Drink at the Inn at Shelburne Farms – quite possibly the most pleasant thing you could do in Vermont ever. See a nice day during the warmer months coming up? Book a reservation at the Inn at Shelburne Farms, show up early, and grab a pricey but amazing drink at the bar and pull up some Adirondack Chairs. The views are ridiculous – open space, Adirondacks across the lake, gorgeous gardens. It’s upscale Vermontiness in the best possible way.
Otter Creek Brewery – Just outside the town of Middlebury, Otter Creek is a decent brewery beerwise, but fun to visit if only for the experience. The Copper Ale isn’t quite as refreshing as it was when it flowed from kegs like water back in college, but they continue to experiment with flavors and styles. Best bet – go for a flight, then grab a pint of your favorite before heading to Drop In brewery or one of the buzzier places like Greensboro’s Hill Farmstead or The Alchemist in Waterbury.
Middlebury College Museum of Art – See Middlebury College If you’re in town and have a yen for some art, it’s one of the best museums in the state, in a gorgeous location.
VINS Nature Center – owls – good kid destination, if you’ve got one with a fascination for birds of prey, owls, and more.
Underhill State Park – dynamite views of Mount Mansfield, hiking and backcountry skiing destination – home to the Teardrop Trail, an old trail cleared out for skiing decades ago. Off the beaten path on the other side of the mountain from Stowe.
Outdoor Gear Exchange – best and biggest outdoor gear store I’ve ever been to. Right on the Church Street Marketplace, so it’s busy with a blend of hardcore outdoor gear heads and grandmas alike. Pro tip for cheapskates – they have a consignment section in the basement. Look there before pulling the trigger on a new kid’s coat or hiking boots they’ll outgrow in a few weeks.
Single Pebble – maybe the most popular restaurant in Burlington. It’s not cheap but not super expensive either. The flavors are really good, though sometimes a bit salty. I recommend the dim sum on Sunday morning. Nothing exotic like a real dim sum place in a big city, but just tasty and fun way to pass an hour or two on a Sunday morning.
Four Corners of the Earth for sandwiches – The rumors are true. It’s slow as hell, because the owner sometimes has help and sometimes doesn’t. It’s also cash only, but there’s an on-site ATM, which is a big deal. Definitely expect to wait 20-30 minutes for sandwiches but expect them to be worth it. The place has a VT hippie avant garde feel to it – just authentic, slow food, interesting flavors. Really hard to go wrong.
Bread and Puppet – Mind-expanding. Awe-inspiring. Challenging in many ways. Remote and kinda hard to get to in West Glover, yes. But the ‘cheap art’ and satirical puppetry produced over the last four or five decades at this revolutionary northeast kingdom destination .. Hard to know what to say about it, other than it challenges the way you’ve been living your life. And it makes you see and feel the absolute dedication and purity and zealousness and honesty of Bernie Sanders and the back to the land movement in Vermont. After Bread and Puppet, you just get why people in Vermont believe they’re revolutionaries, and how big ideas get incubated here in the middle of nowhere, where mosquitoes take whole bites from your body but must be swapping it for some unimaginable elixir for your mind and soul.
The bike path in Burlington – north of town beaches – the Burlington Bikeway is just so awesome and underappreciated. Or maybe it was just underappreciated by me. But particularly north of town, it starts to open up and you see majesty at every spot. Rent a bike, borrow a bike, take a walk. If the weather is halfway decent and you’ve got nothing better to do, there’s no reason not to jump on and take a walk or ride to North Beach or above…
Pho Hong – cheap, good Vietnamese food. Not at all a secret. Prepare to wait if you show up at any peak hour, but you won’t be disappointed. Great pho, fresh ingredients, friendly people. It is BYO.
Von Trapp Brewery at Trapp Family Lodge – This is another place that is entirely weather-dependent. Spending a perfect summer afternoon here, the view across the valley to Stowe Pinnacle and the vastness of the sky makes you feel almost on the same plane of lightness as the clouds as they slowly move past. I can’t remember another time since childhood where I was able to sit and watch the clouds change shape with such a sense of calm. And the beer’s good too. I recommend the pilsner.
Light Club Lamp Shop – best ambiance and coolest vibe in town. Right next door and affiliated with the Radio Bean but with more comfortable seating and better drinks. This place feels like the late-night absinthe bar you’d want to go to in Prague but never got your act together to get to. Fun to see music here because it’s small and intimate and just so many lamps. It’s an actual lamp shop.
