Vermont's Largest City Offers An Artsy Urban Vacation While Being Surrounded In Mountains
On gorgeous Lake Champlain and just a quick drive to the Green Mountains, Burlington, Vermont, is ideally situated for outdoor recreation. As a town of 48,000 residents, Burlington is urban, but not in a gritty way. It has a walkable town center, a vibrant arts scene, destination-worthy restaurants and breweries, and plenty of attractions and activities for people with a wide range of interests.
This northwestern Vermont town comes alive in the summer with arts and music festivals and every possible kind of water-based recreation like boating, swimming, paddleboarding, and fishing. Fall brings leaf peepers and students back to the three college campuses here. The University of Vermont is the largest, with about 12,000 students who infuse the town with youthful energy. Burlington is not known for skiing, but Vermont certainly is –- the town is an hour or less from five ski areas.
Burlington is easily reached by public transportation, with an Amtrak station and an airport served by American, Delta, United, and other airlines. Driving will take about three hours and 20 minutes from Boston, five-and-a-half hours from New York City, and less than two hours from Montreal. And if you extend your stay in the Green Mountain State, you can also visit the Vermont town that's consistently named America's most beautiful.
What to see and do in Burlington
Summer fun centers around Lake Champlain, which is America's sixth-largest freshwater lake at 120 miles long and 10 miles wide. The 350-passenger Ethan Allen boat has multiple daily sailings that include scenic narrated cruises, sunset cruises, and Lobstah on the Lake dinner cruises. It operates from June through October like the Champlain Valley Dinner Train, which serves passengers a three-course dinner on a picturesque roundtrip ride.
Actively explore Burlington's beautiful location by renting a bike and setting out on the eight-mile Burlington Bike Path, which follows the waterfront and passes two beaches. Or, hike in the Green Mountains and along the lake shoreline on the two-mile Rock Point trail. At the Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, a nature and science museum that's open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., kids and adults alike will love the daily animal demonstrations. And, if you want to head a little further out, nearby Stowe is home to a hiking trail that happens to be one of the most photographed places in Vermont.
Burlington's visual and performing arts scene is very active as well. Burlington City Arts is a great place to start as it presents exhibitions, classes, and studio tours and also produces festivals and artists' markets. In nearby Shelburne, the eclectic Shelburne Museum displays American folk art and quilts, duck decoys and circus memorabilia, and French Impressionist paintings and antique carriages on a 45-acre estate. The buildings where the collections are housed are just as diverse; its 39 structures include a jail, a one-room schoolhouse, and the steamboat Ticonderoga.
Where to stay, eat, and play
The Shelburne Museum is on the same estate as the Shelburne Inn, the former home of a Vanderbilt scion. Open May through October, this elegant 24-room 19th-century mansion boasts an exceptional restaurant and rambling grounds with formal gardens and a farmyard where you can find donkeys, goats, and cows. In town, the 14-room Blind Tiger bed and breakfast is a top TripAdvisor pick that has won a Michelin key. Or, ask for a lake view room at Hotel Champlain Burlington, Curio Collection by Hilton, which offers an indoor pool, fitness center, restaurant, and bike rentals.
A few things invite the comparison of Burlington with Dublin, Ireland. The pedestrian shopping street Church Street Marketplace is reminiscent of Dublin's Grafton Street, and Rí Rá, an Irish pub with interiors salvaged from pubs in Ireland, transports you across the Atlantic. But despite the town's Irish scene, Guinness is by no means the only beer in "Beerlington." With the most craft breweries per capita in the US, the town is a beer lover's paradise. Standouts include the Vermont Pub & Brewery, Foam Brewers, and Burlington Beer Company, where you can find double and sometimes triple and quadruple IPAs.
Start with the Vermont cheese plate at Farmhouse Tap and Grill followed by a burger made from Vermont Heritage Grazers pork, or try the mushroom toast and black bass at Hen of the Wood, where the menu changes daily. The original Hen of the Wood is in another nearby artsy Vermont town with a quirky food scene, but no matter where you eat dinner, a stop at the Church Street Ben & Jerry's is mandatory as the first ice cream these guys ever sold was in Burlington.