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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Innkeepers Holiday - Mystic CT

Yes, even innkeepers get to take a little holiday now and then, and when we do we love to go stay at another Bed and Breakfast - of course!

This past week we took a little trip to Mystic, CT at the invitation of fellow innkeepers, Greg and Mary Lou Peck, who own The Adams House.

Greg and Mary Lou are such wonderful and gracious hosts. We felt right at home the minute we stepped through the front door. I just loved our room!

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We then had time to head into town to stroll the main street before dinner. We crossed the drawbridge in the center of town to find parking and then strolled the town.

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This is part of the workings of the bridge. It is drawn up every hour at about 15 minutes after the hour.

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We had dinner at the Captain Daniel Packer Inne, one of the restaurants highly recommended by Mary Lou. I had the petite filet mignon and Mark had the lobster stuffed with crab. We both thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the whole dining experience.

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The next day was our one full day in Mystic. After a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese baked on top of halfed croissant rolls, we headed into Stonington, a small town next to Mystic. The Town of Stonington is situated in the southeastern corner of Connecticut, bordering Westerly, Rhode Island to the east, Long Island Sound to the south, Groton, Ledyard, and North Stonington to the west and north. Stonington is the only Connecticut town facing the Atlantic Ocean.

This is a wrought iron fence around the front of one a house at the start of our walk through the town.

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On a historical note, Stonington made a name for itself during the War of 1812, when in 1814 just two canons were used to successfully hold off four British ships.

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Along our walk through Stonington, we visited the Old Lighthouse Museum.

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This is the view from in the lighthouse tower.

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. . and the stairs down from the tower!

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Next on the agenda was the Mystic Seaport: The Museum of American and the Sea. It includes three major components for visitors: a re-created 19th-century coastal village with historic ships, a working preservation shipyard, and formal exhibit galleries.

This is the interior of the Charles Morgan, the last of the wooden whaling ships. The restoration project is set up so that visitors can tour certain sections of the work in progress, while the ship builders are actually working on other sections. This is the upper deck of the ship.

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This is another ship available to tour was the Joseph Conrad, a square rigged ship that has been used as a training vessel.

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A horse-drawn cart was available for tours around the entire facility (not on board the ships, of course!)

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This was the captains room of the Benjamin F Packard, which had been a 244-foot square-rigged sailing ship. The captain's room and parlor were rescued just prior to the ship being scuttled (sent down to the bottom of the sea) and reconstructed in this fine exhibit. The richness and detail of the wood furnishings and paneling was amazing.

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For dinner that night we went to S & P Oyster Company.

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While waiting for our table, we had drinks and appetizers on the outside wall - a wall the height of bar stools! It was a marvelous spot to just enjoy the view.

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I guess we ate the dinner too quickly because we forgot to take pictures, but it was delicious! I especially remember with fondness the decadent flourless chocolate cake that I had for dessert.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

New Mugs from Deneen Pottery

We just got a new shipment of our logo mugs from Deneen Pottery. They are wonderful as always.

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Deneen offers such fabulous color selections that I like to order something different every year.

We also finally got a Life By Chocolate mug! This is the Rancher mug style - nice and big for a lovely mug of hot chocolate.

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The Life By Chocolate mug will soon be available for purchase from our online chocolate shop. All of the mugs are available for purchase at our inn or over the phone.

In case you didn't know, Deneen Pottery is a family run business in MN that has been making custom hand-made pottery for 40 years. Each mug is formed by hand on a potter's wheel! I would highly recommend them if you or your company needs custom mugs for a special event. They are wonderful to work with, too!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Backporch Strip, Stain, and Paint!

Striping layers of paint may not be the most exciting thing to blog about but I'm doing it anyway!

Our inn is of such a size that our painting budget only allows for a portion of the inn to be addressed each year. This year the painters worked on the lower north side of the main inn and the back porch. The biggest part of the job was scraping and sanding away years of paint from the back porch because we wanted to stain it the same Rose Red that we used on the front porch last year.

The painters started with the deck, first stripping the paint and then sanding it smooth to reveal the beautiful old wood that had been hidden under all that paint. Next came the porch railing and posts. Those were tricky too because of all the groves and detail work.

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It was also revealed that the under structure of the porch was rotting and had to be replaced! It was great to discover this so that it could be fixed, but it also set the time schedule off a bit. We were anxiously trying to get all the work done during a week when we had no guests at the inn, but on the upcoming weekend we'd have a full house. Time was of the essence!

Our painting team was great, though, and put in long hours to get the job done as quickly as possible. They finished on the day when just some of the weekend guests arrived. Whew - just in time!

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