Olana above the Hudson

In the end we didn’t go to the movies last night.  Instead we had a lovely meal at home with our friends and hopped off to bed.   This morning, though, we were awake early and on a tour of Olana, the home of Frederick Church, on a bluff over the Hudson.

Olana was built before the end of the nineteenth century and is a magnificent pile of Middle Eastern style, filled with lovely antiques acquired by the artist and his wife around the world.   Church was one of the leading members of the sublime Hudson River school of painting, with magnificent scenes set against overwhelmingly strong clouds and blue skies.   

The home, now owned by the State of New York, is undergoing continuing preservation--first class all the way.   Its views are fabulous.  Church, of course, died in 1900, but the home was owned by his widow for many years and then by a nephew, who in the end sold it to the state for $470,000.  It’s been a museum since the 1960s.

To complete the day we lunched at le Gamin on Warren Street in Hudson, enjoying the salads from the French kitchen and watching the world go by.  Ben found a new coffee shop, Parlor Coffee and Tea, which was cute but not as good as Nolita or some of our other finds.  

A new trip North...

We’re undertaking a grand swing through the northern states of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut for the next two weeks, first to meet our new grandson outside Boston, go to John’s 50th High School Reunion in Barrington, Rhode Island, and, too, visit with friends in Upstate New York, Bristol and Tiverton, Rhode Island and John’s brother in Connecticut, where we’ll visit the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan.

Our first stop is the home of our friend’s David and Andy in Craryville.  This is not our first trip here, but the site is grand and the hospitality is even better.   We get to do pooch playing with their dog Cooper, sit with wine in hand and watch the sun go down over the Taconic Mountains, and visit such interesting towns as Hudson and the village of Claverack.

Our trip up from Washington included a new find.   We’ve been searching for properly made and properly crisped spanakopita between Washington and New York.  We think we have exhausted most of the options within ten miles of exits on the New Jersey Turnpike available about the time we want to eat lunch.  This trip because we were not using the turnpike, instead coming a more inland route through Wilmington, Philadelphia and Princeton on our way to upstate New York, John ventured on to the web to find Greek restaurants between Philadelphia and the New York border for a stop for lunch.  Lo and behold, it has been found--the appropriate Greek restaurant with spanakopita made daily and roasted in an oven, not zapped in a microwave.  Mikonos Restaurant, 2.7 miles from I-95 just north of Trenton is the place.  Ben’s spinach pie was superb, John’s lamb and beef souvlaki was a joy top chomp on, and the service was great.  The price was good too.

We had our coffee, of course, at Brew Haha in Wilmington, Delaware, and again at Starbucks later in the afternoon, arriving in Craryville, New york eight hours and ten minutes later to good wines, good conversation and absolutely gorgeous inch-thick steaks.

This morning, we headed out to Hudson, one of the East’s major antique centers.  Wednesday is closed-day, but several places were open, enough to enjoy the ambiance, but without crowds of day-trippers or overnighters from New York City clogging the sidewalks.

We managed not only to walk the length of Warren Street, through its centuries of architecture, stopping for a few minutes to look over the Hudson from the point where sitings would occur of returning whalers in the 1820s.  Hudson, even though it is 100 miles inland, was a major whaling port, like New Bedford.  It fell on hard times after the Second World War and is only now recovering as it turns itself into an antique and artists community.   

We had our coffee at Nolita’s, a lesbian vegetarian coffee shop, which was definitely up to Ben’s demanding extra-extra dry skim textured cappuccino.  Lunch was lovely falafel and baba ganoush at Park Falafel and Pizza, a kosher vegetarian restaurant, where we dined on the sidewalk. 

On the way to Hudson we stopped in Claverack--the area is loaded with Dutch names, from its days as a Dutch colony before 1664--to see the dam and mill there, a site that has always interested John.   On our return, we passed a junkyard with old English cars in it.  John thinks the Austin was a 1953 Austin, and a Rover 2000 dated from about 1958.

Tonight we go see a movie about Marie Antoinette and tomorrow head off to Olana, the site of Church’s magnificent 19th century Hudson Valley school paintings.

     

An Update on Summer

We know, it’s been a few months since we wrote anything on the blog.  We can only say that it’s been a busy summer.

Our trips to the Beach were lovely.  We spent a weekend in July in Asbury Park with friends Pat and Michael, and an old friend from Pittsburgh, Chucky.   We had a great afternoon at the beach with all the eye candy and even did a tea dance at a bar there.   The bodies are great looking except for the the god-awful tattoos everywhere.  What are they thinking inking themselves.  When the flesh begins to sag all those pictures will look more like Dali than David.

In Rehoboth, we enjoyed another weekend with old friend Tom, and had dinner with friends from Washington, now retired to the beach, Kevin and Tim.  A fine evening at Aqua, one of the local watering holes, and dinner at Mixx, both lots of fun.   The eye candy is a bit more restrained at Rehoboth compared to the Jersey shore, but fun anyway.   

We had a number of birthday parties and visits from friends, so it's been a good but somewhat quiet and hot summer.