New England

Day 1: Boston – Arrival

A first look at the city and its landmark Boston Common and Public Garden. Walk the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill, lined with brick townhouses and gas lamps.

Day 2: Boston

The Freedom Trail, a red line marked on the ground, runs for four kilometers linking the founding sites of American independence, from the State House to the Italian North End. Cambridge is also a prime destination, with the Harvard campus.

Day 3: Portland

You leave Boston along the North Shore and the Essex Coastal Scenic Byway, a designated Massachusetts scenic route running through Cape Ann and Rockport. Then come Portsmouth, a colonial New Hampshire port with Georgian houses, then Ogunquit, in Maine, and Kennebunkport, one of the finest villages in the state.

Day 4: Portland

Discover Cape Elizabeth and Portland Head Light, its iconic lighthouse. Explore Portland, the largest city in the state, known for its cobbled streets, brick buildings and food scene.

Day 5: Bar Harbor

The road runs northeast, through Freeport and its outlet stores, then Camden, tucked between the bay and the hills. Once across the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, you reach Mount Desert Island and Bar Harbor, where American high society came to spend the summer in the late nineteenth century.

Day 6: Bar Harbor

A full day in Acadia National Park. The Park Loop Road unwinds for some forty magical kilometers between ocean and forest: Sand Beach, the chasm of Thunder Hole, Otter Cliff, the mirror surface of Jordan Pond, and Cadillac Mountain (advance reservation required for Cadillac Mountain).

Day 7: White Mountains Area

The road takes you west, from the Maine coast to the foothills of the White Mountains. The landscape changes: the coves give way to conifer forests, lakes and the first high ground.

Day 8: White Mountains Area

Mount Washington, 1,917 meters, the highest peak in the northeastern United States, known for the violence of its winds. You reach it by the Auto Road, twelve kilometers of switchbacks to the summit, or by the Cog Railway, a rack railway running since 1869.

Day 9: White Mountains Area

The Kancamagus Highway crosses the White Mountain National Forest for fifty-five kilometers, past waterfalls, overlooks and rivers. You continue on to Franconia Notch and Flume Gorge (advance reservation required), a granite gorge crossed by wooden boardwalks. Aerial tramway up Cannon Mountain.

Day 10: Green Mountains Area

Crossing New Hampshire and then Vermont, from east to west, with its classic villages. Covered bridges, white steeples and red barns punctuate the drive.

Day 11: Green Mountains Area

Scenic Route 7A links the villages of southern Vermont: Arlington and its covered bridge, Manchester and its marble sidewalks, Dorset and its broad green lined with white houses. The Mount Equinox Skyline Drive offers a magnificent view over the valley as far as the Adirondacks.

Day 12: Lenox

A short leg to the Berkshires, a region of hills and lakes that became the summer resort of high society in the nineteenth century. Maple-lined roads, scattered farms and handsome houses follow one after another. It now has one of the highest concentrations of museums in the United States.

Day 13: Cape Cod

Along the way, Old Sturbridge Village recreates life in a New England town of the 1830s, with its craftsmen and working farms. Arrival on Cape Cod, a long sandy peninsula of dunes, salt marshes and classic villages.

Day 14: Cape Cod

A day on the Cape. Chatham and its lighthouse, then the Cape Cod National Seashore, sixty kilometres of protected coast between dunes and beaches. At the tip, Provincetown combines a working fishing port, art galleries and the Pilgrim Monument, a granite tower built on the site of the Mayflower's first landing.

Day 15: Boston – Departure

Car drop-off at Boston airport.