Hudson River Valley Weekend

Somehow, being from CT going to New York has always been going to the City. This is a totally different world. Driving through the lush green forests and the hills of the Valley is like taking a step back in time.

I never expected to find wineries in our part of the country. I thought that the Napa Valley in California was our answer to the French. I was wrong. There are several wineries producing excellent chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. New York has less sun than California and thus is better at the white, less sweet wines.

You can visit the summer homes of the Golden Age Millionaires, tributes to a time gone by, where the famous went to see and be seen in a rural atmosphere. Not to imply that the homes are any less formal, they are not.

For the lover of vintage aircrafts there is the Rhinebeck Aerodrome which offers airshows on Saturdays and Sundays.

There is New Paltz with their wonderful Huguenot stone houses and gourmet lunches or dinner at the Culinary Institute. This area has something for everyone.

Quick Tips:

You need to be flexible when you visit this area. In our case the weather was a factor. We went in August when it can change from steaming to chilly in a matter of minutes. Rain was also an issue. The airshow would not have been much fun sitting in the rain or extreme heat. Also the Vanderbilt Mansion is not air conditioned and when it gets too hot, the upstairs is not open. We were initially told we would not be allowed up but our guides sent us through quickly.

Three days is not enough to see everything. We never got to take a Hudson River Cruise or visit West Point of Vassar. I would love to do the Rip Van Winkle and the Sleepy Hollow areas. We didn't have time for the Roosevelt Homes and Boscobel. Certainly we need to return.

Best Way To Get Around:

This is definitely a driving area. There is virtually no public transportation and the sites are spread over several towns. Part of the charm of the area is the ability to drive the back roads and soak up the atmosphere.

I chose Le Chambord with great care and went there with great expectations. For the most part they were left unfulfilled. The main building is quite old (1868) and quite lovely. The dream began to evaporate when we checked in and there was only one room reserved. Luckily for us there were plenty of free rooms. At that time they looked at my reservation which had the rate of 109 per night on it. We were sent to Tara Hall which is a new building behind the inn. It was basically an upscale 2 story motel. Our rooms was large with 4 poster bed but no antiques. The bathroom was well equiped but had dispensers on the wall that gave you the soap and shampoo. This was a definite turnoff. Breakfast is European continental and one description I read said sumptuous. That is an overstatement. Yes, in the hall there was a tray with 2 kinds of sliced cheese and salami but certainly the high point was the fruit cup which had a slice of kiwi and 1 raspberry atop a rather mundane mix of apple and melon. The bread basket had 2 very good banana pecan muffins, 2 croissants and 2 scones and the first morning both couples got a basket, on the second morning we had to share one basket and it was the same size as the day before. Service was spotty and Sunday morning one of the other guests was going around with the orange juice offering it to everyone. The dining room itself was quite lovely with beautiful furniture and artwork.

What really killed the romance of this weekend was checkout. Our bills were waiting for us with rates of $140 per night. I showed the receptionist my reservation again and she went to get the owner. He informed me that this rate was only for his very special corporate customers who have a contract with him and showed me a list of companies. Then why was the rate listed on his web site and why was my travel agent able to book it for me, and why when we checked in wasn''t I told? He rather ungraciously told us he would let me have the rate but wanted to know if I often use this travel agent (I do) and he wanted to keep the reservation. He then took a call while we were waiting. When he got off the call he began to disparage the caller who evidently thought that a Country Inn might have a pool or hot tub ( believe it or not sir, some do). This was a potential customer and we were customers, this was totally unprofessional. I couldn''t wait to get out of there. Maybe he was having a bad day, week, year or maybe he needs to retire. I don''t know, but I do know that there are plenty of other places where customers are number one and next time I will choose one of them.

This was the main reason I wanted to go to Hyde Park. I made my reservation months in advance, and I gather that this a very good idea. I chose St Andrews Cafe because it was the only one of the four that would allow us to wear shorts. It was everything I expected and more. We arrived a little early but were seated immediately. We met our server Orlando and he took our drink orders. After this everything slowed down. This is the place for a leisurely lunch, it took about 2 hours. I would have thought that there isn't too much you can do to ice tea but the tea here is the best I have ever had and he was very good about refilling my glass. We all had a glass of wine too. A very fine White Zinfindel.

