Portland, Maine

Portland has real sandy beaches within half an hour, but the Gulf of Maine decides how much you use them. In the city itself, East End Beach is a small patch of sand below the Eastern Promenade. Just south, Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough have wide, pretty strands such as Crescent Beach, Higgins Beach and Pine Point, and Old Orchard Beach is a long, old-fashioned resort beach with a pier and arcades.

The water is the catch. Even in August it usually reaches only 17°C to 19°C, warmest on shallow, sandy beaches on a falling tide, and much colder from June to early July. Most visitors walk, sunbathe and wade rather than swim, and beach days are a summer pleasure, not the reason for coming.

For a small city, Portland eats and drinks very well, and most visitors plan their days around meals. Seafood comes first. There are lobster rolls and steamers at harbour shacks, raw bars shucking oysters from the Damariscotta River and other Maine estuaries, and chowder on every menu. Around that sit chef-run restaurants cooking with farm and fishing produce, good bakeries, potato-flour doughnuts and a serious coffee habit.

Beer is the other big draw. Dozens of craft breweries cluster on the industrial edges of the peninsula, especially along Industrial Way and in East Bayside, and many have tasting rooms. The range is narrower than in a big city, international cooking is thin, and summer brings queues at the best-known places.

Portland's sights are modest but pleasing. The Old Port is the heart of it, brick and granite warehouses and merchants' buildings rebuilt after the great fire of 1866, with cobbled lanes running down to working wharves. The Portland Museum of Art has a good American collection with a strong Winslow Homer holding, and the Wadsworth-Longfellow House, the poet's childhood home, sits on Congress Street. Victoria Mansion is a lavish Italianate villa, and the Portland Observatory, a wooden signal tower of 1807, looks over Munjoy Hill.

Just outside the city, Portland Head Light in Fort Williams Park is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the country. A day or two covers it all.

Going out in Portland means bars, not clubs. The Old Port has a tight cluster of pubs, oyster and cocktail bars and rowdier college-crowd bars along Fore and Wharf Streets, busiest on summer weekends. Brewery taprooms fill early evening. Quieter wine and cocktail bars are spread through the West End, Munjoy Hill and East Bayside. There are a couple of dance floors but no real club scene, last orders come at 1am, and in winter midweek nights are quiet. It suits an evening of good drinks after dinner rather than a late night.

The outdoors here is mostly about the sea. Casco Bay is dotted with islands, and ferries from the waterfront reach Peaks, Great Diamond and Chebeague for walks and cycling on quiet lanes. In summer, sea kayaks, sailing schooners and whale-watching, seal and lighthouse cruises go out from the harbour. The Eastern Promenade and the Back Cove loop give easy city walks, and the rocky shore at Cape Elizabeth and Two Lights is fine for clifftop rambles.

Inland the land is low and wooded. The White Mountains of New Hampshire are about two hours away for proper hiking, and Bradbury Mountain is closer for a short climb. Autumn colour is lovely; winter is long, cold and snowy.

The Maine coast is a chain of towns, and Portland sits in the middle of the southern stretch. Down the coast, Kennebunkport has sea captains' houses and a harbour full of boats, Ogunquit has the Marginal Way cliff path and its old art colony, and Portsmouth in New Hampshire, about an hour away, has one of the best-preserved colonial waterfronts in New England.

North, Freeport is the outlet town that grew up around L.L.Bean, founded there in 1912, Bath has its shipbuilding heritage and the Maine Maritime Museum, and Boothbay Harbor and Camden, with its windjammers, are pretty harbour towns about one and a half to two hours away. The towns are charming rather than grand, and a car makes the coast much easier.

Portland is an easy, relaxed place with children, small enough that nothing feels like hard work. The Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine is aimed squarely at younger kids, the island ferries feel like an outing in themselves, and lighthouses, forts and tide pools at Fort Williams Park and Two Lights keep them busy outdoors. Old Orchard Beach has a seaside amusement park and pier, and a wildlife park with native animals is under an hour north.

What it lacks is anything big: no zoo, no aquarium of note, no theme park. Lobster boat trips and beach days are the highlights, and summer is the only season that really works for a family visit.

The peninsula is the place to stay, and it is a pleasure on foot. The Old Port, the Arts District along Congress Street, the West End and Munjoy Hill sit within a short walk of each other, though some streets are steep. Casco Bay ferries run from the waterfront to the islands, and the train to Boston leaves from the edge of town.

Beyond that, things get harder. City buses exist but are thin for a visitor, and Portland Head Light, the beaches and the coast towns are much easier by car. Most visitors who want to see more than the city hire one.

Shopping is small-scale and independent. Exchange, Fore and Middle Streets in the Old Port are lined with boutiques selling clothing, homewares, Maine-made pottery, woollens and art, and there are galleries along Congress Street. Freeport, about twenty minutes north, adds a whole town of outlet stores clustered around the L.L.Bean flagship, a draw for outdoor clothing and gear. There are no department stores or luxury labels, and a dedicated shopper will run out of streets within an afternoon.

Portland is an expensive place to stay, especially in summer. Rooms on the peninsula command big-city rates in July and August and on autumn-foliage weekends, and lobster, oysters and chef-run restaurants make eating out costly. Savings come from walking rather than driving, eating at seafood shacks and brewery food trucks, and travelling outside peak season, when hotel prices drop sharply.

For its size Portland has a steady cultural calendar. The Portland Symphony Orchestra plays at Merrill Auditorium in City Hall, which also hosts touring shows and dance. Portland Stage puts on professional theatre on the Arts District edge, and the historic State Theatre and smaller music rooms on Congress Street bring touring bands and folk acts. In summer there are outdoor concerts. It is enough for an evening out, not a reason to choose the city.

There is no bathing culture to speak of here, and spas are mostly hotel and day spas. What Portland offers instead is an easy pace: a ferry ride across Casco Bay to a quiet island, a slow walk on the Eastern Promenade at dusk, a long lunch by the water. Some visitors take a bracing sea dip in summer or use a waterfront sauna. It is a gentle place to unwind, but not one to visit for treatments.