Well as for staying in a quiet area of the hotel as requested we woke up around 7.30 to the sounds of roadworks outside our window. They are resurfacing the road so lots of grinding sounds going on including the use of jackhammers ! The room upgrade has placed us right at the front of the building overlooking the main road where the works are taking place !
Its a beautiful and sunny day but only 2 degrees outside but will eventually reach 17 degrees but not until around 5 pm. Its quite different here in that the maximum temperature does not occur around midday like at home but usually occurs quite late in the day around 4 pm.
I was looking forward to wearing my blue jeans today but cant find them anywhere so must have left them hanging up in a wardrobe somewhere. A bit of dispute about who might be at fault but unlikely it would be me since I dont make many mistakes ! Oh well since we did the washing when we arrived yesterday I can choose from everything else that is available in my suitcase (except for the shorts
For breakfast we headed to the great room as they called it in the main building for our fireside breakfast and we tried something different being rolled pancakes with pan fried apple cinnamon inside (a bit like the contents of a McDonalds Apple Pie) but fresh and so tasty.
We have two full days here in Burlington so we have decided one day will be a day trip to visit Waterbury and the Stowe region which is about 60km away, and the other day we will spend around the city / waterfront area here in Burlington. Last night I tried to book a tour we had wanted to do for the Stowe area for today but I could not book it until tomorrow so we will instead head back to downtown Burlington for a relaxing day walking around town and souvenir hunting (maybe even for a new pair of jeans !).
We found some free 2 hour parking at the College Street garage but could not download their App on the App store to book for 3 hours which is what I wanted (this is the same problem
weve had a few times here where the iPhones are simply unable to download some American apps). Hence we have to stick to 2 hours to avoid being fined so we went for a walk around the church street mall looking for souvenirs and that elusive licence plate and had no luck at all. Some places seem to have lots of these and others are so hard to find. Not surprisingly in Vermont with the Green Mountains region their state licence plate is a very deep green colour And Ill keep looking.
We decided to head into the shop on the mall that we had seen on the live webcam and it was an experience for sure. For a large part of the year the mall has snow piled up as they clean the snow from the mall and adjoining streets and dump this in piles along the mall and it is always in front of this shop and weve been unable to work out what shop it was but we always saw and going. Its like an Anaconda store back with say BCF with a few extra things included. The first level
had lots of outdoor gear and clothes ready for winter time with jackets and sweaters that are so thick to keep you warm and had sections where you can buy snow shoes so you can trudge along outside and snowboarding repairs shop to fine tune your winter activities as well. Lots of camping and hiking gear too.
Unusual in that as we were walking around there were at least 3 dogs I saw just walking around the shop that were not on a leash (just shopping for their masters I guess !). The prices were very steep and we saw a sign saying head down to the basement for the sale & consignment section so off we go and there is another huge area located downstairs and whilst we were not actually shopping per se we were interested none the less to have a peek.
I found a really lightweight jacket that was a wind breaker called Black Diamond Wind Shell and it had the highest rating for keeping the wind out but almost looked like a poncho it was so light and discounted from $160- to $90- (is that a bargain !!).
