THE HART OF AMERICA
New airline route to States offers a chance to explore the high-brow and low-brow sights of Connecticut
AER Lingus and the US state of Connecticut have high hopes for a new transatlantic route between Dublin and New Haven’s Bradley Airport.
They see the service as an attractive way for travellers to reach North America, landing between the great cities of New York – about three hours away – and Boston – two hours.
But the hope is that visitors from Europe will also spend some time in Connecticut itself and not just pass through.
During a threeday trip, I was given a flavour of what the state has to offer, from high-brow cultural attractions to casino resorts with rows of slot machines.
Our first port of call was the state capital Hartford, a smart city well worth a visit and not too far from the airport.
The hotel we stayed in – the Marriott Downtown – overlooks the Connecticut River and is five minutes away from Ted’s Montana Grill, one of a chain of restaurants serving hearty American fare.
I had crab cakes, resisting the temptation of bison meatloaf with Aunt Fannie’s squash casserole.
The crab cakes were good but at $27 for a main course, Scots travellers with the puny post-Brexit referendum pound in their pockets may think twice.
These prices were not uncommon and I was glad I wasn’t picking up the tab.
Hartford’s bars around the downtown area were pretty quiet but if you go there, it won’t be for the nightlife.
The city was once home to Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and we were given a tour of the house he lived in for 17 years. Although he suffered the tragic loss of two of his children, this great man of American letters lived his life to the full and spent his happiest years in his Hartford home, which has been beautifully restored for posterity.
Among his neighbours was another US literary figure, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
A visit to New Haven – the home of Yale University – was another high-brow highlight.
The historic campus includes the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which features one of the world’s remaining Gutenberg Bibles.
New Haven also has the largest collection of British art outside the UK at the Yale Centre of British Art.
Works by Gainsborough, Turner and Constable, and contemporary artists including Lucien Freud and Damien Hirst are exhibited in a stylish space in the heart of the city. Now for the low-brow stuff. Connecticut is home to Foxwoods, the largest casino resort in North America.
As well as 5000 slot machines, it
has rows of shops, concert venues and golf courses. The complex is run by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, whose history is told in the impressive interactive Pequot Museum.
The tribe have built a huge entertainment hub that not only benefits the descendants of Native Americans exploited in the past but makes a stack of tax dollars for the state of Connecticut.
Another tribe, the Mohegan, also have their own casino resort nearby.
The Mohegan Sun is smaller than Foxwoods but it ticks all the boxes for people who want to gamble, eat and drink, shop, relax and watch live music under one roof. These places just never stop and they give people what they want – and lots of it.
At the Mohegan Sun our group stumbled on something called a corn-flaked crusted deep-fried muffin loaf, sitting with honeyed hams and joints of beef – for breakfast.
It tasted awful but before you sneer at its artery-clogging potential, remember we gave the world the deep-fried Mars bar.
The casino resort scene is not for me but if you like that sort of thing, I reckon you’d love it.
The pace was considerably less frenetic in Old Saybrook, a quaint town on the coast where the Connecticut River meets the Long Island Sound.
The Saybrook Point Inn was a delightful place to have lunch. As well as regular rooms, guests can book whole houses across the road where you could while away the hours on the porch looking out to sea.
Oscar-winning actress Katherine Hepburn lived in this quiet and stylish corner of New England. She clearly had taste.
Not far from Old Saybrook is Groton on the River Thames, home to the US Navy’s impressive Submarine Museum, where we were taken for a tour of the first-ever nuclear sub, Nautilus.
The nautical theme continued with a tour of Mystic Seaport, the largest maritime museum in the world.
Just downriver is Mystic itself. We took in the restaurant made famous in the Julia Roberts movie Mystic Pizza and had a stroll around the pretty port town before heading back to the airport for our flight home.
Aer Lingus launched their Dublin to Connecticut route in the autumn with four flights a week, but it became a daily service this month.