For an appetizer I had the curried hummus with flat breadand grilled vegtables and I shared the soup sampler. Before our appetizers came we were given a bread basket with a lima bean spread with a wonderful tapenade, it had just the right salty olive with high quality olive oil taste. I love curry and I love hummus so this was a natural choice for me. My husband had the seared tuna loin with seaweed salad and miso dressing. He was amazed at how delicous the very rare tuna was.

The soup sampler was a cold beet and orange, corn and lemon grass soup and miso soup. The beet and orange was our favorite it had a beautiful color and a great texture and was delightfully sweet. Yum.

For my main course I had soba noodle salad with grilled eggplant and grilled sweet potatoes, I loved the grilled vegetables but I didn't care much for the noodles but that was my own personal taste. My husband had the grilled pork medallion with yukon gold potatoes, spring vegetables and sweet and sour cherry sauce, all I can say was there wasn't a drop left on his plate. Irene had pan seared sea scallops with edamame soy beans, shiitake mushrooms and orange soy glaze and Jim had Thai BBQ chicken with toasted quinoa, glazed bok choy and charred red pepper. Both of them enjoyed their meals.

For dessert I had the 3 sorbet combo, mango, pineapple and coconut with a coconut tuile, it was heaven, the intensity of the fruit took my breath away. I followed this with a cappuccino. Jim had white chocolate cheesecake with oatmeal tuile and fresh fruit. He raved all weekend about it. Al and Irene had angel food cake with expresso gelato and fudge sauce and they weren't complaining either.

It was a marvelous meal. Service was good, the ambience is beautiful and watching the trainees at work is a whole experience on its own. This is not cheap though. Our lunch with tip was $95 for 2, but it was worth every penny.

How can you follow up a visit to the Culinary Institute? Since 3 out of 4 of us are really beer drinkers not wine drinkers this was a great second choice. It is a very typical brew pub , with a hopping bar area which is smoking and 2 large non-smoking dining rooms. We felt lucky to get a table, this is a very popular place.

I had the beer sampler, which is 6 small glasses of their different brews, Sob (Special Old Bitter), Rough Rider (a red ale), Winkle Lager (a Bohemian Pilsner), Chaos (a dry Stout), Big Easy Blond (an European Pilsner) and one other that I don't remember. The place mats are cute, they have a spot for each of the samples so you know which one your drinking.

The dining room has a lot going on. There are posters, large windows and a really different fan light that looks like it was made from a vat. The food was really quite good and my port tenderloin roasted with a bourbon glaze was just this side of spectacular. It came with a huge mound of mashed potatoes and a nice salad. My only complaint was that the salad was room temperate and I prefer it cold. The breadbasket had a nice crispy rosemary bread in it but only offered country crock, no butter. These were small problems in an otherwise very good meal.

Al had a rib eye steak with mushrooms and luckily he got the last one they had. He is a real steak lover and he rated it very good. I never even got to ask our waitress her name, she was just too busy. They had a interesting array of desserts presented on a tray. Apple crisp, chocolate torte, bourbon pecan pie, peanut butter pie, cheesecake and brownie with ice cream. I was too full but Irene and Jim got a piece pecan pie to go and the next day rated it excellent.

They serve lunch and dinner daily. This is not gourmet dining but the portions were generous and the food tasty and the beer worth the price of admission.

This is the most entertaining place that we dined at during this vacation. We passed it several times and couldn't resist stopping. It's a good old fashioned stainless steel diner with two-tone neon tubes around the door. Its as cute inside as out, its like stepping into Happy Days.

They have 4 beers on tap and offer 14 domestic and 11 imports, does it get better than this? I got a Pete's Strawberry Blond in a chilled pilsner glass and my husband go a huge strawberry milk shakes. Irene and I had been craving lamb ever since we checked out the dinner menu at Le Chambord (where rack of lamb for 2 was $70) . We both ordered the lamb and it was great, nice slices of tender lamb, mashed potatoes and mixed vegatables served with mint jelly and a salad. All for $10. We didn't order any of the onion rings but we were facinated by the serving that was deliviered to the couple across from us. It was huge and it looked great. I think we made them nervous the way we stared at that plate.

Their motto says it all: "Think Globally, Act Locally, Dress Casually".

We loved the names of some of their specialties, one of their frozen drinks is "One Free Hour in a Candy Store" made from chambord, amaretto, oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream. One of their ice cream treats is Scoupe de ville- all our ice creams, with hot fudge, bananas, nuts, strawberries and whipped cream. It comes with 2 spoons.

There was a real mix of people here, families, seniors, couples and young couples.

The bread is a warm loaf of sesame bread served on a hot skillet. They even brought us a second loaf.

