We’re spending two-and-a-half weeks in New Haven because we need a break. Wait, what? Haven’t we just been on “a break” for like two months as we’ve been visiting with family and friends? Well, it turns out that in some ways, being near people we know makes us more busy that we normally feel, even if we aren’t riding our bikes all day. We’re glad to be able to focus on time with our loved ones, but it means that things like updating this journal, planning our route forward, or just doing some basic housekeeping tasks, get pushed aside. So we needed some time “alone” with just the two of us to plan around, to recharge. We didn’t want wait too long after leaving Luke and Andrea’s, so finding a relatively-cheap place (with a kitchen, and laundry) anywhere in Connecticut was the general goal, and when a possibility showed up in New Haven, the idea of being near the Yale University campus sealed it.
A not-atypical house in the west-side neighborhood we were staying in. Ok, the tower, is a bit unusual, but the main form of housing is giant single-family-looking house like this, but with three or four mailboxes showing that it’s really like a neighborhood of three-flat apartments, just architected in a more-traditional style than the brick boxes of Chicago.
It took more than a week before we finally got out and did a tour of Yale (proving that this “break” was necessary!) Self-guided, we built it around Rett’s desire to visit their excellent (and free!) art museum (she later did a trip on her own to their natural history museum). I’ve always loved visiting college campuses, both for the vibe and the architecture, and I think I’ve brought Rett (who unfortunately never had the traditional college-campus experience) along with me. But we’ve never really been to an Ivy League university (despite going through Ithaca a few times, we’ve never explored Cornell). We had high expectations, and Yale exceeded them significantly, making it easily the most-amazing campus we’ve ever seen.
The Yale Daily News! Led once by Editor-in-Chief Rory Gilmore!The most-Hogwartsian part of an extremely-Hogwarts-y campus, this is the corner of the “Old Campus”.It’s basically all fake, the buildings are “only” about 100 years old, just designed to look much older. But they certainly don’t feel fake! We were both enthralled by the open windows. They subtly communicate that the buildings are in active use, that things invisible to us are happening behind the stone walls. Most buildings that look like this are essentially museums, attractive skeletons but dead inside. So the open windows are something surprisingly-contrary to that expectation, and make it much easier for imaginations to paint the life inside.This is one of Yale’s 14 “colleges”, essentially dorms, this one one backed up onto the art museum. So the life behind these windows (and most of them really!) is kids in their dorm rooms!The window to the left had shower supplies in it!This building reminded me of one in Venice.The Old Campus. Again, students just live in these buildings! Like, those wooden doors are their front doors. Look at the details: the bay windows, the turret in the center, the little row of windows on the roof above the dormer windows!Yale University.Harkness Tower (and more open windows in the foreground!)Proof that there are just modern college students living behind these windows.A staircase in the art museum.Another staircase in the art museum.The Sterling Memorial Library, a cathedral dedicated to knowledge.Enlightenment at the Sterling Memorial Library.The base of every arch had a different character sculpted. And most every building on the campus has similar detail.We’re now the life on the inside of one of the open windows! Other parts of the library revealed that the windows are a bit of an illusion though, because (obviously) university buildings need to be functional for the 21st century, so the exteriors are sometimes just a gorgeously detailed shell hiding a modern core.The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a second temple to Knowledge, in a completely different style. Inside that Borg cube are the spines of ancient books that I’ve only seen replicated on movie sets.The walls of the exterior cube are translucent marble; that’s the sun shining through stone!Don’t know who this old fella is, but he’s impressively encased in cobwebs. As we gawked at every single building we walked by, Rett kept saying that she would never stopped being amazed when walking this campus. But I argued that (as hard is it was for me to believe too) that all the students walking around seemed to scarcely have any idea what an incredible place they were in, so maybe it does quickly get old? Or maybe they’re all just dumb geniuses!Yale! This huge building had an enormous tower on it, which meant that it was the…gymnasium? Huh?Yale doesn’t have the only claim to cool architecture in New Haven. This is city hall (amongst more-modern buildings), though it is only a couple blocks from the very city-centric campus.
Completely-unexpected, Rett saw that Gogol Bordello, one of our favorite bands (we played their songs at our wedding reception) was playing in New Haven while we were there! It was a great show, it was fun to go to Toad’s Place (a name I knew from metal-band tours, and is literally across the street from Yale), and I proved I can still hold my own in the Gogol dance-mosh pit (thanks to the energy of the only ~300 person crowd).
Gogol Bordello! Now back with an accordion player in the band!A non-Yale building, just a house a few doors down from ours, with a place we’d love to go trick-or-treating.
One final excursion (our whole goal was to not do too many excursions!) was to Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria, to try the original “New Haven Style Pizza” (or, “apizzza” as they call it here). It’s essentially the equivalent of going to the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago, a pilgrimage to the birthplace of a regional style. We had to wait in line about 10 minutes, until a guy came out and told us and two or three other groups our table numbers to go to (it felt like getting to the head of the line for a roller coaster and being assigned to a car). The pizza was good, but nothing out-of-this-world, and less-unique than I was expecting, even with Frank Pepe’s signature white clam topping. Maybe Neapolitan-style pizza is just more common across the US than it used to be?
Pizza assembly at Frank Pepe’s, on incredibly-long (at least 10 foot) paddles (that stand with the towel on it supports the arm). Why?Ah, because the coal-fired oven (the fuel is part of the style) is incredibly deep! It’s quite an operation to watch.
Despite spending most of our 18 days “at home”, we still didn’t get as much done as we wanted to (I guess we should have booked a month like I’d initially blurted out weeks earlier during a moment of frustration!) But, our place wasn’t available for extension, and we need to get back to seeing New England and heading south before it gets too cold anyway!
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