We finally got out of New York and got to see stars – and some Trump supporters

In January we thought we were in for a year of travelling. In the end, it has taken us until August just to leave New York – and it was perfect apart from the Trump supporters, writes Holly Baxter

The Connecticut beaches were largely empty (Getty)

A few days ago, I left New York City for the first time since January. At the beginning of 2020, my fiance and I got the first packed flight back on New Year’s Day and landed, bleary-eyed, in the middle of the afternoon. We were expecting to return in April and June for friends’ weddings, and then in August for our own. We even spoke about how exhausting 2020 would be, with all the travel it had in store for us. Little did we know.

New York is a wonderful place to live, and we feel lucky to be in a part of Brooklyn where it’s a 10-minute walk to the park and a 15-minute walk the other way to the waterfront. Nevertheless, too much time in the city can drive you a little insane. You begin to wonder what stars look like (in the sky, that is — celebrities are 10 a penny) or if you’ll ever hear silence again when you get into your seventh or eighth month of nonstop sirens. So we jumped at the chance to share a friend’s holiday home in a sleepy beach town in Connecticut — and, in true British fashion, we decided to trust the creaky US railway infrastructure to get us there.

The beaches outside New York City are so packed as to be their own deterrents, but here we were able to kick off and actually swim in the hermit crab-filled sea