New Haven, Yale, The Ms, Louis' Lunch, Pepe's Pizza, Eli Whitney Museum, and the Tree house in Cheshire - Saturday, July 18, 2009
We drove from Groton, CT to New Haven, CT to the Yale University Campus to meet the Ms (Steven and Joyce). The first time we met the Ms was January 19, 1999 at about 6:00 a.m. to be exact. We met at South Miami Hospital. She was having her 2nd C-section and I was having my first. We started talking, we laughed a lot and then she calmed me down and explained everything that would happen. She helped make me feel a lot better. They took her in to have Thomas and later I had Jake. During the hospital stay, Al was walking in the hall and ran into Steven coming out of their room. He also noticed the name on the door. Alex knew someone with the same, unique last name from his previous company. He asked Steven if he knew her. It turns out she was his sister. Since then, we have kept in touch on-and-off over the years.
We met them another time in Miami at one of Thomas' birthday parties, but really didn't keep in touch as they moved up to CT. Recently, Alex and his ex-colleague became friends on Facebook. Somehow our trip came up, and she recommended we meet them in CT. Of course, Alex loved the idea. He immediately friended Steven on Facebook and made all the arrangements. Thank God my kids don't have to rely on me to keep friendships alive. I would have been too shy to do all that Alex did. Anyway, the point is, he did and this is what happened:
We met on the steps of Center Church on the Green in the center of New Haven, CT near the Yale campus. They wanted to show us a cemetery that had a building over it (which turned it into a crypt). However, when we arrived there was a wedding going on. We stayed, eavesdropped a little and then watched the bride and groom exit and leave. We took lots of pictures. We weren't able to see the crypt because they were having more weddings and it would be closed. We walked around Yale a bit more. We went to the Museum of Art and saw some great original works of art from Van Gogh and Monet. The kids enjoyed it. We had a lite lunch at the birthplace of the hamburger called Louis' Lunch. The hamburgers are placed in between twp sliced breads (from a white-bread loaf) with no lettuce, no ketchup, and no onions. It was as plain as can be, but delicious. The inside is very small and has some old church pews as part of the seating area. The place only accepts cash and if you ask for ketchup they tell you to go to Burger King. Then, for the most popular dish in town, we drove to Pepe's Pizza for lunch, which is the typical, thin-crust, almost-burnt pizza, which is Al's favorite kind.
Afterwards, we all drove to the Eli Whitney Museum. The kids worked on crafts and the adults walked around, talked and laughed. We left and went back to Cheshire, CT where they live. Their house is absolutely spectacular. It is on two acres of land filled with trees. It's beautifully decorated and we had all heard about THE tree house. The kids were excited to see it. It was perfect and built by Steven and his father-in-law. They set up a table up there and we had dinner. Steven grilled hamburgers and hotdogs for the kids and we had salad and wine in the tree house. We had such a wonderful day. It's funny, because the next day, Steven wrote on his facebook page, "From the moment we met at 11:00 am on the steps of the church until 9:00 pm in our tree house, we were all laughing and talking the whole time." It was a truly special day on many levels. The children got along very well and Jake wants to go back for his birthday one day as they are birthday brothers you know.
We drove back to the hotel. We arrived around 11:00 p.m. This time we did go to sleep quickly!
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