Mystic is a name that travels far beyond its size, and it earns it with ships and pizza in roughly equal measure. The town sits where the Mystic River broadens into a tidal estuary just before Fishers Island Sound, and for much of the nineteenth century its shipyards turned out fast clippers and whalers. That history is preserved at Mystic Seaport, an open-air museum of a whole waterfront village, with tall ships, old workshops and the Charles W. Morgan, a whaler launched in 1841 that is the last wooden whaling ship in the world.
Then there is the film. Mystic Pizza, a 1988 movie with a young Julia Roberts, was set in and named after a real pizza place on the main street, and the restaurant still draws visitors who want to see where it started. The town's other famous feature is its drawbridge, a double-leaf bascule bridge over the river that has opened and closed for boats since the early twentieth century. When it lifts, the main road stops, so allow a little extra time and watch the sailboats pass.
From Mystic, the best riding is eastward. Stonington Borough, a few miles on, is a fishing village at the end of a narrow peninsula, with a working lobster fleet, tight streets, lighthouse and clapboard houses. Noank, to the west, is a little village of boatyards and seafood shacks that looks much as it did a century ago. The roads between are narrow and slow, with marsh views and occasional glimpses of the sound, and the surface is serviceable but patched. A mid-weekday morning is the quiet time; summer weekends fill every lane with visitors.
The town is compact, with parking that is tight in July. Fuel is available on the main road and near the interstate exit, and food of every kind is easy to find: chowder, lobster rolls, and the usual ice cream. The Pequot War's grim history is also here, as a fort stood in this area in 1637, and the Pequot people's descendants run the big casino in nearby Ledyard. Fog is common in spring, so dress for damp.