Travel and tourism information

STATE PARKS & FORESTS

The Lower Connecticut River Valley has a half dozen state parks and forests good for outdoor activities. For information on any park, contact the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation Elm St, Hartford. Cockaponset State Forest, in Haddam, has fishing, hiking and swimming. Oevil's Hopyard State Park, just off cr 82 in East Haddam, has 860 acres of parkland for camping and hiking, including the 60-foot Chapman Falls. Haddam Meadows State Park, in Haddam, is good for boating and fishing. Hurd State Park, in East Hampton, has camping, fishing, hiking and picnicking. Selden Neck State Park, in Lyme, has camping places for those making canoe trips on the river, as well as hiking trails. PLACES TO STAY Camping There are simple, inexpensive campsites in Devil's Hopyard State Park, East Haddam; Hurd State Park, East Hampton; and Selden Neck State Park, Lyme. More elaborate facilities are available at Wolfs Den Campground, in East Haddam, with 235 sites; Little City Campground in Higganum, with 50 sites;

Markham Meadows, in East Hampton, with 75 sites; and Nelson's Family Campground, also in East Hampton, with 300 sites. Motels Moderately priced motels are found along the Boston Post Rd (US 1) in Old Say brook, reached via 1-95 exit 66. Try the Days Inn Boston Post Rd}, which has 52 rooms for $78 on weekdays, $118 on weekends; the Say brook Motor Inn with 24 rooms for $65 on weekdays, $85 on weekends; the Super 8 Motel with 44 rooms going for $70 on weekdays, $95 on weekends. There's another cluster of motels near 1-95 exits 67 North and 68 South. Inns & B&Bs The Griswold Inn  in Essex, is the town's landmark lodging and dining place. Despite The Gris' antiquity (it has been serving travelers since the Revolutionary War), its 25 guest rooms have modern conveniences, and cost $90 to $115 (more for suites), light breakfast included. Hint: Room No 24 costs only $70.

The inn's famous all-you-can-eat Hunt Breakfasts (11 am to 2:30 pm Sunday) cost $13. Otherwise, lunch in the dining room costs $10 to $20, full dinners $30 to $50. A farmhouse built in 1776 was the original Inn at Chester in Chester. Several buildings have been added during the 20th century to produce a colonial-style inn with modern conveniences in its 42 airconditioned rooms priced from $105 to $145 (more for suites). In the spacious dining room, dinner main courses tend to the traditional and gamey (venison, duck) with nouvelle-cuisine touches, and cost $17 to $26, with full dinners for about twice as much. To reach the inn from the center of Chester, follow cr 148 west for 4.4 miles and go past cr 9 exit 6 and pretty Killingworth Reservoir to the inn, which is right on the Chester-Killingworth town line.

The Bee & Thistle Inn, is a 1756 Dutch Colonial farmhouse with 11 rooms, some of which share baths. The dining room (closed Tuesday) is renowned for its innovative cuisine and romantic ambience, so it's a very good idea to reserve your table in advance. Expect to spend $35 to $60 for a full meal. The Copper Beech Inn in Ivoryton, follows the model of the Connecticut River Valley: fine old inns with sophisticated restaurants. Built in the 1890s as the residence of ivory importer AW Comstock, the inn has four guest rooms in the main house and nine more luxurious rooms in the Carriage House, priced from $105 to $175. The updated French classic dishes served in the dining room are hath superb and in high demand. Reserve well in advance and expect to pay $50 to $65 per person for dinner. To find the inn, take cr 9 exit 3 and follow the signs on to Ivoryton, going west 1.6 miles through Center Brook to the inn on the left-hand side of the road.

PLACES TO EAT

Most experienced travelers know that hotel dining rooms often suffer in comparison to independent restaurants. But in the Connecticut River Valley, some of the best restaurants are in gracious old inns, such as the Copper Beech in Ivoryton, the Griswold in Essex, the Bee & Thistle in Old Lyme and the Inn at Chester. For details, see Places to Stay, above. For inexpensive but good sandwiches and picnic fare in pricey Essex, you need go no farther than Olive Oyl's Carry-out Cuisine, behind the Strong Real Estate office. Good breads, cheese, pates, pastries, sandwiches ($5) and snacks fill the display cases and will fill you as well. The aptly named Crow's Nest Gourmet Deli, on Pratt St in Essex, overlooks the boatyard and marina from its perch at Brewer's Shipyard. Breakfast and lunch are served every day to the yachting crowd here. Follow Ferry St from The Gris to reach it.

The delightful village of Chester has several good places to dine. At Fiddler's Water Sty, the specialty is seafood, such as bouillabaisse and inventive lobster dishes. Lunch ($9 to $17) and dinner ($20 to $35) are served daily except Monday. The Wheat Market Deli, next door, provides picnic supplies. Restaurant du Village also in Chester, is like a little piece of Provence in the Connecticut countryside. With its flower-filled window boxes set beneath multilane windows, the blue painted restaurant features country French cuisine, with main courses priced between $21 and $27 at dinner.

