Sunday 11th June: travel to Burlington, Vermont.
It was a glorious morning and perfect weather for the huge Pride parade that was happening in Albany this morning. We went for a walk around Washington Park, and through a bit more of the city, and discovered more magnificent homes in this area. Clearly, around Washington Park must have been the place to be back in the day. Yet again though, we saw barely a soul, and continued to wonder where everyone was? Did we not get the memo? I checked the population statistics and Albany has around 100,000 inhabitants whereas the downtown area has only a few thousand. Maybe the high property prices and taxes, like in so many places around the world, make it harder for many people to afford to live so close to the city? I asked our host at breakfast about this and she looked at me like I was bit mentally deficient and replied “this is upstate NY, no one lives in cities up here, they live in the suburbs. The city will always be quiet on the w/e unless there is an event on”. So, that was me told!
We got away from Albany by around 10.30 for the 3 hr drive up to Burlington, Vermont. The traffic was surprisingly heavy and we’ve noticed the drivers tend to be much more aggressive in the USA and to drive well over the speed limit. Once we crossed from NY into Vermont though the traffic thinned and the busy multi-lane highway changed to a simple single lane road that wound through a most picturesque landscape of rolling hills of green pasture land. Most of the literature I had read described Vermont as being very beautiful and this imagery supported that thesis.
Our accommodation in Burlington was referred to as a ‘converted carriage house’ but the description of ‘an apartment over a double garage’ might be a more meaningful visual. It was nicely appointed, spotlessly clean and a very comfortable space for our 4-night stay. We had bought some groceries on the way here so we decided to set out for the 10 minute walk to explore the downtown area before having a home-cooked BBQ dinner. Our accommodation was on the edge of the hills area which was quite pretty but there was a marked shift on our walk into downtown. The homes here were rather run down / derelict and the streets scape was less well maintained. It’s strange how there was such a significant shift in just a few short blocks. The situation improved though as we reached the Church Street Pedestrian mall.
There was a jazz festival on in Burlington over the weekend and we caught the last few hours of this as we strolled through the pedestrian mall area of Church Street. It was rather reminiscent of the country music festival in Tamworth as buskers played along the way and with jazz music filling the streets. We ventured along to find Ben & Jerry’s, as Vermont is home for the label, and both bought an ice cream. I was not able to finish mine and that’s a first! A ‘small’ serve here means two scoops; check the photos. We noticed that Lululemon was just across from Ben & Jerry’s and this tied in with my ongoing hypothesis (correlation of demographics to whether a town features a Lululemon). We’d noticed a younger population out and about here, most likely due to there being a few colleges and a university in the town. It was quite a nice vibe walking through the downtown area but there was just one more stop before heading home for dinner. Can you guess where? If you said ‘a pub for Mark to have a beer’ you’d be spot on. We were glad to finally get back to the apartment and had a lovely relaxing evening after a fairly full day.
Monday 12th June: Walking tour & Ethan Allen Homestead day
It was a bit overcast but still quite warm so Mark set off for an early morning bike ride before we both had a walk down to the Burlington Bay waterfront. A good section of waterfront area around Burlington is paved with a walking / cycle path called the Burlington Greenway and we walked a small section of this near Roundhouse Park. I had mentioned the contrasting between different urban areas yesterday and this phenomenon was epitomised down at the waterfront. In one photo spot, see below, we had the picturesque Burlington Bay and beautiful greenery behind us whereas before us was the sewage treatment works! The path around Roundhouse Park also contained some amazing marble sculptures. These were carved out of the marble that had been previously dumped here to fill in what was once marshland. Yet just behind these rather fascinating sculptures were the sewage works and a rather unsightly railway junction. It was an interesting placement for these sculptures indeed.
Our plan for the morning was to take a self-guided walking tour from Burlington Walking Tours. This was a great way to get some background on the history of Burlington and its more recent development. It wasn’t long into the tour though that we discovered some rather unpleasant and disturbing information about contemporary Burlington. Burlington residents are apparently the largest user of illicit drugs in the country. In one survey, 21% of adults conceded having used illicit drugs in the previous month. This would go some way to explaining the large amount of homeless people we’ve come across in our short time here. Crime is also on the rise as well in the 2020s and Burlington regularly makes the national headlines with unpleasant stories and crime statistics; I kind of wish I knew all this before we came. There was one good outcome from this walking tour though and that is we found a great grocery store similar toward Whole Foods. City Market was one of the stops on our walking tour and it was a great find. This is where we went back later in the day to get some supplies for our dinner.
It was around midday when we begged off the last two stops of our walking tour, as we will do them tomorrow when we are in the area, and decided to head to the Vermont Pub and Brewery, as this was right across the road from our last tour spot. It was doing rather busy trade but we didn’t dwell there too long as we wanted to head to the Ethan Allen Homestead in time to catch an information movie session and guided walking tour. We had heard about Ethan Allen on our morning walk as he was one of the founders of Vermont. The homestead is about a 7 minute drive out of town and was well the trip. It was very interesting to hear a bit more detail about his life and to see the humble 1787 house he shared with his family, and a few other adults, up until his death at age 51. He died just two years before Vermont became the 14th state of the USA.
We were rather exhausted after our full day having walked over 10 km in the heat so headed home for another quiet night of dining-in. This time though, Mark reversed the car into our parking space to make it just that much harder to break into for any would be opportunistic bike thief; should we become a statistic on the national news! Our apartment was too small to fit the bike so it was residing in the car.
Am I sorry that we included Vermont on our itinerary? Maybe a little? The area of Burlington where we are staying certainly didn’t have a whole lot of the New England charm that I had thought it would have based on my research. I am not stupid. Check out this article where it states Burlington as 9th on list of most beautiful New England towns that you must visit! I have to say I beg to differ. We are taking a bike ride tomorrow along the Greenway and a scenic drive out to Stowe on our last day so maybe that will shift my thinking? Stay tuned!
