2012 Eight: Connecticut

2012 Eight: Connecticut

Saturday started with a trip to the wife's friend's house for a party. As it turned out the party was Sunday. Oops. My Little Helper was disappointed. My wife was embarrassed. And I really didn't care one way or the other. After a quick huddle, we decided to take a road trip to the southern Connecticut coast.

Our first stop was at Niantic, which has a lovely little downtown and a boardwalk along Long Island Sound. For the train buff, the North East Corridor actually runs parallel to Main Street between the town and the beach. We got an ice cream at the Gumdrops & Lollipops Candy & Ice Cream Shoppe. Usually we stop in a Frosty Treat a little further up the road but a little change it good every once and a while. After that it was a trip to the Bookbarn Downtown.

All three locations of the Bookbarn are great. They claim they have 350,000 books, which may not be an exaggeration. There are two downtown locations, one has children's books and the other has movies, religion, railroad, aviation and nautical books, among others. The main building -- a barn -- has history, art books and many, many others. It also has a herd of cats that roam the grounds and haunt the shelves.

My Little Helper and I had a good time in the downtown location while my wife went off shopping in the other boutiques in the area. I picked up a copy of the Nickel Plate Road and My Little Helper played with the wooden train set the store keeps in an open area between the stacks. She did so well the branch manager gave her a pink bookmark because she was so patient while I browsed.

After our stop at Niantic, we went to the Shoreline Trolley Museum in Branford, Connecticut. It was our first visit here and we had a nice ride on a refurbished Connecticut Co. trolley car that actually used to travel on the Branford line. The Shoreline got hurt a year ago by Hurricane Irene, but one of the volunteers said they should have their entire run open by Memorial Day. I will do another post on the Shoreline itself later on.

We ended the day at PizzaWorks at the Old Saybrook train station. We have eaten here many times, but this was the first time we ate upstairs where the train layouts are. My Little Helper really enjoyed watching the trains run around the two HO layouts and then travel back and forth on the bridge connecting them. There are a lot of whimsical scenes in the layouts that she enjoyed finding -- like the dinosaur munching his way through a farm.

After we had out pizza, we went downstairs and sat on the platform to watch some trains roll through. We caught a Washington-bound Amtrak out of Boston. After that we piled back in the car and headed back to Boston ourselves. All-in-all a pretty good day.