Wayne75

If you read about Pittsfield online, it sounds like a city on the verge of reviving itself, but if you actually go there, the downtown area looks pretty depressed. The place is not without character, but there’s a dreariness you can’t escape.

We did find a nice residential area nearby, with lots of families playing outside in yards pitted with dandelions. But without a stronger town center, we didn’t think Pittsfield was the kind of place we’d want to move to.

There was a pretty eclectic museum, though—The Berkshire Museum. It has dinosaurs and insects and fish and reptiles and … early American paintings … and vintage children’s toys. Like I said, eclectic. Maddie liked it, mostly.

This is a terrific city to visit. I suppose there’s plenty to do in Montreal, but the atmosphere is in Old Montreal. There’s a lot of restaurants, of course, but the best ones, in our opinion, were on Rue Saint-François-Xavier, near the Notre-Dame Basilica. (This includes the best Mexican restuarant we’ve ever been to, Casa de Mateo.) The worst restaurants (that we ate at, anyway) were on the popular Place Jacques Cartier. You pay for the quality of the view, maybe, but not the food.

Our daughter was two and a half when we went, and it was a good place for kids—an IMAX theater showed 3D movies about bugs and lions. There was a really neat bike route that we didn’t explore until our last day, unfortunately. Maddie liked that a lot. Public transportation was good, and it was easy to get to places like the Parc Olympique, where there was a lot for kids to see and do.

We stayed at the Bonaparte, which served the best breakfast I’ve ever had. We ate there every morning.

Nicole and I want to spend a few days in Saratoga Springs this summer. We might want to move there in a year or two, based on what we’ve read of the place.