From bark or vine to bottle

Warm and nice weather on Saturday. We were picked up shortly after 8 am for our first stop: the FDR Presidential Library. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, short "FDR", was the 32nd U.S. President (1933-1945) and the first one who introduced the custom of "Presidential Libraries" when he was still in office. Besides having been re-elected three times, he was a real character, an energetic "doer" and a people's man.

Most remarkable is, that he was paralyzed from the waist down because of polio, which he got when he was 39 years old, before his presidency. Since in the old times a physical handicap was considered a no-no in such a position, he sort of pretended to have overcome polio and with the help of heavy metal braces on his legs, a cane and an aide, he always walked a couple of steps at public appearances and hid his inability perfectly. Most people in America didn't know that he was paralyzed and that his legs were completely useless. In the house he used a wooden wheelchair and a dump elevator to hoist himself up to the upper floors pulling ropes.

The promenade, FDR used to exercise with his crutches, and his modestt gravesite in the rosegarden:



His wife, Eleanor, a distinct relative from another branch of the Roosevelt family, was a highly intelligent and personable First Lady, involved in human and civil rights, a writer and fighter for justice and FDR's best adviser.

Besides the Presidential Library and the Visitor Center there is the FDR House (pic), called "Springwood", owned and reigned by FDR's mother, Sara, open for tours. The mansion is surrounded by a huge park, plus a Rose Garden with the family grave sites. The exhibitions in the Library tell the story of the Roosevelt presidency beginning in the Great Depression and continuing through the New Deal and World War II. The Oval Office Desk and FDR's Ford Phaeton are to be seen and besides his merits during the presidency, topics like the deal with the "Japanese American Internment," the Holocaust, his Health, the Fireside Chats on radio, which he introduced, are dealt with.



Across the street from the FDR's estate: Hyde Park Brewing Company - our lunch stop after the highly interesting FDR Library. Sitting outside, on the patio in the sun, we enjoyed samplers of their German style beer, for which they are known, going well with Bratwurst and Knockwurst with Sauerkraut and "German Potato Salad".

It's been a little drive through the woods - beautiful in the sun - and, thankfully we didn't have to drive ourselves (without GPS a challenge!), to the Madava Farms/Crown Maple Estate in Dover Plains. They are famous for their gourmet maple syrup, using state-of-the-art production technology and extremely high purity standards. The sap (tree juice) used for the syrup comes from around 50,000 sugar and red maple trees on the grounds, which is, considering that it takes 40-50 gallons of sap to make a gallon of pure maple syrup, not too surprising. The method used is highly technical, with Reverse Osmosis to remove water and produce a concentrate, which is pumped into an „Evaporator“ and only quickly heated there before filtered twice and pumped into barrels for storage until bottling. Much different from the small sugarhouses we have seen in New Hampshire and Vermont in the past!

Millbrook Winery - horribly busy, city dwellers from NYC all over, visiting this apparently very popular winery with two large tasting rooms, wine and cheese room and a new balcony with great Catskill Mountain views. The winery is housed in a former dairy barn on a hilltop, surrounded by lakes. We got a regular tour and tasting there - after some waiting time - and got to know that besides wines (partly with grapes from California), the company also owns olive groves in Italy and produce their own olive oil.

Another highlight of the day: the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, the possibly most prestigious cooking school in the world. They have branches in San Antonio/TX and Napa/California which we have both visited before, plus a new one in Singapore. The campus alone, directly on the bench of the Hudson River (pic), all green and nicely manicured, and the main building, a former Jesuit college/monastery, are worth a visit! We got a tour through the different kitchens and halls by a very young student who wants to open a croissant bakery in NYC once he has accomplished his bachelor's degree (4 years). A year in this highly reputed college costs around $ 40,000, all included, especially gourmet meals, and most probably also a job after studies.





Not quite a CIA meal, but great prime rib, that's what we had afterwards in the "Shadows on the Hudson". The great views towards the river came for free, in addition. Back to the hotel a little after 8 pm, it's been a busy and interesting day in the Hudson Valley.

Through Leatherstocking's homeland to Poughkeepsie

We left Niagara Falls (pic from hotel room on the left) before 8 am, after a light hotel breakfast, towards Buffalo on I 90 and on the toll road, called NY Thruway (which cost us almost $ 15 toll) on to Mohawk. Since we only took two brief pit stops and made good time, we decided to scratch off one other destination on our bucket list: Cooperstown.

