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Why We Love Rick Steves European Guidebooks

In a May/June 2000 story for Transitions Abroad magazine entitled “The Best and Worst Of Europe—with Apologies to None,” Rick Steves writes “the area south of Edinburgh is so boring the Romans decided to block it off with Hadrian’s Wall.” In another section of the piece (still found online and worthy of a download), Steves notes, “Oxford pales next to Cambridge, and Stratford is little more than Shakespeare’s house—and it’s as dead as he is.” Then there’s this juicy tidbit: “A hundred years ago, Athens was a sleepy town of 8,000 people with a pile of ruins in its backyard. Today, it’s a giant mix of concrete, smog, noise, tourists, and four million Greeks. See the four major attractions (the Acropolis, Agora, Plaka, and great National Archaeological Museum) and get out to the islands or countryside.”

 
Best known as the host of the PBS series Rick Steves’ Europe, the man is also a prolific guidebook writer, one who is not in the least bit bashful about sharing his opinion. This is what we want in a travel guidebook, someone with an expert opinion we trust who can break down the destination for us. We don’t want a book the size of Anna Karenina detailing every nook and cranny of that country with little or no judgment (the old Lonely Planet guidebooks come to mind). Most of us have a week or two on vacation, if we’re lucky. We simply want someone to tell us you’d be a fool to miss the Sognefjord fjord in Norway or Burg Eltz castle in Germany, according to Steves. 
 
To see my latest column for Men’s Journal on how to pick a trusted guidebook, click here. 
 
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Climb Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire

I spent Memorial Day Weekend in the White Mountains with family and friends, finally bagging Mount Chocorua. Standing 3,478-feet high, it doesn’t make the 4,000-foot club and therefore many avid climbers blow it off. They shouldn’t. This is a classic New England climb with an exquisite panorama of the southern Presidential range and enough granite to leave your quads burning by the end of the trek. We took the Champney Falls Trail, named after the artist who painted the distinctive rocky summit of this peak. Within an hour, we reached picturesque Champney Falls and watched the rushing water stream down a series of ledges. Two hours later, after scrambling through rock, we reached the summit, initially socked in a cloud. Once it started to clear up, we were treated to glorious views of the lakes and green valley below, the snow-covered trails of Mt. Washington in the distance. 
 
Instead of staying in the honky-tonk town of North Conway, we chose the pastoral setting of the Snowvillage Inn in Eaton, with easy access to the Kancamagus Highway and Chocorua’s trailhead. The inn was just named in Yankee Magazine’s Best of New England issue for Best New Menu. Indeed, the food was excellent, from the fresh johns river oysters and lobster fettuccine we had at dinner to the blueberry pancakes, genuine maple syrup, and homemade sausage we had for breakfast (included in the room price). It was a treat to sit on the patio, look out past the apple trees to the peaks, and see hummingbirds dart in and out of the feeders. This is especially true when you have a can of Moat Mountain Iron Mike Pale Ale in your hand after climbing a White Mountain. Be on the lookout for my story in an upcoming Boston Globe travel issue.

 

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The Trustees of Reservations Week, Exploring the Berkshires

From the outside, the Guest House at Field Farm in Williamstown is nondescript if not downright ugly. Then you enter the Bauhaus-era home, now a 5-bedroom inn run by the Trustees of Reservations, and you understand the beauty of American modernism. All those rectilinear lines created the perfect opportunity to place large glass windows around the exterior and take in the stunning views of Mount Greylock. Walking into the living room is like walking into a post-modern early 60s museum set where Don Draper is your host. Unlike the architecture, all furniture seems to have curves from the Isamu Noguchi glass coffee table to the swan-backed couch by Vladimir Kagan. For visitors hoping to take in the art at the Clark Art Museum, reopening on July 4th after a major renovation, there’s no better setting.
 
I started my final day sampling the TTOR properties with breakfast at the Field Farm. Then it was on to another architectural wonder, Naumkeag in Stockbridge. Formerly owned by the Choate Family of New York before it was bequeathed to The Trustees of Reservations in 1958, Naumkeag is a 44-room Berkshires “Cottage” from the Gilded Age, designed by the prestigious architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, and filled with arts, antiques, and collections around from around the world. But it’s the outdoor gardens that truly inspire, a masterpiece of 28 years of collaborative work by former owner, Mabel Choate, and her dear friend, Fletcher Steele, one of America’s first modern landscape architects. 
 
Described by the Library of American Landscape History as a “playground for the imagination,” The Trustees recently completed Phase 1 of an extensive 5-phase, 3-year, $3.3 million garden and landscape restoration project designed to rejuvenate the gardens and bring them back to Choate and Steele’s original vision. I was fortunate to visit Naumkeag prior to Saturday’s opening with Mark Wilson, Curator of Collections. The place hasn’t looked this good since Mabel lived here. The transformation includes the renovation of Fletcher Steele’s iconic Blue Steps, one of the most photographed features in 20th-century American landscape design, lined with budding birches planted last summer. Wilson is almost finished with phase two of the restoration, the Afternoon Garden, where each stone was removed and then meticulously reinserted at the exact same location Steele originally intended. Talk about putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, this is stone masonry at its finest. Mending the retaining wall and fixing the fountains of the Chinese Garden is still on hold, but Wilson plans to complete the entire project by the summer of 2016. In the meantime, grab food in the café provided by Red Lion Inn and take in the glorious vista of Monument Mountain. 
 
It was August 5, 1850, when 46-year old Nathaniel Hawthorne met fellow author Herman Melville, 32, on a hike up Monument Mountain.  Along with Oliver Wendell Holmes and several others, they brought a wagon loaded with picnic food and champagne to keep the conversation lively.  Perched on a ridge, they began to read William Cullen Bryant’s “Monument Mountain,” the story of a young Indian maiden who plunged to her death from the rocky pinnacle when she was forbidden by her Mohican tribe to marry her beloved. When it started to rain, the literary party took to shelter and drink in a recess on the west side of the mountain. 
 
After leaving Naumkeag, I drove 15 minutes south on Route 7 to follow in Hawthorne and Melville’s footsteps and climb the 1,735-foot peak. The hike up, less than 45 minutes, is one of the easiest in the Berkshires—a gradual climb on a well-trodden path through mixed woods of hemlocks, oaks, beech, white pines, red maples, and birches. At a fork, look for a large boulder which commemorates the donation of the park to the Trustees of Reservation in 1899. Here, the trail crawls over rocky ledges to the summit. On this cloudless day, I had vistas of Mt. Everett to the south and the Taconic Range of New York to the west. 
 
Berkshires Regional Director of the Trustees, Joanna Ballantine, who joined me on the hike, shared the news that the Trustees is working out a deal to expand the Monument Mountain property all the way west to the village of Housatonic. This will double the size of the reservation and will include trails that will lead to the summit of Flag Rock. Look for an announcement shortly. 
 
Further south, near the Connecticut border, I made my final stop of the trip at Bartholomew’s Cobble. Walking on the Ledges Trail, the Housatonic River snakes through dairy farms on the left while eroding limestone and quartzite rocks formed the cobble to our right. I took a slight detour at Corbin’s Neck to get a closer view of the river and the cows resting on its banks. Continuing on the Tulip Tree Trail, I strolled uphill through a forest of tall hemlocks before reaching a clearing. At a short summit, there was a bench to sit on and take in the views of Mount Everett and Mount Race.
 
Then I veered left on the Hal Borland Trail to visit the Ashley House. Built by Colonel John Ashley in 1735, this is the oldest dwelling in Berkshire County. Colonel Ashley was a pioneer, lawyer, judge and patriot who furnished iron and other supplies for the Revolutionary War effort. He would craft the Massachusetts constitution upstairs with his friend Ethan Allan. On tours on weekend days in the summer, you’ll hear the story of Mumbet, a slave of the Ashleys who sued her way to freedom. Both the Ashley House and Naumkeag are part of the free Home Sweet Home Open House Day on Saturday, May 31st. 
 
I want to thank The Trustees of Reservations for setting up my week, especially Kristi Perry for sharing her favorite properties. I want to thank Mother Nature for supplying five perfect days of sunshine. Be on the lookout for my story in the Boston Globe featuring many of the sites I visited this week. As always, thanks for checking in. Enjoy the Memorial Day Weekend! 
 
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The Trustees of Reservations Week, Central Massachusetts Highlights

Massachusetts might border the ocean, but it’s not until you drive the interior of this state on backcountry roads that you really appreciate the abundance of water. I woke up at Tully Lake Campground this morning and took the 10-minute trail to Doane’s Falls. Little did I realize I was about to witness one of the most majestic sites in New England. An onslaught of water came gushing down a series of rock ledges under a perfectly sculpted stone bridge, one that was built by the CCC under FDR’s helm. It would set the theme for the day—the rushing water of springtime and the wall of rock that’s continually shaped by these rapids. 
 
