For many years my family spent the long Thanksgiving weekend at the grand old Equinox Hotel in Manchester Village, Vermont, the generous gift of my grandmother. We established several traditions there that ended with her death five years ago, after which none of us wanted to return, until this past Thanksgiving. So we came from Maine, Massachusetts and New York to Vermont, where the golden November weather shifted to white winter on Thanksgiving night. We woke up, and it was like a switch had been flipped! We’ve never been crazy about the Equinox restaurants, so we went to the Dorset Inn for a Thanksgiving dinner, as we had in the past. The night after Thanksgiving always began with a dram of Scotch at the tavern at the 1811 House across the way (where nothing else was served except popcorn) but that has been absorbed by the Equinox and I’m not entirely sure what they’re doing with it (although I looked in the window and the bar doesn’t seem to have been changed a bit, thank goodness). Manchester’s role as a center of outlet shopping seems a bit diminished by the pandemic, but we weren’t very interested in shopping anyway (except at the Vermont Country Store a half hour away in Weston). I trudged around in the snow quite a bit but certainly didn’t make it up, or even near, Mount Equinox, though others ascended.
Thanksgiving and the day after at the Equinox and vicinity, the Dorset Inn, and the Vermont Country Store.
On Saturday I trudged all the way to Hildene, the summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln and his family for many years. This is just a great site, encompassing a stately Georgian Revival house and several other adjacent structures, well-preserved and interpreted (and a very nice museum shop, which reinvigorated my shopping impulse). The house looks imposing from outside but seems intimate inside, especially as an organ was diffusing early twentieth-century music through pipes which seem to run throughout. After a spectacular sunset and a great schnitzel for Saturday dinner, we drove down south and home, out of the white and back to the brown (and all of our responsibilities!)
Exteriors and Interiors at Hildene.
November 29th, 2021 at 9:46 pm
Hi Donna,
What a lovely family Thanksgiving in Vermont you described. Sounds like fun. I enjoyed those pics of the summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln at Hildene. Nice that it was opened at this time of year.
And, of course, we always have the Vermont Country Store with its colorful catalogue. Their ribbon candy, funky ceramic holiday trees, and luscious fruitcake and other sundries evoke memories Christmas past. I wrote a little piece about the place a few years ago…
https://historicipswich.org/2017/12/15/the-vermont-country-store-catalogue-evokes-christmas-nostalgia/
December 1st, 2021 at 2:03 pm
An interesting Thanksgiving entry! I unsubscribed by mistake when I was cleaning up my email subscriptions…as Thanksgiving came and went I kept wondering where is Streets of Salem?
December 1st, 2021 at 4:35 pm
Glad you’re back!
December 13th, 2021 at 6:55 pm
I’m a big fan of the Equinox! I have spent many happy days there, and also at Hildene, and the wonderful Northshire Bookstore. The restaurant Reluctant Panther is super also! Great little town.