Travel Guide: Mystic, Connecticut – Day 1
Roman, Marina and I took a little weekend trip to Mystic, Connecticut in June. I have been wanting to visit Mystic for years, and it did not disappoint. Mystic is a beautiful little town nestled along the Mystic River and against the Atlantic Ocean in Southwestern Connecticut. It is clean, charming and historic–an absolutely perfect place for a family trip. We loved every moment of our stay there and I cannot recommend it enough. The entire trip was a joy from start to finish. In this guide I will share my favorite stops along our way, things to do, places to eat, and where we stayed.
To start, we stayed at the Mystic Hilton. There are many options for lodging in Mystic, ranging from homes to hotels to bed & breakfasts. Ultimately I chose a hotel because I wanted the kids to be able to swim and I wanted to be as close to the aquarium as possible. I am so grateful that I chose this spot because it was right across the street from the aquarium and Olde Mistick Village. We drove in and parking here was a breeze. It wasn’t the cheapest option, but it was everything that I would expect from a 4-star hotel. My one disappointment was that room service wasn’t offered due to ongoing health regulations. But, as far as convenience and location go, this place checked all the boxes.
Now let’s talk about our first day. We hit a bit of traffic on our drive from New Jersey to Connecticut. (I’ve hit traffic every time I’ve ever driven through Connecticut, so maybe that’s a bit of a disclaimer if you’re coming in by car.) Since we got there later in the afternoon than I planned, I decided to skip my initial plans for the day. Instead, we had a laid back check-in, unpacked, and got settled in our room. After a short rest, we changed into our dinner clothes and made our way to dinner. I had done a lot of research about dining in Mystic. Since we only had a couple of nights in town, I wanted to make the absolute most of it.
For our first night, I chose S&P Oyster House. The restaurant is in downtown Mystic. I wanted to visit this area on our first night to get a “lay of the land” since it was on the other side of town from where we were staying. The distance from our hotel to S&P was 2 miles, so I figured that we could take an Uber there and then walk back. This was the best decision ever. We had an early dinner and when we finished, the sun was just beginning to set. The golden hour light gave the river and the downtown area the most magical ambiance. But let’s get back to our dinner.
At the recommendation of many reviewers, I made a reservation for dinner at S&P. It turned out that we didn’t need it because it was a gorgeous late afternoon and everyone was eating outside. We essentially had the restaurant to ourselves! We had a wonderful meal. To drink I had the Empress Lemonade which was delicious. The kids had mocktails. For appetizers I had the locally-sourced oysters on-the-half dish which was fresh and absolutely fantastic. The kids and I shared fried calamari, another excellent dish. Roman had fried shrimp from the kids menu which was a bit of a smaller dish. But Marina had the pasta alfredo from the kids menu and the portion was huge. Overall, it was a fantastic dinner in a stunning location, right on the Mystic River. I highly recommend it.
After dinner, the plan was to walk. First, we walked across the drawbridge to the other side of the river for dessert at Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream. That was such fun and the kids loved their ice cream. We ate outside on the parlor’s deck and enjoyed the view of the gorgeous river.
After ice cream, we were all beginning to fade and I knew we had a 2-mile walk ahead of us, so I decided to start heading back toward our hotel. The walk from downtown back uptown to our hotel was beautiful. It is a straight-shot along Greenmanville Avenue and there is a sidewalk the entire way. We meandered off of the main-road a bit to admire the gorgeous gardens in front of the residential homes in the area between downtown and the museum. There were a few shops along the way and we passed along the roadside-end of the Mystic Seaport Museum, where we could see the stunning front-yards of many of the historic homes within in the museum grounds. It was absolutely lovely–and a little bit eerie (we looked for ghosts in windows & marveled over flickering interior lights) too–especially at that sunset hour.
Another highlight of the walk was the Elm Grove Cemetery. Oh my goodness! I had seen this place on the map while planning our trip, but I had no idea how expansive and stunning it would be in-person, especially at sunset. If I had been alone I absolutely would have gone exploring in there, but the little feet of my companions were tired, so we kept walking.
It had been a long day, so once we arrived to our hotel we headed straight to our room, traded our dress clothes for pajamas, and called it a night. Stay tuned for Part 2 later this week.
