Get off the streets for a walk through well-manicured Harbor Park, which gracefully notches the top of postcard-pretty Camden Harbor, on your way to grab a drink with a water view at the Rhumb Line (bar seats are best), then do dinner at Long Grain, a no-frills-in-the-dining-room, high-class-in-the-kitchen Thai joint on Elm Street. (It won't take long.) Stroll Main Street, aka Route 1, for the shops and scenery, and be sure to stop at Sea Bags to pick up one of their funky-chic tote bags made from recycled sails (the combo of design charm, water resistance, and ruggedness makes them the best all-purpose personal-item carry-ons I've ever found). In Camden, you owe yourself a walking tour. Owner Alice Amory is generous with local recs you're likely to find her in one of the book-laden common spaces (where you'll also, yes, find Wi-Fi if you really need it). The cabins are small (it really is a refurbed motel), but they're loaded with charm and whimsy, from the comic poolside blow-up floats to the Crosley turntables-and actual vinyl collections!-in the rooms, which are resolutely devoid of television and Wi-Fi. Stay just north of Camden at the Lincolnville Motel, exactly the brand of hipster retro you'd expect to find in Maine: laid back, warm, and friendly in an quiet way. This is woodsy Maine coast at its best park in the lot and get your phone’s camera ready for the brief but lovely hike to Owls Head Light, a functioning 19th-century lighthouse that's as severely gorgeous as the landscape over which it presides.
Boston to bar harbor road trip plus#
The building alone's worth the visit, with its soaring modern atrium, minimalist lines, and surprise spatial cutouts but the small, intense collection is what truly impresses, running the gamut from early moderns like Renoir, Cassat, and homeboy Winslow Homer (whose studio at Prout's Neck is actually part of the museum) to a charmingly idiosyncratic midcentury selection including Hopper and Alex Katz, plus a strong selection of contemporary work.Īfter lunch, make your way back to 73 toward Rockland-but tack east on North Shore Drive before you arrive, to get out to Owls Head State Park. Then head up Congress Street to the Portland Museum of Art. Go for a pain au chocolat, but the brioche and croissant are great too, and if it's Thursday or Saturday you'll find rugalach-all baked fresh, of course. Grab your breakfast at the Standard Baking Company on Commercial Street, where the smells alone will warm your spirits. It's cleverly styled with typewriter and printing-press motifs, and well appointed with locally crafted leathers and textiles-best of all, it’s close to everything you'll want to see. Park yourself at the Press Hotel, a boutique spot that opened in 2015 in the building that used to be home to the Press Herald. Just remember to put the top up when you park: Summer thunderstorms aren't unheard of. If you do feel like indulging, and you're going in the height of summer, a convertible will pay off nicely, especially on the mid-coast and in Acadia National Park. You'll be spending some time on scenic coastal roads, but this isn't northern California Maine's not an ideal testing testing ground for performance-driver chops-no cliff-hugging curves here-so save the Porsche 911 splurge for another trip. You can certainly do this trip in October-the leaves are likely to have peaked by then, but they'll still be spectacular. Summers get hot, but stay close to the water and you'll find the heat and humidity eased by offshore breezes.
June through September are when the weather's best, and when the flora are at their most enthusiastic. It's all a reflection of the quiet artistic spirit and fierce independence that define Mainers: tough but beautiful, like their coast. You'll find some of the most creative and delicious food in the country right now in Portland, and that restless urge for invention has begun working its way up the coast. These days, they go way beyond conventional Downeast charm. But the trio of cities here-Portland, Camden, and Bar Harbor-form what I think of as the heart of the state's allure, those top three tracks on the greatest hits compilation you can't stop humming. That juxtaposition of quaint and cozy against the ruggedly elemental has been the region's primary draw for nearly two centuries. Maine's coast hardly needs a sales pitch.
0 kommentar(er)
