Interesting town between Northampton MA and Worcester MA?
 

We're driving from Burlington VT to Worcester MA for the Neil Young concert tomorrow night. We'll stop in Northampton for a couple of hours. Is there a town between Northampton and Worcester that might be described as charming-antiques or attractive downtown? We'll be taking the highway and then getting on the MA pike. I don't want to stray too far from the Pike with this weather. I could also overshoot Worcester a bit if there's a nice place to go.
Thanks

I always find plenty to do (especially eat and shop) in Northampton and I like the art museum in Worcester. What are you looking for? What time of the day do you plan to be there?

Right next to NorthHampton is Amherst which could be worth some time to walk around.

Amherst sound great, I'll check it out. Thanks.

Let's see, I'll be leaving Burlington around 8, getting into Northampton around 11. Leaving Northampton around
1. So I'd have a couple hours to spend in another town between Northampton/ Amherst and Worcester.

We like towns with interesting downtowns and shops-antiques etc. Great Barrington would be perfect, but too far out of the way.

Whatever you decide on, be sure to check in advance on how they're dealing with the ice storm aftermath.

Worcester has been very hard hit. Lots of friend's and family there and the stories are bad. I wouldn't go there if I didn't have to! Powere is still out for a lot of places and homes. Check to make sure the concert hasn't been rescheduled.

I live in Amherst -- we totally escaped the ice storm. Just got a heavy rain all day.

The downtown area has lots of crafts shops and book shops, not so much antiques. Amherst College has the art museum and the brand new natural history museum, with the world's finest collection of dinosaur tracks.