Western Massachusetts

I took a 3-day weekend and went out to Western Massachusetts. I left Friday mid morning and stopped at the Yankee Candle Village and Richardson's Candy Store before heading to my hotel and hitting the books for my class. Got last week's reading and most of this week's reading done between Friday and Saturday. Went birthday shopping for gifts for my nieces and nephew. Drove around Amherst and UMass. Ended up the weekend by going to church and seeing one of my friends, and going to a talk at Deerfield about food and sustainability. While the talk wasn't that relevant to my thesis, the speaker gave me some ideas. He's from Strawbery Banke in NH (a living history site), and they have some gardens I didn't know about from the early colonial period, so I see another field trip coming up!

I was very good at Yankee Candle Village about not buying anything that would take up counter space since I am going through a purging process at home. I did buy some cinnamon bears and taffy, but they won't last long :) Yankee Candle Village is a huge store (or actually several stores that are all connected). They mostly sell candles, but they have a lot of cutesy little things and food items like specialty jams and pancake mixes. They also have a candy store. It's the only place in New England where I have seen cinnamon bears.

Next stop was Richardson's Candy Kitchen, which is supposed to be very good chocolate. I got a couple of items--good but very expensive!


My take for the day: 2 chocolates, cinnamon bears and salt water taffy