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Our Accommodations |
Our Accommodations, The Green Mountain Inn
Overall, we were pretty satisfied with our stay at the Green Mountain Inn. The room was nice and seemed pretty well-kept and clean. There was a gas fireplace, which we did not use since it was the middle of July, but I am sure it would be a cozy addition to the room on a cold December evening for vacationing skiers.
With a fireplace being the last thing we needed during a July heat wave, the air conditioning was most welcome, always left on and it cooled the room quite sufficiently.
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There was one notable oversight where the in-room entertainment was concerned. The resort's web site advertised a "large screen TV" in the type of room we stayed in.
Well, if you consider a standard 25-inch color television set "large screen," you must still be living in the 1970's.
I did not bother to measure the TV screen, but my best guess was that it was no larger than 25 inches. I don't think it's completely honest to advertise that as a "large screen TV."
I guess they have not heard about the actual large screen televisions you can get these days like 50 and 60-inch models. Those are what I consider "large screen." Since we were not there primarily to watch television, we were not too put off by it and did not bother making a stink about it.
Service: Pretty Good
My encounters with the staff were not terribly numerous, but what encounters I did have were pleasant. The staff were all friendly and very courteous.
One night while my wife and kids were enjoying the swimming pool I was sitting in the room watching the TV and feeling a bit
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under the weather. I had noticed earlier that the television remote control seemed to work intermittently and now seemed to be getting much worse as I flipped from channel to channel.
Since fiddling with the batteries seemed to help a bit, I concluded that the batteries were probably about dead. Wanting to switch through the channels frequently as men often do, I grew increasingly frustrated with the remote control that had finally reached a point where it would no longer work at all.
I decided I would walk down to the front desk and see if they had any batteries I could use for the remote. The gentleman on the night desk was quite pleasant and when he was not able to locate the type of batteries I needed right in the immediate area, he went the extra mile and wandered off to another portion of the building and returned with my fresh batteries.
Although I wish they would have paid more attention to little details like a properly operating television remote control before I had arrived, I appreciated their willingness to correct the problem and do so in a very courteous and pleasant fashion.
The Food: Quite Good
The Green Mountain Inn has two eateries within. The "Whip Bar & Grill" downstairs and the "Main Street Dining Room" at tehe street level. We were quite satisfied with the two dinners and one breakfast we enjoyed in the "Whip Bar & Grill" as well as the two breakfast buffets in the "Main Street Dining Room."
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We had absolutely no complaints with the food or the service, which were both quite good.
My one complaint would be that there was no genuine maple syrup served with breakfast. That may not be a big deal to most people, but I am truly a self-confessed maple syrup snob. Don't talk to me about "Aunt Jemimah" or "Log Cabin" or any of that other crap. I won't hear of it.
As a native New Englander who lives where maple sugaring buckets adorn the local trees during the spring and who has a neighbor with his very own maple sugar business, to me there is nothing else besides genuine, pure maple syrup that's fit to be poured over a pile of pancakes. I simply love the stuff.
Being that Stowe, Vermont is in the very heart of maple syrup country and our accommodations were not exactly "Motel 6," I expected that genuine maple syrup would be provided with breakfast. Unfortunately, I was mistaken and we were provided with one of those dreadful imitations like those I mentioned earlier and will not speak the name of again.
By the way, if your one of those people who has actually never tried real maple syrup on your pancakes, do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle if it's available in your area. You may end up hating me for suggesting this since you may well discover yourself unable to use the imitation syrups again. The real thing is significantly more expensive, bet well worth it in my opinion!
Ditch The Car For A Day And Walk
One of the nice things about the Green Mountain Inn is its central location right there on the main road (Route 100) through Stowe. There are a number of shops and eateries that are within easy walking distance.
One day we even walked as far up as AJ's on Route 108 to rent bicycles for use on the Stowe Recreation Path. That's not a marathon walk by any stretch, but there is quite a variety of attractions and activities that you can walk to even if you stay right in the immediate downtown area.
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Right next to the Green Mountain Inn is a retail establishment called Stowe Mercantile which is an interesting little store which features all kinds of gift items and specialty food products.
They have a generous number of free sample food products out each day for customers to try, which is an excellent idea with the many unique products they offer.
One morning we saw a woman that must have indulged in each sample at least three times as she circled the store and we wondered if that was how she had decided to have breakfast that morning!
There were a few other area retail outlets that featured many of the same unique food items but I think I enjoyed the layout and atmosphere of the Stowe Mercantile more than the others. The staff was also quite friendly and helpful.
If shopping for all kinds of quaint little gifts and unique food products is something you enjoy, Stowe will surely not disappoint.
Money-Saving Tip
Like many other hotel rooms, our room at the Green Mountain Inn was stocked with overpriced soft drinks, candy bars and other snacks which we actually indulged in on the evening of our first night there.
Although the little helpful maps you can pick up for free in many establishments around town are very useful for locating interesting places to visit, they don't go out of their way to reveal places where one might be likely to find things that may be priced a bit more reasonably than the local shops.
Since our room was equipped with a small refrigerator, we thought it might be a good idea to find a local market where we could buy some soft drinks instead of paying more than twice as much for the stuff that hotel was generous enough to stock our room with.
Since the local map was not much help, we decided to walk south a little bit on Route 100 and see what we could find. After a short distance we found a local market which I believe was called "Mac's" and we picked up some drinks to stock the fridge with.
We later discovered that a short drive to the north on Route 100 would reveal a Shaw's Supermarket on the left just a mile or two outside the village. We didn't end up going in since we had already picked up the items we wanted at the other market, but it's a good bet that Shaw's would have the best prices it town for those kinds of things.