Family Vacation to Connecticut

Our baby had her first vacation this past weekend. I have been talking to husband about wanting to get out of the City for awhile (ok, I'll admit it...I've been nagging him about it), so when a three day opened up, Husband suggested we venture out to the beautiful state of Connecticut. I quickly agreed.

After talking to coworkers and searching on the internet, Husband and I decided to go to South Norwalk for the day, where we could enjoy the small New England town and visit the Maritime Center. I was so excited. I am not sure what excited me more: the train ride, getting out of the City, a whole day with Husband (without any work) or getting to see the Maritime Center.

Our day began early with our weekly Saturday morning breakfast in Bryant Park. We woke up a bit earlier than normal, so this was the earliest we have had breakfast in Bryant Park. Our park was so empty and serene. I love this park. This is the closes thing to a backyard that we have. In fact, Husband and I had a conversation that the lawn at Bryant Park will probably be the first grass our baby ever gets to touch and play on.

After breakfast, we continued on our walk to Grand Central Station. We purchased our tickets and boarded the Metro North bound for South Norwalk, Connecticut. The train ride had it charm. I loved staring out the window and watching the pretty landscape (I love the City, but getting out of the business for a little while is nice too). On the train, we had some tunes to keep us entertained. A fellow passenger was listening to her iPod (at an extremely high decimal). After a few head jerks, she was fast asleep and her earphone fell out of her ear providing the whole car the listening pleasures to the hip hop jams. The funniest part was how everyone on the train car took turns looking over at her in disgust. I’m not sure how she slept through all that noise.

We also were able to enjoy the lovely anecdotes of an adorable three year old boy. While the boy was definitely cute, he enjoyed talking and asking questions through the entire train trip and what was worst was that he didn’t understand the concept of using his “indoor voice.”

The train trip lasted just over an hour. After a couple wrong turns walking trying to figure out where in South Norwalk we were, we walked through an adorable little New England town and ended up at the Maritime Center. While waiting to cross the street at the light (yes, we waited at a crosswalk - a sure sign we weren’t in Manhattan anymore) we saw something that I have never seen before. A street divided in half and rose up so that a boat could pass on the water underneath it. Husband was pretty nonchalant about it, but I started screaming for him to take out his camera.

The aquarium was really interesting. We were able to see seals, sharks, penguins, lots of colorful fish (my favorite was the lionfish) and cool turtles (the fun of looking turtles made me want to get an aquarium; looking up at the thousand pound sea turtle scared me a little bit). We spent several hours walking around the center, but I quickly tired, so we walked through the town to find a nice place to eat lunch.

We wanted to find someplace special for lunch, so we asked some locals for suggestions on where we should go. We got a few different responses, but we finally chose a quaint little diner with great service and even better food (I’m really starting to like food!).

After a much needed rest and a wonderful meal, we traveled back to the Maritime Center to see all that we had missed earlier in the day. Our day was filled with a great deal of walking, so I was thrilled that one of our afternoon activities was kicking back to watch an IMAX movie (well actually, I kicked back and our little girl just kicked!). I have only seen one other IMAX movie before (years ago Husband – before he was “Husband” - took me to see my favorite Disney movie Beauty and the Beast at an IMAX theater). Our movie for this trip was the nature film “Wild Ocean.” It was an exciting 40 minute flick about the wild ocean off the coast of Africa.

The day was a ton of fun for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed it is so much that it knocked me out, and I slept the whole trip home (Husband makes a wonderful travel pillow on the train).

Our baby has now experienced her first trip out of New York with her trip Maritime Center and her adventure into her second state, Connecticut.