From Manhattan's green weekend travel blog comes an earth-friendly itinerary for Downtown New Haven attractions. Aside from all of the transit-accessible, walkable downtown attractions, like the New Haven Green and retail operations, however, the article fails to point out one of the best things about a summer escape to New Haven - the excellent waterfront areas and public parks with hundreds of miles of hiking trails within a short walk or bicycle ride of the city center.
Of course, the idea of New Haven being a perfect compromise between thriving city and rural escape is nothing new: on February 12, 1842, Charles Dickens wrote:
"New Haven, known as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted with rows of grand old elm-trees; and the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and reputation. The various departments of this institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the middle of town, where they are dimly visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral yard in England; and, when their branches are in full leaf, must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter-time, these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance: seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and country; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it; which is at once novel and pleasant."
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