We visited Beverly in May 2019 during our Acadia National Park trip.

We love the Boston area: we lived in Charlestown for two years in the Aughts and try to visit J’s mom just north of Boston often. Taking the Airstream to Beverly, though… let’s just say we learned an important lesson.

Airstreaming in New England Lesson #1

Driving on the jam-packed Northeastern US interstates sucks, and pulling a 28-foot trailer on said interstates sucks doubly. Normally, if Google tells us there’s a wreck ahead and we can save time by taking a different route, we happily exit the interstate and bypass the mess. DON’T DO THAT if you’re pulling a trailer or driving a camper! We were smart (or so we thought) and checked AllStays for low clearances on our new wreck-free route, got the all-clear, and found ourselves in a situation where a cop pulled us over, stopped traffic, and had us back up in order to take an exit before we got the trailer stuck under an overpass. It was insanely stressful… and then a couple days later we did it again. The second time we ended up on a neighborhood road with a hill so steep we would have bottomed out at the end, so once again, we had to back up (thank goodness for J’s skills there) into an awkward spot and abort. So: stay on the interstate unless you know what you’re doing! Tip: apparently roads called Parkway are generally only for passenger cars in the Northeast.

So that was awful. But we made it to Beverly and had a wonderful couple days visiting J’s mom and starting our streak of eating lobster rolls every day. (Spoiler!)

Campground

We parked the Airstream on J’s mom’s wide, quiet street, and left a note on it for the nosy neighbor peeking through her curtains while we parked. The closest commercial campground to Beverly is in Winter Island Park, next door in Salem; that was our backup plan if street parking hadn’t worked.

Activities

This isn’t a comprehensive guide to visiting Beverly, it’s just what we did on this visit. If you have specific questions about Beverly, let us know in the comments. Also, most of the photos taken on this stop have J’s mom in them, and while she is lovely, I don’t think she wants to be available out on the internet, so sorry for the lack of visual excitement in this post.

Eating

Lobster roll #1 for the trip was from Rowand’s Seafood, a go-to treat for us when we visit Beverly. So simple, so delicious: lobster, mayo, soft roll.

For dinner we tried Ellis Square Social, a new restaurant in the location of a former favorite of ours on the main drag in Beverly. The menu is a mix of creative small and large plates and everything we ate was delicious. The service was fantastic, and the cocktail menu included my favorite tropical beverage, which was a fun surprise (we’d see that again in Maine… random!)

Drinking

Coffee

We enjoyed coffee/tea (and wifi) at Atomic Cafe, a cool downtown spot we usually take our computers to when in town, because J’s mom doesn’t know her wifi password.

Beer

Anchor Pub is an unassuming nautical-themed tavern close to our lobster roll joint, and we’d always been curious about it so finally stopped in. It was a fun and friendly place to grab a beer at the bar, and very much a locals’ hangout.

Cocktails

But what I really wanted was a cocktail with a water view, so we drove across to Salem and had one at the bar at Finz. We could sort of see the harbor. Finz’s atmosphere is a little cheesy but our cocktails were tasty. Beverly, you need a bar with water views!

Exercising

Normally we run a pretty route in Beverly, along the waterfront, over the bridge to Salem, around Salem Common. This time the weather was crap, so we went to Blink Fitness for a free first visit. It was big, clean, and had all the equipment we needed. And it was free!

We needed to burn some calories for all the eating and drinking at our next destination!