Bar Harbour ME USA

Bar Harbour

Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium

Our trip ashore to Bar Habour had several important facets to it.  We needed to recce the food shopping and laundry options available in the town. We also needed to find out about the Acadia National Park bus service, hiking routes and also buy passes to enter the National Park.  And finally, and arguably most importantly, we needed to try out the ice cream in ‘Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium’.  Bizarrely they even have a lobster flavoured ice cream for sale there although neither of us was tempted by that flavour choice!

So, having quartered the bustling holiday town, tracked down a laundry, supermarket, and Visitors Information Office where we bought our park passes, we thought that it was ice-cream time.  A quick check of the price list suggested that a single scoop was darned expensive but a large was only 60 cents more. Bargain!  “2 large ice-cream cones please”.  Well, large turned out to be enormous!!  Giggling like school children, we left the shop each trying to balance 4 huge scoops of ice-cream on top of our cones.  Fortunately, the lady who served us had come across the problem before and equipped each of us with a bowl and spoon.  Even having knocked 3 balls off the top we still had large ice-creams.  It took us a long but very pleasurable time to work our way through the cones and the bowls of ice-cream; piggy or what!

Waddling back down the hill to our dinghy we were treated to lovely views out across the harbour.

But the ice cream [over-]indulgence needed to be paid for.  So, we swung into a frenzy of food shopping (with in-built weight-training, carrying it all back to the dinghy) followed by a laundry cardio-session (a dash to the laundry, 1+km from the dinghy landing, and back again with the added time pressure of dusk and the tide falling to uncover the bar to Bar Island if we were too slow getting the chores done).  The final part of the pay-back plan we’d already planned: Marching Monday.  In the morning we’d get one of the free Acadia National Park buses out to a start point and then spend the rest of the day hiking.  That would certainly finish working off the month’s supply of ice-cream we’d eaten in one sitting!

Bar Harbour, Maine, USA