Going to Cleveland? It must be for business or to visit family, right? Most people do not consider Cleveland a vacation destination. But for the past seven years, Laura Solomon and Richard Kemp of Burlington have made "non-destination" North American cities their choices for weeklong vacations.

"We had been to many "normal" vacation places," says Solomon, like Hawaii, Lake Tahoe, Jamaica, and Nova Scotia. In 2000, they decided to go to Cleveland – primarily to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Solomon had grown up with rock and roll, and Kemp was interested in that music's relationship to the blues. Since Cleveland is an eleven-hour drive from Burlington, they decided to stay for a week. They were delighted to find such treasures as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the city's botanical gardens and, of special interest to Kemp, a floating ore boat museum. They also found "the best craft show, the best quality I've ever seen," says Solomon." And they met a Vermont exhibitor there. "After Cleveland, we realized how much fun 'non-destination' city visits could be," she says.

Over the next several years, Solomon and Kemp visited Toronto, Ottawa, Denver, Tucson, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Austin, TX, and Portland, OR. They are thinking about Minneapolis and Providence, RI. "The idea just evolved," says Solomon. "You know that it's a good 'non-destination' city when you tell someone you're going there for a week– and not for family or business – and the response is…silence."

Solomon, a research professor of Family Medicine and Psychology at UVM, and Kemp, a retired IBMer and community activist, have developed criteria for selecting their vacation cities. First, the city must not be on the usual list for weeklong vacations. Then there must be some particular draw for them: a musical tradition, a special museum or two, or an interesting cultural history. Third is accommodations. For budgetary reason and for fun, they like to stay in small inns or bed and breakfasts, where they can meet local people and get good ideas about where to go. They often stay at bed and breakfasts listed in a Unitarian Society directory. They also prefer cities where they can get around by public transportation, walking, or bicycling.

Their accommodations have ranged from a futon in a condo in Denver, to a townhouse on a hill above Pittsburgh. Here they took a funicular down the hill to a train station in the city. The owners of the townhouse were a retired ship's captain and his wife, a city development official. She led a tai-chi class in her home. In Tucson, they stayed in an efficiency apartment that had originally been a stall for horses. A neighboring horse looked in on them. There was no smell from the adjoining stable, probably because the air in Tucson is so dry, says Kemp. Every morning their hostess brought them eggs to cook fresh from a hen. In a bed and breakfast in Toronto, their hostess was interested in reflexology and health food. She massaged Kemp's feet and served a grainy wheat cereal for their six breakfasts

Solomon and Kemp found Toronto to be a marvelous city for a vacation. They spent an entire day at the Ontario Science Center. Its music exhibit includes the history and physics of the instruments, and you could choose to play any of them. They went to the top of the CN Tower, similar to the Space Needle in Seattle, whose glass floors at the top enable you to look down to the earth below. "Not for people who have altitude problems," says Solomon. They enjoyed Toronto's ethnically diverse neighborhoods and the ease of getting around by public transportation, and on foot.

In Ottawa, Solomon and Kemp could walk anywhere from their inn. – especially along the Rideau Canal in the city center. They spent hours watching the boats go up and down through the canal's seven locks. In Denver, they enjoyed the miles of dedicated bicycle paths and the scene where the city's two rivers meet – a turbulent spot where people practice kayak rolls. In Austin, they spent a full day at Lyndon Johnson's presidential library, amazed at the amount of legislation passed in the 1960's – voting rights, public broadcasting, Medicaid, Medicare, the War on Poverty.

Not all of the cities were equally wonderful for Solomon and Kemp. In Memphis, where they went for the city's musical and civil rights history, they had to stay in a motel with no good connection to public transportation. They found famous Beale Street "touristy and uncomfortable," says Solomon. But the Rock and Soul Museum, an arm of the Smithsonian was "well done," and the Civil Rights Museum, attached to the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed was "excellent."  They visited Graceland – "weird," says Solomon, and compared Memphis barbeque with Solomon's native North Carolina ribs.

"The fun is in the exploring, in the people we meet, and in finding things we never expected," says Kemp

Barbara Leitenberg writes on senior issues for the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging. This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press.