Day 2: Hartford and Coastal Connecticut

Morning in Thomaston

On Sunday, we woke up early again for the 7:30am Mass at St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church in Thomaston. It was about a 5 minute walk from our inn. We learned that Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, was once a priest at the church! 

After Mass, we walked around town for a few minutes. Of all the Connecticut towns we saw, Thomaston was most like Stars Hollow! They have a gazebo, an old-fashioned diner with barstools, white steepled churches, a hardware store, family-owned grocery store, and big brick public school, all on Main Street and the town green! We’re lucky that we got to see Thomaston, because we wouldn’t have thought to visit if the Plume House Inn wasn’t there. 

We saw this place, Crabby Al's, on our way out of town, and it reminded us of Al's Pancake World!

We then walked back to the inn and had a wonderful breakfast! The innkeeper, Kay, served us pineapple yogurt parfaits, quiche, and French toast casserole, plus great coffee. She makes it all herself. There was just one other couple at breakfast with us, and Kay told us some stories about how she and her husband opened the inn two years ago. Her husband works in construction, so they did all of the renovating themselves. 

A cool picture of the stairs that Ashley took!

Hartford

We were sad to leave the Plume House Inn but excited to see more of Connecticut. Our first stop in Hartford was the Elizabeth Park Conservancy, which is known for their rose garden. It was beautiful! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many roses. We spent a long time taking pictures of the flowers.

On the way to downtown, we saw the E. Everett Austin Facade House, a mansion that is only 18 feet deep. 

Walking around downtown Hartford, we all agreed that it isn’t a super interesting city, but the Connecticut state house was cool.

St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church 

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Bushnell Park, a big green space in the center of Hartford

The Connecticut State House!

Center Church, where colonial Connecticut ratified one of the earliest state constitutions and the US Constitution

Ancient Burial Ground behind the Center Church. Some of the graves are from the early 1700s

Site of the first public pay phone!

New Haven and Yale

It was about an hour drive from Hartford to Yale. The first thing we did was see the Yale Art Gallery, which is very impressive! They have several Van Gogh, Degas, and Monet paintings, and the original John Trumbull Declaration of Independence painting. We could have spent a lot longer there, but had to just see the highlights and head to lunch.

For lunch, we picked up a pizza from the Pepe Pizzeria in New Haven’s Little Italy. (Fun fact, New Haven is called the pizza capital of Connecticut! I’ve heard people say it’s their favorite type of pizza.) It’s a good thing that we ordered the pizza for pickup because there was a long line out the door! We took it to Yale and had a picnic in old campus. 

After lunch, we walked around Yale’s old campus and especially enjoyed seeing the libraries!

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection

The Beinecke collection had a exhibit of Islamic manuscripts, including this story from 1206.

These three are all the Sterling Memorial Library! It is beautiful, like a cathedral for books!

Outside Branford College, Rory's dorm!

Harkness Tower

Ashley sitting against a Yale tree, like the one that Rory claimed.

We finished our visit to Yale by leaving old campus and driving to the campus bookstore. They had a big bookcase of books written by Yale graduates, but didn’t have God and Man at Yale by William F Buckley! Crazy.

New London and Mystic

On our way to Mystic, we stopped in the small coastal town of New London. The best thing to see was the schoolhouse where Nathan Hale taught. He’s famous for the quote “I only regret that that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 

The town of New London was alright. There was one main streets with shops and restaurants, and across the water, we saw the place where Josh almost worked! Our senior year, he got job offers from Raytheon and this place, General Dynamics Electric Boats. Groton, CT (the town next to Mystic) is the submarine capital of the world!

General Dynamics is the big building in the distance.

Our last stop of the day was Mystic, where we checked into the Spark by Hilton (a fine hotel, but hard to measure up to the Plume House Inn). 

For dinner, we got…pizza again! We ate at Mystic Pizza, which is famous from the 1988 Julia Roberts movie of the same name. I saw it a few years ago and was excited to see the real place! The restaurant walls are covered in photos and posters of the movie, and they play the movie on loop on the TVs. 

That’s all for Sunday! [Josh note: We drove 142 miles]