Mystic CT: Seaport Village, Submarines & the Connecticut Shoreline

A 19-acre living history museum preserving an 1876 New England seaport on the Mystic River — 60 historic buildings, the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan (the last wooden whaleship in the world), and a working shipyard that maintains the museum's historic vessel collection. The Preservation Shipyard is the most active operational traditional boatbuilding facility in the US; the planetarium offers traditional celestial navigation demonstrations. The museum's maritime library holds the largest collection of yacht design drawings in existence.

The Mystic Drawbridge on Route 1 opens at quarter past each hour to allow boat traffic on the Mystic River — a 1919 bascule bridge that has been the visual symbol of Mystic for 100 years. The village of Mystic runs half a mile on each side of the river; the mix of 19th-century commercial buildings, ship chandleries, and maritime galleries has been relatively unchanged by the tourism that otherwise defines the coastline.

The aquarium that first exhibited beluga whales in the United States (1973), with a current collection of 3 belugas in an outdoor habitat, a 750,000-gallon ocean tank, and a significant research program studying beluga and dolphin cognition. The aquarium's position on the Mystic River means the marine exhibit tanks are visible from the outdoor walkway between buildings.

The official US Navy submarine museum in Groton, home of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) — the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, launched in 1954 from the adjacent Electric Boat yard. The Nautilus's interior is open for self-guided tours; the museum traces the history of submarine warfare from the Confederate H.L. Hunley (1864) through the current Virginia-class attack submarines built a quarter mile away at Electric Boat.

The waterfront cottage on Pequot Avenue in New London where Eugene O'Neill spent his summers from 1888 to 1920 — the model for the house in Long Day's Journey into Night and Ah, Wilderness!. The cottage is preserved with O'Neill family furnishings; the National Historic Landmark status reflects O'Neill's position as the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A New London diner institution on State Street since 1938, serving breakfast and lunch in a 1950s lunch counter with the city's most consistent chowder. The New London-style clam chowder is a clear broth with potatoes and clams — distinct from the cream-based Boston style — and considered by its partisans to be the correct version.

A 230-acre oceanfront estate donated to Connecticut by the Harkness family in 1950 — the 1907 Beaux-Arts mansion, the formal Italian garden, and a mile of Long Island Sound shoreline are accessible to the public. The mansion's design by Grosvenor Atterbury features a loggia with Long Island Sound views; the butterfly garden in the restored formal garden is maintained by a state park volunteer program.