Anniversary Trip to Mystic Seaport

 Instead of an overnight trip this year, my husband and I decided to spend last Sunday in Mystic. We're heading out on a vacation to Acadia soon and with our anniversary falling on Memorial Day weekend we didn't want to have to fight the crowds driving anyplace too far. 

Mystic is about an hour an away from us and while we've taken the boys to the Mystic Seaport a time or two we had never gone by ourselves as adults. We enjoyed exploring the Nantucket Whaling museum (our trip here) and figured it would be just as much fun to explore this living history museum dedicated to preserving what life was like in an old new England seafaring town. 

It was a chilly, cloudy day so I added a light jacket over my sweater and wore comfy sneakers since I knew we'd be walking a lot. 

 

The museum grounds cover 19 acres right along the Mystic river and we explored just about every museum building they had open-- and we only saw a handful that were actually closed on this Sunday of the long holiday weekend. 

We were there for 3 hours and learned even more about whaling, ship building/ restoration, and even toured an old whaling boat. I can't imagine sleeping on that thing for years at a time! It's also crazy to realize that most of the whalers didn't even know how to swim. That was not considered a needed or "useful" skill for hunting whales... on the ocean... using harpoons.

 

a current mutli-year ship restoration project they've just started.

After touring the museum we decided to leave our car in the lot and walk the 15 minutes or so to downtown Mystic for lunch and a bit of window shopping. 

 

We ate lunch at The Engine Room and I got the fish and chips while my husband got a 1/2 roasted chicken. Both our meals were delicious!  

We kept walking towards the drawbridge and checked out the shops on both sides of the streets. Then we stopped on a bench for a bit and just sat in the shade talking and people watching. It was so mobbed with cars and pedestrians that we were so glad we decided to walk! It seemed like everyone was driving around in circles looking for some place to park.

After a bit we decided to head to Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream where they have been making and serving delicious homemade ice cream since the 1800's! The line was out the door but moved quickly and was well worth the wait.

 I tried two of their custom flavors-- Seaport salty swirl (caramel ice cream with peanuts, chocolate covered pretzels, pb & caramel swirl) and Mystic Mud (chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks, cookies & brownie bites, fudge, M&M's and heath bar pieces).

It was a delicious ending to our day!

Linking up with: Thinking Out Loud,