Time Off

My husband and I just returned from a week-long vacation to New England—Massachusetts and Connecticut, to be exact. 

He grew up in Connecticut, and I’ve never visited his hometown because his immediate family moved to Central Virginia shortly after we started dating. This trip was an opportunity for me to meet his extended family, see where he grew up, and experience some of the places I’ve heard stories about. 

View of the NYC skyline from the Northeast Regional Amtrak

We took Amtrak from our town all the way to Boston, which took about thirteen hours, including a layover in Washington, D.C. I’ve always loved the train, and it made our travel day much less stressful than it would have been if we’d had to drive through D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. (I could go on about my love for Amtrak, but I’ll spare you.)

Over the past couple years, my husband and I have gotten into baseball, so we centered our trip around a Boston Red Sox game on my husband’s birthday. It was a hot, humid day in Fenway Park, but the Sox defeated the San Diego Padres 4-1. We celebrated with dinner and drinks at Cask n’ Flagon, a famous sports bar right outside of Fenway facing the Green Monster. 

I’ve baked my husband a blue birthday cake every year since we’ve gotten married, but I couldn’t really bake in our AirBnb, so we ended up ordering cannolis after the game from Mike’s Pastry, a famous bakery, to celebrate his birthday. While the cannolis weren't blue, the box they came in had some blue on it. The next day, we spent some time enjoying Boston history via the Freedom Trail before catching the train to Connecticut. 

Printing press demonstration on the Freedom Trail in Boston, MA

Once in Connecticut, we visited his old stomping grounds. Our hotel happened to be right next to the cemetery where his paternal grandparents are buried, so we spent some time at their graves and drove through familiar parts of town to see how things had changed. His childhood home, which had been built by his dad and grandfather, has new owners, and it looks much different than it did when he was a child, but it’s well taken care of and seems to be loved by its new family. 

We took an afternoon to hike through the woods near the house to see if we could find any artifacts from camping trips past and were surprised to find the area had been cleared by the electric company and “paved” with gravel. A bridge he and his brother built across the stream when they were in school had fallen into the water and been replaced by a concrete and steel behemoth boasting an 80,000-pound weight capacity. I joked we should tack up a sign naming it the Babbitt Brothers Memorial Bridge. 

Cats enjoying the music section of Book Barn, Chapter Three.

One of my favorite stops on our trip was Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut. I’ve been to a fair number of bookstores in my lifetime, and Book Barn was the mother of all used bookstores. Spanning three locations and boasting more than 500,000 used and rare books, this “bibliophiles bliss” was an experience in and of itself. We started the morning at the Main Barn where we explored classics, fiction, and history as well as a variety of gardens and farm animals. We even got to feed the goats some carrots. The store has two auxiliary locations that hold their mystery, romance, religion, science fiction, and children’s book collections. We left with a backseat full of books and big smiles on our faces. 

In addition to visiting places, we also spent time with people, including my sister-in-law’s family. Her brother roomed with my husband in college, and we spent time around the campfire in their grandparents’ backyard, swapping stories and cracking jokes. We spent Independence Day back in Massachusetts with my husband’s extended family, including his 100-year-old aunt whom I’ve been wanting to meet for nearly a decade. She was just as charming and spunky as I pictured her being, and we chatted about our shared love of fiber arts—during the 4th of July Parade, she sat in an upcycled lawn chair. She macramed the seat and back when the original webbing wore out.

Later in the day, we went to my husband’s uncle’s house for a late lunch, and I finally got to meet the majority of his cousins. I’d seen pictures of them and even been friended by a few of them on Facebook, but it was so nice to finally meet them in person. 

We don’t go on vacation often, and it was really great to be away from our daily routines for a little while. It sounds silly, but one of my favorite things about the trip was the free breakfast at our hotel—I didn’t have to think about what to make, and we didn’t have to spend money on that meal each day.

After a week away, I’m grateful for the ability to go on a trip like this one—both in terms of finances and time. I know many people don’t have the resources we do, and I’m incredibly grateful to be able to take time off and have a little extra money to plan a trip. While it wasn’t fancy or extensive, it was the perfect getaway for us.