- Tuesday, July 4, 2017 10:19 AM
- DisneyDan
Hello everyone,
A number of weeks back, Jon and I drove up to New England for a whistle stop tour around Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
Obviously people go to various destinations for innumerable reasons, and everyone's opinions will always differ, so while I will give some thoughts, I will refrain from being too opinionated, and will instead for the most part share my photos. It should be noted that in this report I will be omitting Massachusetts, as we saw considerably more there than the other states in the region during our trip, and I so wanted to make a separate report about that at a later date.
Let's start with Connecticut, where, unfortunately, we didn't spend a great deal of time because of needing to get to other destinations. However, if you're looking for a fairly decent diner to grab some good food late at night, then I can recommend the New Holiday Diner in Danbury.
Skipping Massachusetts for the moment, the next stop was Vermont, where we walked around the town of Brattleboro and got lunch at Amy's Bakery Arts Cafe, which, again, I can recommend.
Next up was New Hampshire, where we visited the coastal town of Hampton Beach. We got dinner at the Ocean Gaming Casino, which was fairly priced with good service.
Following New Hampshire, we spent time in Portland, Maine. I liked Portland - it is a charming place, albeit very small given that it's the largest city in Maine. Maine was also significantly colder than anywhere else we visited (and the farthest north), and while it was still May at the time, I am more accustomed to it being more springlike in May - it felt more like early winter when we were there! I was also amused to see that the road signs had distances in kilometres as well as miles.
We saw these cute bear statues at a rest stop while driving through Maine.
The final stop on our driving tour was Newport, Rhode Island. Personally, of all the places we visited on our trip (including in Massachusetts, which I didn't write about in this report), Rhode Island was actually my favourite. I was really very pleasantly surprised at how pretty it was. Not that I really had any expectation anyway, but it just took me by surprise at how clean and beautiful it was. I ended up taking the most photos there, even though we actually weren't there for very long. We got dinner at a place called Pasta Beach Newport, and once again, I can highly recommend it - Jon received the largest calzone we had ever seen!
I just want to make mention of one thing that I noticed while driving around Rhode Island and New Hampshire. I was funny and interesting to see where Disney got its inspiration for some of its hotel resorts. I hadn't really realised at how much effort they actually out into places such as the Boardwalk, and the Yacht and Beach Clubs at Walt Disney World, and the Newport Bay Club at Disneyland Paris before, and seeing the buildings and boardwalks in New England made me realise how spot-on Disney can be sometimes.
That's it for part one of my New England report! I hope you enjoyed following my adventures through the region. In the next week or so I'll publish my Massachusetts report, which features Boston, Salem, Northampton and Springfield - so look out for that!
Have a great day everyone,
Dan.