Christina Tree - Explorers Guide New Hampshire

Welcome to the most widely used and comprehensive travel guide to the Granite State. All inclusionsattractions, inns, and restaurantsare chosen on the basis of personal experience, not paid advertising.

The following points will help to get you started on your way.

WHATS WHERE

In the beginning of the book youll find an alphabetical listing of highlights and important information that you may want to reference quickly.

LODGING

Prices: Please dont hold us or the respective innkeepers responsible for the rates listed as of press time in 2010. Some changes are inevitable. The state rooms and meals tax is 9 percent as of this writing, but that also may change. The following codes are used: EP: lodging only; MAP: lodging, breakfast, and dinner; B&B: lodging and breakfast; AP: lodging and three meals.

RESTAURANTS

In most sections, please note a distinction between Dining Out and Eating Out. Restaurants in the Eating Out group are generally inexpensive.

KEY TO SYMBOLS

Weddings . The wedding-ring symbol appears next to properties that specialize in weddings.

Special value . The blue-ribbon symbol appears next to selected lodging and restaurants that combine quality and moderate prices.

Pets . The dog-paw symbol appears next to venues that accept pets (usually with prior notice).

Child-friendly . The crayon symbol appears next to lodging, restaurants, activities, and shops of special interest or appeal to youngsters.

Handicapped access . The wheelchair symbol appears next to lodging, restaurants, and attractions that are partially or completely handicapped accessible.

Wireless Internet . The wireless symbol appears next to lodging, restaurants, and attractions that offer wireless Internet access.

Authors favorites . These are the places we think have the best to offer in each region, whether that means great food, outstanding rooms, beautiful scenery, or overall appeal.

We would appreciate your comments and corrections about places you visit or know well in the state. Please address your correspondence to Explorers Guide Editor, The Countryman Press, P.O. Box 748, Woodstock, VT 05091, or via email at countrymanpress@wwnorton.com . You can also e-mail Chris Tree: ctree@traveltree.net.

W elcome to the seventh edition of New Hampshires most comprehensive travel guide. We hope that residents as well as visitors will find it useful.

Each chapter focuses on a different region, beginning with a verbal snapshot of the landscape and historical background. Sources of information, how to get around, and descriptions of everything to see and do, from winter sports to places to swim and picnic, follow. Then come capsule descriptions of places to stay. Our focus is on inns and bed & breakfasts, but other lodging ranges from family-run motels to Appalachian Mountain Club huts and lodges. We have personally visited more than 90 percent of the lodgings described; the other 10 percent have come highly recommended. Nobody has paid to be included.

We generally include prices because categories like moderate and expensive can be misleading, depending on what they include. Please allow for inflation. Most lodging places add the 9 percent New Hampshire room and meals tax, and some also add a service charge; be sure to inquire. After lodging come critiques of local upscale restaurants ( Dining Out ) and more casual options ( Eating Out ). We also describe shops and farms worth seeking out and the special events of that area.

Our regions reflect those accepted by the people who live in them. Generally they mirror the way into which the New Hampshire Department of Travel and Tourism divides the state, but there are differences. Crossing the border from Massachusetts, visitors enter the part of the state weve called The Merrimack Valley. Following the Merrimack River north, I-93 passes by Manchester, a city well worth a stop for its Currier Museum of Art, one of the best small museums in the country. A few minutes beyond is Concord, home of the nations oldest state capitol building in continuous use as well as of the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, a world-renowned planetarium named for New Hampshires very own space pioneers, Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard. Other attractions in this sometimes overlooked area include white clapboard villages, the Derry home of poet Robert Frost, and Canterbury Shaker Village.

The scattering of lakes across the width of the state we term simply The Lakes Region. We divide our chapter, as I-93 does, into The Lake Winnipesaukee Region and Ossipee Valley east of the interstate and the Sunapee/Newfound Lakes Region to the west.

Lake Winnipesaukee, the states largest lake, remains the popular tourist destination that its been for more than a century. Still, there are quiet corners such as Squam Lake and the hills around Center Sandwich. Wolfeboro, billed as Americas first summer resort, remains a lively and visitor-friendly magnet. The neighboring Ossipee Valley, flanking Rt. 16, harbors both lakes and mountains, also the gemlike villages of Tamworth and Eaton Center. West of I-93 the open, rolling countryside from Newfound Lake to Lake Sunapee is spotted with lakes big and small, most with a view of one of the areas three mighty mountains, Sunapee, Kearsarge, and Cardigan.