Holiday to New England in Oct 2023: Day 7 – Littleton to Burlington

Another exciting day of travel awaits us – this time we are heading to our favourite ice cream maker: Ben & Jerry’s in Waterbury, Vermont.

It’s also a relatively short driving day.

I was up early working on Dovecote support activities, but I got back to bed without waking Vick. I then slept through until 6:30, at which point we headed over the road to Starbucks for breakfast, which was tasty.

The Vickster loves her Starbucks Egg Bites over here!

Back to the hotel and I finished off some Dovecote-related work before we hit the road at just before 9:30am.

It wasn’t a complex route today: an easy drive along the I93, then we pick up some local Vermont state roads to reach Stowe, then it’s on to Waterbury and finally Burlington.

Reached Stowe (on the Wold?) but didn’t find anywhere to stop so ended up carrying on to Waterbury and we stopped at B&Js to see if we could get in early.

We had our 13:30 tickets brought forward to 11:45. That would allow us to get to the hotel in Burlington ahead of the start of the England v Italy game.

It was great seeing the place that makes our favourite ice cream: Strawberry Cheesecake.

Our tour was guided by Matt and he didn’t delay with the gags. He also looked like he had enjoyed a few pints himself!

We were provided with our voucher for a free pint of ice cream, then we headed up stairs and into a small room to watch a 6m video.

Nothing exciting – normal corporate rags to riches story with philanthropy running through from the start.

Of course, Ben & Jerry are still great mates, live almost next door to each other and they pop in from time to time…

Next stop was a gallery view of the manufacturing process, which was a combination of being able to view the actual process in action and another video. 10 step process.

On the way in we got a sample of cookie dough chunks which were well tasty.

Then it was downstairs to the tasting room and we were introduced to 7 new flavours for 2023, including Raspberry Cheesecake.

We also had a sample of Butterscotch sauce with pretzels, which was also nice.

Then it was over and we were into the gift shop.

We decided to try a pint of Raspberry Cheesecake hoping it was going to be similar to the Strawberry Cheesecake, but alas it wasn’t.

It had Graeme Cracker crumb on top and white chocolate chunks, which were way too sweet. We couldn’t finish it. Shame.

Back to the car, via the Flavour Graveyard and headed direct to the Homeward Suites in Burlington, arriving at around 1:30pm.

Our room was available and we set to organising a free VPN via the Beryl personal router so that we could use Sky Go.

It was really poor quality in the first half, but after a reboot of my laptop, the Beryl AX router and a change of VPN server, it was pretty decent in the second half.

Good result in the end as well: England 3 Italy 1.

In the evening, we drove into Burlington to visit a Mexican-diner which wasn’t too busy and must have served up our fastest 2-course meal ever!

It looks like a classic American diner from the outside, but served up great Mexican food inside.

We started off with some very tasty nachos. I ate all of the jalapenos!

It wasn’t too overbearing in terms of size – just right for two people to share.

Whilst we were eating, we talked about the possibility of visting Montreal for the day tomorrow – it’s a 2-hour drive away. Vick has always wanted to go.

For main course Vick had a 2-taco plate and I had a humungous burrito.

Both really tasty, but we were done in 40 mins.

We concluded that we would visit Montreal and Ottawa in a 2-centre holiday another time.

Squeezing in a visit tomorrow would involve too much driving and stress in a big Canadian city.

After we finished, we had a bit of a wander through Burlington, which had a lovely pedestrian area, full of interesting shops.

It also had a very attractive harbour and promenade.

In between there were a lot of homeless people, sadly.

Back to the hotel to chill out before lights out at 9am!

We were hoping we might be able to fit in a segway tour tomorrow!

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to New England in Oct 2023