This is a fantastic stop in the Berkshires. It is free to walk around the estate grounds/gardens…read more You can also purchase drinks and snacks on their terrace. We had a lovely and peaceful time sipping tea while overlooking the beautiful gardens. Everyone working here was so kind and helpful. We peaked into the mansion while using the restrooms and it looked to have great exhibits!

I really enjoyed the 90 minutes I spent here. Not only was the tour guide engaging and very…read moreknowledge, but I genuinely appreciated learning about Edith. Prior to the visit, I never heard of Edith Wharton, but I developed so much respect for her after attending this tour. The house and grounds are also both gorgeous. Highly recommend!

Do visit the vast 750 acre well-preserved Shaker Farm Village in Hancock. Beautiful buildings, each…read morewell maintained and served a purpose in the past. Heritage farm animals abound - (some you can pet!) - we saw Goats, Sheep, Cattle, Hens, Donkeys and Piggies... ** $20 admission ** ** Tour Guides available ** *** Gift Shop & Café *** Thank you!

This Shaker Village is so well preserved with multiple buildings you can tour and beautiful…read moregrounds. The highlight here is the circular stone barn, and the multi story brick dwelling is very impressive as well. I really enjoyed all of the signs that provided information about various aspects of Shaker life. We visited during the fall festival, and the vendors and other activities were great as well. Be sure to check out the meeting house and school house across the street. Hancock Shaker Village is well worth a visit!

I haven't been to the museum in years, but I did remember checking it out one day…read more The exhibits were amazing! The many artifacts were priceless!

Before my grandma sold her house in the Berkshires my family and I would visit here every year. I…read morehad been coming to visit since I was around five or six. I loved visiting the fish down in the aquarium and I remember when they had a touch tank before the pandemic hit. The snakes were also really cute too which might be an unpopular opinion. I also loved seeing the Christmas trees in the winter, there is a science center for kids and there are some beautiful paintings on display as well. I have always had the best memories here and before my grandpa passed away he would always love taking me here with my parents and my sister. My family members weren't huge fans of the aquarium like I was but I dragged them down there. I have so much to thank this museum for including, how much I learned, the memories I made, and how it was something fun that my grandpa and I could do together.

I was researching things to do in the Berkshires while my classmates and I were vacationing. This…read morepeaked our interest as we're all tech-fascinated people, and my husband was an animation major. It's a free museum visit, but because it's privately run, you have to call them and make special arrangements for them to come and open the museum. The pros: you get a private tour, and hours aren't limited to your usual 9-5. The cons: since it's only run by 2 people, you're really at their mercy when you show up and they may or may not be on there way there still. Admittedly it's nothing fancy, but if you're legitimately into animation, it's a really fun casual tour. They go very old school on some animation techniques. They have a gift shop with some animation trinkets you can buy. For extra money if you have time, you can also create your own animation with them. We opted out of that one. If you're in the area anyway, it's a great place to stop by. Otherwise, I wouldn't go out of your way to travel to the area just for this.

