Things to do in Vermont
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Shelburne Museum
On a 45-acre estate, 7 miles south of Burlington in Shelburne, this museum boasts a stellar collection of American folk art, New England architecture and, well, just about everything. The wildly eclectic collection ranges from an early American sawmill to the Lake Champlain side-wheeler steamship Ticonderoga. How's that for lawn decor?
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Bistro Henry
This casual, chef-owned bistro serves creative modern cuisine highlighting fresh seafood, aged meats and fresh vegetables. Its acclaimed wine selection features eclectic and hard-to-find labels.
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Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory
Get the inside scoop, where tours and a moo-vie about the hippie founders are topped off with a taste tease of the latest flavor.
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Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science
In 1891, when Franklin Fairbanks’ collection of stuffed animals and cultural artifacts from across the globe grew too large for his home, he built the Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science. This massive stone building with a 30ft-high barrel-vaulted ceiling still displays more than half of Franklin’s original collection. Over 3000 preserved animals in glass cases can be seen, including a 1200lb moose shot in Nova Scotia in 1898, an American bison from 1902 and a Bengal tiger. There are planetarium shows at 1:30pm ($3 per person), and also in July and August at 11am.
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Shelburne Farms
- Burlington, USA
- Sights › Farm
You can get a taste of Vermont farm life at this classic 1400-acre farm laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, America's premier 19th-century landscape architect. Try your hand at milking a cow, feed the chickens, or hike the extensive nature trails through pastures and along Lake Champlain.
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Carol’s Main Street Café
If you are self-catering, a great place for picnic fixings is Carol’s Main Street Café – those in the know come for turkey specials on Monday and Friday, tacos on Wednesday and hamburgers on Thursday. Or you can explore delectables from an amazing variety of gourmet hot and salad dishes sold by the pound.
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Outdoor Gear Exchange
This place rivals major outdoor-gear chains for breadth of selection, and definitely trumps them on price for a vast array of used, closeout (clearance) and even new gear and clothing. You name the outdoor pursuit and staff can probably outfit you.
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ECHO Lake Aquarium & Science Center
On the waterfront, ECHO will delight youngsters with its aquatic habitats wriggling with creatures and hands-on interactive exhibits illuminating Lake Champlain's ecological wonders.
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Shanty on the Shore
With its fine lake views, this combo seafood market and eatery serves fresh lobster, fish and shellfish. The raw bar is exquisite, the outdoor deck is wonderful in the summer, and the array of potent drinks enhances the sunset.
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Daily Planet
Popular with locals for its vegetarian fare and relaxed, inviting atmosphere, Daily Planet offers a changing menu of creative dishes like potato-crusted salmon with Moroccan vegetable sauté, or Thai shrimp salad.
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Magic Hat Brewery
This insanely popular brewery, off US 7, offers free tours of its brew operation – and of course they'll tip the tap to let you sample the art. Perhaps the coolest brewery you'll ever see.
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Dutch Pancake Café
- Stowe, USA
- Restaurants › Café
Located within the Grey Fox Inn, this Dutch-owned eatery decked in Delft tiles makes more than 80 kinds of pannekoeken (Dutch pancakes); some have a Southern American twist with sausage and gravy.
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Henry’s Diner
A Burlington fixture since 1925, this diner has daily specials for around $5. The food is simple (you can get breakfast all day), the atmosphere homey and pleasant, the prices unbeatable.
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L'Amante
Sleek yet engagingly informal, L'Amante serves upscale northern Italian cuisine such as squash-blossom fritters with truffle oil, and swordfish with saffron-encrusted risotto. Perfect for a memorable night out.
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Coffee Country Cafe
This informal place attracts everyone from tongue-studded teenagers to 65-year-old farmers. Drop in for some good java and hot baked goods.
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Everyone’s Books
Sells unusual publications, rabble-rousing political literature and an audacious selection of radical T-shirts and bumper stickers.
