We woke at 7 a.m. and called Vermont Transit to confirm our 9:45 a.m. bus from Bar Harbor to Portland. Surprise! That bus stopped running after Labor Day, but Greyhound/Vermont Transit decided to make things interesting by selling us seats on it anyway. We made arrangements to take the 1 p.m. shuttle from Bar Harbor to Bangor instead, where we could catch a 3:15 Concord Trailways bus to Portland.
With some extra time on our hands, we headed back to Jeannie’s Breakfast for some more delicious oatmeal toast and strawberry rhubarb jam (among other things) and then hopped on the Island Explorer shuttle into Acadia. We headed to Thunder Hole, which wasn’t exactly thundering (it was low tide), but Jordan got a good photo anyway. From Thunder Hole, we walked back up the road about a mile to Sand Beach, where AM wrote postcards and we relaxed in the sun. Then we caught the Island Explorer back to the Village Green, where we bought some snacks for the road and caught the 1 p.m. shuttle bus.
Both bus rides were relatively uneventful, and we arrived in Portland around 5:30, a few hours later than we had originally planned. We checked into the
Inn at St. John for the second time that week (this time without the bikes). Then we walked toward downtown, stopping at an art gallery along the way. Eventually we found the Old Port area and a boutique called
Waterlily Imports that AM remembered from her visit to Portland the previous summer. Then we had a delicious seafood dinner at Street & Co. (pasta bolognese with tuna and mussels marina). Before catching a cab back to the hotel, we stopped at a convenience store and bought a big fancy bottle of Belgian beer to commemorate our last night of vacation.