Weight Ultra. It's only about 2-3 pounds heavier than my eBags backpack, but it has sweet, smooth, ultra-stable wide-stance wheels.

Then I put it to the test. Without an enormous amount of thought put into packing (I took three books, a weight no-no, and too many toiletries and clothes), I took it on the closest thing to a European trip you can do in the U.S. — a six day train trip to Boston. Cobblestones? Not so much, but there were definitely brick streets and stubbly D.C. Metro platform edges. And the Boston T's long subway corridors, punctuated with odd half-flights of stairs, were pretty much the exact equivalent of the London Tube (okay, maybe there wasn't quite as much gap to mind). Thanks to Metro's rampant escalator failures, I also got some experience at carrying it up and down full flights of stairs.

My verdict? Wheels win. Wheels win so much, it's not even funny. It was totally stable on the bricks and platform stubble, and pulled just fine. It has a nice rubber carry handle that I could grab whenever I needed to reach down and carry it on stairs, and because of the light weight, it was no big deal any time I needed to do so. And I popped that sucker up in the overhead train bin with no problems at all.

I'm going to keep my wheel-less bag, as I think there will still be some travel situations where it will be the better bag, and if I do ever need to travel with two bags, having one wheel-less, lighter-packed bag will be really handy. My old asshole-sized carry-on (you know, the one that's just a leetle bit over the appropriate size, which meant I never actually used it as a carry-on) will be the casualty of the new suitcase purchase.

I'm looking forward to one-bagging it again in Europe next year, with wheels. Now I just need a Kindle to deal with that too-many-books problem.

What I gave up by going green

My Regional train pulls into the tiny Mystic station.

Yay! The lengthy process of posting all of my photos and video is finally over. I've created a Flickr collection with all of the sets.

As my trip wound down, I started thinking about what I had given up by going green and not using any planes or cars. Planes is easy — I don't feel like I gave up anything by taking the train, unless you count grief and aggravation.

Cars, however, is a bit of a different story. In Boston, I definitely didn't miss out on anything by not having a car. In fact, as is generally the case in big cities, it was more convenient to take the subway and walk to my destinations than having to worry about driving and parking in a strange place. I think you see more by walking, as well.

In my day trips to Salem and Portland, I also don't feel like I gave up much. Taking a cab into and out of town in Portland would have saved me some time, but that's about it. If I were making Portland more than a day trip, though (or wanted to go to the LL Bean outlet), a car would have been helpful. And a drive up to lovely Bar Harbor would have been quite nice — and perhaps allowed me to track down that shack with the mind-blowing lobster rolls. There might be bus or boat transportation options to Bar Harbor, though — I didn't really look into it.

It was probably in Mystic that I gave up the most by not having a car. There's enough to do within walking distance of the train station for a few days, but to spend any more time there — perhaps go to the beach, visit the submarine and other museums, or go to the local wineries — I would have needed a car. Even Abbott's Lobster in the Rough — which I walked to because I really, really wanted to go there — should have been a cab ride or perhaps, if possible, reached by water taxi. There are rental car companies in the Mystic area, including Enterprise, so I'm assuming you can arrange to be picked up at the train station and at least be green about getting to the town.

I do, however, feel like there are some things I gained by doing this all by public transit. There is, of course, that feeling of doing right by the environment. But there's also a sense of accomplishment in figuring out other cities' public transportation systems, even though both Boston's and Portland's were fairly easy. And there's a lack of stress in knowing that someone else is always responsible for getting you to your destination.

I grew up in the Akron area, and in suburban Ohio fashion, thought that if you wanted to get anywhere, the car was it. I never would have thought about traveling for a week and being able to see and do all of the things I did on this trip without using cars or planes.

And indeed, this is the sort of trip you can only make on the busy Northeast rail corridor. So here's hoping we see the national rail network expand quickly — I loved traveling this way.

Kaboom!

So in the two days of Boston-to-Portland-to-Boston-to-Mystic, I didn't manage to post about the one thing I did in Boston Tuesday morning before heading to Portland.

In the course of going to North Station both Sunday and Monday morning, I realized how close it was to Charlestown. Most importantly, it's close to the Charlestown Navy Yard, home of the Constitution. During my tour of the ship this time around, one of the sailors had mentioned that they fire off a gun at 8 a.m. in the morning when they hoist the flag, and again at sunset.