Though we had to take back-roads and made slower progress, SR 28 eventually brought us into this town, which became famous for two things: the author James Fenimore Cooper and his "Leatherstocking" ("Lederstrumpf") and the Baseball Hall of Fame. The location of the town is beautiful, surrounded by lakes and all green, and in the sun the trees were just gorgeous, all in red and orange. We parked on Main Street (pic) and checked out what's there, noting that there is no single remembrance of Cooper and Leatherstocking in town, not even a bar or café by this name! In this regard we were terribly disappointed. We peeked into the Baseball Hall of Fame (pics below), but couldn't visit long, since we were expected in Poughkeepsie at 4 pm at the latest and still had about 150 mi. to drive.

The drive on curvy SR 80 along "Glimmerglass Lake", how Otsego Lake is nicknamed after James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales – at least this name sticked – was beautiful, but, unfortunately, didn't have time to stop.

On to Hwy. 20 into Albany, New York State's capital. Driving along the west bank of the Hudson River we finally crossed the crazy-busy FDR Mid-Hudson Bridge (pic) into Poughkeepsie and, fortunately, didn't get lost and found the hotel immediately, where our contact from Upstate NY was already waiting for us. 400 mi/640 km driven, we left the hotel again after 15 minutes, to walk the famous "Walkway Over the Hudson" State Historic Park, the world's longest elevated pedestrian bridge, spanning 1.3 mi/2 km over the Hudson River, 212 ft (65 m) high up. Opened in 2009, the park is popular for pedestrians, hikers, joggers, bicyclists. Originally it was a railroad bridge, built in the late 19th century to link New York and New England.

On to the town of Rhinebeck then, 17 mi (27 km) south of Poughkeepsie, the Dutchess County seat. 1686 a group of Dutch, led by Henry Beekman, had crossed the river and bought land from the local Iroquois nation. In 1715, Beekman's son brought in 35 German Palatines (Pfälzer) who had fled religious persecution at home and that's where the Germans come into the mix. The village grew, churches and houses were built and
today, the town's historic district is one of the best examples of the early use of the Gothic Revival style in residential architecture.

Terrapin Restaurant, situated in a historic, renovated church building, the former First Baptist church of Rhinebeck from circa 1825, was a unique place: great meals (steak/beef short rip) served under cathedral ceilings and church windows... Back at our Residence Inn 3-bedroom-apartment in the outskirts of Poughkeepsie around 9 pm, working still till 11 pm.

Water - all over the place!

Right now, we are only about 80 mi. away from NYC, in Poughkeepsie, in a Residence Inn Hotel. It's been a long day: we got up before 7 am, drove 400 mi (640 km) from Niagara Falls to the south, partly on backroads, and arriving at 3:45 pm at the hotel, a tourism rep was already expecting us in the lobby. We threw the luggage into our 2-bedroom-suite and out we were again. Back to the hotel at 8:45 pm - that's why we are getting aggravated when somebody is calling this kind of traveling "vacation". So tired,,, but back to our adventures at Niagara Falls.

On Wednesday evening we had arrived in Niagara Falls and checked in The Giacomo Hotel, a 40-room boutique hotel in an Office Building from 1929 in beautiful art deco style - the tallest skyscraper in town. Rooms are nicely furnished and equipped, but best was the view from our corner room towards the high-rises on the Canadian side and the Falls (see pic before).

Krystina from Niagara Tourism picked us up at 6 pm - we had about half hour to "rest" - and she drove us to Lewiston, a town with an attractive main street, situated on the Niagara River, just across the river from Canada. Many thousands of years ago, the famous Niagara Falls has eroded nearly 7 miles south from Lewiston to its present location in Niagara Falls. We had a superb (and quiet) dinner at Carmelo's: duck breast with a heavenly maple syrup sauce and NY strip steak with a delicious mushroom-spinach concoction for Peter accompanied by a glass of local Riesling. Though it was getting late, we still enjoyed the view towards the illuminated falls from the hotel lounge on the 19th floor.

Cold - we've been told later it's been the first frost in the area -, but sunny - the next morning. How fortunate we were: blue skies and, also, to have Krystina to drive us around. She picked us up at the hotel and after breakfast we explored the Niagara Falls State Park, first the "Cave of the Winds" (a walkway down to the Falls) with its new "The World Changed Here"-Pavilion, whose exhibitions and film deals with the history of the Falls and famous people involved in the "Free Niagara Movement", like Frederick Law Olmsted (planer of Central Park), Mark Twain, Rockefeller or Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Tesla (statue on picture) is nowadays known for his electric motor, but originally this Serbian-American inventor experimented with generators to create hydro-power at the Niagara Falls. We have been to the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls several years ago. We regarded the town and its infrastructure as extremely "touristy" and kitschy. Here in the U.S.A. it's not as much about big attractions and show elements, but about the Falls themselves (both falls, Canadian and American, on the pic above).


