Tag Archives: environment

Hot bar!

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The Fire Bar at Hawkeye’s

Recommended by our hosts at the B&B: The Fire Bar at the Hawkeye Bar & Grill at Cooperstown’s Otesaga Resort Hotel. Perfect spot to chill with a glass of wine, a bite to eat, and maybe even a game of bocce on the lawn, if you’re not too mesmerized by the view. 

The Otesaga Resort Hotel is located at the south end of Otsego Lake in the Village of Cooperstown, New York, and hearkens back to the day when people from the City spent their summers at grand hotels such as this. 

 

James Fenimore Cooper referred to Otsego Lake as Glimmerglass in his Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels featuring the character Natty Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, one of the Leatherstocking Tales. The lake also happens to be the source of the Susquehanna River, the 16th largest river in the United States, according to Wikipedia.

It’s no coincidence that Cooper’s stories took place in the area around Cooperstown. His father founded the village, and James grew up in what was then a 19th-century frontier town.

the sun setting on Glimmerglass (Otsego) Lake

The weather was perfect on this particular evening, a cloudless, late-spring promise of blissful summer days ahead. As the sun set we drew our chairs closer to the fire and watched for dugout canoes gliding silently across the Glimmerglass.

On the Homestretch

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the Homestretch B&B

As we rounded Niagara, we entered the homestretch on our counterclockwise lap around Lake Ontario. We’ve driven from Greenwich, Connecticut, up the Hudson River Valley to Hyde Park and Lake Placid, across the St. Lawrence River into Ontario, through the 1000 Islands region to Toronto and Niagara. Now we’re back in New York, crossing the Finger Lakes region and the Catskills to return to Greenwich. I was looking for a place to stay in the Finger Lakes region and recalled an article I’d read about Cooperstown, New York. Yes, we all know it as a mecca for baseball fans because of the Hall of Fame, but the article asserted that the village is a destination in its own right. So I found us a B&B just outside of Cooperstown. Appropriately, it’s called the Homestretch B&B.

The Homestretch is owned by a lovely couple. He raises thoroughbred racehorses on their 105-acre farm, refurbishes antique homes (including their own), and is a master carpenter and artist. She is an executive assistant in the local hospital network and runs the B&B, in what precious free time is left in her week. Their two grown children are on their own, so they converted the family home into this perfectly pastoral retreat.

From herbed baked eggs and French toast for breakfast on the side porch to lazy evenings with a nightcap by the fire pit, this was the ideal way to wind down our trip.

the fire pit

bonus: dogs! Bailey & Bud

 

Lakefront bike ride

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Toronto Inukshuk Park

Activity for the day: a 30-kilometre (19-mile) bike ride along Lake Ontario. We rented bikes at the Harbourfront and started our tour on the west end of the lake trail at Toronto Inukshuk Park. I love these crazy man-shaped piles of rock created by the Inuits in northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland to look like hunters lined up on the hillsides of the tundra. Two converging lines of inukshuks were used to funnel caribou into herds for easier hunting. They’ve become a symbol of native Canadian culture. Pretty ingenious, I’d say. But then, as my living room will attest, I’ve always had a fondness for stacking stones.

seven ducklings!

Next stop: Amsterdam Brewhouse for lunch. No better day than a biking day to order poutine. We eat this traditional Montréal dish every time we come to Canada: French fries topped with cheese curd and brown gravy. Comfort food at its tastiest!

poutine!

After carbo-loading, we rode the remaining nine kilometres to our easternmost destination, Tommy Thompson Park in Leslieville. You would never guess that this bird sanctuary, on a lacy peninsula extending into Lake Ontario, is so close to the city unless you happened to glance up to catch the Toronto skyline on the horizon.

Canada geese have returned for the summer

 

Toronto skyline from Tommy Thompson Park

 

the Distillery District

Our post-bike reward was visiting the Distillery District just east of Downtown. A refurbished old brick distillery originally built in 1832, it is now home to several boutiques, restaurants, cafes, and the Mill Street Brewery—forty buildings in all. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America. (You know how I love my superlatives!)

No spirits for us today, but we did enjoy a cold brew to help us cool off on this exceptionally warm and humid spring day. Great ride, great day!

Distillery District

 

crazy Jenga towers

Toronto: the Harbourfront

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Toronto’s iconic CN Tower

 

humorous depiction of fans at the Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays

 

on the other side of the Rogers Centre

 

A cement mixer in support of breast cancer awareness. Now, that’s a statement!

 

A henge at Harbourfront Park. Those are the Toronto Islands in Lake Ontario, just off shore.

