Finally. A day of summer.

May consisted of 3 1/2 weeks of rain and temperatures in the lower 50s. Last week brought the first days of sunshine, which I used to finish the garden, and today, finally abundant sunshine, temperatures in the upper 80s, a good degree of humidity and a holiday. I packed up my bike and headed to Acadia National Park. Acadia NP is located on Mount Desert Island, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge in Trenton. Mount Desert is how everyone imagines Maine: beautiful fjords, coves, white cottages and an expansive terrain of mountains with hiking trails, carriage roads, and lobster places.

  

My bike ride took me to Jordan Pond house via the carriage roads. My plan was to have lunch at the restaurant, outside on the lawn with a beautiful view of the pond and the ‘bubbles’ and a popover. But alas since it was still raining until yesterday the lawn area was too soggy, and the benches and table had not been placed on the lawn yet. Bummer. So, I biked back to my car, and went to option 2: Bar Harbor.

   (see the bubbles?)

Bar Harbor has beautiful shops, great outdoor restaurants and many old-fashioned ice cream parlors. First order of business was stocking up on olive oils and balsamic vinegars at Fiore! Fiore is a store with a large selection of artisan olive oils, vinegars and other specialties likes sea salts and dips. What I like most about Fiore is that I can taste the different varieties, and I think especially with olive oils you never know if you like it if you don’t taste it first. This time I got a Garlic Olive Oil, Herbs de Provence EVOO and Meyer Lemon olive oil, and a fantastic new Honey Ginger White Balsamic Vinegar with quite a bite to it. Looking forward to grilling with these!

  

Walking off the olive oil samples and up an appetite I took a stroll through the main shopping street. One of my destinations is often a wood store, which sells only items made from wood like decorative ducks, beautiful salad bowls and kids toys. How adorable are these ‘prehistoric pull toys’?

And then it was finally time for ‘lunch’ at 4pm: a golden and red beet salad with goat cheese at Rupununi. Looks like they still had to break in the chef, because the beets were undercooked, and no goat cheese to be found. Quite disappointing. Well, it was the first good day of the summer, and all the waiter/waitresses were on summer jobs and new, too. Anyway, sitting in the warm sun after a satisfying summer day ? --- priceless.