Christmas Prelude

This past weekend was spent with three good friends in Kennebunkport, Maine for their pre-Christmas celebration, called Prelude.  This small quintessential New England town of less than 3,500 residents comes alive for this annual event that draws over 60,000 visitors.

After the tree lighting ceremony Friday night.  Notice the lobster holding a star  at the top.

Aside from tourism, this is a fishing village with lobster being its main catch.  But for this season the whole town gets ready for Christmas with every building decorated with white lights and greenery.  Even the bridge joining Kennebunk to Kennebunkport is draped with pine swags and red bows.  The telephone poles are wrapped with garlands and red ribbons.  There are shops galore and for a mega-shopper like me it was heaven. HGTV rated it as the second best Christmas town in the country.

We loved this display in the small lobby of simple bare trees and white lights.  Hard to photograph day or night, but it was stunning.

We stayed at a fabulous new hotel, The Boat House.  It has been restaurant for many years, but the new owners did a complete renovation and added twelve guest rooms and suites.  We absolutely loved it for its convenience, being right in the middle of town and walkable to almost everything, the wonderful accommodations and its fantastic restaurant.  It was very hard to get a reservation at the restaurant, but if you were a hotel guest you had a guaranteed reservation.  Since the town was so jam packed and reservations at any restaurant were almost impossible to get, we ate at David's both nights and had scrumptious meals.

This was the view from one of the windows in our room.  The lighted tree was on the deck below that was part of the restaurant.

A different view from our hotel. We liked the hotel so much that we reserved rooms for next year.  Once the word gets out I'm sure it will be impossible to get a reservation.



There were so many activities scheduled: tree lighting ceremonies both Friday and Saturday evenings with beautiful accapella singing from the High School choir. Saturday night we walked to the local monastery for Christmas carols with everyone holding a white lit candle. We went to the craft fair at the local consolidated school and picked up some treasures.

How abut this Christmas tree that was made of lobster traps, buoys, and fresh greens! That's Maxine, Sheila and me.  Claire was taking the picture.

The entrance to the restaurant where we had luch just before leaving to go home on Sunday.

Claire, Maxine and Sheila having out last hurrah (lobster rolls, a nice glass of wine and decadent desserts) at this lovely dining establishment with great water views.

Everyone was in a Christmas mood and many people, including me, were wearing Christmas hats.  You could buy them quite inexpensively in town and many were hand made.  On Saturday afternoon there was a hat parade and we were rushing to get to another event and I didn't get any pictures.

Here's my hat, actually a headband, that I bought, now perched on a my Santa doll. The store had so many that it was hard to choose.  There were Christmas trees, Santas, snowmen, Christmas packages, and so much more.  The sparkly mistletoe on the wire made it a little hard  to wear because it kept bobbing around as I walked, but I had a lot of fun with it.

We were very lucky with the weather.  Although it was cold it didn't snow or rain except for a brief sprinkle Friday evening at the tree lighting.  We were dressed very warmly with fleece, long johns  and down coats so we were just fine. We woke up this morning here in CT to roads and walkways coated with ice.  Thank goodness that didn't happen to us on the way home. All in all it was a wonderful, magical weekend and we are looking forward to next year.