Chapel Brook in Ashfield is a popular swimming hole in summer, when this tributary of the South River snakes through a dense hardwood forest before cascading over ledges and forming natural pools. Earn that dip by walking across the street and taking the half-mile trail up Pony Mountain. You’ll be rewarded with a panorama of mountains and valley. 
 
The sound of rushing water also greets me at the next stop, Chesterfield Gorge, a 30-minute drive from Chapel Brook. Here, the East Branch of the Westfield River drops dramatically through rock walls that are close to 70-feet high. Below the gorge, fly-fishermen were seen casting their lines in the riffles in the hopes of hooking a trout. I took deep breaths of sweet pine and walked a ways through the thick forest on the East Branch Trail. This 7-mile long dirt road is open to both hikers and mountain bikers who can cruise through the adjacent Gilbert Bliss State Forest, perfectly suited for a day trip. 
 
Even my last stop of the day, the homestead of William Cullen Bryant, has a water theme. Stroll under the tall and ancient-looking sugar maples and hemlocks his family planted 200 years ago, when the great poet was just a boy, and you’ll reach a rivulet, a trickling stream. The Trustees has posted Bryant’s entire poem from 1823, “The Rivulet,” next to the spring. “The same sweet sounds are in my ear, my early childhood loved to hear,” wrote Bryant. Long after his family had sold off the land and moved to Illinois to farm, the poet and abolitionist would buy the land back in 1865, the same year his good friend Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Bryant, as he documents so well in his poetry, always preferred country life to city life and he would spend all of his summers here until his death in 1878. Look out at the meadows, forest, and Berkshire foothills and you realize little has changed thanks to conservation efforts. It’s still a sylvan slice of heaven, one that I’ll return to next time with a picnic lunch made by the Old Creamery in Cummington, just down the road. 
 
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The Trustees of Reservations Week, Northeast Massachusetts Gems

As editor and publisher of the Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick worked with some of the finest writers of his time, including Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost. Yet, it’s his marriages to not one, but two accomplished gardeners and horticulturists that has had far more of a lasting impression. In 1916, Sedgwick moved with his first wife, Mabel, to a 114-acre hillside property in the North Shore. He built a Federal-style brick house and even had the verandah shipped from a former hotel in Charleston. The house sits atop a drumlin staring out at forest, but it’s the incredible gardens at Long Hill in Beverly that will capture your attention. 
 
I was fortunate yesterday to tour the majestic grounds with current horticulturist Dan Bouchard. He tells me that any season you visit Long Hill, there will be something in bloom. Right now, however, there’s an explosion of spring color from the beautiful blue forget-me-nots to exotic Chinese redbud to the soft yellow and very rare Molly the Witch peonies. The assemblage of trees is also exceptional, from the tall dawn redwood planted by Sedgwick’s second wife, Marjorie, to the signature copper beech in front of the house nearing a century old to the eastern red cedars that are native to this land. The needles on the Japanese umbrella pine feel like plastic, the thick bark on the weeping hemlock out of a fairy tale. You half expect a gnome to open a hidden door. That’s how special this place is. 
 
From Long Hill, I headed to Gloucester just beyond Stage Fort Pork to Ravenswood Park. This 600-acre refuge, filled with hemlocks and birches, is popular with local dog walkers and mountain bikers. Similar to Acadia National Park’s carriage paths, Ravenswood has ten miles of crushed gravel that’s ideal for first time mountain bikers. Even on a warm spring day, strolling past the many glacial boulders, I spotted few other people. If you need to escape the Cape Ann crowds this summer, try Ravenswood.
 
Then I was off to Andover to visit Ward Reservation and climb Holt Hill. The 1-mile round-trip trail brings you through forest and alongside meadows, where you look down and see a labyrinth of old stone walls. Keep on climbing the grassy trail until you reach the short summit overlooking the expanse of Merrimack Valley. Yes, those buildings on the horizon make up the Boston skyline with the Prudential Building standing all the way to your right. 
 
