Description: Bennington, Vermont, was certainly one of the more… depressing towns we visited on our jaunt around the state, but hey hey, we actually had a good time during our stay. So I’ll give credit where credit is due—checking into the Best Western New Englander Motor Inn was the first pleasant surprise of our brief visit in this old town.
"Whether it’s for business or for play, the Best Western New Englander Motor Inn is the ideal place for your stay" boasts the hotel’s flip-card brochure. Now, I’m not sure our stay fell into either the "for business" or the "for play" categories—who goes to a Best Western in middle-of-nowhere Vermont for play anyway?—but we were grateful all the same for finding it.
After picking up in Stowe that morning and driving south all day, we needed to find a place by 7pm to catch Game 1 of the Pistons/Bucks series. Since the nearly empty Hampton House down Historic Route 7A tried to rape us for $100/night, the Best Western and its $59 rate fit the bill perfectly. Plus there’s views of the Bennington Battle Monument from your room! Sweet.
The room was perfectly fine: a small table and chairs, A/C, cable, microwave, newish bathroom, comfortable bed, big closet. We couldn’t decide which extra perk was best—a free copy of
The Rutland Herald, or the half-eaten bowl of turkey stew in the mini-fridge.
Believe it or not, the greater Bennington area yielded a wealth of surprises:
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Bennington Bowl right across the street from the hotel (unfortunately, we didn’t have time to make it, but I did fill my 10th frame with four strikes back in Burlington.)
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Hannaford Grocery, which offers about 20 different types of every single product. Huge!
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Salvation Army and Goodwill were ripe for the picking. Amongst other things, I scored a campy vintage lamp, a few shirts, John Denver’s Muppet Christmas on vinyl, a few more records, and a large framed pirate ship print.
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Dominos, because I’d already eaten like a Midwestern pig for the previous few days, so why not totally throw out my healthy diet and eat a large pizza?
That about does it. The Best Western is a great place to crash for the night if for some reason you find yourself in Bennington, like we did. Oh, and I almost forgot—the hotel also has fax and copy machines... wow! Can you believe it?
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