On Goat Island you get really close to the Canadian Horseshoe Falls (above), on Luna Island you stand between the Bridal Veil (the smaller) and the American Falls (wider) and Prospect Point is another point where you can almost grab the water of the American Falls (below). Much much closer than in Canada, and, free, with the exception of a parking fee! The skyline to be seen on the pics is on the Canadian side, no real highrises on the American.

By mutual agreement, we skipped lunch and just had coffee at the cozy little Cat Coffee Company in Lewiston, before we headed out to Youngstown for Old Fort Niagara. What a beautiful location, even with a direct view of the skyline of Toronto in the far distance, across Lake Ontario! The history of Old Fort Niagara spans more than 300 years: in 1726 France erected a permanent fortification with the construction of the impressive "French Castle" at the mouth of the Niagara River. Britain gained control in 1759, after the French & Indian War, and expanded and fortified, to yield the fort to the U.S. in 1796. Fort Niagara was recaptured by the British and went back to the U.S. again after the War of 1812. It became a barracks and training station for American soldiers throughout both World Wars and was restored 1926-1934. Highly interesting, though the history is very complicated, but they do a great job in explaining, also, with the help of costumed interpreters and demonstrations, among them Iroquois (pic), who settled first in the region.

The Becker Farms & Vizcarra Vineyards in Gasport, our next stop, started out as a self-pick fruit farm, but now is a multi-purpose complex, with shop & café, vineyards & winery, brewery, event space etc. Thanks to Krystina being flexible, we had a chance to check out another winery in town after Vizcarra - called "Flight of 5" -, whose wines were delicious. Different varietals in Niagara than in the Fingerlakes because of the much rougher climate. Before dinner at Shamus Restaurant in Lockport, we checked out the reconstructed historic locks at Erie Canal (opened in 1825), now a recreational canal (pic below). We enjoyed steak (Peter, again) and sea scallops with some nice local beer before Krystina brought us back "home".

Play and Photography in Rochester

Breakfast with Diana from Rochester Tourism at the Highland Park Diner in Rochester – another great place to have waffles, pancakes or eggs benedict in a cozy atmosphere for a decent price. Wish we would have places like this one!

On to the Strong National Museum of Play - frankly, didn't really know what to expect before. The Strong - named for the collector - owns and cares for the world’s most comprehensive collection of toys, dolls, board games, video games, other electronic games documents and historical materials related to play. It is an assemblage explaining the role of play in different ways and how play reflects cultural history. There is even a Toy Halls of Fame, where you'll find famous toys like marbles, hula hoop or barbie dolls, and the biggest collection of computer games in the world.

The George Eastman Museum, our next stop, is connected to "Kodak", since Eastman was the founder of the still existing company in Rochester. It's a highly interesting story how this guy changed the whole world of photography, first with changing from wet glass plates - difficult to carry and to develop - to dry ones and then to films. The museum's core is George Eastman’s fancy historic mansion (pic of the living room) and gardens, where this visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist (1854-1932) lived for almost 30 years during the early 20th century.In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable, and, in 1888, he perfected the Kodak Black camera. The famous "Kodak Brownie" (pic) was the first easy-to-use camera in the world. The mansion on its own and the gardens are worth being seen, the archives are unique and the exhibitions highly instructive. Again,,, another hour would have been great,,,!!!



Before lunch at the Genesee Brewery (Bratwurst & Sauerkraut / Avocado Burger) and a beer tasting flight we had a chance to see the Rochester High Falls of the Genesee River, which are pretty impressive (pic).

Our planned Erie Canal boat tour had been cancelled, but instead we had a tour at the Genessee Country Village & Museum - not a bad choice neither! It is the 3rd largest Living History Museum in New York State, a working, 19th-century historic country village with the largest and most comprehensive collection of 68 buildings, with costumed interpreters, workshops and animals like the oxen on the pic. From a Pioneer Settlement (1790-1820), when the people moved into Upstate NY, to Center Village (1830-1860) and the Gas Light District (1860-1900) it gives a good overview over how life has been in the area in different time periods.

Always in a hurry, just made our drive to Niagara Falls in time, in heavy rain and rush hour traffic around Buffalo. We just had about half an hour to check in, unpack and dress up before we were picked up again for dinner. But, the hotel was great and the whole experience (more later) terrific!