Day 2: Bar Harbor, Maine
Sunday, September 27th, 2015Our first port was Bar Harbor, Maine: still well within driving distance of home! Brian and I have fallen in love with Portland, Ogunquit and Boothbay Harbor together, so it was fun to add another Maine must-see to our list!
I knew we were going to land a little ways out of Bar Harbor, then take a tender (basically one of the life boats) over to the pier, but I hadn’t realized until we were on the tender that our ship hadn’t just docked at a larger pier: it had just plain stopped, and it was anchored right in the middle of Frenchman’s Bay!
We had signed up for an excursion … the best of land and sea … so we got right onto a shuttle bus which took us through the town of Bar Harbor, up in to Acadia National Park, and right up to Cadillac Mountain, the largest mountain on the east coast. We only had 20 minutes at the top, but since the weather was gorgeous and the sky was crystal clear, we enjoyed some incredible views of Frenchman’s Bay (we could see our ship!) and all of the many little islands nearby.
Back down through Acadia, off the bus, and straight on to the Margaret Todd, a 4-masted schooner with gorgeous red and orange sails. We took a very pleasant loop around Frenchmen’s Bay, including right around our ship, so we got a great view of it, as well as Cadillac Mountain, the many islands and the hundreds of thousands of lobster traps!
Back on land, we had two hours before we had to be back on the boat, so we headed down Main Street. Bar Harbor looks like so many lovely New England towns (and lots of Maine tourmaline jewelry!). We stopped in a two places we had heard about: the Abbe Museum and St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, which had lots of different styles of really beautiful stained glass, including several Tiffany windows.
Several hours later, back on the ship, I enjoyed another gorgeous sunset, and it was especially cool to see the sun set on the horizon (with Cadillac Mountain still in view in the distance) knowing that the sun’s job wasn’t done for the day … a few hours later, after a delicious dinner, we got see the sun, the earth and the moon all line up nicely for a supermoon lunar eclipse! We’re told this was a pretty rare and amazing astronomical phenomenon, and on the 13th deck of the ship, we felt like we had front row seats for an incredibly beautiful eclipse. The sky was crystal clear, and of course, it was incredibly windy on the upper decks as we cruised along the coast of Maine towards Nova Scotia.
Brian’s Photos:
