Camden, Maine

Taking friends' advice can be iffy, but for our recent trip to Maine friends proved as good as gold. One told me to stay overnight in Camden on the coast an hour and a half from Acadia National Park. What a lovely town it was! A seaside, harbor town nestled in hills, as can be seen from the state park nearby with it's Mount Camden from which this photo was taken. The main street was given over to touristy shops and restaurants -- where we had a good dinner and saw interesting work by many local artisans. It was also full of flowers. The picture below was just one of many flower boxes in front of shops.

The town had the most elegant -- and beautifully kept-- city park I've ever seen with perfectly placed benches for looking at the harbor or the flowers or for relative seclusion while reading a book. The library sat at the edge of the park. There was a lovely statue of home town girl, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was totally charmed. Another town a bit further down the road had a sign claiming, "most beautiful small town in Maine" and perhaps it was, but only a little more so than Camden. That town perhaps had more graceful old houses but that was about the only edge it had as far as I could see.