I wasn't about to wake up early just to go over there and see a gun fired off, but since my train to Portland was at 9, heading over to the Navy Yard by boat a bit before 8, and then walking over to North Station from there, would put me there in good time for my train.

Having been just burned by the National Park Service saying the Friendship would depart Salem at 1 p.m., when the ship clearly left much earlier, I was a little leery that I would be going over there for nothing. I needn't have worried. Unlike the Park Service, when the Navy says they're going to fire off a gun at 8 a.m., they fire off a damn gun at 8 a.m.

I watched from the one vantage point I thought I'd be able to see the gun, and it was pretty silent except for some muffled calling out ("Fire in the hole!" I think). And then BOOM! I totally jumped, which is quite visible in the video I shot.



The video does show the brief orange flame, and then the cloud of smoke. No car alarms went off, as apparently they sometimes do. Still, the noise of that one blank gave me a better idea of what it must have been like in battle, with guns going off constantly.

Watching the gun go off was pretty sweet, and getting over there early ensured I was easily on time for my Downeaster train, so everything worked out well.

As for today, I've got a bit more time in Mystic, and then I'll be heading back home to DC. I should have lots of time to edit photos on the train, and hopefully Flickr Uploadr won't be so angry with my home Internet connection as it has been with the connections at my hotels.

Until then, I did finally manage to get my Saturday pics up.

All I want to do is eat cannoli for breakfast

I set out to do four things today:

1. Drink cappuccino

2. See square-rigged ship under sail

3. Eat oysters

4. Eat tiramisu

Guess which one I did not accomplish.

I wanted to be in Salem before 1 to try to see the Friendship sail, so that left me part of the morning. I decided to head over to the North End in search of good cappuccino and perhaps something along the pastry line. I'd already had a banana and a piece of peanut-butter-covered toast, but I was not about to pass up another opportunity for some form of delicious Italian dessert. Call it, uh, dessert of breakfast!

I got over to the North End early enough that there were still plenty of tables open at Mike's Pastry, so I went for the opportunity, and had a cappuccino (perfectly frothy) and a florentine ricotta cannoli. The ricotta filling was creamy and amazing, and in a shell reminiscent of toffee — sweeter and harder than their standard cream cannoli shells.

While I was at Mike's, I heard a snare drum in the distance. A group of about eight men marched past down Hanover Street in time to the snare drum, of varying ages and degrees of formal dress. I'm assuming they were on their way to a Memorial Day parade of some sort.

I thought about trying to make the 10:15 train to Salem but decided that would be pushing it. So I sat in the memorial/park behind Old North Church and read (1776 — I had to pick at least one book for this trip that was super relevant) for awhile. It was very surreal to be reading that book in that location, running across location after location in the book that I'd just been to.

I took the commuter train to Salem and got there at about noon. I was down by the water by 12:15, but when I turned the final corner to where the Friendship should be docked, or, perhaps, working her way out to the harbor, she was gone. I walked fast down Derby Wharf and there she was, but already fairly far away.

Friendship heads out.

I could see where the ship was headed, so I thought I'd try to walk down and catch up in time to see her set her sails. I walked, and walked, and walked. Once you reach a certain point on Derby Street in Salem, you no longer have any sort of view of the water. There's a giant power plant. Then a sewage plant. There's a lot of prime real estate taken up with crap. Literally.

Finally I reached a road jutting off in the right direction, and found myself entering Winter Island. Winter Island was actually really nice, with a tiny beach and lots of picnic tables and campsites. And I did get to see the ship heading out to sea, but still no sails. I had assumed they used a motor to get out of the harbor, but this left me wondering if they were going to sail at all between Salem and Maine, where the Friendship is supposed to be hauled out.

Anyway, I ended up doing a lot more walking today than I expected, and the guy that led our tour yesterday was super wrong when he said the ship was leaving at 1 p.m. It might have made open ocean by 1 p.m., but it probably left closer to 11 or 11:30. Since the ship wasn't actually ever under sail, and I'd already seen all the sites I wanted to see in Boston, I was much less dissappointed than I might have been.

I came back and had a light dinner at Union Oyster House — half a dozen oysters and clam chowder. Both were delicious. I'm still fairly new to eating oysters and these were larger and a little meatier than I've had, and therefore more intimidating for an oyster newbie. But they were super fresh — shucked in front of me at the bar — and tasty. The ambiance is fun, too, as the restaurant is the oldest in operation in the country.

Me at Union Oyster House.
The bartender/oyster shucker said he takes
a lot of pictures, and volunteered to take mine.

I've already let on that dessert was tiramisu, which I had with a decaf cappuccino, at Caffe Vittoria. Caffe Vittoria, unlike the tight bustle of Mike's Pastry, is a huge place, and it aims to be like a cafe in Italy. The space was really nice, the tiramisu creamy and one of the best I've ever had. The cappuccino was dandied up with a lot of cocoa powder, though — it paired really well with dessert but from a cappuccino purist perspective, Mike's was better.

Speaking of Mike's, I stopped back there one more time for some pizzelles — I figure these baked goodies I can take on the road. And although I probably hadn't thought of them for years, pizzelles are one food I associate strongly with my childhood and my grandmother, Nona.

Hanover Street in the North End.

I came to Boston looking for good seafood, but I think it will be the foods of the North End that I remember most. I've really felt the lack of a Little Italy in DC since I've been there — I tried and failed just to find a place to buy cannoli shells. Granted, if the past few days are any indication, if I did live somewhere near an Italian enclave, I would rapidly gain gargantuan amounts of weight as I sucked down Italian pastries, pasta, and fried goodness — especially if I wasn't walking what I'm estimating as 4-6 miles each day.

So it's some pizzelles for the road to appease the fourth of me that's Italian, because tomorrow I'm headed to Maine on the Downeaster.

How many lanterns if by aching calves?

An offering for Samuel Adams

Well, I managed to get through the rest of the Freedom Trail today, although anything involving taking stairs up or down results in excruciating pain in my calves. Thanks, Bunker Hill. Thanks a lot.

For the most part, my pictures will probably be more than enough detail (whenever I finally get them up to Flickr, which could be awhile, because I shot more than 300, and they need serious editing). In the case of two of the best experiences, though, photography wasn't allowed.

The first was the Old South Meeting House. There are some small museum exhibits at the back of the meeting house, which is reminiscent of many other churches of that era with its small pew boxes. It's much larger, though, and the exhibits cover everything from the Boston Tea Party to slavery.

The Paul Revere House is the other. Much of the Freedom Trail up to that point is old churches and graveyards, and indeed there's one more old church and graveyard to follow. Granted, that church — Old North Church — is probably the most famous on the Freedom Trail. But still, the Paul Revere House stands out because it is different. You see a lot of points of historical significiance on the Freedom Trail, and yes, Paul Revere did live in the house. 

Paul Revere house

But the real importance of the house is that it provides you with a historical context missing elsewhere. As I walked through the four open rooms, feeling the broad floorboards creaking under my feet, viewing the tiny children's chairs, metal pots and kettle, and  cavernous brick fireplaces,I got a real sense for how people lived back then. Yes, they met and talked about independence, and yes, they banded together and fought the British, but this is how they lived. I think this one is a can't-miss on the Freedom Trail.

Not far from the Paul Revere House in the North End is Galleria Umberto. I read about this unassuming little place on Yelp and when I realized it was nearby, it seemed like the perfect place to stop for a snack. It really, really, really didn't disappoint. For $5.05, I got a piece of pizza, a panzarotti (fried oblong potato and cheese deliciousness), and a Dixie cup of house wine. All were delicious, and I'm not sure I could feed myself from the grocery store for $5.05.

Galleria Umberto's display of Italian goodness

Less memorable was Yankee Lobster, where I had lobster roll #1 on the trip for dinner. This was another Yelp find, and I think if I had gotten an actual lobster, or I was into cold lobster rolls, I might have had a different reaction. The lobster roll was pretty substantial and unadorned, and not suffering from celery chunks or swimming in mayonnaise. But it was also cold, and that's just not my thing. 

When I think lobster roll, I think back to the ones we had in a little shack in Bar Harbor, Maine. Hot, fresh, and with butter on the side — they were amazing. I'm hoping at least one lobster roll I have on this trip comes close. But it wasn't Yankee Lobster's, which is a shame, because I really hiked to get there (and then, sadly, realized it was closer to a Silver Line stop than I'd thought, and that the Silver Line, a bus line, was less confusing than I thought it would be).

My other touristy highlights of the day were the Old State House — which had the most expensive admission at $7, but also the most extensive museum — and the Boston Public Library. The library is not on the Freedom Trail, but I had enough time left after I completed the trail to make it over there. I'm glad I did. The library's weekend hours for the summer are 9-5, and it's closed on Memorial Day. So the 20 minutes I had to go through it were the only opportunity I would have had.

