An Insider’s Guide To Fairfield County

By Shannon Hicks

Trying to categorize the lower left-hand corner of New England — our home, Fairfield County —is, writes Trisha Blanchet, “like trying to eat ice cream with a fork. At first everything goes well. But the longer you keep at it, the more the good stuff seems to slip through those pesky prongs.”

Our region, she continues, “remains ripe with quirks and unanswerables.” While many Fairfield County residents consider themselves Yankees or Mets fans, she points out, rather than Red Sox fans, Fairfield County still retains the best “New England qualities” including greens and churches, historic homes, farmland, and four distinct seasons, among other features.

Ms Blanchet is the author of the recently released The Insiders’ Guide to Fairfield County, a paperback from Globe Pequot Press that is designed to help anyone navigate the complex, intriguing and fun Fairfield County way of life. The guide, promises its publisher, will aid newcomers with the basics — where to get a driver’s license, how to secure day care, where to find the best housing for their price range — as well as the other, equally pressing concerns of finding great sushi, hiking tails, and golf courses.

Insiders’ Guide to Fairfield County (ISBN 0-7627-2727-6) offers 336 pages, including six maps and 18 black and white photographs (including a handful by the author).

Ms Blanchet recognizes that while many celebrities have homes in Greenwich, Darien, and Westport, “people are more likely to run into a CEO than a movie star.” She also makes the point, in her Preface, to say that while rumors would have everyone outside Fairfield County think we’re well-to-do, that’s simply not the truth.

“Recent immigants, recent college grads, newlyweds, newcomers from other areas of the country — even longtime residents — are often shell-shocked by the high costs and struggle to make ends meet,” she writes.

After debunking those myths, Ms Blanchet follows the standard presentation that Insiders’ Guides have been offering to readers for more than two decades.  Her hope, she writes, is to help newcomers and residents alike find insight into lesser known corners of the region and places that readers may not yet have had the opportunity to explore.

Chapters concern Accommodations, Attractions (with a spread about some of the county’s rumored haunted places), Annual Events, Area Overview (with information about each town), and Arts.

Chapters also include Beaches, Parks & Recreation, Child Care, Day Trips & Getaways, Education, and Getting Here & Getting Around (transportation systems).

Health Care, History (including a two-page write-up about Danbury’s federal corrections institute and some of its most notorious inmates), “Kidstuff,” Media, Nightlife, Real Estate, Relocation, Restaurants, Shopping, and Worship are also the topics.

A chapter on Golf is unique to the Insiders’ Guide series. It pays homage, writes Ms Blanchet, to one of the region’s most popular activities with detailed informatin about local courses and clubs, both public and private.

Insiders’ Tips, placed throughout the book in bold type, offer insight and closeups on myriad topics, In the Area Overview chapter, for instance, there are ITs that mention Fairfield County’s median family income, why Stratford has long been considered the birthplace of American helicopter technology, and a hint at the statewide Bibliomation library system.

Ms Blanchet is a freelance writer and editor (she was the editor-in-chief and managing editor of the former Fairfield County magazine). Her work has appeared in a number of publications, and she has authored two guidebooks on traveling: Dog-Friendly New England: A Traveler’s Companion (2003) and Dog-Friendly New York: The Complete Guide to New York City and the Empire State (2004).

She and her family live in Monroe.

An imprint of Globe Pequot Press, The Insiders’ Guide series began with one local guidebook to North Carolina’s Outer Banks more than 20 years ago (Karen Bachman’s book, in fact, is now in its 25th edition). Today, the series has grown to encompass more than 60 cities and regional destinations in the United States and Bermuda.

The guidebooks can be found in the travel sections of nearly every major bookseller.

With a depth of content and detail unrivaled, The Insiders’ Guides are among the best guides available. Each is written by local authors with years of experience writing about their communities, so that the guides provide all readers — newcomer, visitor or business travelers — with a native’s perspective of the area.