The Pinnacle – Hike outside Stowe – Goddamn the Stowe Pinnacle is pretty busy and blown- up but it’s just so pleasant on a nice day. Perfect views across the town of Stowe to the Green Mountains and beyond. Mosses and rocks and roots and a good hard uphill breathing experience… Go!
Getting your christmas tree at Russell Farm in Starksboro – #1 Vermontiest thing we did every year was go to this tree farm out in Starksboro. Horse-drawn sleigh/wagon carries you up into a grove of Christmas trees. You hop out, pick a saw and a tree and cut it down yourself, tag it, and the friendly Russell family grabs it and transports it back to the bottom of the hill while you drink hot cocoa and eat cookies in front of the fire in their little hut. You feel tucked away and cared for in a way I haven’t felt anywhere else. This became THE Christmas tradition, and if you don’t know about it, you don’t know about it. I just counted the reviews on Google, and there are two. This is the kind of experience that requires insider knowledge. But even if a lot of people know about it, its location, authenticity, and remoteness will keep it amazing. In fact, go! Farmer families like the Russells are getting rarer and rarer. Diversifying into these kinds of family experiences can actually help them preserve their rugged but beautiful Vermont way of living.
Middlebury College – It’s just a prototypical small, New England liberal arts college in the prototypical small but beautiful New England town. Vermont’s small towns are far from the wastelands that many US small towns are. Rather, they’re home to bright, engaged populations that participate in their local events, take pride in their local food and drink, and get to know each other personally, thanks to platforms like Front Porch Forum, a throwback and a modern social media platform at the same time. But I digress. Middlebury and the college are just plain gorgeous, especially in the summer, when you can visit an art museum, waterfalls, and stroll through town for some shopping or whatever. Too bad the old Waterfront Video store is now gone…. For evidence of how spoiled the “midd kids” are – cruise around the sports facilities and the field house on the southeast edge of campus and see facilities worth of a huge university on a 2000-student campus.
Hike outside Vergennes
Stone Soup – Right in the heart of downtown Burlington, it can be hard to find a great, quick, tasty lunch or dinner option. Stone Soup serves up really healthy, homey food, great cookies and pastries, and you can grab it quickly from the buffet. Just weigh it and pay. The teriyaki style chicken wings are particularly dependable, but everything is tasty in that wholesome way you’d want to feed your family.
Al’s French Fry – Al’s was an institution in my family. I would take my girls nearly every Wednesday evening. It’s cheap fast food in a 50’s style diner setting, but it does have a real charm to it. It’s not overly self-conscious or trying to be kitschy or hip at all. They play old rock and roll music and you line up to order your food and get it before you sit down. They have ice cream during summer and a small, dirty playground. Doesn’t sound like much, but when you need a simple meal, some good house made fries, and a place to entertain some kids, it just works. Add in the creemees and it’s a lovely little evening activity – and cheap.
Kid places – indoor (Petra Cliffs, Champlain Lanes, ECHO) – If you’re visiting Vermont with kids and the weather goes bad, you need options. These three places in Burlington can help you avoid going crazy for at least a day or two. Some rock-climbing and bowling will keep your body moving and blood pumping, and ECHO is a decent enough science museum to pass a couple of hours. To be clear, these places are nothing to write home about, not at all special or worth a trip on their own, but they can be keys to survival during a cold winter or particularly muddy mud season.
Bread Loaf in Fall – like so many things in Vermont, this recommendation is squarely season-dependent. But anytime from late spring to late fall (the snowy part of winter, too), the stretch of Route 100 from Middlebury to Bread Loaf and the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, past the small town of Ripton, is perhaps the most scenic and least traveled (but still accessible to population centers) drive in Vermont. Otter Creek? flows through the center of the valley where Robert Frost composed his most famous work. The yellow buildings of Bread Loaf, where Middlebury college hosts a famous writer’s conference very summer, have a stateliness and grandeur against the mountain backdrop. You can rent cross-country skis in winter, or access loads of trails all around the area, the Robert Frost Trail, and so much other natural beauty… It’s one of the things I miss most about the place. Depending where you start from, you can link up one of those quintessential Vermont days – hit small towns, the Mad River Valley, skiing, hiking, amazing food all in one shot.
