I’m going to distil my recent trip to North America into 5 posts because there’s so much so them. Then there’s all the stationery I brought back. I feel like I have enough to keep The London Parchment going for a year! Here’s a little map I drew of my trip, starting and finishing in Boston at the bottom of the right page (apologies for my scrawl):

We had such an amazing time. Such a diverse holiday with so much to do and so much to see. To help in communicating it to you without writing a full on essay, I’ve drawn a little brainstorm of my impressions of each place.

In America Maine is known as Vacationland and I couldn’t put it better myself. It’s a vast state, America’s most north-easterly and is full of juxtaposition, from coastline to mountains, forests to rocky outcrops, winters skiing to summers doing watersports. We’re very lucky because my fiance’s family live in Maine in a great, cavernous, wooden house overlooking a lovely town on Maine’s interior called Norway so we got to spend a few days taking in the best of it all.
How to sum a couple of days in Maine up?
The views. You seem to be able to find the most unexpected and unbelievable view on any drive you go on. We barely saw a car in front of us or passing us on several of our drives. Just us and the landscapes.


Beer. I love American Pale Ale and I didn’t really know that until this trip. Maine has an enormous range of microbreweries and local craft breweries, the variety on offer is endless and the cans are all bright and colourful.


The sea. The coastline is awesome. Lighthouses standing tall, waves crashing ashore, shades of deep blues, turquoise and white.


Trees, trees and more trees. I would love to come back here in the autumn. We spent a day in a state park an hour or so away from Norway and saw a waterfall full of meltwater, the start of the famous Appalachian Trail, rivers… all within an endless stretch of forest.


It’s just, well, such a cool state and I have barely even scratched the surface of Maine so far. It’s a state for all seasons and has a great character to it. Here are some of the many little eccentricities I found…







My next post: Quebec City, Canada.