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America, Countries, Culture

Party like a pioneer in Plymouth on Thanksgiving

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The people of Massachusetts feel more blessed on this day than any neighbour which is why they party like a pioneer on Thanksgiving.

Because, of course, legend tells us that it was in Plymouth where the Pilgrims and the people who were already there first broke bread and wine in 1621.

Some 53 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag, led by Chief Massasoit, feasting on fish, shellfish and veg.

The table is set: What it might have looked like in 1621

Now talk around whether everything happened exactly the way we play it out today keeps a whole industry of historians in work, which is no bad thing. 

Of course, the best place to immerse yourself in everything Thanksgiving is where it all began, in Plymouth.

Where they are feasting like it’s 1621.

Pilgrim’s Progress

Free the turkey: And vote for Thanksgiving

Our Plymouth pals direct us to the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plimoth Patuxet Museums, Plymouth Rock and the National Monument to the Forefathers.

And as we’re channeling 1621 then first off is the Pilgrim’s Progress, a procession to Sabbath worship.

The Donald will: Even if he gets his feathers ruffled

On the site of the original fort/meetinghouse where psalms are sung.

And passages are read by ‘Elder Brewster’ from Governor Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation or other sources.

The First Nations

Everyone’s invited: For Thanksgiving

Now Thanksgiving Day, on the third Thursday of November, should be as much about the indigenous population as the settlers.

And Plymouth doesn’t forget them with a National Day of Mourning March and ceremonies at Massasoit Statue, Cole’s Hill.

Now Plymouth is only 40 miles from Boston and should be part of every American history fan’s odyssey.

Thanks to Aer Lingus

Fair wind: And now we’re flying

And like everything American for us travelling from these next rocks at the eastern end of the Atlantic.

We advise to travel through Dublin.

Irish-Americans all: Thanksgivings in Dublin

With Aer Lingus with pre-clearance.

We found a random return flight for next month from €634.42.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE 

 

 

 

 

 

America, Countries

Tapping into Platinum syrup in Vermont

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For those who struggle getting the golden nectar out of the bottle here’s a lesson in tapping into Platinum syrup in Vermont.

Visitors to New England will inevitably tap first into the region in its showpiece city Boston.

And some of us linger for a summer seeing both sides.

Skyline’s the limit: In Boston

Black culture in Tremont Street and working in Irish bars and the historic Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall area.

With the beauty of timeless Boston being that you can return 35 years on and it still feels the same even when they have totally transformed the harbour area.

Of course, once you’ve got a taste for Boston and Massachusetts you’ll want to venture further into New England life.

Dreaming of New England

Hello flower: Providence, Rhode Island

The olde worlde charm and beaches of Manchester, New Hampshire.

Pizza culture and Yale in New Haven, Connecticut and art and Ivy League again with Brown and murals in Providence in Rhode Island.

Got it licked: With Handsome George at Yale

Which brings us to the New England states still on our to do list and a very attendant waitress Kelly who flagged up her own homestead of Vermont.

And how I just must get up there, and especially in the Fall, to tap syrup from the maple trees.

Now we know and have shared the fact that everyone’s idyll of a wholesome rural family settled there when the Von Trapps relocated to the US.

Very Vermont 

Field of dreams: Austria or Vermont

And we just know that they would have tapped into the Vermont syrup.

You’ll stay in the Von Trapps‘ adopted town of Stowe on your Platinum Travel New England Fall Foliage trip.

And in Montpelier visit a maple syrup family where you’ll learn how to tap the golden liquid from the trees.

But as Maria once said, let’s start at the very beginning. 

In Boston on the red-brick Freedom Trail, before moseying through the bronzing leaves of Vermont’s lush trees.

The Maine meal

Life’s your lobster: In Maine

New Hampshire’s White Mountains glisten at this time of year while on a clear day you can see as far as Canada.

While for lighthouse fans there’s Maine’s oldest in Portland.

