I spent this past weekend in Upstate New York, Ithaca to be precise. I really didn't appreciate it when I lived there in college, but now that I have the yin/yang counterbalance of living in New York, I like to go back now and then for a break.
If you've never been to Ithaca, it can be thought of as a college-town in the classic sense, along the lines of Berkeley (minus the influence of nearby San Francisco, or even Oakland) or, I've been told, Iowa City or Fayetteville, Arkansas. The scenery is just beautiful, and the variety of (and feverish support for) independent businesses is absolutely refreshing.
At nearly every possible opportunity, I drove out of town just to see where the road would lead. On Sunday, I ended up in Trumansburg, a lovely little village about ten miles away. On the way back to Ithaca, I stopped at an antiques marketplace and admired an 18th-century pine hutch and a 19th-century Parisian tea service for 12. The tea set was porcelain with a hot pink and dark fuschia leaf pattern overlaid, and totally dreamy.
If you're thinking of heading up that way, here are my top seven: Moosewood, Gimme Coffee (the one in Trumansburg is best, but Fall Creek is fine, too; note: there is now a Brooklyn outpost!), The (I.M. Pei-designed) Johnson Museum of Art (on the Cornell University campus), Ludgate Farms Market (weekdays), and the Ithaca Farmers Market (weekends), Autumn Leaves Used Books (located downtown on The Commons; I once bought a dictionary of '30s hobo slang there that I still reference frequently), and Spirit and Kitsch.
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