CONNECTICUT

CONNECTICUT was named Quinnehtukqut by the Native Americans for the "great tidal river" that splits it in two before spilling out into the Long Island Sound and washing the old whaling ports of the coast. This small and densely populated state is a sort of conservative, high-rent suburb of New York City, enabling commuters to earn Big Apple salaries while avoiding New York state and city taxes. Its first white settlers arrived in the 1630s: refugees from Massachusetts seeking liberty, good farmland and trading opportunities. Connecticut soon became a center for "Yankee ingenuity," prospering through the invention and marketing (often by the notorious and not always honorable Yankee peddlers) of many a useful little household object. Although hit very badly by English raids in the Revolutionary War, its role in providing the war effort with crucial supplies made it known as "the provisions state." After the war, the original charter of Connecticut's first colonists was used as a model for the American Constitution and gave rise to another nickname: "the Constitution state." It continued to prosper during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with steady industrialization and lucrative whaling along the southeastern coast.

Today, much of the old industry, especially in the north, has withered away, leaving areas of green countryside, untroubled by noisy interstates, many verdant forests and the idyllic rural villages that typify New England's PR image – but also unemployment and poverty. New Haven in particular, home to Yale University, faces distinctly urban problems like drug wars, homelessness and violent crime, which belie New England's myth of rural tranquility. The linchpins of Connecticut's economy – insurance companies, medical research and military bases – hardly make for pleasing aesthetics, as demonstrated by the rather dull capital city, Hartford; and even the historic and other wise attractive coastline is marred by some unfortunate stretches of sprawling gray concrete.

Central Connecticut
Though central Connecticut is dominated by Hartford, the state's largest city is possibly one of the nation's dullest destinations. There's not a great deal of point in straying away from the coast, where New Haven is a whole lot more interesting

Southeastern Connecticut
The much-visited southeastern coast of Connecticut spans fifteen miles from Stonington in the east to Niantic in the west, bisected by the Thames (pronounced Thaymz) River. Each of the handful of tiny, picturesque colonial communities and old whaling villages along the Long Island Sound is a mere stone's throw from the next. No longer are they the iniquitous and rumbustious ports that so inspired Melville, but they're still keen to preserve a sense of their history. The restored nineteenth-century Mystic Seaport justifies at least a day's visit; nearby are the less lovely US Naval submarine base at Groton and the pretty fishing harbor of Stonington Borough.

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