Travel and tourism inforamtion

It still uses the historic vertical grills, and serves other sandwiches as well, most for less than $4.50. It's open 11 am to 4 pm (until 1 am Friday and Saturday); closed Sunday. Yankee Doodle Sandwich Shop  is a classic hole-in-the-wall American lunch counter Formica countertop, chrome and plastic stools with prices to match: hamburgers for $1.75, ham and cheese sandwiches for $3. It's open for breakfast and lunch daily except Sunday. Restaurants Claire's, at College, is the local favorite for vegetarian cuisine, eat-in or take-out. Bright and airy, it's always busy with students picking up healthy light meals ($5 to $7) or gooey desserts. Clear your own table when you're done. Bangkok Gardens  just off Chapel, is the center's most popular Thai eatery.

At lunch, big plates of pork, beef and chicken with vegetables cost only $5 to $6, and the special three-course lunch is only $7. At dinner, main courses range from $9 to $1l. It's open daily. Tibwin Grill at the corner of Crown, is an upscale New American bistro just a short stroll from the green. Grilled beef, lamb, pork and fowl turn on the spits as diners nibble exotic appetizers and quaff select wines and beers. Lunch comes to around $15 to $18, dinner $25 to $40. Despite the red-meat emphasis, it does have a few vegetarian dishes (this is a college town). It's open daily for lunch and dinner, Sunday for brunch only (noon to 3 pm). Want to try something different? New Haven is one of the few cities in New England with an Ethiopian-Eritrean restaurant. It's Cafft: Adulis a few doors north of the Tibwin Grill.

Eritrean cooking is distinguished by the use of sun-dried hot peppers called berbere, which are simmered in some dishes. An exotic dinner might cost $25 to $40 here, lunch half that. Scoozzi Trattoria at York next to the Yale Repertory Theatre, serves trendy Italian fare with strong New American cuisine accents. Their little pizzettes and other appetizers arc favorites with the beforeand after-theater crowd, who combine them with wine by the glass to make a light supper. More substantial fare includes creative pasta combinations and new variations on traditional Italian meat courses. Lunches cost $12 to $18, dinners $20 to $40. Scoozzi is closed Sunday. The Union League Cafe Chapel Sty is an upscale European bistro in the historic Union League building.

Expect a menu featuring continental classics along with those of nouvelle cuisine for about $15 to $22 per person at lunch, twice that at dinner. On weekends, only dinner is served, and the Sunday dinner is a fixedprice ($24) repast. Wooster Square, six blocks east of the green, is a mostly residential neighborhood, but it's famous for its pizza parlors. Frank Pepe's Wooster Sty serves good pizza, just as it has for decades, in spartan surroundings. Prices range from $5 to $20 per pic, depending on size and toppings. A nearby challenger to Pepe's is Sallie's Pizza 237 Wooster StY, younger but even more highly regarded by many New Havenites. Sweets Chapel Sweet Shoppe  at High, is every candy lover's pearly gates. High-quality sweets, chocolate and coffee beans fill the windows, the display cases and the loyal customers.It's almost impossible for children to walk by without walking in. Entertainment As a college town and a city of some size, New Haven has a lively evening entertainment scene. Theater & Ballet The well-regarded Yale Repertory Theatre and the Yale University Theatre companies both perform in a converted church at the corner of Chapel, with a full and varied program of performances fromOctober to May. The famous Long Wharf Theatre  at 1-95 exit 46, is down on the waterfront near the Howard Johnson, with a season extending from October through June. 

Travel and tour operators

The Shubert Performing Arts Center is the venue for ballet and many musical performances from September through May. For shows that draw a large audience, it's the New Haven Coliseum. Classical Music The New Haven Symphony Orchestra) holds concerts at 8 pm each Tuesday evening from October through June in Yale's Woolsey Hall. The Chamber Music Society at Yale College Sty sponsors concerts at 8 pm Tuesday evenings from Connecticut Coast New Haven 395 September through April in the Morse Recital Hall of Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St. Other concerts are hosted by the Yale School of Music and by the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments Folk & Rock Music Toad's Place, 300 York Sty is a hot, very well-known nightclub worth checking out. Performers such as Black 47, Johnny Cash, Michael Bolton.

