T Stands for A Weekend Excursion

   Hi everyone.  Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by for T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

  This past weekend my husband, myself and even the 2 dogs-although they just went along for the ride- packed up the car and took a road trip down to coastal Connecticut, specifically the area around Niantic. I had a family event to attend, which I'll share a bit about later in the post.

  For those of you who live outside of the US and who are not  familiar with New England, here's a map.

    The upper red-orange state is New Hampshire (NH) where I live, and the lower red orange state is Connecticut (CT) where we traveled to.

  We decided since we were traveling 3+ hours away to a place we really hadn't been before, we might as well stay over night and see a few new things  at the same time. That worked out great except my husband wanted to visit the Submarine Museum (Submarine Force) in Groton  and for some reason it was closed until further notice. 

   I took this photo from a parking area above the museum, and although it's not a great photo, it's looking down onto part of the museum and the USS Nautilus, the first US nuclear sub which is now decommissioned and  part of the museum.

  Otherwise we had a great trip. Here's a few photos I snapped while we were out and about.

    The breakfast wasn't anything, but I do recommend this hotel if you're ever for any reason staying in the area. And if you won't ever be,  enjoy the sunset view in this photo.

    It's still too early for all the pleasure boats to be  in their boat slips. In fact, both days the wind was cold, and the temperature was only in the 40's (around 4-6 degrees C).

   Saturday night we went into New London to meet up with my brother, his wife, my niece and her husband for dinner.  We went to this fantastic restaurant called Tony D's. From the outside it wasn't much, but inside it was a cozy  place. (Sorry no photos.) My meal was amazing. I had lobster ravioli that was their special for the night and along with some water I had a glass of Merlot. 

     There was so much food as it came with some delicious focaccia and a dinner salad too.

    My niece and her husband live down in this area of Connecticut, but the funny thing is my brother now lives only 35 miles away from me over in Maine. I haven't seen him since he got married last March.  It's a shame  we don't visit more since we don't live all that far apart. (I used to drive 35 miles every work day each way when I was teaching so an occasional trip to his house would not be a big deal.) 

    While in  New London for dinner Saturday night we had to park in the street, and I noticed these 4 old buildings across the street. They caught my eye, and so I looked up what they were about. They were built in between the years 1835-1845, and this area was known as Whale Oil Row. They were once homes of the whaling upper class. That history also explains the mural that was next to where we parked.

    We also visited a nice beach  late afternoon on Saturday, but it was a bit too chilly to spend much time outside. 

    At dinner Saturday night I was told about this interesting used book store. Of course, Sunday,  I wanted to go. It's actually 4 stores but I only made it to 2 of them. I had a lot of fun browsing. This store (photo below) contained art, history, architecture, biography and teen books.

   The annex in the back of this lot was full of fiction. It was also very crowded. Here's one small section. The aisles weren't exactly straight  and there were also books tucked into every available corner. That is to say, there were a lot of books. 😉

    It was good to see people buying books though. Of course these were all used and reasonably priced. 

    This used book store was spread out in 4 locations. There were 2 shops where we stopped; there was another one  downtown and another one  further out of downtown. Sadly the downtown location, where I didn't get to, is where the mystery, gardening, nature, craft and cookbooks were. In another way, it was probably good for my wallet that I didn't get there because those are the genres I am most likely to buy. 😉

      However, I still managed to pick up a few books. 😏 (Plus one more that was not in pile because I had started reading it. Grin.)

    OK you've seen snippets of the trip except for the reason why we went.  That reason was this fun celebration Saturday afternoon.

    My niece is expecting, and we'll have a new member of our bigger family in May. 👍

    Here's my second drink for T Day. I'll be popping this cork once I hear the good news from my brother.

   And before I sign off,  if you ever stop by Mary's blog Dark Thoughts, her daughter's lupus is attacking her heart. She  has 40% heart failure. Someone has started a Go Fund Me page for her, so here's the link if you are interested: Go Fund Me Page.

   That's all for me today. Wishing everyone a happy T day and a great week ahead.