Get Out of Town: Weekend Getaways Just Outside Rhode Island
If, like us, you're in need of a little weekend R and R this fall, we have some perfect close-by solutions.
Culinary Getaway
Hotel Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Courtesy of Hotel Vermont.
Vermont pure. It’s what we crave right now — somewhere to de-Zoom and ogle fall foliage. But we also want to celebrate being free-range to dine out again, in a city with restaurants worth leaving our lair. Enter Hotel Vermont, Burlington’s first boutique hotel. In a city where the airport has a yoga room and a bike peddler hawks baguettes, the eco-chic hotel filled a neglected niche when it opened in 2013.
The hotel promises to help you explore like a local and relax as if it’s your job. Between its location and amenities, field trips are easy. Guests can borrow complimentary custom-made Budnitz bikes and tour Lake Champlain’s waterfront. An expanded bike path offers 200-plus miles of routes, plus there are challenging hiking and biking trails at Red Rocks and Ethan Allen parks. Or hop on Local Motion, a pontoon-style bicycle ferry, to explore Lake Champlain islands on wheels.
The in-house restaurant, Juniper, serves local, ingredient-driven cuisine. Courtesy of Hotel Vermont.
COVID-19 has paused some of Hotel Vermont’s unique experiential offerings but the hotel still welcomes guests at check-in with apple cider and apple cider doughnuts, a seasonal drink from the hotel restaurant’s Juniper, and a $15 gift card to a local farm where you can pick your own apples, pumpkins or other seasonal goodies. Weekend guests can set sail on Lake Champlain with Let’s Go Sailing’s captain, Gideon Bavly. The two-hour tour includes a picnic lunch from Juniper, packed with local ingredients.
The hotel also hosts events such as trivia nights and live music. Bedtime on-demand extras include hot toddies, aromatherapy and Vermont Teddy Bears for snuggling. In winter, guests can stir with morning yoga before visiting the DIY bloody Mary station for avant-ski fueling. The hotel offers complimentary snowshoes and its apres-ski scene features an annual ice bar celebration on the terrace (February 2022 will be its tenth season), where guests play ice games, sip frosty cocktails with local spirits, ciders and brews (or taste-test booze-infused sno-cones), chill by the ice sculptures and thaw by the s’mores station and fire pit.
From crisp lagers brewed locally to
New England IPAs, craft beer is always a highlight. Courtesy of Hotel Vermont.
To showcase and support local artisans, the hotel is Vermont-loyal, including Ursa Major skincare products, Vermont Flannel bathrobes, books by Vermont authors in each room and Jeremy Ayers mugs. For more local wares, nearby Church Street marketplace’s promenade of restaurants and shops includes Frog Hollow, the country’s first state craft center, which sells creations from 200-plus Vermont artists; it also features an art gallery plus arts and crafts classes.
Three local restaurants are hotel-affiliated, with one right in the lobby. With a carbon-negative cocktail menu, indoor hearth and terrace overlooking Lake Champlain, Juniper restaurant is open for breakfast and dinner. Local flavor is on order, from the Maple Wind Farm buttermilk fried chicken to a charcuterie plate for sampling the best from Vermont farms and cheesemakers. Juniper chef Doug Paine’s other signature restaurant, Bleu Northeast (25 Cherry St., 802-864-8600, bleuvt.com), is just down the street. Hotel Vermont also lured renowned Vermont Hen of the Wood restaurateur and chef Eric Warnstedt to open a second restaurant affiliated with the hotel (55 Cherry St., 802-540-0534, henofthewood.com). Warnstedt has racked up multiple accolades and is a frequent James Beard Best Chef Northeast semi-finalist or nominee. The locavore menu changes regularly (maybe you can get a taste of the dinner he served at the James Beard House: hen of the wood mushrooms and Maine lobster with spring-dug parsnips and cider brown butter).
Courtesy of Hotel Vermont.
Further afield is Misery Loves Company (46 Main St., Winooski, Vt., 802-497-3989, miserylovescovt.com), in the riverside restored mill town of Winooski, aka Burlington’s Brooklyn. It’s Vermont, so of course it’s farm-to-fork; however, this local food emporium is also nose-to-tail. The owners cure their own meats, pickle veggies from their In the Weeds farm and churn out homemade pasta and honey butter. You can also take home a taste of Vermont with their own dressings, even ketchup.
41 Cherry St., 855-650-0080, hotelvt.com. Weekend fall rates are $239–$549 a night.
