Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • F5

THE HARTFORD COURANT SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015 F5 VING i WEB DEALS Germany Cruises; Packages To Paris, Rome 3 By PHIL MARTY Special to Tribune Newspapers Here are some of the more interesting deals, websites and other travel tidbits that came across our desk recently: If you like to plan well in advance, the Online Vacation Center has six-night Germany cruises aboard Viking Cruises in late 2016 priced from $1,949 per person double occupancy for a riverview cabin. That includes round-trip air from Boston or New York and a $500 gift card. Air add-on is $100 from Baltimore, Chicago or Orlando. 800-780-9002, http:tinyurl.comogcl6s6 Epicure.sb is a monthlong celebration of the culinary scene in Santa Barbara, Calif, with special events and festivals, tasting menus and lodging deals, http: tinyurl.com2vnfsfk EuropeanDestinations.com has a package that includes three nights each in Amsterdam, Paris and Rome, flights between cities and round-trip air. Cost depends on dates and city of departure.

We checked dates in late October from Chicago and turned up a price of $1,512 per person double occupancy. For the same date but from New York, the cost was just $1,390. http: tinyurl.compxr3l32 Hostel Fish is billed as an upscale hostel, offering rooms in downtown Denver from $45 a night per person plus tax. VIKING CRUISES UNIWORLD.COM THE VIKING FREYA on the Danube River at Durnstein, Germany. A BRIGHTLY LIGHTED view of the Douro River in Portugal.

Look at foodie tours in San Francisco at http: tinyurl.como5xrdm6. Hurtigruten is so confident you'll see the Northern Lights on its classic Norway winter cruise that the company says if you don't, it'll give you another voyage free, http: tinyurl.comoyruv88 CruiseCritic.com compares Norwegian Cruise Line vs. Carnival Cruise Line at http: tinyurl.comqjlbatd. NightSwapping matches travelers around the world looking to share homestays. www.nightswapping.com Ding Darling Days will be Oct.

18-24 at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Fla. http:tinyurl.compuewpvk Prices include taxes and fee unless otherwise noted. Deals and websites listed here have been checked for availability as of press time, but the listings are not an endorsement. 303-954-0962, www.hostelfish.com. Uniworld Boutique River Cruises has brochures for its 2016 offerings available online or by mail if you go to http: tinyurl.compn62bwe.

SmarterTravel.com lists 11 ultra-packable dresses for travel at http:tinyurl.como5l9x8u. SmarTours has its listing of 2016 Europe tours available at http: tinyurl.como9cwn2b. STEPHEN DUNN I SDUNNCOURANT.COM IN TOURS of the Leffingwell House Museum, Greg Farlow can point to a compelling collection of art, decorative pieces and items for domestic use. Below, the gravesite of Connecticut Gov. Samuel Huntington, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a distinguished statesman.

Daycation Continued from Page Fl Uncas and the 1643 Battle of the Great Plain between the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes. It's a majestic site, surrounded by mill housing and mills that have been converted to waterfront apartments. Norwich is a walking city with a handful of distinctive trails. The website of the Norwich Community Development Corporation (http:www.askncdc.com) provides links to downloadable illustrated walking tours about Historic Broadway Union Streets, Historic Washington Broad, Historic Norwichtown and the Old Norwichtown Burial Ground, a veritable outdoor museum of folk art. There you'll find the graves of Samuel Huntington, the first president of the united colonies under the Articles of Confederation (1778); Benedict Arnold's mother (he was raised in Norwich); a monument to LaFayette's French soldiers, who died here during the American Revolution; Boston Trowtrow, the only one of Connecticut's Black Governors whose grave is marked; and some of the most beloved folk sculpture in New England.

It is an enchanting environment accessed by a narrow alley at the south edge of Norwichtown Green. Norwichtown was the original town center. Norwich is well-preserved because the industrial age center of town was built up a distance from the original center of town at the port and railroad terminus on the Thames River. As a result Norwich has one of the largest concentrations of 18th- and early 19th-century houses in New England. One of them is the Leffingwell House Museum (www.leffingwellhouse museum.org), 348 Washington in Norwichtown.

The earliest part of the house dates to the 17th century. It was expanded to its present size by Christopher Leffingwell, an early industrialist and ardent patriot in the American Revolution who helped finance the classical sculpture the finest such collection still intact and on display anywhere in the U.S. Kent, who went on to become one of the founders of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was a curatorial prodigy who built a remarkable collection of Norwichiana, Asian art, African art and more. Rich Art History Norwich has a vibrant art history, more in the crafts than painting and sculpture. One local painter stands out, John Denison Crocker (1822-1907), who spent most of his life in Norwich.