 

in Yo Yo Ma’s Music Garden

Toronto: Old Town

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view to the north from our apartment

We’ve arrived in Toronto and are loving city life! We’re in a fantastic Airbnb rental on the 27th floor of a tower in the Church-Wellesley area of downtown. This is one of our best rentals ever!

Our first day: walking tour of Old Town, the Entertainment District, the Financial District, and the Harbourfront.

first stop: St. Lawrence Market

 

We love these European-style markets, chock-full of fresh foods.

 

Couldn’t resist a peameal bacon sandwich, known to those of us from south of the border as Canadian bacon.

 

Toronto’s Flatiron Building

 

humorous trompe-l’oeil mural on the back of the Flatiron

 

stumbled across this delightful park—Berzcy Park—behind the Flatiron Building

 

adorable dog fountain!

 

the pinnacle–the almighty bone!

 

Five bonus points if you noticed the cat on the fountain!

 

1000 Islands National Park

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This photo of Belleville is courtesy of TripAdvisor

 

With so many “rocks” sticking up out of the St. Lawrence River, which qualify as islands?

Interesting factoid: To be considered one of the 1000 Islands, an island must be above water for 365 days of the year and it must support at least one living tree. By these criteria, there are 1864 islands in the 1000 Islands. The smallest is Tom Thumb Island, on the Canadian side of the border. It has one tree and only a few square feet of land that stay above water all year long.

No island is bisected by the border between Canada and the United States, which is why the border through the 1000 Islands region is so jagged.

photo courtesy of Omegatron

Just Room Enough Island, aka Hub Island, is the smallest inhabited island. It’s in the US 1000 Islands. Funny, but the name of the family that owns it is Sizeland.

Airbnb Roulette

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Riverview B&B

Months ago, when I was planning this trip, I was looking for a place to stay between Lake Placid and Toronto. We wanted to see the Thousand Islands area, but I didn’t know any of the towns along the St. Lawrence River. So I played Airbnb roulette: Pick a town anywhere in the vicinity—Kingston, Ontario, say. If you don’t see anything you like in Kingston, keep zooming out on the map until you find something. That’s how I found the Riverview B&B in Gananoque. Ganawhat? Doesn’t matter. Just put your chips down and spin the wheel.

The Riverview was a bit difficult to find only in that our GPS (some of you may remember the obstinate Rita from previous trips) disavowed any knowledge of Thousand Islands Parkway where the B&B is located. How can that be? It’s a major thoroughfare along the river! With Rita in a huff and not having cell service in Canada, we were on our own. (What did we do before Smart Phones?) Fortunately signage was good, and we were able to find the parkway, which, by the way, is spelled “1000 Islands Parkway.” Hence, Rita’s attitude.

The B&B, the former Lansdowne House, stands out like a manor house in its rural community just east of Gananoque. It was a large, stately home that has recently been remodeled into eight spacious guest rooms, plus a large suite for the owners. It also has a fitness room, a breakfast room, and a beautiful rooftop terrace. Relieved that we had at least broken even on our bet, we dropped our luggage and headed in to town to explore. 

What an adorable town! Gananoque—or Gan, as locals call it—is just our speed: small, picturesque, quiet, and oh-so friendly. There are several scenic walks through the town of approximately 5000 which highlight some of the elegant homes built during Gan’s heyday as a major transportation hub on the St. Lawrence. Perhaps it’s fortuitous that river traffic was later diverted to Kingston, a city of over 120,000 today, so that Gan could retain its 19th-century charm.

We started at Tourist Information, where a pleasant woman educated us as to Gan’s many highlights. Primarily, it’s a launching point for boat tours of the 1000 Islands. Rather than being cooped up with tourists feeding seagulls for five hours, we opted to see the sights of the town on foot, starting with the Ganonoque Brewing Company which, as luck would have it, was right across the street from TI. We enjoyed a very talented (humorous, as well as musically endowed) duo performing in the brewery’s diminutive Beer Garden while we washed down the dust of the road. 

at the Purple House Cafe

A couple saw us reading through our TI brochures and asked if we were looking for a place to eat. Not particularly, but we would take all recommendations. Purple House Cafe, hands down. Just a pleasant stroll away, Purple House had a sweet stone patio with a wood-fired pizza oven out front. The weather was perfect—sunny and a warm 75°—so we enjoyed a delicious pizza while playing a rousing game of dominoes. Board games are part of the ambience. It just keeps getting better. Winner, winner, pizza dinner!

Bendominoes, bendy dominoes