Visiting Downtown Hartford, CT

Yesterday was an action packed day. I am telling you, ACTION PACKED!!! It was packed with action.

Okay, we started off by driving up to Hartford to pick up Laura’s friend. She lives near White Plains, but doesn’t have a car. She figured that the easiest way to get here would be to take Amtrak to New Haven and then a bus to Hartford. According to her, it was a very easy trip. In case you were interested, there is an Amtrak station in New Rochelle. How cool is that?

Anyway, we hopped in the car to go get her at the bus/Amtrak station in downtown Hartford. Now, just to let you know, I have never actually been to downtown Hartford, so I didn’t know what to expect. I have only driven by it a few dozen times. I usually expect the worst and really don’t enjoy being in congested areas.

I am going to give you a little play by play, just in case you Googled “Downtown Hartford” to see what it looks like. Just a word of warning, I am using Live Maps to assist me in this little walking (well, driving) tour.

Here we go…We drove over Founders Bridge onto State Street. We stopped at the stop light and I said, “Hey, this isn’t bad at all. Actually, it’s pretty damn nice.” I noticed all the signs promoting the festival of lights and all sorts of other stuff hanging from the bridge in front of us. I quickly grabbed my trusted camera to start snapping shots.

These are two that I got yesterday (Friday) morning.

We made our way onto Central Row, took a right onto Main Street and then a left onto Asylum Street to head straight down to the bus station.

While at the bus station, I was sitting in the car. Two cops pulled in front of me on their cop motorcycles and parked. I thought a picture of their cool motorcycles would be nice.

Those are the only two pictures I got on Friday morning. This morning (Saturday), we drove back up to drop her friend off. I took a lot more pictures, plus, today’s weather was much nicer.

Those are all the photos I have.

I must say, I was quite impressed with downtown Hartford. I always thought it was a city strictly about work, but there were a lot of people out and about, walking through the parks and doing shopping. Also, it was much cleaner than I thought it would be and very well kept up, with the banners and decorations. At one point, I turned to Laura and said, “You know, this is a very walkable city.” She just smiled, nodded and continued gazing into my eyes.

I think we’ll go back. That’s two thumbs up.