A Visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

We'd been promising our good friends, Jim and Lynn, we'd take them out to dinner to celebrate their 44th wedding anniversary ever since their anniversary...which was December 28.

What with one thing and another: too cold, too many other events going on, too lazy to set a date, etc., we kept putting off the actual doing.

Then I had a brainstorm: Why not take them on a full-day outing? Nothing's better than Maine in the summer, so we had plenty of activities from which to choose.

We finally settled on taking them, early in the morning, to the Montsweag Flea Market in Woolwich, then on to the botanical gardens in Boothbay, then to a restaurant in Boothbay Harbor for lunch.

So that's what the four of us did on a recent Saturday.

We couldn't have asked for better weather for the outing: clear blue skies and comfortable warmth.

 I've blogged about Montsweag before, so I won't go into that now, but I don't think I've ever mentioned the beautiful Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

They're about 1 3/4 hours from our home in southern Maine. They're "up the coast," or "Down East," in other words.

The gardens opened in 2007, so they haven't existed all that long, but boy, are they spectacular.

What's not to like about 248 acres of meticulously landscaped and groomed gardens? And excellent architecture housing their Visitor Center, their Education Center, and their administrative offices?

The gardens are divided into various smaller gardens: the Rose and Perennial Garden, the Great Lawn and Ledge Garden, the Lerner Garden of the Five Senses, etc.

My favorite, I think, is the Children's Garden. It was in the beginning stages of construction when Ken and I last visited, so we were delighted to see it in completed form. It's extensive and whimsical and full of activities for children.

I loved the grass-covered roof on the small building to the left and below. I'd love to have that building in my own flower garden.

The Children's Garden has ropes for climbing, hens and chickens for feeding, fish in a pond for watching, a Story Barn, a Coloring Cottage, and even fairy houses.

This critter is under water in the Children's Garden.

Here Ken and Jim meditate in the Meditation Garden, or maybe they're just resting their feet.

Here we are after our two-hour walkabout in the gardens.

This is the Garden of the Five Senses. As you can see, visitors bring their cameras and take many close-ups.

This is Waterfall Landing. Pretty, isn't it?

After a visit to the Rhododendron Garden, which was the only disappointing area since the rhododendrons were just past their full bloom, we stopped at the Garden Gift Shop. It's a wonderful gift shop, full of gardening items as well as many Maine-made crafts. (I came home with a pretty handmade seaglass bracelet). I'd love to go back there to do some Christmas shopping.

There is also a Kitchen Garden Cafe where we could have had lunch. I've heard good things about it.

But we'd already decided to drive into Boothbay Harbor for lunch. We chose the Tugboat Inn Restaurant and enjoyed delicious lobster rolls.

Celebrating a December anniversary in June isn't such a bad idea!

Eastern Europe: the final photos!

 Let's wind up this trip once and for all, shall we? It's now approaching the end of June and I want to move on to other topics.

So...Here's Hungary's Parliament in Budapest, photo taken while on a cruise on the Danube.

Prague

Yours truly and the mister, taken on Castle Hill, Budapest.

Hungarian paprika is world-renown. This is paprika peppers drying in Szentendre. 

 

Musicians at a Hungarian dinner. The violinist coud make that violin obey his every command! Amazing.

Of course I did some knitting during the days of long rides by coach.

Poppies line the highways of Austria.

We attended a Mozart/Strauss concert while in Vienna.

The famous Astronomical Clock in Prague. Folks jam the square to see it strike on the hour.

Children folk dancing in Prague.

Prague, entering the Old City.

And finally, a brief stop in Dresden, Germany, for lunch while on our way back to Berlin before our flight home the next day.

Warsaw to the outskirts of Vienna

Our first stop for two nights, after leaving Berlin, was Warsaw.

This city was heavily damaged during WW II, and it has been carefully rebuilt to look exactly as it did before the bombings.

To me this looks like a movie set, but it's real.

One afternoon the two of us found a cozy little restaurant just outside the city's center and filled ourselves with delicious pierogis.

A side street in Warsaw

School children on a field trip, Warsaw. Childen on a field trip look pretty much the same, regardless of the country, don't they?

On our way to Krakow, we stopped at Auschwitz. This was a startling, disturbing visit, but I'm glad to have seen remnants of the horror with my own eyes.

