New England: Best of

The capital city of Massachusetts, Boston is a happy mixture of present and past: the wide avenues of the modern part of the city blend into the narrow, snakelike lanes of the old colonial town; futuristic skyscrapers rise next to historic buildings. Boston was built in 1630 around the Boston Common – a pasture then used to graze local livestock – and, during the following century, became the core of the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain. After independence was declared, Boston kept on thriving as a trading and culture centre.

A bridge connects the mainland to this little town, rising on Mount Desert Island. Formerly a fashionable resort for early 20th century millionaires, today Bar Harbor is a popular holiday spot, its old mansions having been converted into hotels. During the summer its harbor is a favourite departure point for offshore fishing and whale watching. From Bar Harbor you can also visit the nearby Acadia National Park. The coast is rugged, as it typically is in Maine, peninsulas are covered in woods and dotted with small villages and lighthouses overlooking the ocean.

Standing at the very tip of Aquidneck Island, Newport has always been the harbor of East Coast tycoons. The flotilla of luxury yachts moored at the docks speaks for itself, as well as the opulent, fin-de-siècle summer houses belonging to New York magnates like the Astors and the Vanderbilts.

Route 6A, The Old King Highway, which is on the northern, or bay side, of Cape Cod, winds its way through some of the oldest villages in America, including Bourne, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Brewster and Orleans. Many of the homes and churches along this tree-shaded road are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There are also several beaches nearby, including Sandy Neck and Sandwich Town Beach. During the summer, the road can become a bit crowded, but it is much quieter than the bustling Route 28, which cuts through the southern side of the Cape. If you are interested in seeing what Cape Cod looked like before tourists discovered it, and want to visit some of the best quaint, little shops in New England, Route 6A is the place to be. In 1602 this narrow, hook-shaped peninsula was aptly named Cape Cod due to the prodigious amount of cod that could be fished off the coast of Provincetown. Today Cape Cod is a delicate ecosystem of beaches, dunes and salt marshes dotted with charming old towns looking just the way they did one hundred years ago.