Each summer weekend can be like a holiday here in Maine. Once, to the Vikings, it was rugged Vineland; today Maine is Vacationland. After a hard, dirty winter, mild air and watery sunlit places are calling: an abundance of evocative coastal places within a couple minutes' or couple of hours' drive. The author experienced one beach not typical of Maine. It was different in a lively way. She and her spouse, Allen, drove to Auburn for groceries and suddenly decided—over lunch in the Nickel Diner—to go visit Old Orchard Beach before grocery shopping.Old Orchard Beach has long been a resort town, situated in a curve of Saco Bay and full of mechanized carnival life, its waterfront crammed with screaming or jovial activity, shimmering in sunlight. After a search in side streets full of summer lodgings and cars, the travelers locate a place to park, then walk down to the sea—down to "Maine on the Mediterranean."