The Hudson Valley
Moving right along on our summer road trips, we hit up the Hudson Valley. This was an area of New York that I have always wanted to visit. A good friend of ours grew up in this area and helped us put an itinerary together. We started in Beacon (the town he grew up in) and made our way to Hudson. Beacon is just the most adorable town. Quiet and quaint with coffee shops, cute boutiques and restaurants. So let me take a a few minutes here to give you a run down of our weekend activities.
BEACON, NY
EATS & TREATS
The AirBnB that Dan booked was in a great location and allowed us to walk to many places. On our first morning there, we walked to The Beacon Bagel. When we arrived, we noticed a gathering in front of the shop. Quickly asking, the customers told us that the A/C was broken. OMG. When we walked in, I immediately started sweating. I quickly gave Dan my order and E and I waited outside. We brought the bagels back to our house and enjoyed them on the outdoor deck (our AirBnB did NOT have central air and it was so hot that weekend!). The bagels were pretty delish!
Our go-to coffee shop for the weekend was Trax mainly because it was super close to our house but thankfully it was also very good.
Just a hop over from Beacon is the town of Newburgh. We did take our car for this trip (because we were going to visit Dia Beacon). We grabbed a bite to eat at Hudson Taco. The atmosphere is pretty laid back and had a very nice buzz about it. The tacos themselves were excellent!
I think by now you know that if there are donuts, I will find them! I spotted Glazed Over on our stroll through Beacon, made note of it and returned the following day to try their donuts. I went with a simple vanilla glazed donut X 2 (to share, of course). They glaze them to order, YUM!
As I mentioned earlier in this post, this particular weekend was especially hot. On both days we were in Beacon, we made pit stops at Zora Dora for their paletas to cool off (E enjoyed them too!). Also another non-A/C spot. Needless to say, we ordered and immediately vacated the shop to enjoy these cool treats outside.
Because we were out and about on both days, we definitely wore E out. So instead of pushing it, we ended up ordering dinner in once we put her down to sleep. We did individual pizzas from Brothers Trattoria. They were pretty good and hit the spot. The second night we ordered from a Thai restaurant. I don’t recall the name but it was only so-so.
RETAIL THERAPY
There are so many amazing boutiques along Main Street and Kaight was one I popped into. They specialize in sustainable fashion and also carry beauty products as well as homegoods such as candles (of which I picked up one). My friend grabbed herself an awesome denim skirt.
Once upon a time, I learned how to knit and excelled at making scarves and fingerless gloves. It’s been years since I’ve made anything and not sure if I would be able to recall how to knit. Anyhow, I stopped into the Loopy Mango because my MIL is a knitting fiend. I ended up picking up some of this beautiful chunky yarn so that my MIL could knit Eleanor her winter hat. She turned it around in like a day and it looks amazing on little E!
Whenever I travel, I always stop into flower shops even thought trying to transport flowers or plants home is nearly impossible. I just love to look at them - flowers make me happy! Raven Rose is a flower shop but also carries great gifts. A really beautiful store and worth the pop - in.
Another close by to Raven Rose is Reservoir. I picked up the cutest pair of huaraches that I wore basically all summer long.
We walked by this store and was like “can there really be a store that sells just marshmallows???” The answer is yes. The Hudson Valley Marshmallow Co specializes in artisan marshmallows in a host of different flavors. If you choose to dine in, you can order s’mores with your marshmallow flavor of choice or order a cup of hot chocolate topped off with a few cubes of marshmallows. It was too hot to think about a s’more or a hot cup of chocolate (even though they had A/C!). Instead, we bought a mix of marshmallows to bring home with us. They were pretty good :)
MUSEUM
As part of planning for this trip, we didn’t have any indoor activities planned. But as we were approaching the weekend, my co-workers kept asking me if I was going to Dia Beacon. I had no idea what they were talking about. So I checked in with our friends and they both were interested in going. I’m glad we did. One, it was cool inside (remember I mentioned what a hot weekend it was?). Two, it houses really cool artwork and installations. It was just a really neat space.
That’s my friend Steph, hiding behind this installation. We’ve been friends since the first grade, making her my oldest friend. She now lives in Brooklyn and met up with us! I was so excited to spend some time with her :)
This section of the museum was lit with just the natural light coming through the ceiling. Isn’t the use of space so cool?
HUDSON, NY
As we started on our journey home, we planned it so that we would be in Hudson to grab lunch and give us an opportunity to also give E her lunch. After some Yelp-ing, we found Thyme & Co. With a little bit of hovering, we nabbed a table right outside the front of the cafe. Dan got the chicken BLT and I the corn, tomato, red onion and avocado salad. Both picks were very good and it was nice to enjoy it outside.
We popped into a few stores after lunch but didn’t spend too much time exploring as our plan was to be back in the car for E’s second nap of the day.
While we drove into Hudson, Dan had noticed signs for an antique warehouse. We saved some time to make sure we could stop by. I love antiquing and I was still on the hunt for a few more mirrors to complete our gallery mirror wall (which was a project since maternity leave!!!). We found the Antique Warehouse. It was quite overwhelming. Think of an indoor Brimfield - if I had hours, it would’ve been fun to see what I could find. Luckily, we did walk away with an antique frame which we later had a mirror fitted to it.
Various sections of the warehouse were specifically set up, like this one. I think it’s up to the owner of each section as to how they want their wares displayed.
All right, that’s a wrap from our weekend in the Hudson Valley. We had a great time with E and our friends and I can now check this off of my list of ‘places I’d like to visit’. I’m still playing major catch up on our other road trips we’ve taken with E this summer. So stay tuned!