A shorter ride today as I crossed over via ferry from Long Island to bicycle along the Connecticut shore to New Haven

• High light: A beautiful day for a bicycle ride
• Low light: Sometimes you should believe the reviews

I was ~10 miles from the ferry terminal. There is a 7:30 am ferry and a 9:00 am ferry. While I probably could have pushed it to make it in time for the 9am, I decided to follow my regular routine: wake at 6am, on the road by 6:30am and taking my time to explore.

The photo above shows some of the early morning terrain. Somehow reminded me some of Cape Cod when I used to bicycle there. Quiet little places and each one proclaiming themselves as Village of <X>. It was a nice morning ride and without much difficulty I found my way to the ferry.

I got a senior rate! I just met the cutoff age for senior citizens so saved on my one-way fare. The bicycle went for free. The complete list of fares are listed below.

One of the boats was already there, though it turned out we went on the other one that just arrived.

At 8:15 the kiosk opened and they started selling passenger tickets. My guess is there were ~20 people boarding as just passengers and somewhere between 50-60 vehicles on board. The vehicle space completely filled up. I found the elevator to squeeze in my bicycle and go up to the second floor. There was a large passenger area here with places to sit. I took a few spots to lean my bicycle but there seemed to be enough room. After the pedestrians came up, it filled further wit everyone from their cars.

The journey was otherwise uneventful. I was facing the interior so didn’t see much from deck or outside, though my impression was you could always see land on both sides.

A picture of all those cars waiting to leave. The middle rows were 10 deep and there were five rows across the bottom and four rows up top, so perhaps more than 70 cars. Most with New York license places.

Fortunate get everything sorted out and off the boat by 10:30 am. It took a little to figure my way through downtown Bridgeport but eventually I was on the coastal route again. This was once again part of the East Coast Greenway route, though I had created a duplicate of my route to load into GPS.

It was just a stunning beautiful day for a bicycle ride. Clear skies, sunny and not too warm. Seemed like people were out. In small town of Milford there was a bustling farmers market. Along the way, one group was sponsoring a car wash, another had two young ladies selling girl scout cookies. It had a nice festive feel and great day for a ride.

A photo of the bicycle with Long Island Sound behind, just for fun.

As I got close to New Haven, it was a little tougher finding my way. Above was one short section that turned into a wild trail. Other sections were right along the beach with many pedestrians out an walking around including on the path so that was slow. However, was making good progress and planned an easy day with only 35 miles for today. My intended destination was a motel on the east side of New Haven.

In my perception, the Days Inn in Foxon Boulevard is a shady operation – but let me explain what I observed…

• I got to the hotel about 2:15 pm and asked for the room rate and was told $147.
• I acted surprised since I had seen the same room listed for $83 (now this was $87 + $4 Expedia discount) – how could that be?
• The clerk said, they didn’t have any rooms for the Expedia rate.
• So I asked, what would happen if I went and now booked on Expedia for that $83.
• The clerk told me I would still be charged an extra $100 deposit if I booked on Expedia.
• I said OK, if that was a deposit, and suggested I would book on Expedia.
• The clerk got flustered, decided now that they would be full – and if I booked on Expedia they couldn’t honor it because they had just become full. In fact, they had just become full and didn’t even have any of those rooms at $147 any more.

I told him I wanted to follow up to report this including with Expedia since it didn’t seem like this hotel was following their agreements (still need to do this). In any case, there are a lot of other motels in New Haven, so I found one six miles closer to Hartford, my destination for tomorrow.

Here is a screen shot from my phone *after* the interaction where he said he had no rooms – showing Expedia was still letting me pick a room. These are among the reasons I think Days Inn New Haven is a shady operation. Now sometimes you can also find reviews on sites like yelp. Here is the one for this Days Inn…

Organize the reviews by newest first and you’ll see almost all the new ones are one star ratings (I’ll add one later as well). Normally I am willing to discount some of these poor reviews. After all, I’ve stayed for $3/night in Bolivia and $2/night in India. So a bed and a shower with hot water – and a western style toilet and this is a step up from some of my travels. Besides this was across from a Walmart which would be good opportunity to get some grocery items. However, in the case of basic dishonesty on part of staff, I’ll draw the line and put this establishment below those places from Bolivia or India.

Strava for this morning – and to the next motel – totals 35.01+6.07 miles with moving time of 3:39:38+38:49 and average speed of 9.7mph. 1250 feet of elevation gain and 3036 calories burned.