Reunion Research

The West Street Hotel

The West Street Hotel is the #2 hotel in Bar Harbor right now according to Trip Advisor. It is described as a "luxury boutique hotel" and we liked it because it was not all Victorian-y like most places in Bar Harbor and because it was downtown.

We got a tour of the different room types and there is one big suite with two bedrooms that has a huge, awesome wrap around balcony - the one right above the bar in the picture above. That would be the room for us to get. We also saw the adjoining suites I think they are called, which are basically just two rooms with a large door connecting them. They have to go together because there is only one door going out to the hallway. We also saw a normal room which was very nice. I don’t think you can go wrong here. They have ocean view, harbor view, and no view. The West Street Hotel was redone last year so it is super new feeling.

There is a rooftop infinity pool that is only for adults, but the same owner also owns the Harborview and the Bar Harbor Club so kids (and anyone) can use the nice pool and hot tub over there, which is like a block away. They also have a big area, kind of like a resort in Mexico has, where there’s a bar and just a place to hang out. Everyone we talked with asked if we had already talked with Deb since she organizes most of the island, apparently so we left a message for her.

The infamous Deb basically said that we should stay flexible rather than reserving a block of rooms. If we did a block we’d have to pay a deposit, lock into a price, and then pay ourselves if enough rooms didn’t fill. So we’re not doing that. She said that the nice thing about Bar Harbor is that there are lots of hotels within walking distance so we may just want to give people options and stay wherever we want ourselves. They don’t take any reservations for next summer until after Christmas. We mentioned that the big suite with the porch would work for the first night where everyone comes to the host’s room, and she said that 35 people would be too many for that room due to noise. Maybe she’s thinking these are rowdy people. I’m pretty sure no one will be standing outside of the room monitoring. The only problem is that if it is super rainy, as it is today, it would be a pretty tight fit to all fit into the living room, since there is no dining or kitchen area to spread out into. We were thinking though that if we did end up with too many people and it rained we could go up to the hang out area by the pool on the roof (indoors) or we could go over to the pool house. Deb said that the issue is making an area private, when it is normally open to guests. We didn’t think that we necessarily needed to exclude people, except when we’re providing food. Even so, it is unlikely people would just take random food laying around.

We met with Deb to look at meeting rooms that could be catered. The room is about $200-400 and then the meal would be about 50-70. Andy had a revelation that actually trying to make plans for 35 people could be the problem. If 35 people show up at a restaurant, they deal with it, right? That many people can’t really sit together and all communicate anyway. So we are thinking that we could just plan to break into groups one night. Paddy’s only takes reservations 15 minutes ahead of time, so then we could do something where we make multiple reservations of 10 if multiple people wanted to eat there. Or we could just offer some recommendations of places and help orchestrate the reservations for people so they could eat where they wanted to. We could do a group drink hour together at the pool house and then head out to eat.

There’s plenty to do and see: lots of restaurants (lobster!), walking around the water, Acadia National Park, Atlantic brewery, Bar Harbor Cellars Winery, whale watching, the Margaret Todd Schooner, kayaking, sitting around the many pools, looking for sea shells, eating more (ice cream, blueberry pie), golfing (3 courses on the island along with Pirates Cove mini golf), Asticou Azalea Garden, driving around the island, checking out art galleries in the outlying parts of the island, seeing live music at night. 

Pics from the West Street Hotel website.