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North Hartland Lake Recreation Area
Getting to the middle of nowhere is easy in Vermont though the perfect place is North Hartland Lake. Within minutes of Quechee Village, you can scoot your boat off the North Hartland Lake Recreation Area ramp. Trees and meadows swallow virtually every shred of evidence of the existence of anyone beyond you and whoever else is plying these tranquil waters. You head into the various nooks and rivulets of the 215-acre lake, and just beyond sight of the beach, a noisy great-blue heron rookery occupies the tops of the pines on the north shore. Around the bend an eagle may just be pulling this afternoon’s catch out of the water. You’ll see an occasional shallow-domed muskrat…
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Coolidge Homestead
The 30th president of the USA was born in Plymouth, Vermont, and attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. He opened a law practice in 1898, in Northampton, Maine, and then ran for local office. Following election, Coolidge served as state senator, lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts. Elected vice-president on the Warren Harding ticket in 1920, he assumed the presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923. Vice-president Coolidge was visiting his boyhood home in Plymouth when word came of Harding’s death. His father, the local justice of the peace, administered the presidential oath of office by kerosene lamp at 2:47am on August 3, 1923. Known for his simple,…
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Bread & Puppet Museum
Rolling though the Northeast Kingdom, it’s easy to become jaded at the sight of yet another barn. One in Glover definitely warrants a detour – not for its livestock but for the cosmological universe of the Bread & Puppet Museum, lurking within. Formed in New York City by German artist Peter Shumann in 1963, the Bread & Puppet Theater is a collective-in-training that presents carnivalesque pageants, circuses, and battles of Good and Evil with gaudy masks and life-size (even gigantic) puppets. The street theater of its early performances gave voice to local rent strikes and anti–Vietnam War protests as well as an epic parade down Fifth Ave in the early eighties to…
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Waterfront Diving Center
Ever since the 18th-century French and Indian War, 120-mile-long Lake Champlain has been a major thoroughfare from the St Lawrence Seaway to the Hudson River. During the American Revolution and the War of 1812, numerous historic battles were fought on the lake to control this navigational stronghold and many military and merchant ships sank to the lake’s deep, dark bottom as a result of a cannonball or temperamental weather. The misfortunes of these vessels make lucky finds for scuba divers. Two hundred wrecks have already been discovered, including the 54ft American Revolution boat Philadelphia, pulled from the waters in 1935 (and now sitting in the Smithsonian…
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North Hartland Lake
Getting to the middle of nowhere is easy in Vermont. While the rumpled green countryside offers endless miles of solitude, just about any blob of blue on the map will serve as an escape hatch as well - though few as perfectly as North Hartland Lake . Within minutes of Quechee Village, you can scoot your boat off the North Hartland Lake Recreation Area ramp.
Trees and meadows swallow virtually every shred of evidence of the existence of anyone beyond you and whoever else is plying these tranquil waters.
You head into the various nooks and rivulets of the 215-acre lake, and just beyond sight of the beach, a noisy great-blue heron rookery occupies the tops of the pines on the…
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Rock of Ages Quarries
The world’s largest granite quarries, 4 miles southeast of Barre off I-89 exit 6, cover 50 acres. The granite vein that’s mined here is a whopping 6 miles long, 4 miles wide and 10 miles deep. The beautiful, durable, granular stone, formed more than 330 million years ago, is used for tombstones, building facades, monuments, curbstones and tabletops. From the onsite Rock of Ages Visitor Center there's a quarry tour which includes a short video and historical exhibits. This 35-minute guided minibus tour of an active quarry heads off-site. At the onsite Rock of Ages Manufacturing Division, you can watch granite products being made – some with an accuracy that approaches…
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Marlboro Music Fest
At first sight, this village 8 miles west of Brattleboro is pretty but unremarkable: a white church, a white inn, a white village office building and a few white houses. But to chamber-music lovers, Marlboro looms very large as the home of the Marlboro Music Fest held on Saturdays and Sundays from early July to mid-August. The festival was founded in 1951 and directed for many years by the late Rudolf Serkin, and attended by Pablo Casals. The small Marlboro College comes alive with enthusiastic music students and concertgoers, who consistently pack the small, 700-seat auditorium. Many concerts sell out almost immediately, so it’s essential to reserve seats, by phone or…
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Vermont Country Store
On the eastern side of the Green Mountains, Weston is another of Vermont’s pristine towns. Its common is graced with towering maples and a bandstand, and is home to an acclaimed summer theater. Weston also draws fans from far and wide to its famed Vermont Country Store, a time warp from a simpler era when goods were made to last, and quirky products with appeal (but not a mass-market appeal) had a home. Here you’ll discover taffeta slips, Tangee lipstick, three kinds of shoe stretchers with customizable bunion and corn knobs, personal care items and clothing. Some of the products have survived from past decades and many have become indispensable – once you’ve been…
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St Johnsbury Athenaeum
Home to the country’s oldest art gallery still in its original form, the Athenaeum was founded in 1871 when Horace Fairbanks gave the town a library. Comprising some 9000 finely bound books of classic world literature, the library was soon complemented by the gallery, built around its crown jewel, Albert Bierstadt’s 10ft-by-15ft painting, Domes of the Yosemite. The rest of the collection consists of works by such Hudson River School painters as Asher B Durand, Worthington Whittredge and Jasper Crospey as well as dozens of copies of old masters. Bierstadt is said to have returned to the gallery every summer until his death to touch up his masterpiece.
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