The Dave Matthews Band headline there. Cover is free to $25, depending upon the act. The Greater New Haven Acoustic Music Society hosts folk concerts and performances in the summer in the Eli Whitney 1816 Barn, and in the winter in Dodds Hall, 300 Orange Ave, on the University of New Haven (not Yale) campus. Dance Clubs Check out the Brii Rm at Bar Crown Sty, facing Louis' Lunch. The Brew Room (as its name translates) serves up brewpub beer, brickoven pizza and dancing till mid- night on most nights, till 1 am on Friday and Saturday. Getting There & Away Air Connecticut Transit (n 203-785-8930) can shuttle you to Tweed-New Haven Airport 1-95 exit 50, from where several commuter airlines can take you to Boston or New York. Bus Peter Pan Bus Lines connects New Haven with New York City, Hartford, Springfield and Boston, as docs Greyhound Bus Lines.

 inside New Haven's Union Station. New Connecticut Limousine runs buses between New Haven and New York City's airports (La Guardia, JFK and Newark). Train Metro-North trains  make the 1 \I2-hour run between New 396 Connecticut Coast New London & Groton York City's Grand Central Station and New Haven's Union Station, 1-95 exit 47, almost every hour from 7 am to mid- night on weekdays, with more frequent trains during the morning and evening rush hours. On weekends, trains run about every two hours. Commuter Connection buses run at peak morning hours and during the afternoon/evening commuter times to shuttle passengers from Union Station to New Haven Green. There are also several daily Amtrak trains from New York's Pennsylvania Station, but at a higher fare.

 See the beginning of this chapter for information on Shore Line East trains from New Haven east to New London. Car Avis, Budget and Hertz rent cars at Tweed-New Haven Airport. Driving details for New Haven arc as follows: destination mileage

NEW LONDON & GROTON

 Stretching 6 miles along the west bank of the Thames (pronounced 'Theymz') River, New London is an industrial, commercial and military city with a small tourist trade. During its golden age in the mid- 19th century, New London was home port to some 200 whaling vessels, more than twice as many as were based at all other Connecticut ports combined. Its whaling commerce rivaled that of Massachusetts' great whaling ports of Nantucket and New Bedford. Unlike Nantucket, however, New London is short on charm and long on industrial bustle. On the east bank of the Thames, Groton is known for the General Dynamics Corporation, a major naval defense contractor, and for the US Naval Submarine Base, the first (1881) and now the largest in the country. It's a fitting place for these establishments, because the world's first submarine was launched in 1776 just down the coast in Old Saybrook. 

Captain Cook, on his voyage of discovery, wrote in his journal that the Aborigines "appear to be the most wretched people upon the Earth, but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans." Despite Cook's insight, it did not stop him basing his claim on the eastern seaboard of Australia on the legal fiction that he had discovered a terra nullius a land without people. At the time of Cook's visit the Aboriginal population was probably between 500,000 and one million. The subsequent interaction between white settlers and Aborigines almost turned Cook's legal fiction into fact. Disease, high child mortality rates and persecution of the local inhabitants dramatically reduced their numbers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Aboriginal population was as low as 50,000. Today it is estimated that there are about 230,000 people of Aboriginal descent living in Australia. Aborigines were displaced, often by force, by early white settlers who spread out from their first settlements to secure grazing land for sheep. In Tasmania dispossession turned to genocide, nearly wiping out its indigenous population. Only a few survived on offshore islands. The settlers' weapons easily overpowered those of the indigenous people, but the Aborigines did not simply give up their land without a fight.

In many areas of the country, guerrilla warfare tactics were used by Aboriginal people in retaliation The Country and Its People for the white settlers' transgressions of the tribal law. In some areas with a high Aboriginal population, such as near Hobart and Sydney and Cook town on Cape York, different tribes united to launch attacks on the colonists. The expansion of the colony, however, was not greatly hindered by Aboriginal resistance, much weakened by the diseases brought by Europeans.

The introduction of alcohol further debilitated their society.

 In 1905, the government adopted a policy of "protecting" the Aborigines by segregating them from the influences of European society. This formalized and accelerated a movement initiated in the 1870s of moving Aboriginal people to missions and reserves. This was, in fact, a reaction to the widespread concern that Australia had witnessed the destruction of a race with the death of Truganini purportedly "Tasmania's Last Aborigine" in Hobart in 1876. Aborigines were removed from their traditional territories and different tribes were moved onto the same reserves without any regard to kinship or relationships.

The Aboriginals Ordinance in1918 placed many Aboriginal children of white fathers in the foster care of white families, as a way of ensuring the "purity" of Aboriginal communities. This institutionalized racism continued until the 1 930s, and in some cases into the 1960s, resulting in a "stolen generation" of people, forcibly cut off from their Aboriginal heritage. There is a saying among Aborigines that he who loses his dreaming is lost. The arrival of Europeans almost ended the traditional Aboriginal way of life, and today most live in cities and towns or in isolated settlements near tribal lands. In the outback and urban communities, though, elders are making every effort to ensure that their children are told the secrets of the DrCamtirne so they do not lose touch with their religious and spiritual values.

Although few continue their nomadic ways, many of Australia's Aboriginal people still speak traditional languages at home, and there is a growing interest among younger people to learn more about the life, art, stories and music of their forefathers. In recent years, Australia has become more sensitive to the plight of Aborigines, resulting in increased health and educational services, greater recognition of Aboriginal land rights and a growing appreciation of Aboriginal culture.