Welcome to Amherst

I just spent a couple of very cold, slightly snowy days exploring around Amherst Massachusetts.  For those of you unfamiliar with it (which I was until this past weekend!) Amherst is a college town right in the middle of the state, about 90 miles west of Boston.  The town has been home to a fair number of famous people as it turns out: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Uma Thurman,  Augusten Burroughs, J Mascis and my personal favorite...the guy who invented the Dewey Decimal system, Mr. Melvil Dewey himself! 

If you are by chance visiting Amherst, consider staying at the UMass Hotel at the Campus Center.  The building is a hulking concrete modernist (looks Brutalist to me, but really, I don't know that much about architecture) structure designed in the 1960s by Marcel Breuer.  In contrast, the hotel room interiors were recently redone in a very modern, minimalist style.  I especially loved the bathroom.  Seriously!

Downtown Amherst has a nice selection of restaurants and little shops.  One of them, Amherst Books, is relatively small but with an impressive selection of books, especially art books.  Not a ton of them, but interesting and uncommon titles.  The other spot I loved is The Clawfoot Tub.  A very well curated shop of home goods, many handmade and/or locally made.  The shop was so cozy, you want to buy everything in there just so you can recreate the atmosphere in your own home!