9. New Bedford, Massachusetts
Craving a lobster roll and the briny smell of New England coastal air? Skip the traffic to the Cape and stay on the mainland for a lot cheaper. While a lot of New Bedford has an industrial feel, the downtown waterfront has gone through some redevelopment, which brings back some of the look and feel of the historic whaling port it once was. Cobblestone streets still service one of the most active fishing ports in the world. Herman Melville left New Bedford in the 1840s on a whaling trip, inspiring him to write "Moby Dick." The Seamen's Bethel, which played prominently in the book, is still an active house of worship. Across the street is the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which houses the world's largest collection of whaling artifacts, including a massive scale model of a whaling boat you can climb aboard and a 66-foot skeleton of a baby blue whale. If you want to check out a darker side of the area's history—and have nerves of steel—you can sleep at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum, about a 20-minute drive west in Fall River, where there are nightly recreations of the famous double axe murder.
Massachusetts Travel Guide