Southern New England Tour Guide (Or Why It's Never a Good Idea to Drink in Hartford at 3pm on a Monday Afternoon)

Even though I work out of my house when I'm not travelling, my company is a real business with a "headquarters" office and everything. Since most of my colleagues live outside of New York City, we rarely have company wide meetings that require us to travel to the main office in the Stamford area. There's about 150 glorious miles of I-95 between my house and Stamford, most of which stretches through some of the worst commutes in the country. Rather than listen to an endless loop of Pink and Kanye on KC101 while gridlocked in New Haven, I usually use company meetings as an excuse to drop in on my friend T in Hartford.

Hartford is one of those cities that has way worse of a rep than it actually is. I mean, if you blind folded someone and dropped them off in the Capitol area and asked them to guess where they were, they would never in a billion years guess that they were in Hartford. Hartford is the Insurance Capitol of the World, which means that if there wasn't a mad rush back to West Hartford and Glastonbury during the 5 o'clock dash, there'd be a good chance that you'd meet someone with a good job at a bar.

The streets of Hartford after work are pretty desolate, which is truly a shame since unlike Massachusetts, Happy Hour is alive and well in the Constitution State. T and I met up with her friend at Bin 228 on Pearl Street a wine/bistro that offered bottles of wine at half price until 7pm. I cleared the tab at the next bar (an upscale Irish pub) and couldn't figure out if my scotch had just hit me really funny of if the bar tender had made a mistake - a Blue Moon, a Grey Goose and Tonic, and a Glenlivet rang in at $17. I didn't drink much at the next bar (driving) but they were also offering half price bottles of wine for the entire evening.

If you're young and single, you probably won't meet anyone under the age of 200 at any bar in Hartford. However, the locals are friendly enough. One very inebriated guy in his early 60's walked up to us with his a plate of cheesecake pickings and asked us if we wanted it. I can't say that's ever happened to me in Boston but it was certainly a warm (and gross, unsanitary) gesture.

Meanwhile the Red Sox were getting crushed, though nobody at any of the bars seemed even remotely aware of this fact. As T and her friend walked me back to my car (plenty of free street parking!), T stopped to remind me that we were in the "bad" part of Hartford. After quickly replying "Seriously? How can you tell?" I looked around and realized that the area wasn't any better or worse the Broadway section of South Boston.

Hartford is hardly a vacation destination, but if you're stuck there for work or pleasure rest assured that it's seriously not that bad. It doesn't have the charm of Boston or the attitude of New York, but you can eat, drink, and play without breaking the bank (or possibly getting shot). Best of all, when things get dicey you can click your heels and be on your merry way to Boston in under 90 minutes.