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Lark Hotels Holiday Pop-Up Shop on Newbury Street December 13-18

I’m busy this week writing about the latest properties to open in New England for Yankee Magazine. Two of those boutique hotels, Blue on Plum Island and Gilded in Newport, are managed by Lark Hotels, the collection that is quickly expanding around the region. Learn about all their properties including Hotel Salem, which is slated to open next summer in Salem’s Newmark building, at a pop-up on Boston’s Newbury Street. You’ll also have the chance to purchase Lark Hotels’ deluxe sheet sets and hand-selected items from LATHER, Lark’s exclusive bath amenities partner. The pop-up is located at The Shop, 144 Newbury Street, on the corner of Dartmouth Street. 

 

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Explore the Canadian Wilderness with Several of Canada’s Best-Known Explorers

It’s not enough that Canadian Mountain Holidays runs two lodges in some of the most glorious British Columbia mountain ranges, the Bugaboos and Selkirk, where granite peaks and spires pierce the peak over 7,000 feet high. No, it’s not enough that this well-known heli-ski company uses those same helicopters in the summer time to take hikers to trails traversed by far more bear, elk, and caribou than humans. Now you’ll get to explore those same trails in the company of Dr. Joe MacInnis and Dr. Roberta Bondar. MacInnis led the first team of divers under the North Pole and was one of the first to dive the Titanic. Bondar is Canada’s first woman astronaut and a neurologist to boot. Dates are July 24-27 with MacInnis and August 17-20 with Bondar.
 

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Dining at the Source: New Culinary Experiences to Discover on PEI This Summer

One of the most memorable meals I’ve ever had as a travel writer was at the Inn at Bay Fortune on Prince Edward Island’s western shores. I arrived via kayak, courtesy of a four-day inn-to-inn sea kayaking jaunt; paddled onto the grassy shores and walked across the sloping manicured lawn. After washing the salt and rust colored sand from my body, I arrived for dinner expecting the usual PEI meal of lobster and mussels. Little did I realize that I was in for a culinary epiphany. The first course was pan roasted oysters in a soothing soup, creamy but not overwhelmingly rich like chowder. Then came a splendid salad of mixed greens where the waiter announced matter-of-factly that "everything is grown on the property, including the edible daisy." A seared rainbow trout topped with tomato risotto and black olives was followed by the meat course, a roasted leg of lamb, butchered by the farmer down the road. Dessert was a peach, strawberry, and mint compote, made on premises, of course. 

Before calling for a wheelbarrow to be escorted out of the restaurant (after all, I spent the day paddling 8 miles along the island’s fabled red clay cliffs and the night feasting), I had to first meet the talented chef who shrewdly took advantage of all his homegrown goodies. Standing tall in the kitchen was Michael Smith, who at that time was a recent transplant from Manhattan, once sous chef at Bouley and awarded four stars (extraordinary) by the New York Times.  Of course, he would soon move on to his successful television show "The Inn Chef," and release his best-selling cookbook, "Open Kitchen-A Chef’s Day at the The Inn at Bay Fortune." 
 
PEI is still home to a bounty of chefs, farmers, and fishermen who make the destination a foodie paradise. This summer, Experience PEI and Culinary Adventure Co. have teamed up to create an Island-focused collection of four culinary adventures. The Bar Clamming Adventure lets guests slip into a wetsuit and snorkeling gear, and wade into the water in search of bar clams, the biggest clams on Prince Edward Island. The Floating Lobster Boil features a sunset cruise around the Charlottetown Harbour, freshly cooked lobster, and stories from a third-generation lobster fisherman.  
 
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The Lobster Bake Aboard a Maine Windjammer

Aside from 11 year-old Mary Beth, who loved swimming and paddleboarding in the Atlantic, the highlight for most of us aboard the Schooner Mary Day was the first night lobster bake. Captain Barry anchored near a quiet beach with no other boats in sight and proceeded to row us over to the shore. The crew built a fire, then placed two massive pots brimming over with lobsters, corn on the cob, potatoes, onions, and a healthy top layer of seaweed. We swam and drank wine as the pots boiled, anticipating the feast. When ready, Captain Barry threw off the layer of seaweed and grabbed his tongs to place all the lobsters and fixins in a circular design. We each grabbed our lobster and plopped it on a tray, next to hot butter, corn, potatoes, and found a spot on the beach to dine. 

The lobster opened easily without the need for crackers, as large pieces of tender claw meat was soon dipped into the butter, washed down with a nice, dry sauvignon blanc. Sublime. After polishing off the tail and leaving a puddle of water on my shirt and bathing suit, I could start all over again. See, the best part of a lobster bake aboard a Maine windjammer is that you can eat as many lobsters as you want. Captain Barry tells me that his record is a college student who devoured 13 lobsters in one sitting. Content with my big 2-pounder, I was happy to make the first of several s’mores over the hot wood. Quite sated, four of us decided to swim back to the schooner instead of rowing. A wise decision. The water was clean, cool, refreshing. The dinner far more memorable than all those James Beard-award winning restaurants I dined at this year. 
 
(Photo by Melanie Jermanok)
 
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Stay in a Treehouse in Ohio’s Amish Country

Drive about 90 minutes northeast of Columbus or 90 minutes southwest of Cleveland and you’ll reach Glenmont, Ohio, the heart of Ohio’s Amish Country. This is where you’ll find The Mohicans, best known as the country’s largest treehouse village. They offer 6 treehouses, 2 of which were designed by Pete Nelson, the star of the Discovery Channel’s series, “Treehouse Masters.” Moonlit Treasure looks the best to me, but all are impressive. Nestled in the woods, this is a place to relax, walk the paths, and then dine on tasty farm-to-table cuisine. It’s perfect for families looking at colleges in Ohio. 

 
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Lark Hotels to Debut The Break in Narragansett, Rhode Island

Yesterday, I wrote about one of my favorite places to stay in the Portland area, the Pomegranate Inn. The 8-room B&B is now managed by Lark Hotels, who manage six boutique properties in New England, with a 7th on the horizon. They just announced the opening of their latest lodging, The Break, set to open in June in the surfing community of Narragansett. In the off-season, the waves at Narragansett’s Town Beach provide local surfers with enough action until their next trip to Rincon. In the summer, the beach is a bit milder, attracting families who can walk easily from The Break and restaurants like the Coast Guard House, where you can dine on Point Judith calamari and native littleneck clams on the outdoor deck. 

 
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Top 5 Travel Experiences of 2012, A Culinary High in Caraquet, New Brunswick

Last May, I was fortunate to drive New Brunswick’s Acadian Coast for an upcoming Boston Globe story. Stretching 110 miles from Shediac to Caraquet, the northeastern coast of New Brunswick boasts the warmest waters north of Virginia, the sand dunes of Kouchibouguac National Park, lonely lighthouses on Miscou Island, and the largest lobster processing facility on the continent. Yet, the real reason folks go out of their way to venture to the Acadian Coast is to experience the French Canadian culture. Stop at any of the small towns and you’ll notice a distinctive joie de vivre, with foot-stomping fiddle music, down-home French cooking accentuating the local seafood catch, and festivals that celebrate the Acadians’ 400-year-old history in the Atlantic Maritimes.
 
Yet, it was one day in Caraquet where I experienced my greatest culinary pleasure of the year. In the morning, oysterman Gaetan Dugas took me out on the waters of Caraquet Bay to show me firsthand why these oysters are a cherished commodity in high demand from chefs around North America. Especially the petites, small oysters that are both succulent and briny. Dugas’ ancestors include a pirate who commandeered a ship against the British in the 1750s, but it’s his father who taught him how to oyster farm and his grandfather who taught him the traditional ways of the local Mi’kmaq people. 
 
Just as bountiful as the sea are the forests surrounding Caraquet, ripe with morels, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and other goodies like the foot of the cattail. Local Jean Patenaude made a name for himself scouring the countryside for edibles, bringing home laundry baskets full of wild mushrooms on ideal days in summer. In the afternoon, he took me foraging for morels. 
 
That evening, I assembled the goodies I had collected that day and brought them to chef Karen Mersereau, the mother of gastronomy in Caraquet. Mersereau was a food marketing rep in Toronto when she met Gerard Paulin, the third-generation hotelier of Hotel Paulin, a Victorian-era gem perched on a hill above the water of Caraquet Bay. A dozen years later, the couple are parents of a boy, Jules, and Karen is firmly entrenched at the helm of the hotel’s kitchen. She has wisely aligned herself with both Dugas and Patenaude. 
 
Mersereau took my day’s bounty and created a memorable wild mushroom oyster bisque. To ensure that every spoonful was chockful of meat, she throws in the native palourdes clam, similar to a quahaug. Her bevy of local supplies would make most chefs weep with joy. In addition to oysters and mushrooms, there’s snow crabs, tuna, Atlantic salmon, shrimp, and halibut right off the boat, goat cheese and spring-fed lamb found in nearby farms, and blueberries and cloudberries that grow wild along the coast, perfect for making a sublime pie. At Hotel Paulin, the locavore movement has reached its crescendo.
 

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