The Boston Public Library is one of the more ostentatious public buildings I've seen. It reminds me a bit of the British Museum. I think I actually said "wow" when I walked in. So I'm really glad I slipped in to see it.

Boston Public Library

The T and other transit

So I'm back from the Freedom Trail, but before I go into that experience, I think I'm overdue for a transportation upddate.

Thus far, I've found the T to be incredibly easy to use, which is remarkable given that apparently it had a massive power outage yesterday. When I rolled into South Station on the Acela, I took the escalator down to the red line, queued up, and bought my pass. Based on my experience with other subways, buying a pass is usually the most difficult thing. But here the menus were extremely clear, and my 7-day pass was $15, which is absurdly cheap.

The system was pretty easy to figure out, although rather than signposting which way is which with the terminal station, the T uses "inbound," and "outbound," so it does take a little more thought to figure out which stairs and escalators to take. Some of the lines branch off in different directions, but the destinations seem pretty clear. 

All in all, I've felt very comfortable riding the T. It's not the cleanest subway system, but it's also the oldest in America, and trains seem to run pretty frequently on most of the lines.

Today, I also got to use my 7-day pass for a ferry ride from downtown to the navy yard at Charleston. Getting out on the water, even just for a little while, was nice, and it got me from point A to point B quite quickly.

Why I'm here for Old Ironsides

Pictures of my Acela trip and Red Sox game are finally up at Flickr.

Today I'm planning to work my way backwards through the freedom trail. 

Why backwards?

Well, I've got a ton of things I want to see while I'm here, but my main prompt for wanting to go to Boston was the USS Constitution.

I had a chance to see the Constitution only briefly during a family cruise stop a few years ago. We had eight hours, total, in Boston, and spent the morning on a tour. Still, in my remaining time, I hiked over in the rare 100 degree heat, quickly toured the ship and museum, and walked back to catch the shuttle back to the cruise ship. It wasn't the leisurely visit I would have liked, but I wasn't sure when I would have another chance to see the ship.

When the chance came up to be totally self-indulgent about my travel plans, I knew I wanted a second chance to see the Constitution at my own pace.

I suppose at this point I'm due for an explanation. If you've heard of the USS Constitution, or know her as "Old Ironsides," fighter of the Barbary pirates, star of the War of 1812, and the oldest commissioned floating naval ship in the world, you might wonder how a borderline Gen X/Gen Y woman came to be so interested in a square-rigged sailing frigate.

A valid curiosity. To be honest, I'm not even so sure myself how the fascination came about. I do know that I watched "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and was fascinated by this whole other wooden world, enough that I looked into it a little more, and found out that Patrick O'Brian had written 20 1/2 books about the characters in the movie.

Well, I'm someone who believes the movie is never better than the book, and I was intrigued by something that had achieved the level of acclaim O'Brian's books have, and yet flown under my literary radar. So I bought a used copy of the first book, and read it, and liked it enough to get a used copy of the second. And then the third. And somewhere around there I was hooked.

O'Brian does a lot of things well. His pacing is superb, and his description of another world, that of a British Royal Navy warship during the Napoleonic Wars, is flawless, if sometimes difficult for a landlubber to understand. But his truest, deepest strengths — those that kept me coming back, book after book — are his ability to maintain plots over the course of several books, and the unparalleled ability to develop his characters and stay true to them over the course of a very long series. I whipped through all 20 1/2 books, but I began to want more — I began to be very interested in the alien world O'Brian had introduced me to.

To read about the stooped ceilings, the rows of great guns, and the mass of rigging of a sailing warship is one thing. To walk the wooden decks, climb down the narrow stairs, and stoop yourself is quite another.

And this is why I was willing to to hike my sweaty self over to the Constitution during my brief stop in Boston. And why, less than a year later, I took a train trip from London to Portsmouth to see the HMS Victory, the oldest commissioned naval ship in the world (unlike the Constitution, the Victory is permanently dry-docked).

Over the course of this trip, I'm hoping to see multiple sailing ships, and visit sites that show our country's maritime past and present. That might seem to give this trip two very different themes, but actually, I can't think of any greener transport than ships that crisscrossed the world with nothing but wind and manpower.

"The weather is never like this here"

We heard that a lot during our cruise, as we apparently rode a fine jet of globally warmed air throughout Canada and New England. No rain, a little fog, and a lot of sun (too much in Boston).