He worked in the style of the Hudson River School, producing numerous scenes of his native southeastern Connecticut and of Norwich. The Slater devotes an entire gallery to this artist's work and story. Part of Slater's appeal is that it remained frozen an in amber through most of the 20th century while other art museums rooted in the 19th century went modern. No museum in the country better conveys what Victorians had in mind when they created America's first art museums. In the 1960s, when art museums everywhere dumped regional artists in favor of "cutting-edge" art from New York, the Slater gave sanctuary to the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts.

Exhibiting the work of Connecticut artists and craftsmen, in addition to serving the needs of the Norwich Free Academy, is the museum's primary work. In the Taftville section of town stands the Taftville Cotton Ponemah Mill, a gargantuan French Second Empire building that, when completed in 1875, was one of the largest buildings in New England. The name "Ponemah" was taken from Longfellow's poem, "The Song of Hiawatha," meaning "our hope." At its peak, the Ponemah Mill employed 1,600 workers and produced more than 20 million yards of cloth a year. The company was the first importer and user of Egyptian cotton in the United States, and one of the first mills in the country to manufacture fine fabrics. Breathtaking in scale, ornament and setting on the Shetucket River, Ponemah Mill is Connecticut's most iconic cathedral of the Industrial Age.

Frances Calkins wrote the town history in the 1850s these are among the treasures you'll find there. The Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution owns and operates the Perkins-Rockwell House museum. Between the two of them is an abundance of local cultural material as deep and rich as any town in Connecticut. The crown jewel among Norwich's cultural treasures is the Slater Memorial Museum (www.slatermuseum.org), Crescent Street, on the campus of Norwich Free Academy. In 1888, William Albert Slater engaged Worcester architect Stephen Earle to create a masterpiece of Romanesque Revival design, founding what became the first municipal art museum in Connecticut.

The Slaters were renowned Rhode Island industrialists. The museum got off to a great start by hiring Henry Watson Kent as its founding curator and engaging Edward Robinson from the Museum of Fine Art, Boston to build a collection of cast plaster replicas of arts and articles of domestic use. Norwich was the first important center of silversmithing and clockmakingin Connecticut a story well-represented. Some of the earliest Connecticut needlework, the key to Benedict Arnold's house, local industrial products, a surgeon's chest used by Dr. Phillip Turner in the American Revolution and the desk where Benedict Arnold's expedition to Fort Ticonderoga.

Leffingwell was a pioneer in the manufacture of paper. He also owned a woolen mill and Connecticut's first chocolate mill. Owned and operated by the Society of the Founders of Norwich, the museum presents a remarkable collection of locally made and owned art, decorative Shopping Continued from Page Fl attractions. Information: http: visitniagarafallsusacom book-a-package. Surfside Hotel Suites in Provincetown, has a Whale Watching Package available from Sept.

14 to Oct. 31. Rates start at $309 and include two nights stay and two tickets to the Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch. Information: 508-487-1726 or www.surfsideinn.cc. Red Roof Inn offers special senior savings in September.

Travelers 59 and over get 15 percent off through Sept. 30. Use Promo Code 607564 when making your reservation. ID required at check in. Information: www.redroof.compartners seniorsseptemberdeal.

Ride the rails to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and other Northeast destinations this fall, and you can save up to 25 percent off the lowest available coach fares with Amtrak's special Northeast Regional promotion. Online bookings only; 14-day advance purchase required. (Choose adult or child passenger type when booking to get the discounted fares.) More information at Amtrak.com. Here are some fall travel deals around the Northeast: Prices for the Discover Block Island package from Block Island Reservations, available Monday through Oct. 8, start at $359 for two, include two round-trip tickets on the traditional ferry from Point Judith, RL; two beverages on the ferry; lodging for two midweek nights at the Harborside Inn; a welcome gift bag; $100 in dining vouchers for Mohegan Cafe Brewery; and two bikes, two beach chairs and an umbrella to use during your stay.

(Includes taxes.) Information and reservation: 1-800-825-6254 or www.blockislandreservations.comspecials. Niagara Falls, NY, holds an End of Summer Sale throughout September with midweek vacation packages starting at $79 a night with such extras as dining credits and vouchers for various activities and Br KATHY BORCHERS I THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL PRICES FOR THE Discover Block Island package from Block Island Reservations, available Monday through Oct. 8, start at $359..