Weekend in New England - (I)

So last weekend we rented two cars and drove off to New England. Our first road trip!!! The plan was to go through Vermont, spend the night in Montpelier (the state capital of Vermont) and then drive back to Boston via New Hampshire. We were hoping to see fall foliage and great scenery. But the weather forecast was not too good (showers on Sat, thunderstorms! on Sun). So we were not expecting too much.

The first day was indeed a little wet. Not too bad, just a little drizzle or so. We drove for about an hour and a half before stopping for some coffee at quaint little one street village with probably just the one cafe in the middle of the street. We then proceeded to Quechee Gorge which is in Vermont. The Gorge was quite ok but there were just no nice photos because of the cloudy weather. There is a small little Quechee Village Shopping Centre (CK) which has a large antique market, with tonnes of stuff. Not all can be called antiques though - I saw a row of the old metal lunchboxes which I used to take to school and Nancy Drew hardcover books of the type which used to be in our school library. (Or is the sale of these as antiques is a sign of age now!!) I also saw these two little cats:

We then went down to Woodstock to take a look at the town. This was when I started driving! We stopped at a covered bridge along the way. Apparently, New England is supposed to be famous for its covered bridges, which are quite quaint (I suppose) but not really that picturesque. Woodstock has its own covered bridge, its own little quaint row of shops etc.

From Woodstock, I turned the wheel back over to my classmate. We then drove to Berlin, where we would be spending the night. However, whilst we navigated the highways quite easily, we overshot the junction leading to the hotel because, simply, it was not well signposted! We ended up in Barre (not that far away actually) and had to turn back. Our hotel was easier to find coming from the other direction - at least the sign was more visible.

After checking in, we drove over to Montpelier to check out the State Capital of Vermont. It is a pretty small little town but has a rather large and impressive State House (see photo). Anyway, we drove down two of the three main streets and then drove back to our hotel.

We had dinner at Applebee's, which is this American restaurant chain with a branch just next to our hotel. Sampled New England beer - Ottercreek beer - here. I'd earlier seen bottles of local brew in one general store in Woodstock and was quite amused to see the interesting names of the beers, eg "Scarecrow", "Monty Python", "Hobgoblin" etc. But the best part of the dinner was dessert! We had a Blondie (sister of Brownie) with vanilla ice cream and maple sugar syrup, with toasted walnuts, and a yummy apple pie with ice cream on top. (I have since checked on-line and find that Applebee's has a branch in Boston! Excellent!).

So ends day one .... hold on for Part 2 of this story. (And check out photos of Vermont here).