I scream. You scream. We all scream for….. an ice bar?

Ok, picture this. It was one of the coldest nights of the year. Porter and I are standing on the sidewalk in downtown Portland along with another 50 people for FORTY minutes. We were all waiting to go through a hotel, back into the freezing cold courtyard. We have to pay $10 apiece in order to do this. Crazy, right? Well, not exactly. Every year the Portland Harbor Hotel hosts an Ice Bar. They have numerous sculptures and a number of bars all made out of ice. The event is three nights long.


Porter and I went on Saturday, the last night. We had hoped to go to both the ice bar and the downtown showdown. We underestimated how long it would take to get in to the ice bar and therefore never made it to the downtown showdown. (Hey there is always next year!) Though we weren’t able to keep to our original plans we did have a nice evening. After spending less the 30 minutes at the ice bar (We’ll get back to that in a minute) we went to Portland Pie. We love Portland Pie. We actually had our rehearsal dinner there. We finished the night off with a nice stroll through the Old Port back to our car.

So, why 30 minutes at the ice bar? Well, after waiting for forty minutes outside we were finally allowed in. (They let one in for every one out. People didn’t exactly want to leave after waiting so long to get in.) We went up the stairs, bought drink tickets and headed back outside. As soon as we opened the door my body started to thump from the sound and volume of the music. We had to push through a mob of people to get close to the bar. We were standing in one line looking for a beer when we realized it was the martini line. If we weren’t such beer lovers it would have been nice to get a martini although it would have taken us probably 30 minutes to even get close to the bar. They had these really cool ice luges that they put your martini in to make them extra cold. Once the sea of people parted slightly we could see that there was a bar just for beer. (Remember all of these bars are made from ice!) They only had Shipyard as they were one of the sponsors. It was so cold and so crowded and so loud we grabbed our beers and went inside. Inside they had free food (if you don’t count the entrance fee) but it was quite minimal. We didn’t find out until later (I don’t know why they didn’t publicize this more) that all the money raised goes to area charities. After eating a little something we decided we were going to need something more substantial so we turned to our favorite standby, Portland Pie.

I must admit, I have a bias towards Portland Pie. They have the most amazing buffalo chicken pizza. It has become such a part of our life we knew we had to make it part of our wedding. Even though it isn’t exactly a new thing for us I wrote a review for all of you to enjoy. Surprisingly all the beers I have reviewed (which are all from local breweries and Porter and I drink these brewers regularly) are ones I haven’t tried until now.