Favorites

  Some personal favorites:

• Easy hike: up Mount Holyoke at Skinner State Park, off Rt. 47 south of Hadley. Foliage hike: Mount Toby in Sunderland. Long (4-6 hour) hike: The Notch to Skinner.
• Italian food, inexpensive: Pasta e Basta in downtown Amherst. Not-so-inexpensive: Mulino's in Northampton. Expensive: Carmelina's in Hadley.
• Excellent icecream: Herrell's in Northampton, open daily till fairly late, around the corner from Thornes Market.
• Good local produce: Atkins farms, South Amherst on Rt. 116 towards South Hadley. In the Spring and Summer, roadside stands and the Farmers' Market, Amherst Common on Saturdays.
• Coffee: Rao's in Amherst, Haymarket Cafe in Northampton, both downtown. Coffee and books and plain beautiful place: The Montague Book Mill (``books you don't need in a place you can't find'').
• Cross-country skiing. In Amherst, Amethyst Brook, on Pelham Road. Nice groomed trails and affordable equipment rental: Northfield, about half an hour North of Amherst on Rt. 63.
• Good People-Watching: Haymarket Cafe, Northampton. Harvard Square, Cambridge (nice to do after a day of hard tourist work in Boston).
• The Norwottuck Rail Trail -so named because it runs on a defunct railroad bed- , from Northampton to Amherst and beyond, for biking, rollerblading, etc.
• Movies: the Tower Theaters in South Hadley, all seats are excellent and they accept reservations over the phone.