Cooorrrrr. It was a busy one today.
We woke up in Burlington and needed to head out straight away to collect our car from the airport (Burlington is small so it was only a 15 minute Uber away). A Ford Focus was what we thought we were getting - but we were given a super snazzy Cadillac instead. I am not a car person, but there is something nice about driving around in a proper car. It took me a good 5 - 10 minutes to figure out how everything worked, but we were soon off.
After leaving the airport we needed to grab breakfast so we popped to a mini mall that Kirstie found nearby, which had an IHOP (pancakes and breakfast type place) that was next to a couple of shops we liked and needed to grab a few bits from.
We jumped in the car and headed for our first stop - the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory. We had no idea it was just outside Burlington. In fact, I said I thought it was made in Canada when we saw one of their shops in Montreal, but we later found it was in fact made in Vermont. For just a few quid you could have a tour of their factory and learn about the ice cream making process, have a sample and then buy some new flavours that weren't yet for sale elsewhere. It was good tour and a pretty funky place to have a walk around. We sampled the Butterscotch flavour ice cream with salted pretzel - a nicer combination that it sounds!
After B&Js we hit the road through the rest of Vermont. Where the longish journeys in Canada were fairly flat and agricultural, the journey through Vermont had much better scenery with rolling hills and some skiing places (that weren't open, of course) and rivers/rapids etc. It was a really lovely and easy scenic drive. We got into New Hampshire and stopped in Concord for a little walk around. We felt like we couldn't just fly through an entire state without stopping somewhere in it and where better than the State Capital. It was a fairly sleepy town, but it had quite a few really nice old buildings including the oldest State House in the country - which is basically the building where the executive council and the Governor are based. It also had a replica of the Liberty Bell, which is one of 53 life size replicas made in 1950 that are dotted around the country.
We had a little mooch around and felt like we needed a late lunch, so we popped to a Panera Bread that was nearby. Panera Bread was something of a staple for Kirstie and her pals when she lived in Colorado. It serves soups, sandwiches and salads with particularly nice bread. I had a small soup and salad combo - which really hit the spot. Over lunch we decided that we would power through to Salem and so I booked an evening walking tour.
In the morning we had chatted to a couple of people staying in the same AirBnB and they had advised that we spend half a day in Salem and take the train from Boston, or if we did drive, to be mindful of the terrible parking situation in a small town with hundreds of thousands of guests during the Halloween season. We had read about this too - so they advised us to avoid the downtown parking lots and to head for the train station parking garage. This tip came in very useful! We thought that as we were nearby with the car, and that we weren't all THAT into Halloween, we would just pop in as we were passing through. We parked at the Garage with no dramas and walked the fairly short distance into the town centre.
Salem really loves its Halloween. The town centre was fully decked out with decorations, lights and displays. The visitors were also decked out in halloween costumes, make up and all sorts. If Halloween had a spiritual home this was definitely it. We headed for the town hall to meet our guide. She explained that she was a Salem local but had just finished a Masters in Theology and had done a fair amount of research into the witch trials and so she was a great person to be on a tour with. There were other tours that were focused on ghosts, witchcraft etc etc, but our guide was a bit more based on real history and was coming from the point of view that this was not entertainment but more a dark chapter in the town's history - though she was very funny with it, so it was quite entertaining (I am not sure if that makes sense...).
She showed us around the town centre and talked about the history of the town as a major port city in the 1600s and 1700s. She took us along to see some sites associated with the witch trials and explained the various contexts which they happened in. I won't bore my legions of readers about it - but it is fairly interesting and worth reading up on. Salem, due to its connection with witches has also been the filming locations for some scenes/episodes in Hocus Pocus, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Bewitched and the Crucible.
After the tour had finished, we headed back to the car and made our way to Boston. As we drove in, the city lights reminded us we were leaving the leafy and scenic part of New England and were now heading for the big smoke (although tomorrow we were heading out to Cape Cod).

Black Cadillac. Not bad.

IHOP breakfast, in the words of Roy Walker: 'it's good but it's not right.'

Wahey! Greetings from Ben and Jerry's

This is the place they design new flavour combinations...

That's a lot of sugar and cream!

The State House, Concord, New Hampshire

New Hampshire legislature. It used to be a Post Office

The back of Salem town hall... features in Hocus Pocus

The First Church of Salem

Ropes mansion - in Hocus Pocus but was also the home of the wealthy Ropes family. Haunted by a girl who died being burnt to death after a ball dress caught on fire (which is the reason for the fiery illuminations!)

Pickman's house - overlooks the cemetery and Salem Witches memorial
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