Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9407220007
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN WILLIAMS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Interstate 95 was the straightest line of asphalt I could find: the shortest distance between Greenwich and Pawcatuck. But recently I strayed off the turnpike and discovered another Connecticut and a coastline to cheer about.
I found a faux antique museum devoted to P.T. Barnum who, it turns out, did not say ``a sucker is born every minute'' and his ``Greatest Show on Earth.''
At Yale in New Haven, I found dinosaur bones terribly fashionable these days and in Norwalk I found friendly seals and starfish at an aquarium. Just off the coast near the cozy New England village of Branford, I cruised around the Thimble Islands. The only Thimble Islands in the world, I think.
I dined at two class restaurants - Yankee open-hearth cooking one evening, damn-the-cholesterol French the other - and in New Haven inhaled the best thin-crust pizza this side of Regina's in Boston's North End, washed down with the local Elm City Ale.
There was much that I didn't get to the casino on Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Ledyard, the impressionist art at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme or the 19th-Century Lockwoods Mathews Mansion in Norwalk - good reasons to return.
Connecticut is a melange of the best of New England: soft-washed beaches, village greens right out of a Robert Frost poem, white-steepled churches and lush foliage along river valleys.
The aspects of this state change from region to region; I confined my explorations to about 100 or so miles of coastline in southern Connecticut. Sounds like a quick-hit trip - a beach here, a cove there, a ferry ride, a stop for fried clams - but each of my four days driving north filled up with more things to do than there were hours to do them.
Greenwich to Norwalk
The sign by the Merritt Parkway reads, ``Welcome to Connecticut. Maximum fine for speeding, $340.''
It's a gold coast, all right. You run smack into wealth just over the New York line, at Greenwich.
The Merritt is billed as one of the country's most scenic parkways. Attracted by the smell of fresh air and money, I took the first off-ramp.
The homes are majestic, sprawling estates, many with private roads and no-trespassing signs. In the town, Greenwich Avenue is a kind of downscale Rodeo Drive, with a view of Long Island Sound from the top of it.
But Greenwich was just a place to gather my bearings.
My destination was Norwalk. Cruising on I-95, I neatly bypassed Stamford and its high-rises and drifted through dainty Darien along Connecticut 1, a precious version of Greenwich. Over the Norwalk line, I confronted minimalls, fast-food joints and heavy traffic. Heading to South Norwalk, I found the Maritime Center and the friendly seals.
The center, smaller than the one farther up the road at Mystic, anchors the ``revitalized'' part of town dubbed SoNo - a strip of saloons and restaurants and boutiques, a scaled-down South Street Seaport. It's a complete aquarium, housing more than 125 species indigenous to Long Island Sound, but the most remarkable sight is the 110,000-gallon ``Open Ocean'' tank stocked with sharks. Small sharks. Big sharks.
And all the bigger because you can walk up to these guys, eye to eye. ``How thick is this glass?'' I asked the guide. He just smiled.
There are touchy-feeley things, too - a tank with live starfish and tame horseshoe crabs. My favorite fish was the pout fish that ... well, pouts.
I passed the night in a rustic old inn up in Norwalk's Silvermine residential district, which dates to pre-Revolutionary times. The Silvermine Tavern is bottled eau de New England, with flowery wallpaper, low ceilings, creaking wood floorboards and Victorian furnishings.
Bridgeport to New Haven
New Haven's character has long been defined by one word: industrial. Founded by Puritans, New Haven thrived in the 19th century; factories spit out clocks, carriages, firearms and munitions. Eli Whitney, a Yale grad, and the father of mass production, lived and made his cotton gins and muskets here.
Today the city is billed as a touchstone of urban renewal. It is culture-rich for sure, with an impressive list of theaters, repertory, art centers, a well-regarded symphony, lots of museums.
Yale, in all of its Gothic grandeur, doesn't show its age (292 years), and it's so spread out you'd never guess that more than 11,000 students attend this Ivy League university.
A walking tour of New Haven is in order, starting at The Green, the heart of the downtown district (excellent advice is provided by Michelin's ``green guide'' for New England). My priority was a museum, and I had an enviable choice: the Yale University Art Gallery (Manet, Matisse, Klee, Picasso) or the Yale Center for British Art (Gainsborough, Turner, Constable) or the Peabody Museum of Natural History (stegosaurus, brontosaurus, snakes, etc.).
Snakes, etc. it would be.
Because the Peabody isn't nearly as overwhelming as, say, New York's Museum of Natural History, some will find it lacking. For me, though, a single reconstructed brontosaurus goes a long way, and Yale's Big Guy (67 feet long, 35 tons) was fossil enough. Those who know claim that this bronto is a perfect specimen of the breed, reconstructed bone by bone from a dig in Wyoming.
Branford to Stonington
Most maps and guidebooks don't recognize the Thimble Islands, all 23 of them, gathered just off Stony Creek, south of Branford. The homes (fewer than 100) are mostly from the Victorian era high gables, gazebos, widow's walks and gingerbread. They're occupied by wealthy summer people (it's rumored that pirate Captain William Kidd spent some of his vacation here), and the rocky islands look like a miniature version of Maine's Casco Bay islands.
The 45-minute cruise aboard Volsunga III includes Captain Bob Milne's nonstop commentary on the hazards of navigation, famous homeowners (President Taft kept a summer White House on a Thimble for one season) and vignettes, like the one about the Spanish ``cannonball'' artifact found recently that turned out to be a bowling ball.
by CNB