Where it’s best to go native with a decadent fresh lobster dinner… now if only I had Kelly, the best waitress in New England there to serve me.

With pancakes and fresh maple syrup tapped from a Vermont. tree.

Fall for New England

Chowder cheer: Rhode Island or Boston, take your pick

Your New England Fall Foliage trip will see you leave on September 19, from €3790 per person including flights.

With single supplement €1630 per person and a deposit (including flights) for €650 per person.

You’ll get return flights from Dublin and transfers. and handpicked hotels over seven nights.

There’s authentic dining with seven breakfasts, five dinners and wine.

You’ll travel by customised coaches (twice legroom of standard coach.

And much, much more.

While you’ll return with extra skills from tapping into Platinum syrup in Vermont.

 

America, Countries, Culture

Let’s turn on the juice and New England shakes loose

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The ghost with the most is back nearly 40 years on so let’s turn on the juice and New England shakes loose.

Everyone’s favourite sassy spectre Beetlejuice is revisiting his old haunts of Massachusetts which are also mine.

And our friends in New England have scared up some spooktacular spots from the movie to draw us to their states and Commonwealth.

Streets of New England: Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice chooses Connecticut to come back from the dead.

Only despite the charms of the Constitution State the moviemakers modelled Winter River on East Corinth in Vermont.

With Melrose in Massachusetts also commissioned for some of the Halloween shots.

The Mass media

Benchmark: Robin Williams and Matt Damon

Now the Commonwealth has long been at the forefront of Mass media.

And we have all of us, who are not from Massachusetts, first made acquaintance with these New Englanders from the small and big screens.

And the classic bar sitcom Cheers which launched a merch marketplace which my travelling buddy got on board.

While in the Millennium Boston’s legal landscape was under the microscope with Ally McBeal and her pals.

Boston too is home to Hollywood acting elite in Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg and Uma Thurman.

And, of course, like all Bostonians they love to give back.

With Matt championing a campaign to put a statue up of the late Robin Williams near the bench where the duo shot a famous scene from Good Will Hunting.

Busting for Boston at the movies

Give ’em Sox: Brad Pitt at Fenway Park

Of course, those of who have spent a summer working in Boston and living on the wrong side of the tracks will recognise South Dublin from The Departed.

And enjoying any free time we got at Fenway Park, featured heavily in Brad Pitt’s Moneyball.

All of which you can take in on a Boston Movie Mile Walking tour or the Boston TV and Movie Bus Tour.

Where, of course, you can see why Boston is a picnic for every teddy bear as long as that bear is Ted.

All roads lead to Rhode Island

A dog’s life: With Handsome George in Yale, New Haven

Now the five states and commonwealth that is Massachussets bring the region all together under the New England umbrella.

And it is a joy to travel through them all as we have been doing, and taking in the landscape along the way, on Amtrak.

And so we have been able to marvel at the coasts of sailing Nirvana Rhode Island which have so appealed to artists and film-makers.

Rosecliff Mansion in Newport features in several famous movies like 27 Dresses, The Great Gatsby and True Lies. 

The Mansions of Newport are also a major setting for The Gilded Age.

And fans can go behind the scenes and get all the insight on The Gilded Age Tour which takes in the four mansions featured in the series.

Dreaming of New England

Open and Shutter case: For Leo

Scorsese also returned to New England to use Otter Cliff in Acadia National Park for the cliff scenes in Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

With the movie set on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Popham Beach, at the tip of Maine’s Phippsburg Peninsula was featured in the 1999 film Message in a Bottle.  

Many of the scenes of Cider House Rules starring a young Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron and Michael Caine, were filmed at Sand Beach in Acadia National Park.

While the famous Mystic Pizza also inspired the movie of the same name starring Julia Roberts.  

So we’d all agree then, it’s frightening how much movie talent and legacy there is in New England.