I've already posted 360-some photos, so I won't go too detail-crazy here, but I thought I'd post a little about each of the ports and the cruise itself.

Portland, Maine

My parents had already been here several times and they really like it. Our tour started with Victoria Mansion, which I don't have any photos of because nearly everything inside is antique or a painstakingly done reproduction, but this crazy-ornate mansion was really interesting to see.

The rest of the tour was totally disorganized, although kind of hilarious. It consisted primarily of the woman who was our tour guide trying to decide where to go next, and then telling the bus driver when it was almost too late for him to do anything about it. She was all, "Turn here! Wait, no, turn left there!" We kept waiting for the driver to turn down a street and get stuck, thus having to back out. That didn't happen, but he did run a red light, and at another point the tour guide actually shushed my sister, who was not talking loudly at all. The whole thing did beg the question — hadn't they done this tour before? And if not, why didn't they plan it out in advance.

Portland, though, was very nice, despite our chaotic route through it. After the tour, we walked around and did some shopping. I bought blueberry wine, which I've yet to drink, but I find very intriguing. One thing that was really cool about Portland is that most of the shops and even the restaurants allow dogs. As a result, there are dogs EVERYWHERE. Most of them were very quiet and well-behaved. It's too bad we didn't have Rex for this portion of the trip. I told my Mom she'd just have to bring him back.

Bar Harbor, Maine

There had been a little bit of fog heading in to Portland, but nothing like what we woke up to heading in to Bar Harbor. It was solid fog, and the ship was sounding the fog horn regularly. The fog was so bad that when we got there, they had to delay the ship's tenders (Bar Harbor was the only port where the ship couldn't dock). We had an early tour and it was canceled because no one could get to shore. No, I don't have any idea why they didn't just delay it.

Because we still had tour tickets, we were able to take the first tender once they started running them, and got on an Ollie's Trolley tour of Acadia National Park. The Park was really beautiful, and we were lucky that the fog lifted enough for us to go to the top of Cadillac Mountain (which is really more of a hill, but is still apparently the tallest point on the east coast) and see.

After the tour, we went to a little sandwich stand for lobster rolls. I believe it's called the Lobster Claw, but I could be wrong on that one. If you're ever in Bar Harbor, definitely go. It's not much in the line of space or decor, but it reinforces that theory that the best seafood is in the the places that look like a hole. We got the rolls that are just fresh lobster on lettuce and bread, with some butter on the side to drizzle over it. Definitely the best lobster I've ever had.

Fortified for shopping, we did just that. Bar Harbor is a small but really charming town. It reminds me of a cross between Key West and Put-in-Bay.

Saint John, Canada

So, in hindsight, an error in strategy. My Dad, sister and I, as the family beer drinkers, had pegged the city highlights and Moosehead beer tasting tour as something we wanted to do. Tour + beer = good.

So the tour starts with us going over to the Reversing Falls. Now, the Reversing Falls is a really interesting phenomenon, caused by huge tide changes, but you apparently have to see it several times in one day (at high tide and low tide) to really get the impact. When we went, it was slack tide, which means we just saw a big boring body of water. Also, what we didn't realize about the Reversing Falls is that on the opposite side of the river from the viewing platform is a giant factory, which was dumping something into the river. I have no idea what that something is and if it's okay or bad for the environment, but the whole thing is not very picturesque. Does Canada have an EPA?

After the Reversing Falls, we drove around some and then the tour dropped us off at the market. The market is extremely old and was built by a wooden shipbuilder (the ceiling is just like an upside-down ship). It was bigger than Eastern Market in DC and definitely bustling.

Then it was time for the beer tasting. I'm all for beer tasting, but I think we all agreed by this time that we would have been better off just skipping the tour and going to a bar and drinking Moosehead. Perhaps with a trip to the market or some more fresh lobster.

Halifax, Canada

We did a hop-on, hop-off British double decker bus tour here. I originally thought this was going to be on British-style double-decker buses. But they actually turned out to be old London buses, complete with Transport for London stickers and the driver (and exits, somewhat dangerously) on the wrong side for Canada. Awesome.

