Burlington, VT: The good, the bad, and the ugly part 1

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In case you missed the memo, @mrsbozz and I recently took a trip for our 15th anniversary to Burlington Vermont. This was our first time visiting the city, so there was a lot for us to explore, learn, and experience. Although it is the largest city in Vermont, the population is just shy of 45,000 people.

I still have a ton of content from our trip to share with you, but in this next series of posts, I am going to cover some of the pros and cons we learned about Burlington while we were there. This post will be dedicated to the "Good" stuff. My post tomorrow will be dedicated to the "Bad and Ugly" stuff.

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Very Green

One of the first things I noticed about Burlington as we were flying into the airport was the number of solar panels I could see on the ground. It seems the whole state of Vermont has taken a very green stance in terms of energy. Given their geography with Lake Champlain on the West side of the city, we were surprised we didn't see more wind turbines, but solar panels were plentiful.

@mrsbozz and I work with a teacher who has a son that moved to Vermont after finishing university. Mostly due to the number of opportunities the state has for green initiatives and renewable energy. That's what he got his degree in or something like that.

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Very Walkable

The city of Burlington is very walkable with a couple of caveats. The first is my fault. When I look into visiting a place, I tend to do a lot of research. If you looked at my browser history for the month leading up to our trip, you would likely see many visits to Google Maps so I could get a "lay of the land" for downtown Burlington.

The problem with that is, Google Maps doesn't really show elevation changes very well. I didn't quite realize that the city of Burlington sits on the side of a large hill with Lake Champlain at the bottom, and University of Vermont at the top. This meant that to get from our lakeview hotel to the main part of the city, we had to walk uphill. Not a big deal, but it definitely wore us out.

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I don't have any direct experience with this, but Burlington also seems very bikeable as well. The hotel we were staying at had bicycles you could check out. Additionally, there are tons of bike lanes on the streets. Basically everywhere you went there was a bicycle lane. Additionally, it seemed like pretty much every car we saw had a bike rack on the back of it.

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Very Driveable

You might think given the fact that Burlington is so "walkable" that might mean it isn't very driveable. That couldn't be further from the truth. With plentiful four way stops, and hardly any one way streets, we found Burlington very easy to drive around. I used the photo above as an example, but the real reason @mrsbozz took it is because of the gargoyle on top of the building.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though and I will cover those items in my post tomorrow as they relate to driving around Burlington. If we ever return to Burlington, I think I would drive instead of flying. It's not really that far if you have the time to spare and it would have allowed us to pack more and maybe bring home some more goodies.

Parking is so easy

If you have ever parked in a big city, you know how much of a nightmare it can me. Granted, Burlington isn't anywhere near the scale of Manhattan, but it is a college and tourist town, so those things could add up to be problematic. Thankfully, Burlington has gone all in on the ParkMobile app. Pretty much all of the parking garages and meters in the city use the Park Mobile Service.

It's pretty easy, you just sign up for the app, put in your vehicle details and then when you find a parking spot you put in the code that is on the parking garage or meter. When the "po po" comes along writing tickets, they look in the database and if you paid, you are good to go.

It made things so easy. My only issue with it was the fact that I would always overestimate my parking. I would pay for three hours and we might only be in a place for 1.5. I've gotta believe the city must make a fortune on people over shooting their parking time. In the future I need to remember you can start small and extend your time right inside the app. That would be the smarter play.

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Awesome Bathrooms

It's pretty safe to say that Burlington is a quite liberal town. There are a fair number of "gender fluid" individuals residing there. No matter your opinion on that, the one benefit is that most places in Burlington have moved to a private individual bathroom system. For example, instead of having just a mens and womens bathroom with multiple stalls or urinals inside, places instead have two or more individual water closets with locking doors and loads of privacy.

I know one of the big gripes foreigners have with America is the fact that the bathrooms aren't very private. They would love Burlington. The only downside is if you have drunk guys peeing all over and not cleaning up after themselves. That makes it a bad experience for the lady that visits that bathroom next. It also probably doesn't allow them to move the same volume of people through the bathrooms as quickly, but in my opinion, the pros of this system outweigh the cons.

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Amazing Food

With every other restaurant being a "Farm to Table" joint and dishes like poutine showing up on pretty much every menu, it's safe to say that Burlington is a foodie town. There were so many options and so much food that @mrsbozz and I almost got sick of eating by the end of our trip. I'll talk more about that in the post tomorrow though.

I could have stayed in Burlington for two weeks and still been trying new dishes. @mrsbozz isn't a fan of gravy, so we never tried poutine, but the photo above are some "Irish Nachos" we got at a bar one night. They were as fantastic as they look. The fries (chips) were cooked perfectly and they held up to all the toppings really well.

Amazing Families

In addition to the food, one thing that @mrsbozz notice at pretty much every place we ate was the fact that families were actually talking and interacting with each other. Kids weren't sitting on their phones doing this or that, they were playing word games, making conversation, and asking questions to the adults. The adults in turn were answering the questions and interacting with the kids. It was refreshing to see.

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Church Street

Church Street marketplace seems to be on pretty much every list I have seen of must visit spots in Burlington. I have to admit, it didn't disappoint. It's basically just a long cobblestone street in the middle of town lined with all kinds of bars and boutiques. I've shared a couple photos already from Church Street, but I will likely dedicate a whole post to this area in the future.

As I mentioned in one of my first points, it's very walkable and the open air concept gives you lots of options for hanging out. I can only imagine what this area is like in the Summer when the weather is warmer. The mix of historic and modern really stands out on Church Street and there isn't much you can't find there. We saw several street performers including a lady doing a routine with hula hoops.

It was almost like a classier version of Portabello Road (Free upvote if you get the reference there).

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Very Eclectic

Finally, the last good I have to say about Burlington is just how eclectic it is. You can have people who look like they just came from the big city and then you have hippies that look like they just got off the road from following Phish on tour. It's a wide range of people that make up the population of Burlington.

My wife and I were amazed by the number of different license plates we saw. Anywhere from Maine, to Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and everywhere in between. I actually feel like we saw more plates from other states versus from Vermont. Part of that could be due to it being a college town, but it also might have to do with tourists being in town to look at the leaves for fall. Our rental car had a Pennsylvania plate.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but the food offerings were all over the place in Burlington as well. I don't think I have ever been to a city this size that has as many Easter, Middle Eastern and Indian restaurants as Burlington. There was a kabob place we really wanted to try out, but we never got the chance. There was also a dumpling shop that has been featured on the Food Network, but it was closed when we were there.

There was even a couple Thai places that looked interesting, but I wasn't sure my stomach could handle the heat.

Check back tomorrow for my list of the bad and the ugly. It might feel like that list is longer, but trust me, I wouldn't let a single thing on it dissuade me from visiting Burlington again in the future.

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced