Coastal delight: 6 reasons to visit Connecticut

Connecticut’s location – halfway between New York City and Boston – means travellers are tricked into thinking of the state as a drive-through spot rather than a destination in itself. But New England’s second-smallest state rewards those wise enough to spend a few days exploring its literary legacy, cultured cities and towns, romantic B&Bs and 1,600km of coastline. The latter alone boasts 14 picturesque lighthouses, top-notch seafood and a brand-new oyster trail.

The home of the warm, buttered lobster roll is also one of the Northeast’s best spots for oysters. Around 30 million are harvested from 60,000 acres of shellfish beds along the Connecticut coast each year.

Although the tastiest molluscs are captured in October, you can sample them year round on the brand-new Connecticut Oyster Trail. It features more than a dozen farms that tend beds of Duxbury, Valley Pearl, Ninigret and other local species of the Eastern or Atlantic oyster, and 20-plus restaurants and shops serving the briny delicacy. Try a variety of types at the Milford Oyster Festival (August) and Norwalk Oyster Festival (September).

Connecticut is home to some of the country’s oldest education institutions, such as sprawling Yale University, founded in 1701 in New Haven. Lively, walkable and postcard-pretty, the town is packed with historic architecture, eclectic restaurants, cafes, and boutiques, and live theatre and music venues.

Overlooking the Connecticut River, Middletown, home of Wesleyan University, has nearly 200 independent businesses, from restaurants to cinemas, outdoor outfitters and gift shops. Perkatory Coffee Roasters is a favourite of travellers, professionals and sleep-deprived college students alike.

In the rolling farm country of Storrs, you’ll find the University of Connecticut, plus a unique museum of puppetry that hosts short-form “puppet slams,” and a dairy bar that crafts rich, velvety ice cream from the university’s own farm.

Connecticut’s literary heritage is almost as long as its rocky shoreline. In capital city Hartford, visit the stunning Victorian Gothic Mark Twain House and Museum, where the satirist wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi.

Nearby, the historic home of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe operates as the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Tour the property and attend a reading or lecture by a contemporary writer. On the Wallace Stevens Walk, also in Hartford, retrace the footsteps of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”.

At the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, on the Yale campus, view a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Audubon bird prints, newspapers printed prior to 1851, and vintage books and manuscripts from around the world.

After a three-year renovation, the free-admission Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven has reopened with double the exhibition space, and spans more than 5 billion years of natural and cultural history.

Run by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, the 28,614 sq m Mashantucket Pequot Museum hosts exhibits on everything from the changing environment over millennia to the Pequot War in 1637. There are also archaeology and conservation laboratories dedicated to preserving the history of the Indigenous people of the Northeast United States.

Among the 14 structures of the Philip Johnson-designed Glass House in New Canaan (including the newly restored Brick House) discover a superb collection of 20th-century painting and sculpture, along with temporary exhibits from contemporary artists.

Originally settled by Dutch, English and Portuguese colonisers, the many scenic towns and villages along the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound can be explored on a road trip or by boat charter.

The most famous is Mystic. Take a tour via kayak or steamboat or visit the town’s many galleries. At the Mystic Seaport Museum, 19th-century trade shops and businesses have been repurposed into educational portals about maritime industries. Be sure to grab a slice of pie at the eponymous pizzeria that inspired the popular 1988 Julia Roberts film Mystic Pizza.

Essex is friendly and low-key, with striking coastal scenery, biking trails and well-maintained nature preserves. Learn about maritime history and view a model of a Revolutionary War submarine in the Connecticut River Museum, go shopping and sightseeing along Main Street, and have lunch at the Griswold Inn, which has been in continuous operation since 1776.

Norwalk’s beaches, Calf Pasture and Shady Beach, are ideal for capturing vivid sunsets. In the downtown, go shopping, browse art galleries, enjoy a leisurely seafood dinner, or bar hop at night. Or attend an authentic New England clam bake, join a seal-spotting cruise, or rent an e-bike for a pedal-powered adventure.

Connecticut offers dozens of ways to get outdoors, from sailing, hiking, waterfall chasing and biking in warmer seasons, to snowshoeing, climbing, and ice skating in the winter. Or take a self-guided driving tour or a boat tour to Connecticut’s scenic lighthouses. You can visit the more handsome, Sheffield Island Lighthouse, by ferry from Norwalk.

The state’s sheer variety of tree species and concentration of oaks makes for one of the longest fall foliage seasons in the Northeast. While you can go leaf peeping almost anywhere in Connecticut, the 727-acre Hidden Valley Preserve in Washington, Mattabesett Trail in Stonington, and the park surrounding craggy, quirky Gillette Castle in East Haddam are especially colourful.