Category: Connecticut

Mystic Aquarium – Mystic Connecticut

A charismatic little gold and black frog stands on two feet looking out of the glass of its enclosure.

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Mystic Aquarium has been on my bucket list for a few years now. Everyone I talked to seemed to rave about it saying it was better than the Boston Aquarium. The only issues were that I didn’t really want to go during the summer season when I was sure it’d be packed and I also wasn’t sure the $41 per adult ticket fee was reasonable. I mean, that’s a lot, especially for someone like me who likes to blog destinations that are accessible even to the poorest of people, *cough cough* myself. But you know, there comes a day for everything.

It was the dead of winter, there was snow on the ground, the sky was gray and the temperatures were let’s just say nippy in the 20s. We figured this would mean the aquarium would be more or less dead and we could wander around like the soul survivors of a zombie apocalypse. But alas no!

When we drove up the entire parking lot was FULL with numerous cars circling trying to find a spot. I wandered into overflow parking which was also almost at capacity. We parked, looked incredulously at each other, and started to walk towards the ticket master which it appears has been replaced with a self sign-in kiosk. Probably for the best. We weren’t even in the gates yet and we were swarmed on all sides by dozens and dozens of babies and toddlers, accompanied by their mums, scarcely a dad in sight. No children seemingly over the age of five and so many of them all bundled up in tiny parkas wandering around in the cold and the gloom. What was going on?!

I’ve been to the Boston Aquarium many times (before it’s somewhat recent renovations) and I naively thought aquariums were indoor facilities. Not this time. We waddled up to the first large outdoor tank which held three beluga whales. I’ve never seen a beluga whale before and they… looked like rubbery marshmallows with weird blubbery heads. I struggled to figure out if they were adorable or only a face a mother could love. Two swam around while a third was vertical and lazily drifting from the bottom to the top, to the bottom again. Weird.

Somewhat embarrassingly I still don’t have a coat at this point in my life (after getting too plump to fit in my all-time favorite coat and then declaring I was not going to buy another one, I was just going to lose the weight! Ha! I’m just as pale and chonky as those damn belugas now. And unrepentant about it.) So, I stuffed my hands in my sweater sleaves and continued on. Boy, was I surprised how much of the aquarium is outside! There was a lot! Belugas, sea lions, seals, walruses, and even penguins. Each had a volunteer attempting to tell us about the animals but I think they were just as overwhelmed by this bizarre massive influx of toddlers as we were. They seemed tired and just narrated in monotone, “And that’s Stella there… the one who just came to the surface…And now she’s gone back down again…” Very informative.

The penguins were my favorite of these outdoor enclosures because they were cute and I didn’t feel like they’d rip me to shreds if I accidentally tumbled into their enclosure. I wasn’t so sure about the seals and whatnot. Those things had massive teeth and moved through the water with a disturbing quickness. Sea puppy my ass, those are just wet Shutzhunds.

I was quite content to be moving indoors after this. As we walked in there was a circular tank just within the door with what I would guess were saltwater fish who were “donated” to the aquarium when they got too big or expensive to maintain by private owners. Later on, I’d see a full-grown Achilles Tang and be in total shock. Never knew they got that big! YIKES.

From here there were all sorts of tanks with various kinds of fish and habitats. There was one poor woman (my companion thinks a volunteer) nervously following the swarm of tiny people, a rag in one hand frantically wiping the boogers and apple sauce off the glass as if she thought it might be acid. Germaphobe? Overstimulated staff? Who knows! But whatever they were paying her it wasn’t enough.

I was happy to see all sorts of fish and critters I’d never seen before. Big fish, little fish, fresh water fish, marine fish. A shark and stingray touch tank was nearby. I pondered if they could catch measles. I hoped not. In any event there were colorful cichlids, charismatic Amazonian fish, and a surprising amount of non-fish critters which included some huge crabs, a spiny lobster, the cutest damn frogs I could have possibly asked for, and of course a few turtles scattered about as well as a few lizards and creepy crawlies. I could probably park myself in front of one of these tanks for a while and just relax… if it weren’t for all the crying and screaming. I did find one mother with her baby doing just that. She was talking about the octopus although it was unclear if she was narrating to her baby or trying to talk to us, the only other unoccupied adults. I get it. Being a single mom is HARD and often very very lonely. I commented the octopus was pretty neat and I think it was funny he had a dog toy in his pen.

From here my companion insisted we see the sea lion show. OK… It wasn’t any additional charge, we just had to be there on time. So we wandered in and took a seat in what would end up being a pretty damn full gallery. The humans in this performance bounced out with the energy of a highly caffeinated children’s TV host and the kids ATE IT UP. The premise of the show was that there was a mission to be accomplished with the help of the kiddies in the audience. They yelled on command and did little poses. It was kind of heartwarming and adorable.

There were three seals performing that day and they were enthusiastically silly, jumping, swimming, striking poses, shaking their weird rubbery dog heads yes and no, retrieving props and waving, you know, all the classics. I laughed with the children. It was all very sweet and had an anti-global warming message which… these days it’s just nice to see science out in the open without being screamed at by a flat earthers or whatever.

After the show we wandered back out, saw the tanks we had not yet seen, and decided to try the additional bonus exhibit which this month was Sea Dinosaurs. What? I get to see dinosaurs too?? Yes please! This was an additional $15 a person. We paid and wandered in. The ceiling was decorated with big replicas of fossil sea creatures – mostly ammonites. Inside the main hall there was what I can only describe as a scrabbling course for children which put them in harnesses and let them climb on platforms and tightropes above the crowd. If I were three feet tall I would have been ALL OVER THAT. I sighed at my cracking joints and lamented that youth is wasted on the young.

We wandered about for a while finding a self photo booth with megalodon jaws, a projector sand pit, and some sort of weird psychedelic acid trip of a thing that made our dancing silhouettes into a mass of crazy colors in real time. That was fun. Really fed my inner child. Again, I probably would have poked more at these if it wasn’t such a busy and chaotic day for the aquarium. People tend to look at adults funny when they cheekily decide to play too, though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this and do believe the world would be a better place with more whimsy and less taking ourselves so seriously.

And so that was our trip to the aquarium. We left laughing but kind of exhausted to go to an old haunt Mystic Pizza for lunch. It never disappoints.

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Super Sandwiches – New Haven Connecticut

After our visit to the Yale University Art Gallery we hopped back into the car and tried to find somewhere to eat. After a minute we found a place only a block or so away so we stopped teasing the people looking for a parking space and hopped out of the car. I wasn’t going to parallel park again if we could walk!

Sure enough, a short amble away, past some lovely murals, we found an empty sandwhich parlor and wandered in.

The art on the walls were iconic images of mostly famous people with brightly colored sandwiches pasted into the scene. I chuckled.

The menu here was pretty extensive and a little wild. They had some unique and creative takes on sandwiches up there. We were both torn between two or three separate options each. I eventually settled on their pretzel coated chicken cutlet and my companion got the Chicken Bahn Mi. His was far prettier than mine but mine was a comfort food extravaganza and I bit into that thing like a rabbid werewolf. The dressing was a spicy mustard which I honestly don’t usually appreciate horse radish but it seemed to pair well with the pretzel.

My companion slipped me a pickled radish from his Bahn Mi. I’m an idiot so with little investigation I popped it into my mouth and immediately regretted every decision that brought me to this point in my life.

“It tastes like feet!” I mean I’ve never eaten feet but I feel like this is what a chalky callused ill-washed foot would taste like. I tried to swallow it to be polite but it was so gross I couldn’t get it to the back of my mouth. A quick drought of soda only proved to wash this foul flavor around my mouth even more. I was reduced to shoving french fries in pie hole like a starved raccoon trying to replace the aforementioned taste with glorious fried potatoes. This worked, thank God.

I am so happy I ordered my sandwhich, which was goddamn amazing and not whatever the hell my companion just haplessly consumed. This is NOT me complaining about the food, this entire experience was really just me being way over sensitive to how repulsive pickled things are and too dumb to remember my intense hatred of fermented foods.

So yeah, if you’re hungry and looking for something both familiar and a little adventurous check this place out! It’s a gem.

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Yale University [FREE] Art Gallery – New Haven Connecticut

I know life is getting...grim for a whole lot of people right now but that only confirms that free entertainment and beauty are more needed now than ever and the Yale Art Gallery is free with so much to offer!

We expected a nice museum, though not enormous, maybe with a famous name or two tossed in we can recognize but no, this place was huge. Four whole floors just chuck full of fine art with so many famous names. A real smorgasbord of human creativity that touched on so many cultures and time periods around the world.

Of course I was already in a good mood because I managed to parallel park almost directly in front of the door in one try, during traffic, without attracting an audience of spectateurs. And then I had enough quarters to stuff that goddamn parking meter until it timed out. It’s the little things in life we must celebrate.

ANYWAY. The first exhibit we walked by on the main floor was the African section. I admit, I do not know much about African art or culture, which I realize I could be better at. These pieces were mostly tribal but from all over the continent. A lot of wild animals, masks, colorful figurines. Granted we were the only ones there and the guard followed us around like he thought we were going to stage a heist. Little intense. But I suppose… we’re both white and our ancestors were likely dicks sooo… I get it. But that’s not to say some white people aren’t capable of being respectful.

To be fair since we were there during an intense lull the first two floors had guards who continued to follow us. It was… uncomfortable. At one point I found a silver serving tray made by Paul Revere and went to point out the plaque that this information was written on when a guard barked at me not to touch the exhibits (in this case literal furniture hiding the damn plaque.) My inner 8-year-old knee-jerk responded by yelling, “I DIDN’T TOUCH ANYTHING!” And I honest to god didn’t. Not that my dirty paws could turn furniture (much we’d already seen at antique stores) into dust but you know, respect and all. The last concerning encounter we had was with a very large black guard literally hiding in the shadows of a nook waited for us to pass before saying in a booming voice, “How are you today?” But it wasn’t his stature that made me weary, nor the fact he was hiding in the shadows, it was the pained wheezing that came after his salutations that made me want to ask if he was OK. His facial expression did not seem to be the sort who’d want to be checked in on so I uncomfortably scuttled away, wondering if I was being trolled for being just another timid looking white chick. (I’m totally fine with a little teasing if this was the case.)

Luckily people started to fill the museum and we stopped getting tailed right around the time I squealed with excitement to see not one, not two, but three Van Goghs, none of which I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen almost his entire catalogue save for those in personal collections and Starry Night which is always on tour. That one’s on my bucket list but this one… was a lovely surprise!

We also got to see some Georgia O’Keefe landscapes, some decidedly not ballerina Degas, a couple Jackson Pollocks which looked exactly like the projectile baby vomit and/or splooge I thought it’d look like, quite a few Picassos that seemed like a decent into madness, er, I mean Cubanism, and some others that sounded vaguelly familiar.

These notables were smattered about in different places but we got to see a lot. Roman pottery and mosaics, a likely haunted ancient Meso-American doll, another Meso-American figurine that looked bizarrely like the trash Muppet in The Labyrinth, a gorgeous intensely ornate Buddha that was courting a young photographer who was taking photos of EVERY angle, a delightful depiction of Kali, another Buddha that was thin and serene, some unreasonably jacked baby Jesuses, some Cherubs that probably came from the depths of Hell, some fun abstract sculptures, an exquisite painting of a baby declaring her mom’s titty as her territory, some photography that gave me some ideas about my own, a bunch of “you know what a baby/horse/cat/dog look like, right?” Kinda paintings. A cursed jester, a terrifying baby tinman, some other super questionable scenes on canvas. Oh! And some really impressive shadow puppets! Which were colored on their back sides??

We were having so much fun by this time we had to go back out to feed the meter again. All and all we were there for almost three hours. We saw everything and even swung by the gift shop to buy a magnet and some post cards.

This place was so worth the drive and the fact it was free was astounding. And it was right next to the British Art Museum if you really want to be a glutton for free art. We were pretty exhausted though so we saved this for another day. Perhaps after I remember more than just Banksy as British artists…

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Pig Rig Barbeque, Wallingford Connecticut

You know what’s a great way to end a day after adventuring? Some good grub! That’s how we ended up at the Pig Rig devouring a tender pile of pulled pork, mac and cheese, potato salad, and corn bread.

It was a weird time to be eating so there weren’t any other patrons there but this place looked popular. All the walls were covered with rock posters. They had posters from all the five origional British Invasion bands except the Kinks. Why no Kinks?? They’re awesome!

There was also a display case full of random retro rock memorabilia. Kinda fun. So was their assortment of sauces for the pulled pork. Dear God they were delicious. This place knew what people want. One food coma later and we were on our way.

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Trailside Treasures Antiques & Otherwise – Columbia Connecticut

After eating some mediocre hotdogs we felt a bit more energized and decided to drive further into Connecticut to check out one more antique store.

This place was cute! It wasn’t enormous like the last two but it seemed a little more warm and inviting. And the prices couldn’t be beat. Partially because there were multiple sales going on. I ended up buying a couple metal car banks for $10 each! (I usually see them for $25 or so but I’d never seen one of a circus carriage or an ooooold Mack truck before. Their uniqueness called out to me.)

This place did indeed have antiques of the usual varieties – you know like orange carnival glass I keep telling myself not to paw at until I have an actual house. Sooo orange and shiny! I know millenials have been blamed for killing everything down to paper napkins but come on… having some pretty China could be fun! Especially since I don’t have any wee goblins to break them.

There was also one creepy doll, not 100% sure why it was chain smoking but to each their own. A hand crafted chess set also sat in a quirky little room that had tuna can wallpaper. I love eccentric wallpaper. Not enough people take advantage of them.

ANYWAY. This place was great if you are looking for craft supplies. They were selling knitting needles for a few bucks a pair, all sizes, and quilting fabric was being sold by the pound. First time I’ve ever seen fabric sold by pound instead of yard but hey I’m all for it!

And the cashier was really sweet too. Almost gave me a 50% off discount instead of the 15% advertised. She figured it out a few seconds before I was going to correct her. My treasures were only ten bucks each to begin with!

I liked this place. It was sweet and clearly struggling. I’m not sure the vulture circling it or the mob of 50 or so crows hanging out in the street next to it were helping much but hey! You never know, in some cultures crows are good omens…

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Jerimiah’s Antiques & Shoppes – Putney Connecticut

After enjoying a few hours in the Antiques Marketplace we wandered back out onto the streets and got lost looking for a hot dog stand but before that we realized there’s another antique store right here! Clearly, we had to check it out. Especially with such a razzle dazzle name. But we were kind of a bit burnt out and hungry but when in Rome, or rather Putney CT….

We were greeted with another large store with rows upon rows of glass cases. Most of their contents were pretty normal – mostly bricabracs and whatnot fir the rich grandmother in all of us but then we came across a box of Jarts! Gawd, did they look terrifying. A convenient way to murder your little brother or sister while making it look like an accident. “We were just playing! I swear!”

Weird and very charismatic chairs were scattered about – furry chairs, chairs with weird art deco designs, chairs that could sit alone in the middle of the room and make anyone visiting blurt out, “BUT WHY?”

And then came the all too familiar trickle of racist bullshit including several different copies of Little Black Sambo proudly on display. This quickly devolved into a case and a half of Nazi bullshit. We sighed. I didn’t bother taking a photo. Honestly this sight just made me tired. More helmets, more random loot, more shiny swastikas. Some things should just stay in the past, dead and forgotten. If only.

We then took a trip into the basement which had some more bargain finds. Things started to get more delightfully bizarre from there starting with more creepy dolls including a decapitated ventriloquist dummy, his head sitting on his lap??? Probably by no small coincidence this is the same area of the shop I kept seeing a cat sized void of color darting about at our feet like it was keeping tabs on us. I never give attention to weird shadows and phantoms, though I see them fairly regularly. In a place like this they could be attached to any one of these artifacts, its a hazard of the trade. I made no note of its existence as I ambled onward.

Back upstairs again and I was greeted with a whole cabinet of fruit shaped kitchen ware, an absolutely darling dresser painted to look like the front of a Volkswagen bus, the head of a manniken all punked out with a Christmas light Mohawk, and of course who could forget the absolutely terrifying leather gorilla in attack position with glinting white teeth or the worst doctored nude I have ever seen? A black and white photo of a topless woman with tattoos randomly cut and pasted over the image, I hope in the days before photo shop was a thing because WOW that wasn’t fooling anyone.

This was a nice way to top off the adventure we already had next door. Sort of like a happy bonus!

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Antique Marketplace Putney Connecticut

It seems like every time I feel like we’ve seen it all something else pops up that’s amazing and weird and 100% worth the long drive. That’s what happened when we drove up to yet another antique store (waiting for the warm weather to open up some outside options.)

We’d been to so many antique stores but this one was settled in the center of an old mill city and was HUUUUGE and clearly not what this space was originally used for. It meandered for what seemed miles with weird nooks, corners, rooms, entire whole floors, and the antiques were absolutely bonkers. SO MUCH WEIRD.

We stopped by this salt and pepper shaker shaped like a monk and a nun and my companion asked, “Why does it look like a pod person whose soul has been sucked out?” I couldn’t hold back the nervous half-triggered laugh of some one whose watched and been scarred by The Dark Crystal.

The day had been full of our fun little games: How Racist is this? You Know What a ____ Looks Like Right? And of course, What the Fuck is That?! My companion has roped in a gaggle of D&Ders to enjoy these games with us, taking photos and sharing them to long distance giggles and bewilderment. Initially what started all this was the fact this place was full to the brim with nightmare fuel.

I have become accustomed to haunted dolls but even I was alarmed to find a set of toddler twins still in their perspective boxes, complete with a menacing grin, more than a little side eye and their own bundle of red balloons looking like twin baby Its. Stephen King would be proud.

The creepy dolls were endless. There were ancient dolls with cracked faces, doll heads in tea cups, and even a cabbage patch doll head – sold separately from its body! I never knew they were sometimes sold by the head.

But there was also a ton of terrifying masks and paper mache creations that’d put the fear of Piñata in you. It was also a day for chasmatic chairs – including a solid mahogany shitter. The label said “throne.” This was near a three foot tall anthropomorphic poodle holding a serving tray, a pancaked pheasant on a wall mount, a candle holder that was actually half a gold horse leaping out of the wall, and painting I could only describe as, “A conversation piece.” To which my companion retorted, “Yeah, if you want every conversation to start with ‘What the fuck is that?!'”

We were in this one mall for hours. I kinda wish I was a picker and knew what I was looking at… or had a house and some money to invest in some more conversation pieces. Someday I’ll have a home of my own, at the end of a dirt road, and half the town’s children will think I’m a witch. Their parents will tell them to stay away from my house after walking into it one day and realizing a huggable baby baphomet sitting above the coat rack was the most normal thing they saw there. I look forward to this. To being “eccentric.”

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Riverside Cemetery – Waterbury Connecticut

I’m not going to lie – life circumstances right now have sapped me of any mental energies I may be taking to pick locations as of late, so this duty has been left to my usual travel companion and this location turned out to be a real gem!

Right in the gate there was this super sad statue in front of a geese filled duck pond, er geese pond? A fountain and fall foliage brought the whole scene together like some sort of morbid post card from beyond. And this place was huge! We hadn’t gone to find anyone in specific but we did hear this was a garden cemetery with a lot of gorgeous monuments and it did not disappoint!

Near the beginning we immediately came across a bizarre stone reading, “The Man Fortune, died 1798, buried September 13, 2013. Child of God, free at last.” The grammar was particularly confusing. Was this the Man Fortune as in a fortune of the Man family or a man named Fortune?? And what was up with the dates?! It was clearly a new stone.

As it turns out Fortune was this man’s name. He was a slave, born in Africa, who served under a local doctor who decided to take advantage of his death by using his corpse as a cadaver to dissect and teach other medical students since cadavers at the time were very hard to come by, there’s only so many criminals one can hang on a given year. We can be assured this was not agreed upon by Fortune himself prior to his death and insult was added to injury as his cadaver was rendered into a skeleton that then taught anatomy students and then took up residence in a local museum until the 1940’s under the name Larry. Eventually the origins of “Larry” was discovered almost 200 years later and he was taken down from display. It wasn’t until 2013 however that someone decided to give him a proper burial in the churchyard he was baptized in a year before his death. It was apparently a big news story that got national attention although now I didn’t see a single penny on his grave.

