We had a car reserved to use for our land excursions, the first of which was to explore the Finger Lakes which neither of us had ever been to. This post will cover that trip and a second post will cover our NYC trip. So on Sunday we left Georgio with plenty of food and headed out to our first stop in Skaneateles. What a very pretty town this is! Obviously affluent with very nice shops and restaurants on the Main Street which backs up to a little lake of the same name. We stopped for coffee on the chilly overcast day with occasional rain showers and strolled the village streets which were lively and extremely attractive.
A short drive from there brought us to Seneca Falls where we visited the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.
Seneca Falls was the home of many of the leaders of the women’s rights movement and associated events took place in this now very historic place. The museum was quite interesting as were several of the surrounding shops.
We stopped for lunch at a local pub and Lynn talked Jonny into ordering the specialty of this part of the world, beef on weck, which is a roast beef sandwich on a special roll called kummelweck with au jus and horseradish. It was tasty and quite filling (we liked it better than Philly cheesesteak).
We continued our drive through stunning lakeside scenery and passed scores of vineyards finally stopping at Lamoreaux Landing Tasting Cellars. What a beautiful setting and view of the lakefront vineyards from the tasting room! We were able to see truckloads of grapes being unloaded. We had a lot of fun sampling their very good wines from Rieslings to Cabernet Francs to Ice Wines. Of course, we walked out with a couple of bottles - it wouldn’t be polite not to!
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That evening we stayed in a very well reviewed motel on the edge of Ithaca and drove into that small city for dinner. We found a place called Coltivare which was part of Ithaca’s culinary institute. We proceeded to have a surprising good dinner then took a short stroll through the center of town which was closing up after what looked like what had been an all day festival.
The next day we drove through the campus of Cornell University which is located high on a hill in Ithaca with great views overlooking the surrounding area. The campus was quite attractive with mostly traditional architecture but one very beautiful contemporary building.
From Cornell we drove south to Corning to visit the Corning Glass Museum. What an impressive museum! The architecture is stunning and the collection is amazing. We took advantage of one of the free tours which was conducted by a retiree of Corning, a major employer and benefactor in the area. We spent several hours exploring the collections of very contemporary glassworks and their innovation center as well as the historical displays of glass beads and other artifacts dating back to 2000 B.C. Our favorite section was the collection of contemporary glass sculptures but we also enjoyed finding some crystal pierces in the historical section that were reminiscent of pieces we have that were part of Jonny’s mother’s collection that she had given us.
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From there as we headed back to Zendo driving through the cool town of Watkins Falls. We passed many more vineyards on the western shore of Seneca Lake (which we were able to resist). At the top of the lake we drove through the attractive town of Geneva and saw Hobart College where our friend Michael Bracken went to school.
We had a light dinner and packed because we were heading to NYC the next day to spend two nights there. Fortunately, the wife of the marina owner offered to check in on Georgio while we were gone so Lynn did not feel so guilty for leaving him alone for two days and two nights. Originally we were going to bring him with us and we even found an Air B&B that allowed animals. We gave a Georgio a big break by not forcing him to ride in a car for a total of eight hours. He would not have liked that at all!
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