Montshire Kids Museum in Norwich – best kids’ museum in the area hands down. It’s right across the river from Hanover, New Hampshire, which is home to Dartmouth College. So much more modern and spacious than the ECHO Center in Burlington. Can keep a kid entertained for hours, with lots of different attractions depending on the season. Combine it with VINS for some nature exposure (birds of prey anyone?) in summer
Doc Ponds – Holy awesome beer selection and awesome food and really good deal. Stowe’s very own Doc Ponds, owned and operated by the same dudes that own Hen of the Wood in Waterbury and Burlington, is affordable and just plain awesome in every way. A beer after a skiing or biking or hiking excursion is one of life’s simpler and more perfect pleasures. For some reason, it takes on an almost mystical, ecstatic state in VT. Doc Ponds is that – perfect small outdoor section if it’s nice out, high-top tables inside, little nooks, good music. It gets crowded, so off times are really the best times. They have some gut bomb awesome sandwiches – just hits all the right notes for understanding and appreciating Vermont’s charm.
Hen of the Wood Burlington – Still the best restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life, Hen of the Wood just never disappoints. It’s pricey. Expect to spend that $150-$200 per couple like you would at a fine dining restaurant anywhere, but expect to not have that empty feeling you sometimes get afterwards, when the quality doesn’t match the prices. The chefs at HOTW are true craftsmen, cooking over wood fires. The ambiance is Vermont through and through – natural wood, reclaimed in some instances, comforting, cozy, even cave-like in certain parts of the restaurant but warming and nourishing in every way. The place is always busy, so book weeks in advance if possible. If not, you can show up and eat at the bar. Pro tip – there are about 8 seats right in front of the open kitchen, where you can watch the chefs work their magic and the expediter keep their troops in line. If you’re in a party of two, you can show up and request those seats, grab a drink at the bar, and wait for two of them to open up. It’s worth your time.
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Art Hop – Every September, just when the faintest hint of a nip and the onset of fall is in the air, Burlington’s artists open their studios for two days of exhibits and events. Great for kids, food trucks, and they even shut down the main street into town. There’s just something magic about the combination.
Sitting outside at Juniper at Hotel VT – If you’re visiting Burlington and not on a college kid budget, stay at the Hotel Vermont. Eat at Hen of the Wood next door. But if the weather is at all agreeable, grab a drink at Juniper inside Hotel VT and chill on the porch out back. They have fire pits to help you stay warm when the sun goes down. Just good memories of kicking back for a few at a place that definitely seems to attract more tourists than locals.
Robert Frost trail – Again, Route 100 between Middlebury and the Mad River Valley is just magical (see Middlebury College Snow Bowl and Bread Loaf Campus). One of New England (and North America’s greatest poets used to tramp around the woods there, and it’s fun and inspiring to follow in his footsteps.
Shelburne Museum Benny and Jerry’s Concerts on the Green – A summer tradition – if you’re thinking of hitting the Burlington area in summer, check the lineup for these shows. Great nationally-touring bands like My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes made for the most relaxing big shows ever. You just show up with camping chairs and a blanket, grab food and beers on-site and kick back. The sun sets over the Adirondacks, and you get warm and super fuzzy inside. Really good if you hit the weather and artist right.
Warren General Store – Had to put a general store on the list, cause they’re a Vermont institution. Warren is a tiny town in the Mad River Valley near Sugarbush resort. Just everything good about small town VT, and the store punches way above its weight class in terms of food, beverage and other sundries you may need for an outdoor adventure of ski day.
Threepenny taproom – Montpelier is tiny – smallest capital city in the country population-wise – but it’s got a lot going on, especially food wise. Threepenny Taproom has dynamite beer and great burgers and local food options. Steer clear of The Skinny Pancake in favor of this local favorite. You’ll get a dose of Vermont culture with your beer.
Pizzeria Verita – Like most places outside NYC or New Jersey, good pizza is rare in Vermont. Verita is an exception for its brick oven brand of pizza. It’s just solid and good, though the place gets loud and kinda feels more like Boston than Burlington. But they give kids dough to play with and just generally provide good service.
Donuts at Cold Hollow Cider Mill
Radio Bean – always music
Warren Falls – great, photogenic swimming hole
Local Folk Smokehouse – total local spot around Watisfield with big plates of barbecue. Good reminder of old times when the Mad River Valley wasn’t so rich.
American Flatbread – Perfect setting between Waitsfield and Warren for brick oven flatbread style pizza. Always an interesting special with local ingredients. Kids can run around a big open field and play, great local beers. Pro tip – the place is crowded with weekenders and locals. Show up at 4 to put your name down for seating whenever you want. No phone reservations. You gotta show up and work for it. But it’s one of the more magical VT experiences so highly recommended.
Hill Farmstead Brewery – one of the best breweries on the planet. No idea how they get every beer so right. but they do. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Greensboro. Expect a line, and bring cash!
City Market – best local grocery store/co-op on the planet. They’ve somehow got everything and in a small package.
Zero Gravity – great beer, unpretentious brewery, sometimes hard to park
