PENTAGOET INN

One of Maine’s original summer hotels, the gabled Victorian manor has 16 antique-filled rooms and a front porch just right for morning coffee with fresh- baked blueberry scones.

At the tip of a peninsula overlooking Penobscot Bay, this tranquil village was established as a French trading post in 1613, making it one of the oldest towns in the country. A thriving shipbuilding center in the 1800s, by the turn of the 20th century it had become a summer destination for “rusticators”—affluent city folk who arrived by steamship to take in the bracing salt air. Narrow streets lined with stately Victorian and Colonial-era homes lead down to the deep harbor where lobstermen share the water with port-hopping yachties and kids dinking around in skiffs. Though shopping isn’t a major draw—it’s more about long walks (with frequent stops to read historic markers)—Main Street has its enticements, especially Leila Day Antiques.