December week in Northern Vermont

Christmas shopping on Burlington's Church Street.

A visit to the Shelburne Museum.

Skiing at Smuggler's Notch.

A day trip to Montreal.

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Smuggler''s Notch Resort is a 5 star ski resort located about 35 minutes east of Burlington, in the Green Mountains. The condominiums are sold as timeshare units. You can trade into them if you own an RCI-affiliated timeshare, or you can rent units from the resort.

The condos are wonderful! We stayed in an enormous 2 BR, 2BA unit with a full kitchen, fireplace, and a jacuzzi in the master BR. The building was located right next to a chairlift that provided skiing access to all three mountains.

The unit was well maintained, nicely decorated, and probably better equipped than our home. It was a very pleasant place to spend a week.

This place was a real find. It's a charming, European-style bistro on Burlington's main downtown shopping street, which is a pedestrian mall. Sunday through Thursday nights they offer a Bistro Dinner for Two: a choice of salads, selected entrees, desserts, and coffee for $30 (that's $30 for two people!)

The food was quite good--salads were great, pasta entrees ranged from acceptable to wonderful, and we loved our desserts. We added a very nice $30 bottle of wine from the Leunig's well-chosen wine list, making a memorable dinner for a modest price.

The atmosphere is busy and the staff is friendly. On a cold Wednesday night in early December, we were seated immediately without reservations.

During the first week in December, two lifts and about 15 trails were open. There was a 10-15" base, and the snowmaking equipment operated continuously, plus nature added another 6 inches during the week. We had the lifts and slopes virtually to ourselves, and the skiing was great! Most of the open runs were green or blue levels of difficulty. But Smuggler's does have its share of double and triple black diamond runs as well.

The ski school has consistently been voted #1 in the United States by readers of Ski Magazine. Full-day ski camps are available for kids from age 3 on up. They also offer a variety of adult classes and snowboarding lessons.

If I had to argue with anything at Smugg's, it would be the lift equipment. The chair lifts to the top of the mountains are extremely long, they're slow, and they offer nothing in terms of wind protection. In fact, they seem downright antiquated. On a still, sunny day, it didn't matter much. But one of our skiing days there was a 12 mph wind blowing, and we were numb with cold by the time we got to the top.

Lift tickets seem on the expensive side: $34/day for adults. There are small discounts for half day or multiple day passes.

The Shelburne is a museum dedicated to the preservation of traditional Vermont life. Its large and beautifully landscaped grounds contain preserved (or reconstructed) buildings typical of the region, including a round barn, a Lake Champlain lighthouse, a traditional stone cottage, a jail, and even a Champlain steamboat, the Ticonderoga.

The buildings house a variety of collections--antique toys, folk art and artifacts, and reconstructed rooms with typical furnishings. The Havemeyer art collection (most of which is part of the permanent collection in the MOMA in New York) is nicely displayed in a unique setting. The interior of the Havemeyer's New York apartment were dismantled and reinstalled in a traditional Vermont house and the Monets, Manets, Degas, and Cassatts are mounted as they were in the original apartment.

In winter, the Shelburne is open only from 1 to 4 in the afternoon, and only a limited number of exhibits are open. Besides the Havemeyer Impressionist collection, my favorite was the Ticonderoga, which carried passengers up and down Lake Champlain in the early 20th century. The boat is beautifully finished with elegant carved wood paneling and compact but inspiring spaces.

Adult admission was $8.00. The gift shop is open until 5, and has a good selection of Vermont-oriented gifts and books.

You wouldn't want to visit the Shelburne on a really cold day. The grounds are large, and to visit the limited number of exhbitions that are open means a lot of walking between them. On the sunny winter afternoon we visited, the weather and the walking were not a problem.