Girl’s Week in New England

Hello and happy Fall!

It’s in full swing in New England in the form of beautiful colors and a very slight chill in the air.

I’ve just come off of one of the best vacations I think I’ve ever had. My mom came for a visit and we made it a girl’s only week. I had forgotten how necessary girl time is!

Here’s my beautiful mom, Meribelle. Getting ready to stick her toes in the Atlantic for the first time.

We took a trip up the coast and spent several blissful days shopping, walking, sight seeing, and eating at some really fun restaurants.

You cannot do a trip up to Maine without first stopping in Hampton Beach to walk on the sand and let the water wash over your toes. Only during the week though…weekends are…yikes. Like sardines.

We went up to Portsmouth to have a look around and spent one night. Then, we headed to Ogunquit, Maine where we stayed at the Anchorage Inn Seacoast. It sits right along the coastline, it was gorgeous. This is the sunrise view from the hotel.

We stayed for a couple of days and looked at all of the sights and of course, shopped. And shopped some more. It was so convenient that the outlet malls in Kittery were right on our way to Ogunquit! (ha!) We also tried out some of the restaurants and admired the east coasters knack for landscaping and decorating in Ogunquit.

Ogunquit is a walking town and we had so much fun walking from end to end and seeing the sights. I have many photos of the amazing landscaping, but I hate to make you look through an entire album, so I’ll just give you a taste.

Yes, all of the pumpkins pictured are REAL!

Right out the gate to the ocean at our hotel is a path called Marginal Way. It’s a 1.5 mile, paved path, that goes from downtown Ogunquit to the end of town to Perkin’s Cove. It’s beautiful and winds all along the edge of the ocean.

This is the entrance in town. We spent at least 10 minutes just examining the amazing flowers right at this spot.

This is the view from the path in front of our hotel. That path winds around the point you can see and heads into Perkin’s Cove which is full of wonderful shops and restaurants. It was buzzing with walkers day and night. We felt very safe walking it in the dark.

The weather was perfect the entire time we were in Maine. It was in the high 70’s and the first day we arrived, it was over 80 degrees.

This is the view from one of our lunch stops in Perkin’s Cove.

This is the Ogunquit Memorial Library. It receives no funding from the town of Ogunquit and relies entirely on donations and endowments. Ogunquit has a long established art colony and keeps a collection of several paintings from local artists on display. We didn’t make it inside this time, but it will definitely be on the list for next time!

The next day we headed into Kennebunkport for sightseeing and shopping. And eating!

This is St. Ann’s in Kennebunkport. Unbelievably gorgeous. And yes, they do have services from June until Labor Day. You may even get to see the Bush family who attend regularly when they are vacationing in their summer home, right around the corner on Walker’s Point. It has been a working summer chapel since 1892!

The inside is filled with rock and stained glass and is breath taking. I can’t wait to attend a service next summer! They also have an outdoor service at 8:00 am every Sunday during the summer with the ocean as a back drop. The ocean as a back drop…can you imagine? Get there early, sometimes they can have as many as 400 attendees and once the parking lot is full, they have to close the gates.

Out of all of the stores we we went through in Portsmouth, Ogunquit, and Kennebunk…I would have to rate this one my favorite.

Dannah

This is the outside.

And this…is the inside! There’s another room behind me as well. We spent well over an hour looking through every nook and cranny determined not to miss a thing. We both ended up leaving with several treasures and after lunch, I went back and bought one more item that I had had my eye on!

Here is the view from our lunch table in Kennebunkport. There were doors along the entire wall of the restaurant and all of them were open. Leaves were falling from the trees, and as you can see, it was a beautiful day.

This is off of Walker’s Point.

And this is a lobster fisherman paddling to his fishing boat and then headed out to sea from Perkin’s Cove.

I could show you all of our beautiful pictures of our adventure, but I wouldn’t want to keep you all day!

By the way, this house is for sale, right around the corner. It looks amazing in every season. In winter it is the epitome of New England, covered in snow with a wreath on the door, a wisp of smoke spiraling up from the chimney…