Remember carnival sideshows and the relentless shilling that happens out in front of the midway…read moretent? This is what it feels like to visit AniMagic. The handbill reads, "50% off Make Your Own Animation in our Hands-On Studio," and "$20 workshop includes 2-hr training, materials, and your creation on take-home video (reg. $40). Good for dates! Absolutely not. What we received for $40 instead of a 2-hour, make-your-own-animation workshop was: - a 10-minute tour of all the overpriced optical illusion toys in the dusty gift shop - a 10 minute "free" tour of their "museum," a small room full of sight gags and posters, and an expanding sphere that drops out of nowhere, just barely missing your head. We weren't allowed to linger over the really interesting things - a family tree of all the animators and animation studios in the Berkshires, the actual crab puppets from a food commercial, a technical Oscar - and were instead hustled (pun intended) from one thing to another, with a long, incomprehensible spiel accompanying our visits with long-outdated computer equipment, trompe l'oeil toys, and a mechanical Donald Duck on a high wire. I feared for my eyes during the entire visit. - a bait-and-switch video (really! on VHS!) of claymation (plasticine stop-motion animation), claimed to have been created by the guy's workshop students (we'll get to that in a minute). - 20 minutes of doing exactly what this guy impatiently told us to do, followed by being hustled (again, pun intended) out the front door. In that twenty minute (not two hour!) workshop, we were treated to a machine-gun-fire rapidity of commands by a person who had absolutely no intention of allowing us to make our own animation. We were told to sit at a table in a back workshop and were nonconsensually videotaped as he told us exactly what to do with the plasticine. When the camera was off, he was barking orders at us to make simple stick figures, which were NOTHING like the melting snowmen, dancing flowers, and amazing animals of the teaser video. I felt like I was promised a visit with a unicorn, but when I pulled back the oilcloth tent flap, I was treated to a brief glimpse of a dog with a tree branch secured precariously to its forehead with a necktie. As dreams of a romantic afternoon evaporated in the exact way that my forehead sweat didn't, I noticed his sign, printed in ALL CAPS, which read "THIS IS NOT BURGER KING. YOU DO IT *MY* WAY." No joke, if you have to make a sign to explain to people that they will adhere directly to your totalitarian clay regime, you probably shouldn't be in the business of working with small humans. Any humans. We've both made movies before, and - in the case of my beloved, who's taught classes in animation - brought some measure of competent experience to the table. I had hoped to learn something further about new technology's role in stop-motion animation, and have time to build my character, the backbone of any subject-based creative endeavor. Instead, I was given two minutes to cut legs out of a tube and shove a head onto a trunk with exacting precision, what this guy called "surgery." He had his spiel down pat. When I tried to ask if I could make something else, he said "NO." When I asked if I could make my figure an animal, he said "NO!" He sighed, and growled, and grimaced, and flat-out took our pieces away several times and just built them his damn self. It was as if we weren't there, because every time he noticed we had any selfhood, he seemed supremely annoyed at our very existence. Show's over, folks, keep on moving. The best part of this celluloid turd was when we went back into the main room and were told how to press computer buttons on a 1998 iMac running iMovie 2.0, which apparently required a complex call-and-response system to actuate still photos from a twenty-year-old, 0.5 megapixel webcam in the shape of a giant eye. I prayed that this eye would bear witness to our ordeal. Instead, we were told that we were making different movies (not one, as we at least expected to do), and were told what the movies would be about. We were not allowed to touch the figures more than twice apiece, because we were Doin' It Wrong, so he positioned the figures and told us when to take the pictures and basically used us to fulfill a role he had long before decided needed to be filled with deformed, ugly clay monstrosities. I imagined that a clay horse would run through the set and rescue my poor puppet, or, at the very least, trample it into the earth so it could avoid suffering further. He wouldn't let us do any post-production, forcing us instead to watch as he looped "our" terrible movies, added copyright-infringing music, and tasteless audio effects. We didn't even get a copy - we had to hunt on YouTube for it! When we were led out with a Bye Now after 40 minutes, we knew we'd been had. It's so unfortunate, too, because these people are so very talented (Irena is WAY more talented than he is). Run!!

This is really a gem of a museum, and it shares a property line with Tanglewood. So when you…read morearrive, you park the car and then walk about 1/3 of a mile to the entrance to the house which is on the right. To the left is a building that plays a 20 minute video where you can learn about Suzie Frelinghusen and her husband George Morris who were modern artists in the 1930s and onward. After George's death, the Suzie created a non-profit for the house so that after her death, it would be preserved. This means that the house has the original carpeting and many things that are just as they were originally. In fact, the floor in their library is made of leather, so everyone has to wear booties so as not to damage them. Seeing this house is really like taking a trip back in time, and you get to see a glimpse of their art and how these two lived. Also, in order to see the house, there are tours at the top of each hour. My friend and I were the only two people on the tour, so except an intimate experience. I don't think that it ever gets crowded. Be sure to check out their book collection as well. It was very difficult for me to resist the urge to reach out and open up some of the books! Also, in Suzie's bedroom, she painted herself an extraordinary fresco on the wall. While most of her art is modern, the paintings in her bedroom show her impeccable skill as a landscape oil painter as well.

