1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die Read Online Free PDF

filled with saffron mousse and garnished with Maine lobster medallions.
    Nearby communities—such as Darien, New Canaan, and Westport (see p. 9)—showcase similarly imposing homes and fine shopping, but it’s the small city of Norwalk,and especially historic South Norwalk (aka SoNo), that’s enlivened the otherwise sedate Gold Coast in recent years. A vision of inner-city blight until an exciting revitalization in the 1980s and ’90s turned it into a dynamic hub for food, shopping, nightlife, and culture, SoNo is anchored by the stunning Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, set inside a handsomely refurbished 19th-century foundry. The state-of-the-art aquarium contains more than 1,000 animals native to Long Island Sound, and a cavernous Maritime Hall offers boat-building workshops and houses exhibits on nautical history—there’s also an IMAX theater.
    Among SoNo’s many cool restaurants, don’t miss dinner at Match, an ultra-chic two-story space with a postindustrial design and vibrant energy. Sit at the boisterous bar and sip pomegranate Bellinis before moving on to the dining room, where one of your choices might be steak tartare “and eggs” (served with a three-minute quail egg and chopped black truffles).
    W HERE: 35 miles northeast of New York City.
Visitor info:
Tel 800-866-7925 or 203-853-7770; www.coastalct.com. H OMESTEAD I NN: Tel 203-869-7500; www.homesteadinn.com .
Cost:
from $250; dinner $70. M ARITIME A QUARIUM: Norwalk. Tel 203-852-0700; www.maritimeaquarium.org. MATCH: Norwalk. Tel 203-852-1088.
Cost:
dinner $40. B EST TIME: early June for the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance, a 2-day festival of luxury, vintage planes, boats, and automobiles.
    There’s No Place Like Home
T HE M ARK T WAIN H OUSE AND M USEUM
    Hartford, Connecticut
    Literary fans come from around the world to visit the home of beloved author Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, a pen name he derived from the term used by Mississippi River pilots to indicate a water depth of two fathoms . “To us,” Twain said, “our house … had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with…. It was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.”
    Although more commonly associated with his hometown of Hannibal (see p. 449), as an adult the Missouri-born Twain always held this home in Hartford’s Nook Farm section in a special light. The custom-designed High Victorian mansion was commissioned from well-known New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter. Twain lived here with his family from 1874 to 1891, during which he penned some of his most acclaimed works, including
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
The beautifully restored 19-room mansion features decorative work by Louis Comfort Tiffany and nearly 10,000 Victorian-era objects. Guided tours point out personal items, including the 3-ton Paige typesetter, an ill-fated invention in which Twain invested, leading to his bankruptcy. A striking contemporary museum stands adjacent to the house, further detailing the life and times of this master storyteller—a key feature is a small theater showing a 22-minute Ken Burns film biography.
    Nearly across the street, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center celebrates the legacy ofthe author of the greatest antislavery novel of all time,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
considered to be the first international best seller. This compound is anchored by the brick Gothic Victorian “cottage” (though substantial, it is not nearly as grand as neighbor Twain’s) where the author resided from 1873 until she died in 1896. Guided tours provide insights into Stowe’s abolitionist politics and then-revolutionary social views.
    W HERE: 110 miles northeast of New York City. Tel 860-247-0998; www.marktwain house.org.
When:
daily, May–Dec; closed Tues, Jan–Apr. H ARRIET B EECHER S TOWE C ENTER: Tel 860-522-9258; www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org . B EST