A quick stop to see the tulips at the nearby Stevens-Coolidge Place and then I was driving to the central part of the state to camp overnight at Tully Lake Campground. The Trustees has their own version of March Madness. It’s the time of year when the campsites at Tully Lake Campground are available for reservations. Within an hour, the prime waterfront camping sites on Tully Lake—numbers 7, 16, 20-A, and 31—are pretty much sold out on summer weekends. Come to this tranquil lake where there is little or no motorized boat traffic and tents-only campsites and you’ll understand why campers return year after year. Many bring their own kayaks to paddle to the sandy islands and within narrow Tully River. The Trustees rent their own kayaks and also offer stand-up paddleboarding lessons on Sunday in season, mid-May to late October. Hiking trails lead to Doane’s Falls, where Lawrence Brook tumbles over a series of ledges before it reaches Tully Lake. Ranger Sara leads paddlers to see beavers and Ranger Keith teaches kids how to fish. Also bring your mountain bike, since there’s a 7-mile loop around Long Pond. Tully Lake Campground is one property that people in the know would like to keep a coveted secret. 
 
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The Trustees of Reservations Week, The Splendor of the Crane Estate

In 1949, the descendants of plumbing magnate Richard Crane bestowed their entire 2100-acre estate in Ipswich, 30 miles north of Boston in Cape Ann, to the Trustees of Reservations.  This includes their 59-room Stuart-style mansion, the grounds designed by none other than the Olmsted brothers, a 4.5-mile stretch of Atlantic beach, and a ten-room 19th century cottage and connected tavern which is now the Inn at Castle Hill. Unlike the unheralded properties I visited yesterday, the Crane Estate is the crown jewel of the Trustees sites, especially Crane Beach, beloved by New Englanders.

 
House tours of the Great House on Castle Hill start today for the season. Already there are 70 weddings booked this summer. Once you tour the house and then peer down at the undulating Grand Allee, a sweeping half-mile long front lawn that leads to bluffs overlooking Crane Beach, you’ll want to be married here too. The Trustees does an exemplary job recreating the exact look of the estate when Richard Crane lived here in its heyday in the roaring 20s. A portrait of Richard Crane’s father, painted by Anders Zorn, is the latest addition, thanks to the generosity of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Also look for the symbolist paintings by Richard’s daughter-in-law that hang in his son’s room.
 
The grounds have never looked better, thanks to the replanting of Norway spruce, white pine, and cedar trees along the Grand Allee. New this summer is work on the Casino, a marble-studded pool that hasn’t seen the light of day since the acquisition. Even if you don’t get married here, take a house tour, walk the grounds, and stay for a Thursday night concert. This summer’s performers include Latin music from Grupo Fantasia and rock by The Fools.
 
Better yet, spend the night just below the Great House at the Inn at Castle Hill. Few inns in America can look out from their wraparound porch onto miles of uninterrupted salt marsh and beach and call it their own. Overstuffed couches rest on polished pine floors in front of two grand fireplaces.  Walk upstairs past the whimsical trompe l’oeil painting and sunlit window seats and you’ll reach rooms like Cornelius (Richard’s son), with its custom-made king-size bed and sweeping view of the coastline.
 
Breakfast, included in the price, uses the eggs and milk farmed just down the road at the Trustees’ 1000-acre Appleton Farms. Open to the public, Appleton is the oldest continuously operating farm, in existence since 1638. Stroll or horseback ride on grassy trails past rows of veggies to the Appleton Old House. Both Appleton Old House and the Great House on the Crane Estate are part of the Trustees’ Free Home Sweet Home Open House Tour taking place on May 31st. Or consider taking a cooking class at Appleton, including cheesemaking, fish cookery, or gluten-free living.
 
Guests spending the night at Inn at Castle Hill also receive a voucher to visit Crane Beach. Go at sunrise or sunset, before the crowds arrive or after they leave. Walk the white crescent sand at your leisure and appreciate the incredible gift the Crane family gave to the people of Massachusetts. This is philanthropy at its best. 
 
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The Trustees of Reservations Week, Sampling Southeast Massachusetts Properties

Turkey Hill Lane is an apt name for the road that leads to Weir River Farm in Hingham. On the drive there yesterday morning, I spotted at least a half-dozen wild turkeys. It would prove to be an auspicious start to a glorious day of seeing a small sample of TTOR’s reserves and farms in the southeastern part of the state. Hingham is best known as home to one of the Trustees’ most popular sites, World’s End, a drumlin that juts out onto a peninsula rewarding walkers and bikers with wonderful views of Boston Harbor. Weir River Farm is best known by local school kids for its community farm and 4-H programs. Everyone else will want to take the Thayer Trail, a narrow path on fallen pine needles that leads far away from the South Shore traffic into a tranquil forest full of flowering bushes. 