We didn't eat dessert but I got a rice pudding to go and frankly it was the only disappointment of the whole evening, it was very pedestrian.

P.S. I have to go back here, for breakfast they have Banana's Foster french toast. Doesn't that sound decadent?

We were starving by the time we arrived in Millbrook after our wine tasting. We were seated right away and our drink orders were taken. We only had one menu because they have daily specials but as soon as another group finished with them they brought us 3 more.

The bread basket had lots of crispy sourdough bread and a crock of butter. One thing they need to add however is bread plates, we had crumbs everywhere.

They offer a $15, 3 course lunch special and 2 of us opted to have it. It had a soup, entree and dessert. For soup we had a choice of vichyssois or chilled melon with reisling. I had the melon and it was unusual. It had no dairy and was the slightest bit lumpy, in a good way. It was very enjoyable on a warm day. The vichyssois had spinich in it which made it green and less appealing visually but just as tasty. Our main course was grilled salmon which was sushi grade and quite rare. I was afraid that I wouldn't like it but I was wrong, it was delicious and had a wonderful texture. It was served with grilled veggies, which were very good. Jim had a seafood stew which he said was good, it was spicy and looked to me like the fish stew they serve in San Francisco. Al had a very large burger and homemade potato chips. The only problem was that it was way over cooked.

The building was very atmospheric and they had the cleanest, prettiest bathroom I have ever seen. Our server Kari was friendly and checked back with us on a regular basis.

Our dessert was nectarine crisp which was exactly what it sounds like, fresh nectarines with a crispy sweet crust and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Jim tried the pecan pie with chocolate bourbon ice cream and raved about it and the homemade crust.

This is a sweet little restaurant with great potential and very few rough edges.

It was a real thrill to watch Cole Palens dream come to life over your heads. From a rough beginning with some old planes he had found he made a museum which can entertain children and adults of all ages. The prices I quoted are for Saturday and Sunday when there is an airshow at 2pm. On weekdays it's much cheaper to just come in and look through all the hangers filled with vintage aircrafts. Not all of them are original, some are reconstructions but the overall effect is charming.

The day we were there they were also having a vintage motorcycle display and that was just the frosting on an already wonderful cake. There were people there from every walk of life, families, lots of bikers and some people obviously up from New York City , impecibly dressed and coiffed even on a warm August afternoon. The children behind us at the show were in a constant state of excitement so it definately has child appeal as well. Visions of Snoopy and the Baron flashed through my mind quite often during the show as the German and American aircrafts flew circles around each other.

We had planned to drive through this area anyway so when we found out that there would be costumed guides in the stone houses plus lots of other activities, we were delighted. The cost of entrance was $10 per adult and $2 for children. We parked at a lot about a half mile away and took a bus to Huguenot St. As we began our walk we were greeted by the sounds of fife playing. Later we would see the fife player again as he marched down the street with some drummers. The first house we visited was the Bevier house and we got to meet some of the decendants of the original settlers. The Huguenots first came here in 1677 after they were forced to leave France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I was interested in this because I have Huguenot ancestors who went to Canada and had to convert to Catholicism. I always laugh about this since my Catholic English ancestors became Anglicans. Not a whole lot of religous conviction in my family. Anyway, we visited 4 other stone houses and the reconstructed church. This is a wonderful history lesson. One of the homes, the Jean Hasbrouk, had the largest original beehive chimney in the country and a very interesting Flemish roof. It dates from the late 1600's. The Lefevre House dates from a century later and is more of a gentleman's home.

There were crafts people working under a tent as well as around the area. There were also a few vendors selling their handmade products. I bought some wonderful goatsmilk and oatmeal soap. There were tinsmiths and wood carvers, weavers and basketmakers. There was also entertainment. We stopped to listen to a wonderful string group which included some really young but very talented children. There was also food being sold but the lines were long and we needed to get from New Paltz to Rhinebeck for the airshow so we opted to eat elsewhere.

This is a great opportunity to see history alive and in its original setting. A visit is an experience the whole family will enjoy.

Have you ever dreamed of being a part of the Gilded Age, of entertaining lavishly, of being the envy of even your wealthest friends? Let the dream begin. This house was the dream of Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt. Not that it began as a dream. They had purchased the house that stood on this site only to find that it was not salvagable. It had to be torn down and a new house built. The building where you purchase your tickets and begin the tour is where Mrs Vanderbilt lived while supervising the construction of her new home.

