Planes

It’s an hour’s drive from Albany International Airport. Taxis are available at a cost of around $150–200 one way.

Trains

Pittsfield station is five miles from the hotel and serves local routes as well as a few major cities, including Boston and New York.

Automobiles

Bringing your own set of wheels is by far the best way to experience the Berkshires winding mountain roads and vast national parks. Cars are available to rent at the airport and there’s free private parking at the hotel.

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Literary buffs will be in clover here in the heart of New England, with Herman Melville’s modest mustard-coloured clapboard house and Edith Wharton’s somewhat grander turn-of-the-century mansion just two local highlights. Step inside Arrowhead to see where, in a tiny, book-crammed study overlooking Mount Greylock, Melville’s man-versus-whale epic was conceived. Or take the ghost tour at The Mount, the 42-room country house (in 50 acres of formal gardens) where Wharton penned some of her best-loved works, including Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth. You never know, you might even encounter some of the ‘spectral shapes crouched in corners’ that Wharton described so vividly in her ghost stories.

Head for the Norman Rockwell Museum in nearby Stockbridge for the planet’s biggest collection of Rockwell originals, catch a play by the legendary Shakespeare & Company, whose alumni include Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, or experience the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a summer performance on Tanglewood's immaculately manicured lawns.

The changing colors of New England’s landscape – the lush greens of spring and summer, autumn’s dazzling display of fiery reds and oranges, deep purples and mellow yellows, and winter’s thick white blanket of snow – mean you might quite reasonably expect rather different experiences depending when you visit. Leaf-peepers naturally favor the fall months, when elevated forest views can look for all the world like Rockwell’s palette. Take the relatively gentle trail to Olivia’s Overlook in the Yokun Ridge South reserve for sweeping views of the Berkshires mountains, keeping your eyes peeled for bears and foxes skulking in the less densely wooded sections. Or stroll through 500-acre Kennedy Park to see the fabulous fall foliage up close and breathe the crisp, woody autumn air. More seasoned hikers can take on the rather more strenuous vertical ascent up Lenox Mountain, or make like Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne and hike Monument Mountain, where the pair are said to have met during a storm in 1850.