 
Continuing south, within 5 miles of the Sagamore Bridge to Cape Cod is the Lyman Reserve in Bourne. Like Weir River Farm, it would be wise to download the Google Map to get here or you’ll never find the place. From the parking lot, you have the choice of two trails—one that leads to the shores of Buttermilk Bay and the Cape Cod Canal, the second meanders near a marsh through a thicket of pine to Red Brook. I took the latter trail and was rewarded with views of yellow warblers, great blue herons, and green winged teals.
 
Heading to Westport Town Farm on one of the most bucolic stretches of road in the state, I passed kayakers and stand-up paddleboarders cruising down the Westport River. The wooden clapboard 1824 house at Westport Town Farm is a welcoming introduction to this pastoral property perched on a hill overlooking the river. Still a working farm, the Trustees donate produce to area hunger relief agencies and hold a weekly Farmers Market on Saturdays in summer. I took a grassy trail past the barnyard onto pasture that slopes down to the edge of the water. All I could hear was the cacophony of birdsong.
 
My final stop of the day, Slocum’s River Reserve in Dartmouth, was formerly known as Island View Farm. Tall silos stand across Horseneck Road from the parking lot and you still walk through a farmer’s backyard along centuries-old stone walls to get to the pasture and woods that lead to Slocum’s River. As I made my way close to the shores, I could smell the salty air and see the canoe launch. Next time, I’ll make a note to return with a kayak. 
 
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Spending All Next Week with The Trustees of Reservations

While Crane Beach is still the best-known Trustees of Reservations site in Massachusetts, the group maintains more than 112 locales in the state, from Field Farm in Williamstown to the recently acquired Dunes Edge Campground in Provincetown. The William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington is a pastoral landscape of pastures and fields of wildflowers, largely unchanged for more than 150 years. Slocum’s River Reserve in Dartmouth is a 47-acre coastal farm on the shores of Buzzards Bay, an ideal place to view warblers during the spring and fall migration. All next week, I’ll be traveling around the state introducing readers to at least 20 Trustees sites—research for a story I’m writing for The Boston Globe on my personal favorites. So please check back! 

 
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Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe to Close After 87 Years

Several summers ago, I was hired by Chevrolet to drive a Chevy Malibu from Boston to Washington, DC on one tank of gas and then write about the experience. It was an absurd assignment, made even more ridiculous by the macho photographer they hired to take shots for their glossy magazine. It was a brutally hot day and seeing that he was following my wife and me in a convertible, I asked if he needed any suntan lotion. "Oh no, I don’t need that," said the guy. By the end of the drive around 9 pm, he was as red as a boiled lobster. 

 
Anyway, we needed an iconic Boston locale to start the drive and I thought there was nothing better than Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe. “That sounds like that Seinfeld episode where they try to drive as far as they can without running out of gas,” said Chris Manjourides, when he heard of my assignment. Together, with his brother Arthur and sisters Marie and Fontaine, the siblings run the restaurant, founded by their father in 1927. Lisa and I sat on the red stools across from photographs of all the celebrities and famous politicians inluding President Obama who wisely made their way to this small breakfast joint nestled amidst the fashionable brownstones of the South End. Since the age of 12, Arthur has arrived every morning at 3:30 am to cook the freshly made muffins. Locals stand in line for a chance to dine on their gigantic three-egg omelettes, tasty turkey hash, and blueberry pancakes. Now the siblings can finally sleep in. I just found out that the place will close in June. They’ll be sorely missed in this town. 
 
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Climb Mount Monadnock

Climbing the broad-shouldered peak Henry David Thoreau called a “sublime mass,” Mt. Monadnock, is a rite of passage for many New England children. Just over the border of Massachusetts in southern New Hampshire, Monadnock is less than a two-hour drive from Boston. Its accessibility and locale, smack dab in the center of New England, has made it one of the two most popular mountain ascents in the world going toe-to-toe with Japan’s Mount Fuji. 

 
Early May, when the black flies have yet to arrive, is the ideal time to bag this 3,165-foot peak. Head up the White Dot trail, one of the steepest ascents, but also one that rewards with you with incredible vistas in a very short time. Above treeline, the forest recedes to form open ledges covered with low-lying shrubs like mountain cranberry bushes. This gives you ample opportunity to rest and peer down at the soft blanket of treetops, small towns with their requisite white steeples, a smattering of lakes and ponds, and farms that fan out to anonymous ridges. Soon you’ll reach the summit, where Thoreau watched in dismay as his fellow mid-19th century trampers inscribed their names in rock. You can still spot names like “T.S. Spaulding, 1853” clearly etched in the stone.