Fall Weekend in Brunswick, Maine

Squint at Brunswick, Maine, from a few different angles and you may see a historic mill town, a former military base, or a slightly bougie Portland bedroom community. Nestled between Casco and Merrymeeting bays, at the confluence of the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers, the town of 22,000 is all of those things. But whatever else you can say about it, Brunswick is a college town—in the lowest-bar sense of having Bowdoin College smack in the middle of it, sure, but also because it boasts the quintessential college-town trappings: a walkable core, café culture, an arts scene, and nightlife.

And never does Brunswick feel college-townier than in September and October, when the students are settling back in, filling bars and shops along Maine Street (yep, correct spelling) and idling beneath the increasingly vibrant maples and oaks that shade the Town Mall.

On a recent visit, I opted to tool around Brunswick in classic student fashion, posting up at the white-columned Brunswick Hotel, right across from campus, and going only where the front desk’s complimentary cruiser bikes could take me. The stately 51-room hotel, as it happens, is 500 feet from the Amtrak station, where trains pull up from Boston daily, so a car-free Brunswick weekend isn’t just for middle-aged alums reliving their salad days. (Gorham Bike & Ski, two blocks from the station, rents road bikes and e-bikes.)

It was cocktail hour when I got into town, so I wheeled over to the low-key fireplace pub at OneSixtyFive, an 1848 Federal-style inn on a shady lane of 19th-century mansions, called Park Row. This is best-kept-secret stuff: Plenty of Brunswickers don’t know that the inn’s Pub165 is open to all, that its cocktail menu is on point, and that you can enjoy your drink of choice (and perhaps some rosemary-truffle cashews) on the huge wraparound porch. Live music sometimes floats over from the adjacent Town Mall gazebo. Get another drink and some lobster corn cakes, and voilà, cocktail hour becomes dinner.

The next morning started with strong coffee and a house-baked sticky bun at Dog Bar Jim, just off campus. Narrow and festooned with weird bric-a-brac, including some Seinfeld-themed pieces, it’s the ’90s-throwback coffee shop of your bohemian dreams. Mugs are thrift-store mismatched, and espresso drinks are expertly made (just don’t ask for a pumpkin spice latte).

Where did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne get their joe? The two members of Bowdoin’s Class of 1825 are on a long roster of notable alumni. You’ll find their portraits in the vast collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, one of the country’s oldest collegiate museums, dating to 1811. Among other things, it’s big on antiquities—the current “Flora et Fauna” exhibit considers how nature is depicted on an awe-inspiring assemblage of ancient Mediterranean figurines, urns, chalices, and more (on view through March 7, 2026).

But only two Bowdoin alums have a whole campus museum named for them. The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum was once a glorified gallery, filled with artifacts acquired during the polar expeditions of admirals Donald MacMillan and Robert Peary. In 2023, it reopened in a dramatic three-story space, the public-facing half of the new Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies, with an expanded emphasis on arctic ecology and both historical and contemporary Inuit art. Built from eco-friendly prefab mass timber, it’s an airy chapel of exposed blonde wood, tall windows, and angled ceilings from which the occasional musk ox gazes down. Highlight of my morning: running my hand over a gnarly old narwhal tusk.

After a few hours of museums, I steered my cruiser off campus and toward a couple of pillowy steamed pork buns at ZaoZe Café & Market, a mod little cafeteria inspired by convenience stores in China and Southeast Asia. Next, a spin through a couple of Maine Street’s old reliables. Gulf of Maine Books has been a paragon of an indie bookshop since 1979, its well-stocked shelves bordering on cluttered. A short stroll away, Nest has anchored the 1896 Lincoln Building for more than 20 years, a colorful 6,000-square-foot bazaar of home and garden goods. The afternoon’s haul included a copy of Maine novelist Ruth Moore’s Spoonhandle, recommended by Gulf of Maine co-owner Gary Lawless, and a pair of speckled ceramic soap dishes.

Then, wouldn’t you know, it was cocktail hour again, and I headed across the street to The Abbey. Opened by Connor Scott and Lainey Catalino in 2023, it’s the too-rare combo of craft coffee shop and cocktail bar, welcoming the laptop set during the day and a lively dinner-and-drinks crowd at night (with plenty of overlap). The vibe is DIY glam—mirror ball, candelabras, zine-like handwritten specials menus—and befitting a college town, the place stays open most days till the scandalous hour of 11 p.m. I ordered a Korean-inflected margarita, with house-made gochujang-grapefruit syrup, and an oh-so-fall roasted delicata squash salad, then sat back on my upholstered retro barstool for some people-watching. Longfellow and Hawthorne never had it so good.

This feature was originally published in the September/October 2025 issue of Yankee.

See More: Things to Do in Brunswick, Maine: Where to Eat, Stay & Play

Brian Kevin

More by Brian Kevin