The guides on our tour were a husband and wife team: Jane and Richard Kelley. They are park service volunteers who work every Friday to take groups through the house.

Frederick Vanderbilt was the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt .He inherited 10 million dollars and turned this fortune into 78 miliion dollars. This house was built as a Spring and Fall Retreat. The style is 95% French, 5% Italian. It was state of the art for its time with central heat and electricity. Louise and Frederick never had children and he was not a social person. Louise on the other hand loved to have parties and for years she had a "walker" or a personal paid escort who would attend parties with her. One interesting fact we learned about Louise was that every dress she had was a double; this way on warm evenings if she began to perspire she would go upstairs, freshen up, get powdered by her maid and come down fresh as a daisy in a new but identical dress. She had a French maid, a French cook and a French dresser. Another interesting fact was that Frederick hated French cooking and the first thing he did after his wife died was fire the French cook. You get to vist several rooms on the first floor including Frederick's office which has a secret bar behind the bookcase (Prohibition). Because there is no airconditioning we almost didn't get to visit the second floor but luckily we were allowed to quickly go up. We also visted and exited through the basement where the male servants had their rooms and where the kitchen, laundry and ironing rooms were.

One thing that suprised me was that the house doesn't have a name; it's not the Breakers or the Elms, or Marble House. It made me wonder why. The house was left to Mrs. Vanderbilt's niece, Daisy Van Allen. After trying to sell it for 2 years she decided to give it away. One of the last things Daisy did was to take Fred and Louise's personal items and burn them on the lawn.

This is a beautiful and interesting place to visit and the views from the grounds to the river are spectacular.

The cost for a ticket is $8 per adult and you must be part of a tour.

Normally I would have included this as part of the write up about the mansion, but the pictures I took were just to spectacular not to include. Frederick Vanderbilt was a Botanist. It's what he got his college degree in. He used his gardens to express his love of nature. They are done in terraces and include a pond with lily pads, some beautiful fountains that no longer work, a pergoda and serveral trellis'. The rose garden is large but at this time of year most of the roses were not in bloom. What was in bloom were black eyed susans, lavender, delphinium and lots of others flowers I didn't know. There are both annuals and perenials. This is a relaxing and peaceful break in an otherwise hectic day. We visited the house then went to lunch and came back later in the afternoon. The gardens are open until sunset.

As I stated in my overview I really never expected to find a vineyard in the Hudson River Valley. Since I am not much of a wine drinker I would not have gone here on my own but since my friend Irene wanted to go after I had dragged her to the Vanderbilt Mansion and the Culinary Institute (believe me she didn't need much dragging on this one), I decided to be a good sport and go along. It was a lot of fun and very informative too.

We arrived a little early on Sunday morning. Tours begin at noon, so we walked around and talked to some of the other people who were waiting for the Vineyard to open. The tour itself is free; if you want to take part in the wine tasting after the tour the cost is $4 a person. It was a real bargain and you get to keep your wine glasses too. We started our tour with our guides Diane and Brook at the edge of the vineyard. We are given the history of this particular vineyard and we were told about the actual growing of grapes in New York state. Four man-made ponds have been constructed on the property to help create the type of environment where wine grapes thrive. The vines are grown on a goblet trellis which allows them to drape over both sides. This land was a former dairy farm which was purchased by John Dyson in 1981.

We then move into the room which houses the barrels where the wine is stored while it ages and we were told that the barrels are oak and that there are 2 types of oak French and American and they affect the taste of the wine. There are airlocks on top of the barrels that release carbon dioxide. Hard to believe there are 285 bottles of wine in a barrel.

The winery produces 15,000 bottles of wine a year and we saw the machinery that bottles and labels the wine. It is done in the evening when no one is around. Even Diane has never seen it in operation.

The grapes here are hand harvested; there are 56 acres of grapes and everyone, even the guides helps out. The grapes are placed in fermentation tanks where the sugar turns into alcohol. This takes 2-4 weeks. In red wine the skins and pits are left in this mix which is what gives the wine its rich red color.

After the tour we all headed upstairs to have our tasting. It was loads of fun. We tasted 4 white wines and 3 reds. We also tasted some olive oil and their Merlot and balsamic vinegar with fresh bread and crackers. We then headed down to the gift shop to pick up our favorite wine and, in my case, some of the Merlot balsamic vinegar for Christmas gifts. They even wrapped up our free glasses for us. Everyone here seemed to like their job and to enjoy helping us to understand the process of making wine.

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