4 Best Sights in Farmington, Hartford and the Connecticut River Valley

An important stop for art lovers, this 100-year-old museum's collection of more than 8,500 works, from 1740 to the present, focuses solely on American art. Among its treasures are paintings by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as sculpture by Isamu Noguchi. Of particular note is the selection of Impressionist artists, including Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and John Henry Twachtman, as well as Thomas Hart Benton's five-panel mural The Arts of Life in America. The museum also has a café, a large shop, and a library of art books.

The more than 100 aircraft at this museum include gliders and helicopters, a World War II–era P-47 Thunderbolt, and a B-29 Superfortress, along with other vintage fighters and bombers—and an extensive collection of engines, instruments, parts, uniforms, and personal memorabilia. There's even a fighter-jet simulator. Next to Bradley International Airport, the museum also frequently holds open-cockpit days, allowing both young and old to play pilot.

Converted from a private home into a museum by its talented owner, turn-of-the-20th-century female architect (unusual at the time) Theodate Pope, the house has a superb collection of French Impressionist art displayed in situ, including Claude Monet's Grainstacks and Edouard Manet's The Guitar Player hanging in the drawing room. Poetry readings take place in the elaborate Beatrix Farrand–designed sunken garden every other week in summer.

Opened in 1846, the country's oldest amusement park is known to locals simply as "The Lake." Today's attractions include a lakefront beach, a water park, and a clipper ship with a 300-gallon bucket of water that gives unsuspecting guests a good dousing. There are also some pretty hair-raising rides, such as the Sky Coaster, Wildcat (New England's oldest roller coaster), Boulder Dash ("World's #1 wooden coaster"), and Zoomerang.