womantraveler

College Town Graduations: Charlottesville VA

Moms and graduations -- the season is upon is and we greet it with mixed feelings. After four years of making Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the University of Virginia, and my home away from home, it's time to pass on her special delights to the next generation of womentravelers who trek to college towns to visit their students. Wherever your college town, it can be a terrific place to visit as a destination in itself, while checking in with your kid. Returning as a womantraveler from time to time, you can experience why students and faculty love these places. The restaurants are varied and top-notch, reaching out for a worldly clientele, the entertainment options are dynamic and contemporary and the shopping is much more fun, idiosyncratic and cheeky, catering to students who are on the cusp and faculty and parents who are reliving their youth.

Quintessential college towns -- the ones in which the institutions inspire the overall personality of the community -- are precious little secrets. I particularly like Charlottesville, which lies at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in summer when the student population is way down. Unless you plan way ahead, it can be really difficult (and extra expensive) to get hotel reservations because these towns double and triple in size on popular college weekends.

My optimal destination choice is the Boar's Head Inn, where I wake to the misty cooling moisture of a Virginia summer morning. The low blanket of fog will deliver rain or break away for sunshine later in the day. In defiance of air conditioning, I open my to hear breezes rustling across the rolling hillsides, crossing the lake, and landing on my veranda like a breaking wave on the shore. The birds and ducks entertain, trusting as they have become to visitors.

Reminiscent of a vintage Virginia country club, the inn lies on more than 500 acres at the edge of town, fashioned from a grist mill before the Civil War, but with today's amenities -- a city-size sports club, spa, tennis courts, and golf course. It's a perfect base for a visit to the Albemarle County area in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Virginia wine country (more on Virginia wines coming in another post). For elegant dining and attentive service, I return for dinner in The Old Mill Room, the 2002 Virginia Wine Restaurant of the Year and its original interpretations of regional cuisine (434.972.2230). The other more convenient hotel accommodations are Omni, which sits at the foot of the Downtown Mall -- an historic walking street of shops, eateries and galleries, and two Marriott Courtyard (the preferred of two locations is on West Main near the campus, which UVA calls "grounds"). However, many womentravelers prefer to take advantage of local guest houses that offer gracious spaces from single rooms to apartments.

College Town Getaways: Penn Prez's Philly Faves

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Guttman's insider's travelogue of Philadelphia is an engaging excursion that places the city squarely in the perspective of a womantraveler and illuminates how Philly continues to buff up and spice up its urban chic and appeal. With so much history to preserve (aka The Declaration of Independence and Ben Franklin), yet a carefully restrained yearn for the contemporary, Philly has always had the challenge of not turning legacy into parody a la Disneyland. Twenty years ago, professionals and the hip of all ages were escaping Center City for the 'burbs for want of anything cultural to solidly keep them downtown. Fortunately, Philly keeps building on its historic past -- and it's all to the benefit of women travelers and their pals.

Guttman first published her faves for her colleagues in the Chronicle of Higher Education -- and what a great idea. High on her list are Stephen Starr's exotically themed restaurants (such as Buddakan) across the Center City and West Philly, where Penn is located, and First Friday gallery openings in Old City. An innovative music town, Philly is a jazz mecca for those in the know, and Zanzibar Blue -- which began happening about 20 years ago -- still holds its own off Broad Street (recently renamed Avenue of the Arts). That renaming honors the performing arts venues in the quarter (mixed in withe the mega-franchise retail stores that now occupy elegant 19th century bank buildings). We also wrote about Reading Terminal Market, the nation's oldest continuous operating farmer's market, where the aromas, sounds and energy of a huge in-town working market make it a destination in itself.

College Town Getaways: Berkeley's Classy Shopping

A male friend described 4th Street in Berkeley, CA, as "a bunch of shops you don't need" -- which is precisely the point! This is a totally fun shopping (and dining) destination. We had a wonderful business lunch at Café Rouge, a lively French bistro where the carnivores reign (including the carry-out butcher counter at the rear), and I splurged on truly mouth-watering steak frites.

4th Street Berkeley -- how can I count thee the ways? You're a few minutes from the University of California-Berkeley and its deliberate disregard of the fashionable, yet you offer Crate and Barrel Outlet, Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware, Peet's Coffee, Design Within Reach, Mephisto, Sur la Table and more. Of course, these are the West Coast usuals, but they're not all easily found just anywhere. And then come more local specialities like Cody's Books. After all, this few-block area is still deeply Berkeley-fied, resisting upscale but embracing it with quiet panache at the same time. You get it both ways -- bursts of the unusual and funky mixed in with the predictable.

Let's not forget the theme of this blog meditation. If you are doing the college visits, and you're not fully of the Birkenstock or magenta hair legacies, then 4th Street will provide comfort and familiarity in your Cal-Berkeley journey -- a dose of alternative California balanced by the dependable faces of the high-end mall. Not everyone who's of deep Berkeley spirit, however, is happy about this transformation.