Ideas for a 7-day road-trip (NYC-New England-NYC)

[ajalatraveller]

My wife, 6-month old son, and I will be visiting the US from Nigeria for about 8 days. We intend to spend about 7 nights traveling from NYC through many towns in New England and then back to NYC.

We love visiting historical places. We love architecture and beautiful quaint towns.

We are also foodies and will love to sample very good, home-made cuisine.

The lure of the open road is irresistible; the more scenic, the better.

We depart NYC on August 28 2011.

Suggestions are very welcome.

[DonnaR57]

Boston is full of architecture and history, particularly early American history. If it were me, I would definitely want to visit the Old North Church, the site of the lanterns for Paul Revere's Ride (Longfellow's poem). From what I'm told, too, it's heaven to a foodie. My husband warns everyone who doesn't live there: you WILL get lost in Boston. It's just the Rite of Passage. (He drove commercial trucks and that's what they told all of the drivers before sending them on a run to Boston.)


Donna

[ajalatraveller]

Thanks Donna. Boston is now squarely on the plan.

As for getting lost, I am sure my trusted 'Getrude' (GPS) can take care of that.

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

I'm currently on a RoadTrip in the Boston/Cape Ann/Plum Island area, and I must say that our own GPS ('Gladys', as in "She's a Pip") has proven invaluable in navigating the twisting, narrow, one way streets that predominate in these older colonial towns. However, no GPS unit can substitute for the synoptic view of the road network that you get from a paper map at the right scale. Case in Point: Yesterday we were returning from visiting a cousin in Rye, NH and although we had taken the scenic route up, we were anxious to get home and just sticking to the freeways, I-95 and MA-128. But when we went to make the transition from one to the other, there was a major accident on 128 and traffic had ground to a halt. We were fortunate that the entrance ramp we were on was also a local surface street exit ramp, so we exited while I had my wife and navigator start digging out our paper maps. 'Gladys' started "recalculating", but all she could ever come up with was to put us back on the traffic-clogged freeway as soon as possible. What we needed to do was to find the best routes that paralleled the freeway and occasionally crossed it so that we could see when the traffic was flowing freely again and we could decide when to get back on.

There are many reasons NOT to rely blindly on a GPS. This was just another example.

AZBuck

[AZBuck]

As Donna noted, Boston and New England in general is home to some great architecture. A few of the better known and more concentrated collections are in Newport, RI (the famous 'Cottages') and Beacon Hill in Boston, For some in-depth history try one or both of the living history museums, Mystic Seaport in Connecticut and Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. For food, you simply cannot do better than to take our standard advice: Inquire locally. We cover the entire country with RoadTrip recommendations, but/so there is simply no way that we can know as much about the culinary possibilities in each small town as do the local inhabitants. Most small towns will have a visitors bureau or welcome center. We used one in Gloucester, MA today to find a great luncheon location that was an obvious favorite with the locals judging by the ratha thick accents. finally, my favorite bit of advice about finding scenic roads in New England: Relax, you would have to work very hard to find a road that is not scenic. Once you're past roughly New Haven (along the coast) or Hartford (heading inland), get off the freeways and just enjoy the beauty.

AZBuck

[ajalatraveller]

AZBuck

Thank you for the valuable tips.