DAVIS, Calif. — We spent the first full week of October in Portland – enjoying the heck out of the beautiful apartment we rented on Munjoy Hill, which came, thanks to the generosity of our hosts, with bicycles. These allowed us to spend our vacation getting much-needed exercise while sightseeing, sampling craft beers, eating way too many lobster rolls, leaf-peeping and dodging cruise ship crowds.

The weather during our all-too-short stay ranged from overcast to glorious, but knowing that rain was forecast for Friday, we tried, in preceding days, to smoke out information about the Greater Portland Metro bus system. As in, where do the buses stop? How often? Do you need to buy tickets before boarding? Where can you get them? What do they cost?

Our quest for bus intelligence was met with puzzled looks. “I never ride the bus,” said the woman at the information desk at the Portland Museum of Art. (Is it a coincidence that the museum is currently hosting a biennial whose theme is “You Can’t Get There From Here”?) Her comment was echoed almost verbatim that evening by our waiter at Maria’s Restaurant.

What amazed us was that in an entire week of asking about the bus – in bars, restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores, bookstores, breweries and coffee shops, and at tourist attractions like the Victoria Mansion – we did not encounter a single person who had ever ridden the bus.

We came close at the Portland Observatory. The young woman working there told us her boyfriend rides the bus to work in South Portland. Did she know how much it cost? “Oh, I don’t think it’s very much,” she said. “Maybe a dollar or $1.25.” She knew nothing else about it.

My husband, who is also my IT guy, noted that his Transit, Google Maps and Apple Maps iPhone apps were no help: There was no data on local transit.

Now in some cities you may visit, cities that seem to want riders on their buses, the bus stops yield clues – such as maps or schedules – to those hoping to climb aboard. Some cities post these visual aids in shelters put up to protect potential passengers from the elements. Portland is not one of them.

Thursday night, dining at Boone’s, we talked to someone who directed us to the Casco Bay Lines Ferry Terminal to buy bus passes. The man at the counter sold us all-day unlimited bus passes for a bargain $5 apiece and answered our barrage of questions with “You might want to pick up a schedule.” He nodded his head in the direction of a nearby shelf.

I walked over there, and seeing nothing labeled “Bus Schedule,” returned and said I couldn’t find it. He pointedly repeated that I “might want to pick up a schedule,” with the exact same motion with his head.

Growing a tad irritated, I returned to the spot and scanned the shelf more methodically. Wedged amid the somewhat jumbled piles of printed matter, I found a thick, brightly colored pamphlet titled “Greater Portland Transit Guide.” It was the last of its kind on the shelf. This guide contained everything we needed to know.

It poured the Friday we were there, a novelty to those of us visiting from drought-stricken California. We left the bicycles in the apartment.

We walked to the Front Room for a fortifying breakfast, then got soaked waiting for buses at shelterless stops en route to the Maine Jewish Museum and the Wadsworth Longfellow House.

The buses we took were fairly full. The one bus shelter we encountered (across from the Longfellow House) was packed with umbrella-toting would-be riders of all ages: a couple of teenagers chain-smoking cigarettes, another teen with a bicycle, a man in a wheelchair, some seniors and parents pushing baby strollers.

We are now members of what seems to be a rarefied group: people who have ridden Portland’s buses. If you have any questions about the city’s bus system, ask us. We’re experts now.