Holiday to New England in Oct 2023: Day 9 – Burlington to Manchester

We wondered what we would find in Manchester, Vermont and we were pleasantly surprised!

It’s got a lovely main street, some fab restaurants and good trails.

Overnight, I did my usual and woke early, got up, did some work and then went back to bed.

I finally woke at after 6am, but I am happy with that Modus Operandi. It works for me.

We walked out to Starbucks, sat in the store for 20 mins and enjoyed our drinks.

Heading back to the hotel, we looked for a free ATM where we could withdraw some cash for use at a restaurant we planned to visit in Manchester, to avoid a 3.5% surcharge!

The one bank ATM that we found charged a one-off fee of $3.50 to withdraw cash. Bit of a cheek if you ask me, but we decided having access to the cash, was worth it.

We had breakfast in the hotel again and hit the road not long after. It wasn’t going to be a long drive today, in the context of distance, but the roads proved to be a little challenging.

Our stop-off was a Starbucks in Rutland. The Audi sat nav couldn’t find it in its database. To be honest the Audi sat nav has proven to be awful: it doesn’t have half of the places we want to go to, and at times it has a life of its own.

For some reason it simply stopped telling us which way to go, unless we had the entertainment system on. Bizarre!

After a long 90-min drive, we finally arrived at Rutland. Amazing how tired we both were after a slow drive along roads with no opportunity to overtake. Lots of heavy lorries joining the road just in front of us. Just one of those drives – hopefully we won’t have to deal with another frustrating drive like that again on this holiday.

After Starbucks we headed to Equinox Preserve Trust trails in Manchester, which had a number of trails of varying lengths/difficulties. We chose the Pond Trail, which had some amazing views of the colourful trees.

We bumped into a number of very friendly locals and the same walkers on a number of occasions who were also enjoying the Pond Trail.

From the trails, we headed to the Hampton Inn, Manchester. Our room wasn’t available when we got there, but we were happy hanging around in the foyer, whilst our room was prepared.

We checked into room 225 which was a corner studio suite. It was a good size and had everything we needed.

A snooze was enjoyed and in the evening we had booked into Gringo Jacks, a Mexican in Manchester which was an excellent experience.

We were provided with fresh tortilla chips (a mix of wheat and corn) and salsa – lovely!

We shared a pitcher of sangria, which had too much ice in it, but we managed to offload a lot of that.

Then we shared a bowl of guacamole, which was good, although it probably needed a squeeze of lime in it. It certainly wasn’t as good as the infamous guacamole in Miami a few years ago.

For main, we both enjoyed fajitas: chicken and steak.

Overall, it was a good meal, but certain aspects could have been a little better.

The bill included the 3.5% non-cash charge, so we left a reduced tip in cash and went on our way.

Vick struggled again with her shoulder, so some massage was required on the way home.

A good night sleep was definitely in order. It was going to be a long drive tomorrow.

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