Bar Harbor is the main gateway to Acadia National Park and the social hub of Mount Desert Island. The town fills with visitors every summer, drawn by the park, the whale watching tours, and the fresh seafood restaurants along the waterfront.
At low tide you can walk across a gravel bar to Bar Island -- just keep an eye on the tide or you will be swimming back. The Shore Path skirts the rocky coast past the surviving Gilded Age cottages of the West Street Historic District, and the Abbe Museum tells the long history of the Wabanaki peoples who summered on this island for ten thousand years before anyone else.
The town itself has enough shops, galleries, and restaurants to fill a rainy day, but the real draw is the surrounding landscape. Save half a day for the Jordan Pond House popovers inside Acadia — a 130-year-old tradition that remains the one thing nearly every visitor does.