Sept 10, 2019 – Booth Bay, ME
We had a great day visiting Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor, two more classic coastal New England towns with old historic buildings, and a strong connection to the fishing/seafood industry, and tourism.
The town of Boothbay lies just outside the town limits of Boothbay Harbor. Boothbay feels more like an average town with the usual retail stores, service businesses, fast food restaurants, etc. It’s also much bigger in terms of the town’s land mass and population than Boothbay Harbor. BH is only about 9 sq. miles, and about a third of that is water. There are also several islands, some with a house, some without. I suspect that a lot of the folks working in Boothbay Harbor are actually living in Boothbay. But Boothbay Harbor is the classic New England waterfront fishing town popular with tourists and summer vacationers. There’s a strong arts community, lots of B&B’s and historic Inns, nice shops, good restaurants, and tons of recreational opportunities e.g whale watching, sailing trips, fishing, sea kayaking, etc. And of course, lots of places selling seafood, especially lobster and clams. What’s not to like?! It seems like it would be a great place to spend a couple months in the summer when the average high temps are in the upper 70’s!
Boothbay Harbor is where most of the tourist action is so that’s where we spent most of our time. We walked all around the downtown waterfront, went in a few shops, walked around the docks and had a great lunch at a place on the waterfront called Taka. We looked at three restaurant menu’s and chose Taka because they had sushi. We haven’t had any sushi for a long time and it just really sounded good to us. We got two bloody Bloody Mary’s and two sushi rolls and everything was fantastic. The sushi rolls were some of the best, and definitely the biggest, we have ever had!
I have to say that after traveling for most of the last year, it’s amazing to me how many active retirees there are out there! When you’re working, most everyone you interact with, both professionally and socially, is also working, raising a family, etc. You’re just not that aware that there is this whole other world of people that are getting up everyday and living a completely different life. You knew they were there, but they were always just a part of the larger crowd, most of which were working like you. You rarely saw retirees in large numbers in one place……they just sort of blended in with everyone else. The truth is, there’s a whole world of people that are doing all kinds of fun things while the rest of the world works!
Until next time…..