Steepletop was poet Edna St Vincent Millay's home before she passed away in 1950. According to the…read morenice man we spoke to here, the Millay Society opened the house and grounds up to the public in 2009-ish. What's here now is the house itself, which is only open for guided tours, the gardens, a small historical gallery with the poet's family tree, photographs, and heirlooms, and a Poetry Trail into the woods, leading to Millay and her family's burial site. Admission was a bit more than I expected, but I'm not sure why (why it surprised me, that is... not why it was more than I thought). Maybe it's just been a while since I've been to a historical site, but it was $10 to view the gallery and grounds; guided tours of the garden or the house would have been $16; and a combination of the two comes to $25. According to the website, reservations are required for the tours. Walking the Poetry Trail alone is free. As you come up East Hill Rd from Rte 22, you'll see the Millay Colony for the Arts on the left. That's not it. Keep going until you see the sign for the Millay Society at Steepletop. The gravel driveway is very tight, but I don't think they get a lot of traffic. There are signs directing you to the side of the house, where you enter and go up some stairs to the office. My friend and I did the gallery/grounds thing. The man working there was amazingly informative and loved to tell us everything he knew, but he was also happy to step back and let us browse on our own. The family tree that sprawled across an entire wall, though it was packed with information, seemed a little chintzy, created with printouts and typed with not always the best grammar -- a bit disappointing for an author's home. In addition to the family history, you can find books from Millay's own collection, a piano she grew up with, a couple of garments -- one real, one a replica -- and a few other family mementos. When we had fully saturated the gallery's displays and our host's brain, he pulled out a big cardboard map to show us the layout of the gardens. It wasn't until then that I realized the building we were in as not the actual Steepletop house. But it was not going to be hard to find. We memorized the map (why they don't have a version you can take with you, I have no idea) and ventured across East Hill Rd and up a soft incline to the house. All we could do was wander around the outside, but we were interested enough to do so. The Millay Society is in the process of restoring both the house and the gardens to their previous condition, and at the moment the gardens are in an odd in-between state where some bits are meticulous and well maintained and others are rustic and overgrown. But the swinging gates, the weather-stained sundial and other stone features, and grassy areas like the one that used to be a circular badminton court all still have a quaint and beautiful feel, even in their disrepair. The swimming pool has seen better days. And hopefully will see better ones to come. One intriguing stop in the garden area was Millay's writing cottage. It's small and musty and was the only building we encountered that didn't have its windows blocked from the inside, so we peeked in. A couple of desks are inside, one with a pile of papers and a composition book. The Poetry Trail is charming. It takes about 20 minutes to roam from the road to the burial area. Every so often, a passage of poetry by Millay appears on a post. The distance between poems is just right for letting the previous one sink in. Eventually we reached the burial site and found Millay and her husband Eugen Boissevain's graves easily enough. Millay's mother, sister, and brother-in-law are supposed to be there, too, but we didn't spot them right away (and it had started raining, so we weren't going to spend much time searching). Millay and Boissevain's flat gravestones were scattered with leaves and fit right into the unmanicured grove. I'm in this area once a year and might try a guided tour at some point. Whether you're a Millay fan or just Millay-curious, this little historic site is worth coming a little bit out of the way to check out.

Things are very much closed up at the home of Edna St Vincent Millay, because of funding issues, I…read morebelieve. They need support in order to re-open, I suspect. Keep an eye out for future chances to experience this stunning site. I hope they get some help from an angel donor or some other source.

Cute if you're in the area - no long train rides but they do little minute long rides and blow the…read morehorn which is fun. Very pretty overlooking the pond out back. The little museum inside the old train station is cute, not a ton to see but it is interesting to learn about the trains in the yard. $5 for adults

Apparently a review for the BSRM could mean the museum itself, the old train ride (pre-2016), or…read morenew train ride out of North Adams, MA (2016+). Having heard that it was scheduled to open, I tried to go in 2015 but they apparently only had one weekend of trips. So, when they announced a scheduled run in 2016 the same weekend as my birthday (Memorial Day) I jumped on it. I am a train nut, so even a bad train yet will still garner a couple of stars here. However, based on our trip in May I can only give it three. Here is why: 1.) It was HOT. VERY HOT. Riding in the train/RDC with no air conditioning, or the ability to open windows, led to most people on our train ride being very uncomfortable. People were visibly sweating. No water was sold on the train, which would have helped. Waiting for the train, there wasn't a "station" of sorts so people gathered in line on the ballast in whatever shade could be found. The only breeze came when the train was moving through the front and rear door, but it just isn't enough. An open riding car would help a lot. And that was just May. 2.) A conductor read from a script about the things we were passing by as the train rolled along. It was nice, but it was hard to hear, even though the entire train is one car long! The speakers need to be turned up. BUT... he also read for nearly the entire trip. Without stopping. It was just a wall of noise that we tried to tune out as we wanted to talk on the train, not listen to someone read something for 80 minutes or so. On the return trip, it seemed like (from the bits and pieces we could make out) that he was just reading the paper in reverse. Some interesting commentary is nice, but it needs to be cut back and louder. I hope they do well. I have heard that the AC was repaired, which would be great. Also, the scenery was less than spectacular (some old factories, some old roads, some trees, etc.) but perhaps in the fall when the leaves change colors it would be really nice I bet. I probably would come back and ride it, but as train rides go it wasn't one of the better ones.

Beautiful ornate, interior woodwork Lovely mansion, period…read morefurnishings. Beautiful large porch facing lawn. Site of Cider House Ruled movie. Lots of programs offered during the year: Gilded Age, Tea& Talk, Ghost Talks, Murder Mystery Dinner, etc. Would be perfect to rent for wedding or private parties.

I really enjoyed the 45 minutes I spent here touring the mansion. The house is in process of being…read morerestored, and I love that photos of the original rooms are on display in each room that's been restored already. The work that's been done to save this beautiful home is incredible! The $20 admission is worth it. I appreciated that the audio tour was relatively short for each room, and informative. I wish I lived nearby so I could come to the special events here. Highly recommend!

Gorgeous restored Jacobean style mansion built in 1893 for Sarah Morgan, the sister of financier…read moreJ.P. Morgan. The tours average about two hours. Tour guides are well versed on the lifestyle of the wealthy Morgan family and what life was like during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hours are Daily 10AM to 4PM. Do call and check ahead as the 28,000 square foot home is often host to private party events and weddings. Check out their website: https://gildedage.org/ Enjoy!