By Kiran Jayasinghe
We woke up in our Hampton hotel room just in time to make it to the complimentary hotel breakfast. With eggs, bacon, sausages, oatmeal, cereal, a waffle making machine, drinks, and more, it was a great breakfast to start off our journey to Hartford, Connecticut.
Once we had packed all our stuff (you’ll be amazed at the mess a family of five can make in one night), we hit the road.
One of the surprising things on the East Coast was the lack of Starbucks – or rather the non-existent lack of Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts stores were everywhere, sometimes even ones less than 0.5 miles away from each other. This wasn’t a bad thing, however, since the sheer convenience of Dunkin Donuts stores being around convinced our parents that we should have donuts. Dunkin Donuts donuts were, being donuts, amazing, and our Mom loved the Dunkin Donuts coffee.
We enjoyed a scenic drive all the way to Hartford, Connecticut, where we parked in a public parking garage and then walked, in the humid, hot, weather, to the Old Statehouse (Connecticut has two). We paid a small admission fee, then explored the building. With four accessible floors, the Old Statehouse had courtrooms, displays, an old room consisting of hunting trophies, and had it’s own museum. After a couple of hours of absorbing information and screaming at the dead snakes and tarantulas in the hunting room, we decided to drive about 15 minutes to the New Statehouse. The New Statehouse was huge, with a basement and four top floors. The first floor consisted of a few statues and meeting room, as with the second floor. The third floor had a couple of courtrooms, but we couldn’t see all of it, since half was blocked off. We visited the gift shop, but it was closed, so instead we went to Mark Twain’s house. Of course, with our luck, that was also closing, but the gift shop was open, so we bought a few things just to say we’d been there!
After the Mark Twain house, we drove to the hotel. We stayed in a Homewood Inn and Suites. It was very enjoyable, with a complete kitchen and a set of dishes, a dining table, separate bedroom, and modern bathroom. We enjoyed about a half hour in the hotel pool, which was quite big in hotel pool standards, and then we watched the movie Up, which is a Disney Animated movie. It was a good movie, with great comedy and a great moral. We finished our day with pizza from a nearby pizza place, and then went to bed, to prepare for the next day of our trip.
