April 29, 2024

Just Moments

Travel Groove

A Unique Escape On Long Island Sound

Sited on the sandy shores of Very long Island Sound in Madison, Connecticut, the Madison Beach Resort is a four-period getaway, conveniently positioned about two hrs from both of those the New York Metropolis and Boston metropolitan areas.

In distinction to greater-recognized summer season meccas on the East Coast—like the Long Island Hamptons and Martha’s Winery south of Cape Cod—both the hotel and the quaint city of Madison are significantly a lot more relaxed, small-key, and mainly devoid of hordes of vacationers and working day-trippers.

Visitors at the Madison Seaside Hotel get pleasure from unique access to a personal beach front in a predominantly household community. Each individual of the visitor rooms, most with massive balconies, gives unobstructed sights of the Sound, a tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean.

When company go away the ground-to-ceiling French doors to their rooms open at night, they are lulled to slumber by ocean breezes and the seems of the waves lapping at the shore. The morning views of the dawn are magnificent.

A a single-of-a-variety residence

With only 33 rooms in full, this boutique, four-story resort retains the distinction of being the smallest Hilton-branded home in the planet. While aspect of the prestigious Curio Collection by Hilton (and its related Hilton guest loyalty software), the assets is independently owned and managed by Henry (Ric) and Dawn Duques.

Also location it apart: The Madison Beach front Lodge is the only lodge in a quaint, household city with valuable number of accommodations for right away visitors except a handful of BnBs.

The historic roots of this beachfront residence run deep. To start with a boarding house (at first referred to as the Flower Home) for shipbuilders passing as a result of town in the 1800s. Afterwards turned into a lodge, it has wooed site visitors to the similar location for some two hundred several years. When rail services changed picket sailing ships for transporting cargo alongside the coastline, town dwellers took to the rails to devote their summers at shoreline cities like Madison.

Devoted patrons of Madison Seashore

From the age of 9, Ric Duques (now a philanthropist and retired Chairman and CEO of Initially Information Corp) invested his summers at his family members beach front home in Madison, actively playing on the rocks in close proximity to the lodge. His grandfather experienced been the town’s initially postmaster and Duques cherishes the reminiscences of the time he expended on the seaside.

More than the decades, the unique rickety picket lodge perched on a impressive piece of land fell into disrepair, becoming structurally unsound and an eyesore on the scenic shoreline.

Coupling his really like for the town, his small business acumen, and an “I can fix anything” perspective, he and his wife, Dawn, resolved to acquire the house in 2006 and embark on an bold task to restore the dilapidated Madison Beach front Lodge. They hoped to preserve the property’s gracious New England come to feel while modernizing its rooms and solutions.

Even so, the pair identified that the outdated constructing was in this kind of inadequate affliction that it couldn’t be salvaged. Undaunted, they basically had to begin from the floor up, starting up with a new foundation to satisfy contemporary shoreline building requirements. An expected two-yr venture took extra than 3 decades to finish.

A conventional resort reimagined for the instances

The reimagined Madison Seashore Hotel, which opened in June 2012, sits in the very same footprint as the first. When the quantity of rooms continues to be the identical, inside hallways with a nautical motif have changed outdoor catwalks. Nevertheless, the grey and white shingled exterior is continue to reminiscent of a 19th-century New England guest dwelling or inn.

Open up for lunch, supper, and continental breakfast, the on-web-site Wharf Cafe features inside eating as perfectly as alfresco eating on its previous-fashioned wraparound porch. The menus of the new chef at its helm, Chef Brian Warmingham, emphasize fresh new, nearby, and seasonal ingredients—of class, emphasizing fresh new seafood.

Visitors can revitalize their minds and bodies at the hotel’s exercise heart and at the total-service Appears of the Sea Spa. If they can pull them selves absent from the assets, they can go to the museums and shown historic sites in the city, or wander or bicycle to the lively city heart (fewer than a mile absent) lined with coffee outlets, eateries, an impartial cinema, present retailers, and clothes boutiques.

Based on the time of 12 months, the resort attributes a strong calendar of getaway-themed and gourmet foodstuff/wine activities as nicely as out of doors live shows on the lawn, temperature allowing.

Pressured to near for almost 6 months for the duration of the height of the pandemic, occupancy premiums at the Madison Seashore Resort looks to have returned to pre-pandemic stages, with men and women in search of getaways nearer to residence. A lot of company return calendar year right after calendar year to rest and recharge in an idyllic placing that is near to property but a little bit off the crushed path. And offered its diminutive dimensions, the services is dependably warm and own.


Information on rooms at costs at the Madison Beach Resort

Facts on Madison, CT from the Madison Chamber of Commerce

Information on acquiring to Madison, CT