Frommer’s Star Ratings System
Every hotel, restaurant, and attraction listed in this guide has been ranked for quality and value. Here’s what the stars mean:
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Recommended |
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Highly Recommended |
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A must! Don’t miss! |
AN IMPORTANT NOTE
The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and busses and trains change their routings. And all of this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about, these hotels, restaurants, museums and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.
Late fall foliage is ablaze with color in Maine, as some lobstermen begin to hang up their buoys for the season.
3Suggested Maine Coast Itineraries
Outdoor Adventures on the Maine Coast
4Southern Maine: Kittery to the Kennebunks
6Lower Midcoast: Freeport, The Boothbays & Pemaquid
7Upper Midcoast: Around Penobscot Bay
Elsewhere on Mount Desert Island
Where to Stay & Eat on the Downeast Coast
10Side trips from the Maine Coast
Watching a Downeast summer sunrise over Tenant’s Harbor.
There’s a reason they call it Vacationland. Season after season, you can’t turn a corner in coastal Maine without stumbling into some postcard-perfect New England tableau. Stately federal architecture, stoic fishermen on wharves, lighthouses proud against (Winslow) Homeric weather-beaten shores. In these hinterlands of Yankee country, eccentricity and bohemian funk have made inroads in a culture of modesty and taciturnity, so expect splashes of local color: lurid lobster buoys dangling from tree limbs like psychedelic lichen; front-yard art installations cobbled together from life’s flotsam, gaudy flea markets edging Route 1 like God’s own yard sale. And yet, for all the seaside human carnival, you’ll never want for a quiet pocket of deep forest or sublimely dignified shoreline. It’s a multiverse of overlapping ecosystems, from rounded coastal mountains to finger-like tidal inlets, the domain of everything from prehistoric horseshoe crabs to the occasional lumbering moose. Those guys look pretty good on the postcards, too.
Mooses flirt in Baxter State Park (p. 262), one of the state’s best spots for hiking, climbing, and nature-watching.
Portland and the Southern Coast
Maine’s largest city, Portland manages to feel urban and hip without losing its historic harbor town character. See p. 82.
A vintage sign welcomes visitors to charming Kennebunkport (p. 70), full of boutiques, colonial B&Bs, and shingled summer mansions.
Ogunquit’s main beach (p. 69) stretches for three long sandy miles, with room for everyone to spread a towel.
Ramping up the city’s cultural cachet, the Portland Museum of Art (p. 101) would be outstanding in a community 5 or 10 times Portland’s size.
The Portland Sea Dogs, a AA Red Sox farm team, play at delightfully old-timey Haddon Field. See p. 103.
A craft beer mecca, Portland has many hangouts like Gritty McDuff’s Brew Pub in the Old Port (p. 107), with live music and the house brew on tap.
Summer family fun in the Kennebunks (p. 70)inevitably at some point involves an encounter with a crustacean.
Near York’s popular beaches, Nubble Light (p. 59) is one of the world’s most photographed lighthouses.
Rocky headlands protect Ogunquit’s tiny Perkins Cove (p. 69), offering sweeping sea views and an escape from the harbor village’s often-thronged gift shops and seafood shacks.
At low tide, horseback riders take a seaside canter at Popham Beach State Park (p. 127), one of the few sandy strands in the rockbound lower Midcoast.
The touch tank at the Maine State Aquarium (p. 136) in West Boothbay Harbor gives kids a hands-on encounter with tidal zone marine life.
On Penobscot Bay, shady Castine (p. 170) is a classic New England village. Walking tours begin on the town green at the Castine Historical Society.
Boats are the only way to reach remote, picturesque Monhegan Island (p. 141), beloved by landscape artists; rent a bike or kayak to explore once you’re here.
A Midcoast classic: The Wiscasset seafood stand Red’s Eats (p. 134), where in summer the hungry patiently wait in line for up to 45 minutes to taste the succulent lobster roll.
Life seems to slow down on the rural Harpswell Peninsula (p. 127), off the tourist-developed track. In winter, locals walk their horses to pasture.
From sloops to windjammers, Boothbay Harbor (p. 135) sailboats can be booked for tours, excursions, or lessons.
Opened in 2006, the Penobscot Narrows Bridge offers 360° views from the world’s tallest bridge observatory (p. 170).
South of Rockland, the Owls Head Transport Museum (p. 154) displays vintage planes, trains, and automobiles – a fun rainy-day option.
Not into outlet shopping? Freeport’s other attractions include the hiking trails of Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park (p. 120).
A must-see stop along Acadia National Park’s 20-mile Park Loop Road: The summit of Cadillac Mountain, the island’s highest peak, with its breathtaking views. See p. 192.
Another scenic way to explore Mount Desert Island—paddle a canoe around one of its peaceful backwoods ponds. See p. 228.
In contrast to the rest of this bucolic island, the town of Bar Harbor fairly bustles, especially by the waterfront. See p. 207.
Downtown Bar Harbor (p. 207) retains the strollable charm of its late 19th-century heyday.
Afternoon tea with popovers is a summer ritual at the Jordan Pond House (p. 192) in Acadia National Park
On the “quiet side” of Mount Desert Island, villages such as Somesville reward exploration.
Bass Harbor Light keeps watch from a stony crag at the island’s southwest tip.
Flotillas of sea kayaks set out from Bar Harbor every day in summer, to explore Mount Desert Island’s rocky shores. See p. 220.
The Abbe Museum (p. 218) in Bar Harbor has a top-rate collection of Native American artifacts, like this birchbark canoe. It’s Maine’s only museum affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
Youngsters dig in the clam-rich mudflats of Cobscook Bay State Park (p. 244), one of Maine’s hidden jewels.
Along the Downeast coast, the vast Maine Coastal Islands Wildlife Refuge (p. 240) protects a host of shorebirds and seabirds, like this quizzical puffin.
At West Quoddy Head, the easternmost point of the U.S. is marked with this jaunty lighthouse, welcoming ships into Lubec harbor.
Near the lighthouse, walking trails lace through the dim coolness of a coastal forest in Quoddy Head State Park (p. 245).
On a day trip from Lubec to Canada’s Campobello Island (p. 247), you can ramble in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s boyhood footsteps along the surf-dashed shore of Herring Cove Provincial Park.
Across the state line in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (p. 250), an interpreter demonstrates colonial-era cooking in one of more than 40 historic buildings of the open-air museum Strawbery Banke.
The popular Chimney Pond (p. 272) hiking trail affords some stunning vistas on the climb up Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain, in Baxter State Park.
Flowing along Baxter State Park’s southern border, the wild west branch of the Penobscot River offers some of the most exhilarating whitewater rafting in the eastern U.S. See p. 272.