Beyond this there were a bunch of statues of mourning women scattered throughout the cemetery, an elk on a hill overlooking everything, and a few unique monuments as well. As expected in a cemetery of this sort of wealth we also came across a number of stone masons. Everything was just electrified by the blushing trees in the background, one was so golden we took a ton of shots of it, none of which showed just how vibrant yellow it really was. We spent a few hours wandering this place. It’s hilly and with every hill there’s a new view, none of them disappointing! This place was perfect for the would-be photographer looking for an afternoon out.

Although it does not have terribly many famous names here it was still worth a good walk through and the two hours it took to get there. We had an awesome time and I would highly recommend this place!

*Credit given to my BFF for taking the cover photo. His photographic skills often surpass my own and DAMN was that a brilliant photo!

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MINE Antique Store – Mystic Connecticut

Since we were out and about already it seemed like a good idea to see if there were any antique stores in the area we hadn’t already hit. That’s how we found MINE. It was a sweet little place, really a refurbished barn with several lofts, all with interesting things in it. I’m not sure if the store is new or not but I feel like it might be because it seemed to be a lot of things. The main floor was mostly antiques and nautically themed decor but off to the side was a whole section that was more of a crystal shop. And upstairs? Retro clothing galore including old Halloween masks and costumes! I tried on some hats but alas I must have an enormous head because none of them fit. Shame. and not to be disappointed this place had a small assortment of probably haunted dolls and doll heads, you just can’t beat that. This place was also filled to the brim with paintings of every genre. This would be a wonderful place to go shopping for your bare walls!

All and all it was a sweet little find, worth the little detour, and a nice place to wander for an hour or probably less. It was of moderate size. Quirky though! And you know how much I love quirky! (Seriously there was a pair of lobster flip flops there… flip flops that looked like lobsters… that’s peak quirky there!)

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Round 2 – Grove Street Cemetery – New Haven Connecticut

After going to the Grove Street Cemetery and doing their cradle grave and Civil War tour we had to return to check out all their Amistad related graves and find the monument they left for Glen Miller which we missed the first time. There’s even a tree tour but we didn’t get to that one.

Right at the front where the kiosk is there is also a monument to the captives of the Amistad, many of whom were buried in this cemetery near the lawyers, judges, and other people involved in this historic trial. Most of these individuals were nearby. It was interesting to see what happened to many of these individuals after the trials, it seems a number of the captives became active and successful members of the community which just astounds me considering the trauma they must have all carried with them.

We learned the oldest stones that were leaned against the perimeter of the cemetery were actually from a different cemetery that used to be where the park is now. Though they may have moved the stones they don’t appear to have removed the bodies and as late as 2020 human remains were found entangled in the roots of a downed tree. This is not a unique story as many cemeteries were eventually taken over and transformed into parks over the years.

We were also surprised to find Webster of dictionary fame, Goodyear the guy that pioneered vulcanized rubber, Josiah Willard Gibbs – inventor of calculus and significant contributor to thermodynamics, Eli Whitney inventor of the cotton gin, Walter Camp “father of American Football,” and Othniel Charles Marsh a tireless Yale professor and paleontologist that worked mostly on the evolution of birds publishing an astounding 1,400 scientific papers in his life.

And of course towards the very end of our exploration of this cemetery we found the monument to Glenn Miller – composer of In the Mood and a ton of other songs that are still played today. I say monument because this isn’t his actual grave – he died in a plane crash fighting in World War II and his body was never recovered. I wonder if he was the first of the popular musicians to die in a plane crash, either way what a bad ass way to go – killing Nazis.

Anyway, that was our tour. We learned a lot of history and saw a lot of cool things. This is definitely a cemetery worth checking out and if you’re looking for someone specific the fact the roads have names and the stones have addresses makes it pretty easy to find them.

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