Portland Harbor Hotel
COST: $$$
Set on the edge of the cobbled Old Port neighborhood, this opened-in-2003 hotel offers upscale (if somewhat corporate) accommodations just steps from some of the city’s best bars, restaurants, and shopping. Grand details like cornices, oversize flower arrangements, and hefty carved-wood antique reproductions adorn the lobby and dining room, while the 101 ample guest rooms and suites—with cheery yellow walls, toile fabrics, his-and-hers armoires, and mega-TVs with 70 channels—are more focused on comfort. Deluxe rooms and suites have positively palatial baths with Jacuzzi tubs. (Ask for the lavender bath “turndown.”) Eve’s, the hotel’s restaurant, serves surprisingly good state-inspired dishes, like beef Oscar served with béarnaise sauce and local Peekytoe crab. And the adjacent cocktail lounge is a favorite local hangout—and a more civilized alternative to raucous brewpubs down the street; its garden terrace is a welcome oasis of calm in warm weather.
Insider Tip: Ask the concierge to book a front-row table at Fore Street, James Beard Award–winning chef Sam Hayward’s lauded warehouse restaurant (just down the street at No. 288).
Room to Book: Request any one of the hushed garden-facing rooms to avoid occasional street noise.
As Featured In...
From Travel + Leisure, Aug 2006
“In a town with surprisingly few worthy hotels, this 2003 arrival is the top choice for both location (right in the Old Port) and comfort (spacious rooms are done up in butter yellow with dark-wood furnishings; granite bathrooms have outsize soaking tubs)....” MORE>>
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