It's fun. Beautiful. Safe. Cool. Diverse. Busy. Surprising.

I Like St. Mike's: The Heart of Vermont

Place any town on the shores of Lake Champlain and surround it with mountains and you'd have a special place. Add the shops, businesses, restaurants and live music venues of downtown Burlington and you have a place that's consistently called one of the healthiest, happiest and most desirable cities to live in the whole country.

No wonder there are over 14,000 college students in town, attending Saint Mike's, UVM, Champlain and Burlington College - the city keeps them busy.

You can catch live music most nights, eat great food from around the world, shop for snowboarding gear, get your latte fix, find some awesome vintage clothes and spend the day on the shores of Lake Champlain at the beach, at the boathouse, on the seven-mile bike path or out on the water.

There are plenty of opportunities for first-hand job experience at an internship in town. Local companies include IBM, GE Medical, Burton Snowboards and Ben and Jerry's.

Got the travel bug? Burlington is just a road-trip away from the Winter Olympic cities of Lake Placid and Montreal, plus Boston and Portland, Maine. There are lots of bus, air and train connections in town to get you where you want to go, and bring you back again.