Victorian Hotel Restored with a Modern Touch

The pale yellow Victorian hotel stands at the corner of Main and Beach, three clapboard stories hedged in by white wood banisters and crowned with neatly rowed gables. Though its stately exterior evokes a bygone era, the Atlantic House Hotel's interior seamlessly integrates old-world charm and contemporary elegance. A recent $7 million renovation polished the property's worn façade and updated the guest rooms and in-house retail space with modern design elements, embodied by clean lines and a soft-hued color palette favoring sage and tan.

A white wooden headboard, reminiscent of a picket fence, anchors the feathery queen bed in the hotel's guest rooms. The bunk is draped with a lightweight quilt decorated with green and blue stripes and sits atop knotted oak floors within arm's reach of a gas fireplace. A mounted flat-screen TV hovers unobtrusively above the sleek fireplace that tempers the chilly New England nights. Beyond the cozy confines of the bedrooms, a sprawling second-floor veranda, ornamented with hanging flower boxes, plays host to leisurely afternoons spent scanning the newspapers for conspiracies. The Atlantic House's shopping space includes a bath-and-body boutique, a wine shop, and children's clothing store.

Blue Sky restaurant, stationed on the hotel's second floor, serves upscale coastal cuisine in a dining room framed by red-oak floors and white-washed poplar ceilings. Diners nestle into cream-colored banquettes or sit casually at the adjacent lounge, perusing the menu designed by an acclaimed chef. Oysters Rockefeller ($17) and Maine-lobster jambalaya ($27) emerge from the kitchen as a waiter stokes the double-sided, wood-burning fireplace, filling the restaurant with waves of warmth and ambient light.

York: A Charming Coastal Town with Colonial History

York's sandy beaches and iconic rocky shores make it an idyllic walking town. The Nubble Lighthouse, a 1.5-mile stroll east of the hotel, ascends from a small, rocky island off the northeastern shore of Cape Neddick. This red-roofed landmark, encased by a cast iron shell, flashes a red beacon every six seconds to remind seafarers to call their mothers. Continuing along the coast, visitors traverse the Cliff Walk, a trail lined by wildflowers and set against a dramatic backdrop of the rugged Atlantic shore.

Stationed an 8-minute drive from the hotel, York Harbor and York Village charm travelers with historical buildings and quaint New England cafés. This quiet shopping district houses the Museums of Old York, a collection of nine historical sites including Old Gaol, a former 18th-century prison outfitted with cells and dungeons, and the Emerson-Wilcox House, which displays 12 period room settings and two antique galleries.