I like hop-on, hop-off better than standard tours, because if you like things, you can stay as long as you want, and if they're lame, you're not stuck there. Our first stop was the Citadel, and it was actually the best one. The Citadel is a fort on the top of a hill, and it vaguely reminded me of a smaller Tower of London, except with no crown jewels. There were "soldiers" (all of them were actually civilians) drilling in kilts, and a series of mini-museums in the walls of the fort on various aspects of Canadian and British warfare. It was very well-done.

Our next hop-off was the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which had a lot more hype — maybe more than anything could have stood up to. It was still nice, though. There was a signal ship, the CSS Acadia, that you could walk through, and a series of exhibits. One of the exhibits was on the Titanic (Halifax was instrumental in the rescue effort, and many of the dead are buried there). People were quick to point out that none of the items in the museum were pulled up from the ship — they're all things that were found floating during the rescue effort. I personally was hoping there'd be a little more of a British bent to things. Maybe I'll have to go to Greenwich some day for that.

We finished our day shopping at Pier 21, which was where the cruise ship docked. It was a major immigration center for Canada.

Boston, Massachusetts

It was HOT in Boston — we heard it got up to 100 degrees, and I'd believe it. If it hadn't been so hot, I'd say that the tour we took was not the way to go. Boston, like any major city, has major traffic, and our tour bus spent a lot of time navigating that traffic and not actually covering a lot of ground. But it was air-conditioned, which was a major bonus.

Our first stop was a Trinity Church, but only briefly. The tour guide said that if you'd seen any of the major churches in England, it wouldn't be very impressive, and he was right. After last year's London trip, I felt pretty eh about it.

The tour went over to Cambridge to the Harvard campus. The campus itself, at least the old portion, wasn't as expansive as I thought it was going to be. My sister wondered why it looked so much bigger than the movies. Memorial Hall, though, was very impressive — it looks like a church, but was built as a memorial to alumni who died in the Civil War. In addition to the memorial, it houses more pedestrian things like a cafeteria.

The next stop was at Old North Church, where the church sexton hung a lantern on the night of Paul Revere's ride to warn everyone that the British were coming. At that point it was the highest place in Boston. The inside of the church is still much as it was then, and although it's not as large or grand as even Trinity Church, I enjoyed it because it had such a role in history and was so well-preserved.

We got a glimpse of the USS Constitution before the tour dropped those who wanted to get off at Quincy Market. We opted to get off there, and grabbed some lunch. There was going to be some definite shopping involved after lunch by my mom and sister, but as I'm a ship nerd, I wasn't about to pass up a chance to see the Constitution, so I walked over to see the ship. It was HOT, but it actually felt really good to walk on land.

The Constitution was hands down my favorite thing from the trip. It is the oldest floating commissioned ship in the world, at 209 years old, and it is just amazing to me that something that old not only floats, but actually goes out for the occasional sail, and even has her guns fired occasionally. I did the guided tour, which meant we got to go down to the gun deck and the berth deck.

Seeing "Old Ironsides" is probably the most literary geeky thing I've ever done, but I am so glad I went. The ship is contemporary to, and even part of one of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, and to actually stand in it and get an idea of the perspective of the ships already so well described by O'Brian was awesome. That aside, it's a huge part of United States history, and really a miracle of preservation.

The cruise ship

We were on the Grandeur of the Seas again. We previously sailed on that ship two years ago to go to the Caribbean (it sails out of Baltimore, so it was convenient then, and was even more convenient now).

This time, though, I actually got seasick for the first time in six cruises. It was on the day I was walking around in the heat in Boston, which may have been a contributing factor, but my sister got sick as well. We were both sitting "backwards" at dinner, and the more the ship moved and the more I ate the more I felt like I might throw up. Generally I have no problem with rough seas -- I didn't get sick at all on the Century when we went through a storm with pretty big waves for a cruise ship to handle. But in this not-very-rough sea, the ship had this weird side-to-side vibration thing going. Normally the thing to do if you're getting seasick is to look at the waves and the horizon, but the waves and horizon weren't in synch with the motion of the ship. Ugh.

Although I've had a lot of fun during the cruise portion of our previous cruises, I think this was the one that reinforced that land-based vacations are really more my thing. Royal Caribbean, at least on this ship, is a little light on entertainment, particularly decent music performers. Unlike on land, you can't just go to a bar and drink. You can just go to a bar and drink on a cruise ship, but you'll have to listen to the easy-listening duo cover "I'm just a gigolo" for the 405th time. Uh, pass on that. I don't know why more cruise ships don't do what the S/S Norway did, which is to create an actual club and play actual good music during hours that make sense. The Norway's club didn't have any windows, and it actually looked like a club — you really felt like you were in a real land-based club.

