To understand New Haven is to understand the highways. Whenever you drive from New York to Boston, or visa versa the mid-way point which all of the highway signs point to is New Haven. The entire time you're thinking, "Man, this New Haven, must be good, all the signs point here". Then you drive past New Haven and you feel a bit disappointed. You see a factory and a not so pretty seashore…

Then you actually realize that you were looking the wrong direction the whole time and you feel rather stupid. Lo and behold while New Haven officially does encompass the water section and the factory, that is not even close to the town center.

The other emotional conflict that New Haven causes is that everybody says to you, "New Haven, oh you mean Yale, there's nothing to do in New Haven" and "New Haven, it's not safe". Usually you're left believing these things for quite some time and on both accounts well, you're wrong again. New Haven is a rather frustrating city in that sense because the whole time you're saying, "I didn't realize New Haven was like this…" After a while, you stop saying that, purely because people start looking at you funny, but you still feel it.

We originally were invited to visit New Haven by Renny at the Greater New Haven Convention and Visitors Bureau as she read an essay I wrote a number of years ago called, "Why I Hate Connecticut". It wasn't of course a real life list of reasons but went about describing anger, depression and people who came from the rich suburbs of New York who seemed to have everything going for them. Renny realized it was satirical and just wanted to show us another view of Connecticut. Other visitor boards in Connecticut never bothered to even read it but just went along proving the focus of the satirical piece by their ignorance.

Upon driving into New Haven, you take Interstate 95 to CT-34 which is a poor excuse for a highway as it's only a mile or so long but takes you right into downtown. Five turns and a few, "Oh, this is very pretty's" later and we arrived at the Omni Hotel. The Omni is a 4-star hotel right next to the main village green in New Haven and can be described as nothing less then clean, pretty and well, very 4-star-ish. There was nothing to complain about which only frustrates you more in New Haven as I was predisposed to think that New Haven would be something to complain about.

I mentioned the city green and that should be commented on. New Haven is America's first planned city according to a grid model and in the center of that grid is a big city green with three separate churches. The middle one came first and then the members of the middle church got pretty upset at each other and built a rebellious church right next door, but made it look really similar so I question how rebellious they were in those days. Almost everything in New Haven that's anything is within one block of the village green.

Anyway, in the lobby we met Renny from the Tourism Bureau who at first strikes you as a quiet elegant, older woman, something like an eccentric aunt who takes you out for pizza when your mom claims you're lactose intolerant. I warn you, this is only a first impression as she breaks out of this perceived shell rather quickly and will exhaust you with her love for the city within minutes.

The pizza thing did however, hold true as our first stop was Pepe's for Pizza. Pepe's was established by Frank Pepe right here in New Haven and is where the first pizza was introduced to the United States. I always thought it was introduced in Brooklyn and Margherita, my wife insisted that no matter how good this pizza was, it couldn't surpass Brooklyn pizza. We agreed before we came that she would smile, nod and enjoy it but NOT say anything about Brooklyn pizza.

She broke that agreement and told Renny how wonderful Brooklyn pizza was and that she wasn't sure if Pepe's could possibly beat it. I tried interjecting, but there was no hope in stopping her as she kept on this impassioned debate arguing stronger than politics or religion would take you. Needless to say, the pizza did beat out most places we've ever eaten at in Brooklyn and it easily enters one of the top spots as far as I thought. Margherita was very surprised and commented about how the cheese was fresh and the sauce was very good, although sparse, which surprised her.

This made Renny very happy and she mentioned that we were right on path to make me forever forget my "Why I Hate Connecticut" story.

Well, after pizza we ran back to the car, (as it was a bit cold) and drove around town a bit. New Haven's architecture can best be described as the resultant of a schizophrenic architecture Professor just throwing out ideas randomly. If a block has the same architecture, they are promptly chastised and beaten with a stick. Every house has a unique architecture worth noting… historic, modern, gothic, strange, pretty, you name it and they seem to just collect it here.

We pulled up to a parking lot right near village green to walk over for dessert at a restaurant called, "Hot Tomatoes". Located in the old Taft Hotel, where, believe it or not, President Taft used to stay, Hot Tomatoes now encompasses the old ballroom.

"Wow, the staircase in this restaurant looks just like a ballroom from some old Broadway show" I said.

"It's where Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote, the lyrics for 'Oklahoma'" Renny said and marked another point on her mental chart about why people should like New Haven. She giggled to herself.

We walked up the stairs and Margherita started swaying up the stairs preparing to make a "grand entrance". I ignored her as to not encourage her behavior and we ordered dessert.