maine vacation ~ the cottage

We stayed at this cottage for the week in Hancock, Maine...

The owners call this place "The Tides Cottage".

The place is located along the Sullivan Harbor on Frenchman's Bay. It was a true New England coastal cottage and rustic in its own right...right on the water, nothing too fancy, needing a fresh coat of paint on the walls and ceilings, uneven floors, noisy steps, stinky water, but quite perfect for our vacation and no drippy ceilings when it rained. (The information we got on the place warned us that the roof would drip when it rains, but it didn't even after a huge thunderstorm rolled through one night.) We loved the feel of the home and the comfort it provided. We really felt like we had a real Maine experience and adventure (and we even shopped at Reny's, too!).

This is the view in the back of the cottage.

Here's the inside...

the kitchen where we cooked most of our meals

the living room which had the most comfortable couches in it and a great big area for the kiddos to run and play in (the organ turned out to be a great source of entertainment...you had to pump the pedals back and forth to get it to play

the steps which you had to step carefully on the top step or you would alert everyone in the house that you are coming down the steps or that you are awake

This was the shower in the upstairs bathroom. As soon as Ivy saw it, she LOVED it. (In fact, when she first saw pretty much everything in the cottage, she would excitedly remark, "Look at this! Wow! Look at that!") This shower was also where she had to change her clothes at our first morning there. Can't you tell that it just has dressing room written all over it?
the bedroom where the kids slept

the bedroom where our friends slept (it was on the dark side of the house)

our bedroom which our friends graciously let us sleep in...it had an awesome view of the water! It was our intention to give our friends this room since it was bigger and would allow them to spread out more in, BUT if you see in the pictures, the side looking out to the ocean were all big windows with no window coverings on them. This was also the side where the sun rose on, and it would start rising at 5 o'clock in the morning and would be shining in all of its glory by 5:30. We are use to waking up early, and our kids are early risers, while our friends (even their sweet little son) love to sleep in when they can and they felt that the sun may wake Levi up earlier than they wanted so they gave us the bedroom. The doors opened to a balcony, and the room had this nice bench in it.

The sunrises were spectacular. On this particular morning, my camera doesn't do justice as to how gorgeous the sky and water were. The sky was so red and the water was so blue that when you gazed at the sky's reflection in the water, you saw the richest color of purple one could ever see. So remarkable!
We also enjoyed watching the lobsterman's routine every morning between 5 and 5:30. Two men would drive down to the shoreline in their pickup truck and unload a canoe where one man would row out to a little motor boat docked in the water. That man would drive the motor boat back to the shoreline to pick up their supplies and the other man (who had parked the pickup truck up further so the tide wouldn't wash it away)...The two men would then drive their motor boat out to their lobster boat, load up their supplies and lobster traps, and ride off to work on the ocean. It was so fascinating to watch them.
That's where we stayed!