Shopping

North of Boston & Merrimack Valley

Shopping North of Boston will have you antiquing, strolling through art galleries and encountering unique shops.  Along the coast you'll find seaside communities like Marblehead, Newburyport and Beverly full of one of kind shops and galleries.  Bearskin Neck in Rockport  is full of  specialty and food shops owned by local artisans and Pickering Wharf & Essex Street Pedestrian Mall in Salem are chock full of local flavor.  Rocky Neck in Gloucester is  a wonderful  artist colony and the locals are eager to sell their pieces.  Rte. 1A through the towns of Essex, Ipswich and Rowley is an antiquers dream and the mills of Amesbury & Lawrence are filled with unique shops.  As you move further southeast you'll enter the Merrimack Valley, a region that covers a lot of territory, from rolling farms to battlefields and small historic towns to urban cities.  The shopping can be eclectic as well.  Arts thrive in the city of Lowell.  More than 100 artists are housed at Western Avenue Studios and the artists open their doors to the public the first Saturday of every month. Unusual and one-of-a-kind items can also be found in the Brush Art Gallery, Whistler House Museum of Art, American Textile History Museum and Boott Cotton Mills. In Concord many beautiful little shops are tucked into museums.  The Concord Museum, The Orchard House and the Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond each feature merchandise unique to the purpose of the museum.  Other great shopping places inlcude Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, which sells a selection of museum-related gifts, books, games, toys and reproductions.  The Museum Store at Garden in the Woods in Framingham is a gardener's delight, with books on gardening, conservation, and the environment and garden statuary, fountains and outdoor planters.  The Store @ DeCordova, at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, offers a wide array of unique, amusing, and creative items including jewelry, art supplies, wearable art and educational toys.

• Arts
• History & Heritage
• Outdoor Activities & Sports
• Science & Nature
• Tours & Sightseeing
• Family Fun
• Shopping