New England might not sound like the most exciting travel destination for your dead-of-winter interim travels, but don't overlook Calvin College's New England Saints trip.

Picture this: It's barely January. You arrive on campus, your bags stuffed with all the warm clothing you own, including the wool socks you asked for as a Christmas gift. You load it onto a coach bus and climb aboard with about thirty other students—maybe you know some of them, maybe you recognize a lot of the faces, but likely most of them are strangers. It's a long, long ride from Grand Rapids to Massachusetts, but it goes by more quickly than you expected, especially because you've found out that the people sitting around you are really quite nice—and you're enjoying making fun of the contestants of PBS's "Colonial House" with them.

As it gets dark, you somehow manage to fall asleep.

You wake up as the bus slows to a stop and your fellow travelers start stirring. You rub your tired eyes, and when you look out the window, there it is: Plymouth Bay, lit by a gorgeous sunrise. You stumble off the bus and learn that this is nearly the exact view the Mayflower's passengers were familiar with. You take a look at Plymouth Rock—yes, the one you learned about in elementary school—and after a hot, delicious diner breakfast, you visit the grave of William Bradford as well as the oldest continually operating museum in the country.

After spending some time at Plimoth Plantation interacting with Rose and Miles Standish, Alice and William Bradford and their livestock, learning about the lives of the people who founded the oldest constantly inhabited settlement in the United States, it's time to move to the trip's home base: the picturesque town of Concord, MA. Concord encapsulates everything you imagined when you pictured a beautiful little New England town. The main streets are lined with cozy inns, book stores, antique shops, bakeries, cafes, a cheese shop and a beautiful library. Walden Pond, the serene inspiration for Thoreau's most famous work, is within walking distance. Concord becomes your home-away-from-home for the trip, and its snow-lined church steeples hold on to your affection for good.

From Concord, you and your fellow Saints, who are quickly becoming your close friends, and your new favorite professors take day trips throughout Massachusetts and the surrounding area, visiting places like Boston (you enjoy ice skating, the local seafood and, of course, Boston cream pie), Salem (watch out for witches), Lexington (where the Revolution began, according to the tour guides, though those in Concord will vehemently disagree) and Amherst (home of Emily Dickinson).

You read selections of early American literature and are awed to visit the homes and graves of their authors: Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whitter (why do all these people have three names?), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson. History comes alive for you for the first time as you walk the Battle Road (dodging snowballs rather than musket balls), sing the Concord Hymn at the Old North Bridge (imagining the Concord minutemen facing off against the redcoats) and visit the graves of guys like John Hancock and Paul Revere in the many old graveyards of Concord and Boston.

The days slip by faster than you thought they would, and although you're exhausted (in a good way), you can't believe it's almost time to drive back to Michigan and get ready for the spring semester. You'd be lying if you said you hadn't thought a few times about moving to Concord or Boston when you graduate, and you can't imagine being away from your new Saints family for the entire week of interim break.

Every trip has its cons, of course. One: New England can be wicked cold in January, but if you bring a good coat and lots of socks, you'll be fine. Two: it's not held every year, so you'll have to hold tight and keep an eye out for New England Saints '18.

To a lot of people, New England doesn't sound as glamorous (or warm) as California, Hawaii, or somewhere overseas. But ask any former Saint—the New England interim could be the best month of your life.