Lyme Street, Old Lyme

Old Lyme is renowned for its museums and galleries and its history as an art colony. But just a short walk from local institutions like the Florence Griswold Museum and the Lyme Art Association is a town center that's as lovely as any American Impressionist masterpiece.

Old Lyme is one of those pretty Connecticut places that strike first-time visitors as almost too adorable to be true. And even though I've now driven down the main road, called Lyme Street, many times, I've never quite gotten used to how it always looks so perfectly picturesque.