So let’s turn on the juice and New England shakes loose

 

 

America, Countries

Frost, the Fall and New England

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Whose woods these are I think I know… but then I do know a man who does as I leaf back through Robert Frost, the Fall and New England.

As we turn the calendar into September and the seasons change.

That New England has claimed the season of Autumn is undeniable.

And they have the American Poet Lauriate Frost (and Mother Nature) to thank.

Whisper it around Massachussetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont but Frost was actually San Franciscan.

He did though relocate to New England perhaps his ‘road less traveled’, and he did more than most to promote the north-east of the US.

Avoid those leaf peepers

Can you kick it… Yes, we can

New Englanders obviously welcome the visitors to their woods and lakes and rivers but urge us to allow plenty of time.

Because of leaf peepers, those who slow down and stop to take in the wonders of the foliage.

My answer is to let the train take the strain as we did when we got Amtrak to guide us through the region.

The rail thing

Staying on course: The itinerary

And yes, there is a joy to going solo but if you prefer someone to do the heavy lifting for you then Great Rail Journeys are experts in this field.

They’ve got just the thing for next Fall with a 10-dayer from £2,795pp.

And you’ll take in some of our old favourites in Boston (tick), the White Mountains and Falmouth on Cape Cod and pilgrims port Plymouth (bucket list) and Providence (tick).

And get this the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. 

The future is orange: New England in the Fall

So here’s what’s included:

  • TOUR MANAGER
    • Expertise of a UK Tour Manager from start to finish
  • TRANSPORTATION
    • Standard Class Rail
    • Heritage Rail Excursions
    • All rail and coach travel throughout your tour
  • ACCOMMODATION
    • 8 nights’ hotel accommodation
  • FOOD & DRINK
    • 5 breakfasts
  • FLIGHTS
    • Return flights from London Heathrow to Boston
On course: The Cog Railway

GRJ come highly recommended by our very own outlaws here, the Frosts (it all comes around in the end with Frost, the Fall and New England).

And that they’ll factor in regional differences with departure points from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Newcastle, Manchester and London Heathrow.

 
America, Countries, Deals

Connecting the Twain and Stowe dots

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You can only be in Connecticut if you’re connecting the Twain and Stowe dots which helpfully isn’t difficult as they were good neighbours.

And lucky for us literary tourists that they were as visitors to the Constitution State can immerse themselves in Mark and Harriet in the one trip.

And more fortunate still that their hood, Nook Farm, is just a 15 mile drive down from Hartford Bradley International Airport.

Which we all know has the best connections with Aer Lingus flying New England lovers (that’ll be us) to Bradley with the added bonus of pre-clearance.

And coming in at €483.90 for a sample October round trip.

In the pink: Mark Twain’s house

Now Mark Twain, as well as giving us Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and championing bushy moustaches, is a figurehead of travel and travel writers.

And we could all do worse than follow this sage advice…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

“And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

Although even the most travelled of us would do well.

To match his adventures of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

A proud Connecticuter

If the walls could talk: The Twain interior

The long and short of it: Stowe and Lincoln

Harriet Beecher Stowe was well ensconced, having moved into Nook Farm in 1871.

And going on to live here for the last 23 years of her life.

By then abolitionist Harriet was firmly embedded as the most famous woman in America.

On the back of her pioneering book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

All of which prompted Abraham Lincoln to greet her in Washington DC in 1862 thus: ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.’

Student life: With Handsome Dan at Yale

Look out for that reference in a framed photo near the foot of the staircase in the Stowe House.

And seeing you’ll be in Hartford then you’ll be sure to take the Riverwalk.

And dwell a while at the statue of Lincoln and Stowe built by Bruno Lucchesi in 2006.

Of course we’re studied in the state and Yale and New Haven following last year’s drift through New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut).

But alas not visiting Hartford on our Amtrak tour.

We’ll be back, though, again, connecting the Twain and Stowe dots.