That right there is a quarter pound hot lobster roll from Abbott's, in Noank, Connecticut, on a beautiful, hot summer road-trip weekend. Yes, it is imposing - all of those large lumps of lobster looming over that toasted bottom bun. But it was actually quite manageable, and very tasty.

Abbott's is only open in the summer time. It is set right on the water and we watched more than one patron arrive by boat, disembarking in their bare feet to order a feast of fast food from the sea.

Noank was actually the second stop on this little excursion, which we took a few weeks ago, before Marissa left for Seattle for 10 days. The first was Stonington, a quintessential New England seaside town, where we ate Portuguese eggs for breakfast at a place called Noah's and wandered among cute little houses dating from the 18th century as we worked up an appetite for lobster rolls.

To me, the town of Stonington had a well-taken-care-of feel to it. Nicely preserved old homes and some really plush-looking new ones. My first impression was that people enjoy leisure time in Stonington and, judging from the license plates, many of them come from New York City to do so.

If Stonington was the blue-blood of our trip, Mystic was the blue collar. Our third stop for the day definitely felt more like the seaside tourist town for the rest of us. Crowded, with an ice cream or T-shirt shop every few steps and gaggles of children running across the drawbridge while traffic crawled by.

It was a warm day and by this time in the afternoon I needed a beer. We stopped at a little Irish tavern - whose name I can't remember - just down from the bridge. And when I say little I mean little. One open room with a miniature pool table, a couple of booths and the bar. But they had a variety of good local beers on tap and Guinness of course, and the owner/bartender was friendly. They also had one of those maps of Ireland on the wall where you can trace your family roots. Marissa found the area her Irish side is from. I couldn't find mine.

So we had a beer, looked for our Irish peeps, and just took it easy while the hottest time of the day came and went. Shortly after, we walked to the car and headed inland, back to our home-for-now.

It was a day well spent. Sometimes you've just got to get out of the house and get somewhere - and for us that weekend, the Connecticut coast was a good place to get to.