1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (7 page)

Most of Yale’s older buildings were constructed in the gothic style.

Yale’s campus makes for a fascinating architectural survey, and not just of the traditional collegiate gothic variety. The Yale University Art Gallery is considered one of the finest architectural designs of Louis I. Kahn. Inside you’ll find the renowned collections of Etruscan, Egyptian, and Greek art; the esteemed collection of Chinese and Japanese works; and Impressionist pieces by such European masters as Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso. Kahn is also responsible for the dashing building across the street, the Yale Center for British Art, in which you’ll find as fine a collection of English art as exists outside Great Britain. Another Yale attraction of considerable note is the Beinecke Rare Book Library, which is housed inside one of the campus’s most avant-garde buildings, a minimalist geometric structure designed in 1963 by Gordon Bunshaft and sheathed in white marble panels. Highlights include the most comprehensive archive of playwright and Connecticut resident Eugene O’Neill as well as an original Gutenberg Bible.

The west side of campus borders one of New Haven’s most dynamic neighborhoods, the College-Chapel District. You can wander along the tidy, tree-lined New Haven Green, which abuts campus and is home to three historic churches, and poke your head inside the dozens of hip cafés coffeehouses, bookstores, and quaint shops in the area.

W
HERE:
40 miles south of Hartford. Tel 203-432-2300;
www.yale.edu/visitor.
Y
ALE
A
RT
G
ALLERY:
Tel 203-432-0600;
www.artgallery.yale.edu
.
When:
closed Mon.
Y
ALE
C
ENTER FOR
B
RITISH
A
RT:
Tel 203-432-2800;
www.ycba.yale.edu.
When:
closed Mon.
B
EINECKE
L
IBRARY:
Tel 203-432-2977;
www.library.yale.edu/beinecke
.
When:
closed Sun.
B
EST TIMES:
last 2 weeks of June for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, featuring spoken word performances, theater, music, lectures, and tours; first 3 weekends in Aug for New Haven Jazz Festival.

Tranquility, History, and Pastoral Good Looks

Connecticut

Rarely does the congested Eastern Seaboard offer places of true peace and quiet, amid pastoral scenes of dairy farms and sleepy mill towns. Here in Connecticut’s northeast corner is one such spot. The National Park
Service has described the area as “the Last Green Valley in the sprawling metropolitan Boston-to-Washington corridor.”

Route 169, designated by the Federal Highway Administration as one of America’s 14 Scenic Byways, meanders for 32 miles through
the area, taking in the expansive Quinebaug and Shetucket rivers corridor, a well-preserved swath of tended farmland and protected parks and preserves. Follow it from the Massachusetts border to the village of Canterbury, and you’ll pass more than 200 homes dating from the mid-19th century or before. One of the Quiet Corner’s largest towns is Putnam, a former mill and manufacturing town that fell on hard times after WWII and languished until the 1980s, when it was reinvented as an important hub of antiques shopping.

The area’s most luxurious lodging is found at the handsome Inn at Woodstock Hill in South Woodstock, whose rooms are housed in a renovated 1816 farmhouse. There are few more delightful ways to enjoy a meal than by having dinner at Brooklyn’s Golden Lamb Buttery. The setting is a handsome red barn at the 1,000-acre Hillendale Farm, operated as an acclaimed restaurant by Bob and Virginia “Jimmie” Booth since 1963. There’s just one seating, and a prix fixe meal of limited but reliably excellent choices—perhaps the perfectly prepared house specialty of roast duckling or chateaubriand with generous family-style sides of vegetables, followed by chocolate-hazelnut torte. Guests are also treated to live music and an old-fashioned hayride.

W
HERE:
Putnam is 45 miles east of Hartford.
Visitor info:
Tel 800-863-6569 or 860-444-2206;
www.mysticcountry.com
.
R
TE
. 169:
www.byways.org.
I
NN AT
W
OODSTOCK
H
ILL:
South Woodstock. Tel 860-928-0528;
www.woodstockhill.net.
Cost:
from $130.
G
OLDEN
L
AMB
B
UTTERY:
Brooklyn. Tel 860-774-4423;
www.thegoldenlamb.com.
Cost:
prix fixe dinner $65.
B
EST TIMES:
late Aug for Brooklyn Fair (the nation’s oldest agricultural fair); early Sept for Woodstock Fair; early–mid-Oct for Walking Weekends (
www.thelastgreenvalley.com
).

A Corner of Country Splendor in the Nutmeg State

Connecticut

Deep in the heart of verdant Litchfield County (see p. 14), tiny Washington has grown into a smart, sophisticated cultural crossroads, with a host of nationally acclaimed restaurants, inviting bookstores, galleries, and
clothing and antiques shops. A diminutive 19th-century mill town of pretty clapboard Victorian buildings, neighboring New Preston contains shops selling antiques, decorative arts, and fine furniture. High-profile celebs with homes in the region enjoy their anonymity, ambling around the village or window shopping within earshot of the Aspetuck River’s gushing waterfalls.

Drive southeast on Route 47 for about 10 miles to reach Woodbury, where dozens of high-end shops selling museum-quality furnishings have earned it the title of “Antiques Capital of Connecticut.” But visitors are also drawn here by the reputation of the Good News Café, opened by Carole Peck, one of the first female graduates of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York (see p. 156). Peck changes her menu seasonally but has long featured a few standby favorites to please devoted regulars: The pecan-crusted oysters with cherry tomato and jicama salsa is
second only to the unusual mac-and-cheese with lobster and Swiss chard, accentuated with white truffle oil and imported provolone.

