If you’ve watched the British television comedy Keeping Up Appearances you’ll be familiar with the lead character Hyacinth Bucket who prefers to put a French spin on the pronunciation of her last name. It would seem appropriate, therefore, that we should have a bouquet list of things we wanted to do before leaving the US. Since we won’t have a big oven in our French house, Bill’s been baking all kinds of bread, and besides, we’ll be walking to the boulangerie every morning for our daily baguette and maybe even a pastry or two. From our pantry we’ve already had our fill of tapioca and gelatin (yum?) so it’s time to see what else is on the list.

We used to travel in New England for work but we never got the chance to stop along the coastline just to enjoy the view, eat lobster, and drink Moxie in Maine. Since we had been invited to a wedding a bit north of Boston it made sense to take the week before and explore that beautiful area of the country. We used the port town of Camden, ME as our base to be within easy driving distance of one of those bouquet items: Acadia National Park.

What a perfect time of year to be in New England. This was mid-September so the fall crowds had not yet arrived but the trees had just enough color to make it worth the trip.

A bonus of this trip was getting to see our dear, long-time friend Anne and to meet Paul, whom Anne sweetly refers to as her “beau” (there’s that French influence again and his heritage is French-Canadian to boot). Hopefully, as with many of you following this blog, we’ve convinced them to make the journey across the Atlantic to see us. Heck, you guys, from Boston it’s only a little over 6 hours before you’re in Paris. See you there!