Massachusetts

Massachusetts, known as the Bay State, has a lot of history and a whole lot of colleges and universities. Larger cities include Springfield, Worcester, Lowell, and Boston. Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, and Nantucket attract visitors from all over the world in the high season. In Provincetown, you can do some whale-watching, explore the dunes by bike, or hit the nightclubs. Williamstown has gorgeous panoramic views, the Clark Art Institute, great bookstores, and proximity to a multitude of mountains. In Central Massachusetts, Old Sturbridge Village reproduces a colonial community. Near Boston, you can visit Concord to pay your respects to Thoreau at Walden Pond, and Emerson and Hawthorne, who were also laid to rest at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery across town. Salem has many sights devoted to the supernatural, new age, and the trials of alleged witches in the late 1600s. More gruesome is the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River, the subject of a historically inaccurate nursery rhyme. You can tour the house where her family members lived up until their deaths, or even spend the night. Boston’s Fenway Park is synonymous with baseball, and is also a great place to attend concerts.

Worcester offers vegan Caribbean and Asian food, Provincetown has organic juices and salads, you can have soups and beet salad in Salem, and Wellfleet on the Cape has organic juices, smoothies and vegan desserts. In Western Massachusetts, Great Barrington has a gypsy-themed cafe with lentil burgers and Middle Eastern food; Greenfield has establishments with locally-sourced and often organic food and drink; Hadley has organic, vegan, and sometimes gluten-free sandwiches and desserts; Northampton has organic macrobiotic food and local organic cafe fare, and Pittsfield has organic, local salads and pizza, which can have a spelt or whole wheat crust.

Near Boston, Waltham has a macrobiotic, organic restaurant, and there is organic, seasonal food in Watertown. Somerville has an upscale vegan restaurant that offers gluten-free and nut-free options, as well as a bean-to-bar chocolate factory where the goods are shade-grown, stone-ground, certified direct trade, sustainably produced, and organic. In the actual city of Boston, you can get fairly traded, organic, and shade grown coffee; gourmet frozen treats with a coconut milk base, local organic food (like chili with pasture-raised ground beef and organic poblano peppers) in the funky Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and organic Ethiopian or French-Cambodian food.