Washington’s best of show is the elegant Mayflower Inn & Spa, one of New England’s most opulent. The 1992 inn sits on 58 acres crisscrossed with trails, streams, gardens, and stands of rhododendron, its spacious interiors filled with English and French antiques; a brand-new 20,000-square-foot spa has further polished its image. Meals at the Mayflower are romantic and surprisingly unfussy. Expect the freshest and purest foods, such as Colorado lamb chops, line-caught Hawaiian swordfish, and the season’s tastiest vegetables. For dessert there are sweet dreams in four-poster featherbeds with Frette linens, and the promise of tomorrow’s spa treatments, perhaps a rosemary-and-citrus deep-body soak. Or head north out of Washington for a few miles to reach Lake Waramaug and its bucolic green hills, country cottages, and rambling farmsteads. Overlooking the rippling waters is the 1890s Boulders Inn, which was virtually reinvented in 2003 and offers ultra-cushy accommodations and memorable dining. Spend the weekend here and enjoy the famous Sunday brunch, a truly lavish affair.

W
HERE:
50 miles southwest of Hartford.
G
OOD
N
EWS
C
AFÉ:
Woodbury. Tel 203-266-4663;
www.good-news-cafe.com.
Cost:
dinner $40.
M
AYFLOWER
I
NN:
Washington. Tel 860-868-9466;
www.mayflowerinn.com.
Cost:
from $400; dinner $50.
T
HE
B
OULDERS
I
NN:
New Preston. Tel 800-455-1565 or 860-868-0541;
www.bouldersinn.com.
Cost:
from $350; dinner $50.
B
EST TIMES:
Sun from early Apr–mid-Dec in nearby New Milford for the Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market (
www.etflea.com
); late Sept–early Oct for prime leaf-peeping; Dec for Christmas Show & Sale at the Washington Art Association; Christmas Eve, when Woodbury’s Main St. is lit with luminaria.

Rusticating amid Nature’s Grandeur

Maine

Like other stretches of heaven on earth, much of the idyllic Maine coast has been bought up over the years by the well-to-do, who’ve fenced it off for their own private use. It’s ironic, then, that in the case of Mount Desert Island
, Americans owe a debt of gratitude to some rich folks who put the common good above their own interests, and handed this lovely island over to the public domain.

When French explorers began arriving in the early 17th century, they found the island inhabited by the Wabanaki Indians. Samuel Champlain, noting its barren, rocky summits, named it “Monts Desert.” France and England vied for the island for the next 200 years; somewhere along the line its name became a linguistic hybrid, written in English but pronounced with a French accent, making it sound like “dessert.”

By mid-19th century it began to gain fame for its beauty. Painters of the Hudson River School arrived, creating works that led their rich patrons to blaze a path to Mount Desert, to see the simple life for themselves. In time, the Rockefellers, Astors, Fords, Vanderbilts, and their fellow “rusticators” founded a summer colony, building elegant estates they referred to as “cottages.” Among the wealthy bunch was one George B. Dorr, who in 1901 began buying
up land in the area, eventually turning over thousands of acres to the federal government. In 1929 the U.S. set aside much of that land as Acadia National Park. The park today totals 35,000 acres of craggy grandeur, covered with lush fir and spruce forests, dotted with lakes, and surrounded by great opportunities for offshore whale-watching.

The timeless serenity of the island is tested by the ever-increasing number of visitors—the 27-mile Park Loop Road, for instance, one of the most picturesque drives in America, attracts big crowds in summer. But avoiding traffic is easy enough. In 1917, when John D. Rockefeller Jr. became unhappy with the arrival of the noisy automobile on the island, he began work on the 57-mile network of bridge-linked carriage roads that today offer some of the nation’s loveliest car-free walking and bicycling, and become a splendid network of cross-country ski trails in winter. Hiking trails cross the island, offering great views and demanding only moderate effort. Most visitors, however, will need a car to watch the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, a park tradition. At 1,530 feet the highest peak on the U.S. Atlantic coast, this is the spot where America catches its first rays of the morning sun.

Acadia National Park contains more than 120 miles of historic hiking trails.

Plan to arrive at Jordan Pond House on the Park Loop Road in time for late-afternoon tea and popovers on the restaurant’s front lawn. Rusticate overnight at the Claremont Hotel and Cottages, sitting grandly on 6 shorefront acres since 1869. Grab a chair on the porch for poetry-inspiring views of the Somes Sound.

W
HERE:
36 miles southeast of Bangor. Tel 207-288-3338;
www.nps.gov/acad.
When:
Park Loop Rd. closed mid-Nov–mid-Apr.
J
ORDAN
P
OND
H
OUSE:
Tel 207-276-3316;
www.jordanpond.com
.
Cost:
lunch $18.
C
LAREMONT
H
OTEL:
Southwest Harbor. Tel 207-244-5036;
www.theclaremonthotel.com.
Cost:
from $115 (off-peak), from $175 (peak).
B
EST TIMES:
July–Aug for the weather and whale-watching.

Charm, Chamber Music, and a Cozy Inn

Maine

Located right between the popular vacation destinations of Acadia National Park and Penobscot Bay, the tiny coastal village of Blue Hill is one of those “who knew?” places. Serene and charming, full of elm-shaded
streets and solid New England homes, it is also graced with one of America’s best chamber music schools and one of the world’s largest music libraries. Add in the winding roads, picturesque farms, and coastal scenery of the surrounding Blue Hill Peninsula, and you have the kind of Maine destination people dream about.