The Boston Sunday Globe
Explore New England

The wraparound porch on the hillside Five Gables Inn overlooking the lobster and pleasure boast on Linekin Bay in East Boothbay, Maine, is a place to both start and wind down the day with breakfast and afternoon tea.  The porch is decorated with green wicker furniture, hanging baskets of fuchsia, rockers, and a well-placed hammock to relax in the breeze.

Tea is informal, a chance for guests to munch on homemade chocolate chip cookies and sip something warm or cool from the kitchen of Mike and De Kennedy, who have run the Victorian bed-and-breakfast for 10 years.

To the Kennedys, the porch is a reminder of De’s childhood in northern Georgia, where her family has a civil War-era home with three porches.  “We were what you call porch dogs,” Mike said.

The tradition of rocking and rambling in the evenings down south was well documented.  In summer 1993, the pair found a diary that belonged to De’s great grandparents; it was written when her relatives were about the same age as the Kennedys are today.

“And they were doing the exact same thing we were doing –100 years earlier – sitting out on the porch,: Mike said. “when we bought the inn, we brought that mind -set with us.”