Southern Maine Off the Beaten Path: Biddeford, Art, Food & Fog
Most people driving to the Maine coast have a destination in mind and a highway to get there. We'd like to gently suggest that the places worth knowing are the ones you almost drove past.
Southern Maine — specifically the area running from Old Orchard Beach through York — has a cultural life that surprises people who come expecting only lobster and lighthouses. Not that there's anything wrong with lobster and lighthouses. We have much affection for lobster!
Biddeford: Maine's best food city you've probably never heard of
Biddeford has gone through a genuine transformation in the last decade, and food is the most visible part of it. The mill district downtown has attracted the kind of chefs and restaurateurs who could hold their own in Portland or Boston but chose here deliberately — for the space, for the community, for the creative energy of a city figuring out what it wants to be next. Our favorites include Magnus on Water, Palace Diner, Catface, the Lincoln Hotel bar, Sweet Cream and Run of the Mill.
It's about fifteen minutes from Wonderland on the Water in Biddeford Pool, which makes it the perfect answer to "where do we go for dinner" without requiring any real planning.
Ogunquit: theater, drag shows, and dinner worth dressing for
Ogunquit has been a performing arts town and a genuinely welcoming community for longer than most places have been either. The Ogunquit Playhouse runs a serious summer season of theater. The drag shows and piano bars give Provincetown a run for its money. The restaurant scene is the most concentrated in this stretch of coast, and the Marginal Way — a one-mile clifftop path above the ocean — is one of the great short walks in New England.
About five minutes from The Apex. Forty minutes from Wonderland on the Water.
Wells: antiques, thrift stores, and the slow morning
The antique district along Route 1 in Wells rewards the unhurried. The kind of stores where you go in looking for nothing in particular and leave with something that turns out to be exactly right for the corner of your living room you'd given up on. Combined with the thrift stores in the area, it's a full morning for anyone who enjoys the hunt.
The art angle
Biddeford Pool and the surrounding marsh have drawn painters and photographers for as long as people have been coming here. The light — especially in early morning and at dusk — does things that are hard to explain and easy to understand if you've seen them. Several local galleries carry work by artists whose entire practice is shaped by this coastline. Check out the galleries in Kennebunkport, Ogunquit or the Portland Museum of Art.
A note on the geography
Worth clarifying because people sometimes picture this area as a neat triangle: Biddeford Pool, Kennebunkport, Wells, Ogunquit and York sit roughly along a north-south line on the coast. Portland is the northernmost then down through Old Orchard Beach and Saco to Biddeford. Kennebunkport and Wells are just before Ogunquit, then York has it’s own beautiful beaches before hitting the outlets in Kittery at the southern end. From any of our properties, you can move easily along this corridor — the drives are short and Route 1 or I-95 connect everything.
