Hartford, Connecticut.

Hartford is the capital of Connecticut. And we hadn't really done anything useful in Connecticut before, so soon after our trip to Vermont, we headed to Hartford.

What is there to do in Hartford? TripAdvisor lists 2 top picks: some art museum, and Mark Twain's home. At the time of this trip, I knew very little about Mark Twain. Certainly, a few years ago, I absolutely nothing about him. At some point, I think in high school, when I hadn't really gotten around to hearing music/movies/shows in English, I swear I believed that Mark Twain was some pop star in America. I think I had read some quote of his and it sounded like one of those pop-starrish things to say. I don't think I still properly know what Mark Twain was all about. But it seems clear that he wrote stuff, and also entertained in various ways. Some of his stuff was about some Huckleberry Finn, who I swear, after I learned about this, thought was related to the cartoon Huckleberry Hound. My word, I'm a pleb. Because of this, we first headed to the museum.

It was a helluva cold and windy day. :/

The art museum was nicely curated. It was one of the few places I've seen Dali's paintings in America, and I was absolutely thrilled. There were a number of paintings by other less known French artists. It was worth the visit.

Me looking goofy with a Dali painting. 

Louis Antequin's really cool blue painting. 

The red glow of the sunlight is just so uniquely, and honestly portrayed in this Theodore Rosseau painting.   

Lady peering out. What is she thinking? I'm always intrigued by such paintings. 

After that, we headed to Mark Twain's house which was boring as fuck. If you ever do end up at Hartford, whoever you are, I forbid you to see Mark Twain's house there, however lavish it is. (It is not.) I mean, there was some interesting stuff with the fact that he was poor and his wife's parents opposed their relationship for a long time and so on. Maybe our tour guide was just lazy. I cannot imagine it being worth it however. 

Mark Twain's house. 

And finally, we ended up back in Boston at Dana's place. One of the best developments in my life have been the realization that I can bond with dogs too. As a kid, I only have memories of being chased by wild packs of dogs and being terribly terrified of them. I was a generally timid kid anyway and this didn't help. So it wasn't easy for me to get comfortable with Dana's dog. But I'm beginning to realize that dogs are insanely sweet animals. I got so comfortable I was even able to cuddle with Scout, and even allowed her to lick me a little (!).  

Falling asleep on a dog's face with my trusty Mojito in hand. I cannot believe I could do that.  

Vermont

It's a been a few months since we went on this trip but I've been kind of lazy/busy so I couldn't come around to recording it. This time we were accompanied by Richard and Sarah who suggested that we should do a road trip around Vermont, chill around, get some coffee. Get some coffee? But seriously, why would anyone want to drive for 3 hours to Vermont just to get coffee (at a Starbucks no less)? I guess the answer boils down to: becozzz.

(I must admit, ever since Yulia pointed out that Richard and I are basically the same person, I've been noticing many similarities in our ways of thinking myself...)

Road Trip!

So what is Vermont all about? Many strange things, actually. You would've expected it's just a boring old New England place, with nice woody areas, picturesque retiree-filled towns and mostly just emptiness. It's not. At least not the places we went to. In fact, it turned out to be one of the most real places we've visited so far in America.

Poverty. Squalor. Filth. And the smell of burnt wood in the air.

It's not a joke. There were massive stretches of our drive through Vermont where, if we stopped to check around, all we could smell was burnt wood, coal and trash. It was so strong it would seep into the car. Admittedly, most of the people in these places were lumberjacks and so the smell of burning wood sort of makes sense. But the absolute squalor was astounding. There were homes with shanty roofs and dirt on walls. There were heaps of trash, refuse, laundry lying around willy-nilly near the homes of people.
This was real. I honestly could not believe my eyes. I just could not imagine that there was such a side to life in America. Well, poverty and squalor go hand in hand. Anyone from India knows this well.

An example of a relatively clean, well-built but abandoned building in Vermont. We stopped here because this was the first sign of life we had begun to see in Vermont. What followed was much worse, but those places were occupied and we didn't feel like stopping in front of them. 

Eventually we hit the town of Brattleboro. Brattleboro would feel completely in-place alongside the many small towns in Massachusetts but here it did not. Most of these New England towns are an interesting mix of liberal arts students/borderline hipsters and retirees who run to the countrysides for peace and invite the hipsters to keep up some intrigue in their lives. Well, Brattleboro is much of that but on overdrive. The streets are full of art shops that have stuff that's interesting and creative and great to window-browse. (And amongst this, an odd sighting was that of an Indian grocery store!) We had lunch at a really nicely decorated place with some very nice continental food. Lots of old people here. After that we went into this glasshouse like structure which had "local, artisan" pottery and all that jazz. 

Here's the thing. On the one hand, you have those lumberjacks who are living in absolute filth and poverty. And right next door, there's Brattleboro with all it's artisan bread and cheeses and rare vegetables decorated in a glass house (the irony). It just doesn't fit. I thought I was in Sodosopa (of South Park fame). I asked one of the people manning a kiosk in the glasshouse what the town was all about; what did most of the people do here? When he couldn't offer an answer, I offered, "it seems like many of them are retirees?", to which he said, "yeah, I'm not really sure...". And this guy was manning the kiosk for "local information". 

Cross-less church. 

Being an imbiber of artisan shit. 

We then headed to another small town, Bennington. On the way, we got to see some more of Vermont's autumn wilderness, took some pictures, and got ourselves in and out of more stores selling lots of Maple syrup and honey. (The main symbols of Vermont are the maple leaves and the moose which isn't too surprising given the proximity to Canada.)

Wooden Wilderness.

Left to Right: Saloni, Richard, Sarah. 

Testing Richard's fish-eye camera feature. 

Maple Syrup. Maple Syrup. Maple Syrup. 

In Bennington, we got to see a little more of the art scene. This included oddly painted restroom doors, alongside the traditional Hippie moniker of Peace. Even the church doors were oddly painted. There was also some more squalor which we greatly enjoyed.

Trippy door with Hippie insignia. 

Red with passion Church.

Creepy dilapidated warehouse with death threats and such spray-painted = great photo op moment! Oh and there was also a stream alongside. This stream had a dirt path next to it and the signs pointed to it as "River Walk". Oops. The streams had some tattered clothes floating around (or maybe I imagined this) in line with the death-threat theme of the place. 

Finally, we had dinner in some semi-major town oddly named Lebanon. Oh well. There was maybe not so much to do but I think we tried to make the most of Vermont :)