Getting the flavor of...Maine’s Acadian getaway

Maine’s Acadian getaway

Serenity can be found on Maine’s Mount Desert Island even in high tourist season, said Betsy O’Connell in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Acadia National Park, which encompasses about half the island, draws about 2 million visitors annually, many of whom stay near Bar Harbor and bunch up at such big draws as the park’s Sand Beach. My husband and I escaped the hordes by opting for an inn in Bass Harbor, a small fishing village on the island’s quiet western side. (One afternoon, a young moose wandered within yards of our window.) We took strolls along quiet pebbly beaches but also drove to the eastern side’s popular Park Loop Road, where “rocky outcrops meet thundering Atlantic waves head-on, sending salt water high into the air.” A crowd awaited us atop Cadillac Mountain, the tallest of the island’s many bald peaks, but soon enough we were back in our serene harbor. We parked at the roadside just to gaze at the boat lights reflecting on the water.

Old-time San Diego

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Fine restaurants, hip shops, and a lively nightlife have made San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter exciting again, said Stephen Jermanok in The Boston Globe. The rise in foot traffic marks “just the latest evolution” for a neighborhood where lawman Wyatt Earp once tried to make his fortune operating saloons and gambling halls. In Earp’s era, the Victorian buildings were home to banks, brothels, and hotels, but by the 1920s the neighborhood was little more than “a seedy hangout for sailors.” Though the city recognized a 16-block section as a historic district in 1974, only more recently did another youthful clientele begin transforming the quarter, drawn by nightclubs such as Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar, founded by the widow of singer Jim Croce. Today, a convention center and Petco Park have re-energized the Gaslamp, and the district boasts such top-tier restaurants as Searsucker and Nobu. “This is not Earp’s Gaslamp Quarter, but it is thriving again.”