We had always fancied a trip to see New England in the “Fall” (autumn, to us Scots), so we had a look at where the cruise ships stopped and did some research on Google for the best places to go, then came up with a plan.
We decided to take in both the US and Canada, so we initially flew into Boston, Massachusetts and rented a car to drive through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. We headed straight out from the airport and left our Boston city visit until the end so that we could drop the car off and spend a couple of days exploring the city on foot.
There were some stunning places to see in New England and one of the B&B’s we stayed in (in Vermont) made our Top 10 list. For hiking, the standout place was Acadia National Park in Maine where we hiked the stunning Beehive trail. For small towns, Bar Harbour was just lovely.
From Boston, we flew up to Halifax, Nova Scotia and again rented a car to explore. Halifax didn’t impress us, but there were many beautiful places and colourful small towns within a short drive such as Lunenburg and Peggy’s Cove. We would also like to return at some point and head to Cape Breton, which we didn’t have time to do on this trip.
As far as the fall colours, it’s very hard to know exactly when to go as the fall can start early or late. We opted for two weeks early-mid October in 2012. For most of New England in that particular year, this proved to be coming into “past peak”, but weirdly further north in Nova Scotia, Canada, it was peak season. Even past peak in New England was still gorgeous, but Nova Scotia was outstanding.
We flew back home from Halifax, making it a nice round trip. Our “Photo Journey” below splits the trip into two sections, New England and Nova Scotia…
NEW ENGLAND (in no particular order)
NOVA SCOTIA (in no particular order)
ExploreOurWorld 