More from Forest to Shore

This last weekend I headed up to Stratford, Connecticut to visit my friend Robert (i.e., my first friend in NYC), his fiancé Kelly and their dog Oso. I met Robert on my first day of work in NYC in July of 2007; he has been inviting me to visit him since about September 2007 and I finally took him up on the offer.

I left early on Friday and took the Amtrak Northeast Regional train to NYC. I got more and more excited the closer I got back to the city I once lived in. I stayed in NYC long enough to get a coffee with a friend before boarding Metro North to head up to Stratford. 

choo choo

First things first, I had to meet Oso, for the occasion I knitted him a bow tie. 

debonair

Friday night we grabbed dinner at a cool cafe that had live music. The food and company was good, unfortunately the funk band decided to funk it out at top volume, so we only lasted one set.

Saturday morning we went on a 7 mile hike on the Housatonic Rail-Trail with the dogs. There was still a bit of snow in the shady areas from the big storm they had last Wednesday. 

For lunch we headed to New Haven to get a burger at Louis Lunch. According to their website they invented the hamburger sandwich as we know it today when in 1900 a man asked for something he could eat on the run. In honor of that tradition (and the tight quarters inside) we ordered our hamburgers to go. 

The hamburgers are still cooked in the original grills (seen below) from 1898. We got our burgers with cheese, onions, tomato and served on white toast. They were pretty good.

you put the meat in the rack and the rack in the grill

We then spent some time walking around the Yale campus. The sights:

This tree fell over in the storm and they found three skeletons underneath. Apparently the Yale Green was previously a cemetery and when they moved the headstones they forgot the bodies.

I'm not sure what this building is, but its beautiful.

We went into the library, the library looked straight out of Harry Potter, but with a lot more computers and laptops.

Soon it was time to eat again and we headed to Bar Pizza. Bar serves New Haven style pizza, which is super thin and crispy. We got one of their specialties, mashed potato & bacon, as well as a cheese pizza. I really liked the mashed potato & bacon. 

we inhaled half before I thought to take a picture

We capped off our night at the Owl Shop with Robert's CT crew.

props

After a delicious omelet and coffee on Sunday morning I hopped back on Metro North to head back to NYC...