Town #86: South Windsor

We stopped at Mill on the River restaurant. We were seated between an elderly woman's 100th birthday party and an office of about 20 businessmen discussing golf and stock options. So the experience was a bit out of the usual.

The restaurant itself was very large, decorated somewhat formally, but it also had a more casual air. The menu was large, the food was good, and the price was less than I would have expected.

You walk over an enclosed foot bridge to get inside the restaurant. We should go back in the daytime as we've been told the restaurant is extremely picturesque.

Something else that is interesting about South Windsor is The Shops at Evergreen Walk. The shopping center itself isn't all that interesting, but its possible evolution is. South Windsor was historically a more agricultural town, but it also situated next to Manchester. Manchester has long been known for the Buckland Hill Mall and its shopping venues in general. After years of seeing how much revenue Manchester was making they decided to put in their own retail space. One of the most popular and successful malls in Connecticut is Westfarms, a "boutique" mall. My best definition for that would be trendy, upscale women's fashion chain stores. More recently The Shops at Farmington Valley were also opened in Canton. It's an open-air large-scale strip mall.

So, it seems like South Windsor is taking a cue from all three towns to create an outdoor, boutique mall with as many stores as possible.

The thing I find funny about this kind of shopping in Connecticut is that we don't have the climate for it. If it's not snowing, it's raining. I am surprised that Nutmeggers have taken to this kind of shopping so much. Perhaps, not being in a conventional mall makes the shopping feel less like shopping and more like going for a walk, but how many days of the year is it actually comfortable to shop in a spot like this?

Anyway, a lot of people don't know the Evergreen Walk shops are in South Windsor. Located on the border of South Windsor and Manchester, it's an easy cross over for Manchester shoppers, and a brilliant location on the part of South Windsor.

South Windsor stats:
Population: 25,985
Size: 28.7 square miles
Villages/Other Communities: East Windsor Hill, Wapping
Historic Places: East Windsor Hill Historic District, Elmore Houses, Windsor Farms Historic District

Town revisit: Bethlehem

This was our second visit to the town of Bethlehem.

For this trip we attended the town's annual garlic festival.

We found every product you could ever imagine made with garlic. We bought some garlic jelly and but we passed on the garlic oil.

Bruce had a lot of deep fried garlic--because it's not a New England festival/fair unless even the vegetables are deep fried.

As a note: garlic might be good for the digestion but too much deep fried garlic definitely does not have the same effect.

It wasn't all garlic though. We also found a lot of innovative products like the pesto we bought and fell in love with as well as many kinds of farm fresh produce. We can't wait until next year to go back!

And we're still planning on returning to visit that abbey...

Check out our first Bethlehem visit.