For instance, this is a bin, a huge bin, filled with the tiny shoes of little children brought to Auschwitz with their parents...and killed.

It was a relief to leave Auschwitz and get to our destination, Krakow. The city's market area, only a few steps from our hotel, is beautiful at night.

The next evening we went to a restaurant in the countryside for a delicious dinner and lively Polish folk music and dancing. The band members are all of the same family, from mother to daughters to grandchildren.

Now on to Budapest. One morning we went to the top of Castle Hill, which gave us a panoramic view of the Danube and the parliament building. Budapest is divided by the Danube into the "Buda" and the "Pest" sides of the city.

We took an optional excursion while in Budapest to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. This city is known for its lovely needlework. I loved this place and oogled much delicate needlework artistry.

Here we enjoyed another dinner, this one Hungarian and, of course, some Hungarian music and dancing.

Now it was time to move on to Austria. This was the southernmost stop on our tour and, ironically, the windiest and coldest!

We were surprised to see miles and miles of wind turbines dotting the landscape. Here in Maine, a hillside with 10 or 15 turbines creates a major stir among the locals. In Austria, apparently, this form of electric power production is more accepted.

About that absence...

I've been remiss, more remiss than usual, in updating my blog lately, but I have a good excuse: Ken and I made a trip to Eastern Europe in mid-May. We flew to Berlin on May 15.

This was our third Globus Tour, so we finally wised up: We arrived in Berlin two full days before meeting the other group members and starting the actual tour. Ken suggested we do this in order for us to "get our bearings" and adjust to the jetlag before visiting the various countries on our itinerary. It was a smart suggestion, as it turned out, and one we'd do again.

The spot where President Reagan implored Gorbachev to
"take down this wall."

I was a little intimidated at the thought of our being in Berlin on our own, though. I'm not half the intrepid traveler I was in my twenties and thirties! I think I was too young and innocent to be nervous about tackling a foreign city back then. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

As it turned out, though, Berlin proved to be an extremely friendly, inviting, and beautiful place to start our trip.

The weather in Berlin couldn't have been nicer. Well, maybe it could have been a tad cooler. Temperatures in the 80's greeted us. Ken hadn't packed enough short-sleeved shirts, so one of the first things we did upon arrival was visit Galeries Lafayette and purchase two more shirts for him. (In retrospect we over-reacted a bit, because the farther south we traveled in Europe, the chillier it became. By the time we got to Vienna, I was wishing I'd brought along my winter coat, and that's no exaggeration.) Galeries Lafayette was an experience all by itself, never mind the rest of the city!

Lafayette Shopping Center, much grander than
anything you'd find in Maine!

The food court in the basement has the most enormous selection of olive oils I've ever seen, for starters.

We spent our two days "alone" enjoying the architecture, walking miles and miles (seven miles one of the days), eating good German food, taking a boat cruise on the Spree, photographing various landmarks, visiting the museums (the Museum of Technology being Ken's favorite), and adjusting to the six-hour time difference.

This beautiful wisteria caught my eye while on our boat cruise.

This wurst vendor near the River Spree is the ultimate in efficiency: The grill is attached to his waist, the propane tank is attached to his back, and the umbrella is attached to the propane tank! German engineering at its best.

The Bierbike caught our attention more than once as we roamed the city. And no, we didn't take a city tour on it!

For this particular Bierbike what caught my eye was not simply the fact that every passenger on three sides of the bike pedals, yet the vehicle moves forward,...it was the guy in the pink spandex outfit! Can't say I'd ever seen the likes of that before.

Our visit to the Berlin Wall Memorial was sobering. It's hard to believe, when you see Berlin today, that West Berlin was made an island in East Germany from 1961 to 1989.

A local tour guide whom we met a couple of days after our arrival told us of the night the Berlin Wall fell. She had heard rumors that the wall might be taken down, but she didn't dare grow too hopeful.

She'd driven over to Checkpoint Charlie on an errand around 11:30 that night. While there, she learned the wall was coming down. She, her friends, and fellow West Berliners partied the rest of the night, she said. Then she dashed home, took a shower, and went to work. No sleep for her that night, but she was running on adrenalin, as were her fellow Berliners.

Our Globus Tour officially got underway on Friday night, May 17. Next installment: Poland.