{"id":16565,"date":"2019-08-06T13:15:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T17:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16565"},"modified":"2020-04-24T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T18:38:04","slug":"tales-of-the-grand-hotels-inns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/tales-of-the-grand-hotels-inns\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales of the Grand Hotels &#038; Inns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Story by Gwen Thompson and Frank Bishop<\/em><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16567\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Toni Morrison\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Toni-Morrison-525x350.jpg 525w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>&#8220;&#8216;If\u00a0you need anything, just press zero\u00a0and call me, any time,&#8217; I said to our two new guests at the Pomegranate Inn in Portland&#8217;s West End historic district.<\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\">&#8220;Okay, Miss Zero.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Nobel prizewinning author <strong>Toni Morrison<\/strong> and her sister laughed as they checked in. &#8220;She and her sister teased me and called me &#8216;Miss Zero&#8217; all that fall weekend,&#8221; says proprietress <strong>Isabelle Smiles<\/strong>, who has owned the inn since 1988.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">&#8220;They obviously were having a good time together and enjoyed the second-floor front room, the one with birds hand-painted on the walls by Heidi Gerquist.&#8221; For breakfast, they chose from delights available to all guests at the inn, from &#8220;apple pancakes to poached eggs florentine, french toast with raspberries. She did tell me &#8216;I&#8217;ll be writing a new book,&#8217; so it&#8217;s really exciting to think that she was here with <em><span class=\"s4\">Paradise <\/span><\/em>in her head&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/199802FM-Morrison-SMALL.pdf\">View full story as pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Toni Morrison&#8217;s stay at Portland&#8217;s Pomegranate Inn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[948,431,947,945,323,160,322,946],"class_list":["post-16565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic-maine-stories","tag-author","tag-maine-classics","tag-nobel-prize","tag-pomegranate-inn","tag-portland-magazine","tag-portland-maine","tag-portland-monthly","tag-toni-morrison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17991,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565\/revisions\/17991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}