The food was generally good, but there's always a certain point in a cruise where I actually get tired of eating. Except dessert. Heh. This is actually one of the things that amuses me about Royal Caribbean, though. You see their commercials and it's all, "You're exercising! You're jet-skiing! You're climbing a rock wall! You're walking on glaciers! You're not a normal cruiser!" And then you get on the actual cruise and people are all like, "What time is the midnight buffet?" This is actually a legitimate question, although cruise directors never fail to make fun of it, because the midnight buffet NEVER ACTUALLY STARTS AT MIDNIGHT. Anyway, maybe the people on Alaskan cruises are more active or something.

There were definitely some enjoyable things on the cruise itself. The Grandeur had a very good Beatles cover band (I think they make a loop on the Royal Caribbean ships in the area) the last time we were on the ship, and they played again. A Beatles cover band is a great idea. There should be more. But only if they don't suck. I didn't read quite as many books as I'd brought, but I got through quite a few, often in the "Solarium," a very nice enclosed pool, or in a lounge chair on the lower side deck.

So, all in all, a great trip. Now I need to start planning a new one. At this time last year I still had London to look forward to. Guess I need to get back to work on learning to speak Italian.

Massive update

So it has been a very long time since have blogged, and that is primarily because June was crazy. I suppose it is time for an update.

1. Eileen and Jeff came out to visit over Memorial Day weekend, and much fun was had. I finally got to meet Melissa in person, which was v. cool, and Melvin joined us for our Baltimore adventure. The Orioles and seafood were involved. That's all of us there in the picture. Photos on Flickr

2. Not long after that, it was time for the second round of visitors. My parents brought my grandfather out to see the World War II memorial and the rest of the city. We did Tourmobile, and my dad and I got off at the Vietnam memorial. I hadn't been there since I moved out here, and had only been there once in 8th grade. It definitely has a different emotional resonance at my age than it did in 8th grade. If you are like me and haven't seen it as an adult, I definitely recommend it, but be prepared to cry. We caught up with my mom and grandfather at the World War II memorial. All in all a good trip, and my grandfather said he really enjoyed himself. Photos on Flickr

3. Pretty much immediately after they left it was time to turn around for another visitor — my friend Tanya, this time. It is amazing, despite having so many visitors in such a short time, I really did almost entirely different things with everyone. Tanya and I hit a ton of museums, including some I hadn't yet been to, so another v. fun visit. Photos on Flickr

4. Now it is time for ME to travel (although my parents are in town again at the end of next week because my dad has a work thing). Up this weekend — San Francisco, for Eileen's transcontinental birthday bash. Then at the end of July it's time for the annual family cruise. This time to Canada/New England, which should be fun. I'll get to go to both San Francisco and Boston for the first time this year, and...

5. I am going to see Underworld!!! They are playing in Central Park on Sept. 14, and Melvin, Katherine, Eric and I all have tickets already. I am crazy excited for this. I have never seen them live and have always wanted to so so much. And, oddly enough, I have never been to New York, either (which is really inexcusable now that I am a 2-hour train ride away), so that'll be another major U.S. city crossed off the to-visit list.

6. Putting a slight damper on San Francisco is a mystery leg problem I seem to have developed. Last week I looked down at my calf and there was a giant bruise that I couldn't remember getting. No, I hadn't been drinking. Much. The bruise kept going down in size but over the last couple days I have been experiencing odd random pains, tingling and numbness in my leg. Sometimes it feels like a shin splint. Sometimes my knee (this is, of course, the leg with my bad knee) hurts. So today I went to the doctor and he wasn't too alarmed, which I took as a good sign. I did have to get x-rays but they won't send them to the doctor until I'm already in SF. So hopefully I will not get a call on Monday telling me that a legkillerapede has burrowed into my calf or something. Fortunately, I can walk on it pretty well. It's actually sitting and standing that it hurts the most.

7. The good news that came out of the visit to the doctor today is that my cholesterol, which had come back as absurdly high for someone my at my age and fitness level, has dropped 90 points. Or they screwed up the test in the first place. Being that I've done little different except eat less meat and more blueberries, and I'm taking a B vitamin, I'm going to go with the screwup. Either that or Trader Joe's B vitamins are miraculous.

8. Is anything from China not contaminated with dangerous things?