It's been quite some time since I have written a #wednesdaywalk post, so I thought I should fix that. Started by @tattoodjay, #wednesdaywalk is a way to get out and explore your world and then share it with us each Wednesday.
This particular walk didn't take place on a Wednesday, it was actually a Sunday, but since it is Wednesday today when I am writing this post, I think it qualifies. It was supposed to rain most of the day on this Sunday, and @mrsbozz and I already had plans to do something out of the rain. By some stroke of luck, it hadn't started raining when we woke up, so we decided to take a walk down to Waterfront Park and a little breakfast place we had heard about.
I will be writing a full review of the breakfast place tomorrow. After we finished our meal, the rain was still holding off, so we decided to take a short stroll along Waterfront Park and along the Burlington Greenway.
Our hotel was actually right across the street from Waterfront Park, so we got a pretty good view of it every day when we looked out our window. The Burlington Greenway runs through the park and if you were to do a search of things to do in Vermont, I would bet the Greenway shows up on 8 out of 10 lists.
As you can see, it is a pretty beautiful trail. They do a really good job of keeping it up. According to the website linked above, the Greenway consists of eight miles of paved paths and connects to several parks along that length.
The Greenway is also part of the Island Line Trail which includes the causeway. We walked part of the causeway, but not on this morning. I will be writing another post about that in the future! The causeway also has a bike ferry which can take you to one of the many islands in Lake Champlain.
Unfortunately, it was quite cold and windy on the day that we took our walk, but like many things in Burlington, I can see how in the summer or early fall, this is a pretty magical place to hang out. Everything just feels really fresh and well kept up. Nature is everywhere, and you can't help but want to get out and experience it.
The park takes you down along the water with many walkways and fishing piers for you to explore. If we hadn't flown here, I might have brought my fishing pole and thrown my line out a time or two in to Lake Champlain!
This part of Lake Champlain isn't that wide, so you can easily see the state of New York in the distance and some of the mountains that run along the western coast of the lake. We thought about driving over to New York one day, but with the weather being so uncooperative, we had to plan our road trips strategically.
I know you can't read it, but this sign in the park commemorates the first international hockey game that was played on the ice of Lake Champlain. It was the first documented game between teams from different nations to ever take place and it happened in 1886. The hockey game was the culmination of a Carnival of Winter Sports that included a variety of activities as well as concerts and parades.
Just some more photos of Lake Champlain and New York on the other side of it.
The park has several seating areas and you can see how on a nicer day it would be an awesome place to watch the sun set behind the mountains in New York over Lake Champlain. We only got a couple really nice sunsets while we were there, but it was cold so we had to enjoy them from the comfort of our hotel room.
We didn't walk all the way down the dock, but at the end of that pier on the right is a bar that you can sit at and watch the boats on the lake. There is also a science center down there that is dedicated to the Lake Champlain waterway/watershed and the benefits it has to the ecosystem and the surrounding area. Even without kids, it might have been an interesting stop. Maybe next time...
This was our walk heading back to our hotel from the park. The hotel is actually further to the left out of the frame. I thought the building with all of the painting on it was really cool. There is a load of street art in Burlington that we didn't get the chance to explore because of the weather.
On the very left edge of the photo is another small cafe that we had breakfast at a couple of times (not the one I am going to write about tomorrow).
Finally, to close, I wanted to share some photos of the railway for @livinguktaiwan because I know how much she enjoys trains. The rails in the earlier pictures are actually active and as you can see, there is a train station down near the waterfront that gets quite a bit of action.
We could often hear the train whistles from inside our hotel room. Which honestly doesn't bug us that much because we have a freight train line that runs behind our neighborhood, so on warm summer nights when you have the windows open, it sounds like they are right in your backyard.
Burlington is really a wonderful town and although we have other places we would rather visit first, I hope I get the chance to come back here again when the weather is nicer and we can really enjoy being outside and all the city has to offer.
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