I went to a business meeting for 2 days in June 2005 in Hartford, Connecticut, on the east coast of the USA about halfway between NYC and Boston. Hartford is known as “insurance city”, as over 40 insurance companies are based there. I hadn’t been to the east coast since I was a teenager, so I was pretty excited about going back. Let me tell you though, if you ever plan a trip to the east coast of the USA, avoid Hartford like the plague!! Stay in New York or Boston, but don’t go to Hartford! For being such a prominent city for the business of insurance and the capital of the state of Connecticut, I was shocked to see how run-down the city was, and I didn’t feel that safe walking around there in the evening. The capital building was nice, but it’s hard to find anything else redeeming about the city. It is very poor, and there seems to be a gang problem, and there are police everywhere. There are no good restaurants and all the shops seem to close by 7PM. The summer weather is even very hot and unpleasantly humid. I feel fortunate that most of my time in the city was spent in the safe, air-conditioned conference room of a hotel. Lots of people work in Hartford but most of them live outside of the city (and I don’t blame them at all!) and commute there to work from the suburbs. The nice, talkative taxi driver who took me back to the airport (I remember her particularly because she said she couldn’t believe I was 27 and that I looked like a teenager and too young to be going to Hartford for business… this was the highlight of my trip) said she felt bad that Hartford is the only encounter many people have with Connecticut since Connecticut, she said, is actually a beautiful state… I don’t doubt what she said because from the parts outside of Hartford that I did see, I get the impression it is a very nice place with green everywhere, and I hope that in the future I will have to opportunity to explore the rest of the state…