Maureen Ogden Preserve, Chesapeake Tavern & Morris Museum

Maureen Ogden Preserve

New Jersey needs breathing room because it’s the most densely populated state in the U.S. Fortunately, a patchwork of land preserves provides lots of it.

Today, we land on the Maureen Ogden Preserve near Long Valley, a 228-acre wooded property atop Schooley’s Mountain ridge. We choose the red trail for our walk because it stays almost entirely in the woods versus the longer blue trail that involves walking along the road for a stretch. At less than a mile, the red trail provides a leisurely, woodsy loop with plenty of fresh air on a crisp autumn day.

Chesapeake Tavern

After our walk, lunch beckons less than 10 minutes away at Chesapeake Tavern, a favorite seafood restaurant in these parts. (The Long Valley Pub & Brewery sits adjacent for those seeking an alternative.) Long Valley has several historic structures dating from the Revolutionary War, and this restaurant resides in one of them, a charming wooden building with outdoor seating during warmer weather.  We dine inside on fish sandwiches and crab cakes before continuing our day.

Morris Museum

Our last stop is the Morris Museum in Morristown, a thirty-five minute drive but on our way home. Built around the Frelinghuysen mansion, originally designed by Stanford White, the museum offers an array of exhibits, along with live performances at its Bickford Theater. Our destination today is the unique Mechanical Music and Automata exhibit. Here, several rooms display 750 music boxes, player pianos, and mechanical dolls that operate through mechanisms other than electricity, such as wind-up springs or complex pneumatic systems. The orchestrion, for example, can play an entire orchestra of instruments.

Walter Rossi, The Buddha, mixed media

Asia Society Museum, McNally Jackson Books, The Pebble Bar & Nasrin’s Kitchen

Asia Society Museum

You can spend every day of your life visiting a different museum or art gallery in New York City. Many exist below the radar, including the Asia Society Museum on 72nd and Park, with its relatively small collection and peaceful vibe. Fridays are free at this museum, so we choose Friday to visit.

Founded in the 1970s by John D. Rockefeller III, grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller (who long held the title of richest man in America until Elon Musk came along), the Asia Society’s mission has been to nurture cultural relations between the U.S. and Asian countries, which sounds almost quaint today given the massive economic relations that exist between the societies.

That quaintness extends to the museum, and we have a nice time exploring its two floors of contemporary and traditional art, especially the Chinese ceramics collection on the second floor.

Tea and coffee at the airy, light-filled Leo Café downstairs tops off the visit.

Sculpture by Rina Banerjee (born 1963, Kolkata, India)

McNally Jackson Books

Once upon a time, in 2004, the physical book appeared to be on the digital chopping block. As an activity, reading words on paper clearly had seen its day, according to forecasters, and they predicted we would read strictly on screens before long.  Into this breach stepped Sarah McNally, who decided to start an independent bookstore on Prince Street in Nolita. Jackson McNally has since expanded to five locations, including an outpost in Rockefeller Center, where we stop on our way to catch a drink before dinner.

McNally Jackson is a great visit, with staff recommendations to guide your purchases, a children’s area separated by bookshelves, and a selection of volumes from McNally Editions, a paperback reprint division “devoted to hidden gems.”

We browse but don’t buy, but thank you, Sarah McNally, for making our day a little better.

The Pebble Bar

In an even more distant time than 2004, a bar called Hurley’s, because of its proximity to nearby 30 Rockefeller Center (or 30 Rock, as it is known),  served as a watering hole for the likes of Johnny Carson (who had his own back entrance to the bar), David Letterman and various members of the SNL cast. Even Jack Kerouac drank here, and the current name Pebble Bar derives from a passage in one of his novels describing the place as “the pebble at the hem of the shoe of the immense tall man which is the RCA building.”  By which Kerouac meant 30 Rock.

We take the short walk from McNally Jackson to the Pebble Bar, which has been refurbished into something far sleeker than Hurley’s. Walk-ins can drink on the second floor, but reservations are required on the third, which is where we sip old-fashioneds while looking out the windows on Sixth Avenue and wonder if the ghost of Johnny Carson still lurks. Come to think of it, the bartender did look a little like him…

Nasrin’s Kitchen

Nasrin’s, being a Persian restaurant, does not serve alcohol, and so we order an extra one at the Pebble Bar before strolling through a beautiful October evening to Nasrin’s unlikely digs on the commercial busyness of West  57th Street.  From the street, you wouldn’t know a restaurant existed on the second floor of this townhouse that time forgot but once inside a carpeted stairway leads us up to a large dining room decorated with candles amid marble walls. Nasrin’s interior reminds us of Manhattan decades ago when businesses often inhabited repurposed spaces like this.

The food at Nasrin’s Kitchen is outstanding with all the wonderful aromas and spices of the Middle East. We get there early enough for a table by the windows, looking down on traffic while feasting on lamb shanks, stews and kebabs.

Great Falls at Duke Farms, Somerville County Courthouse Green, The 1933 Room and Verve Restaurant

Great Falls at Duke Farms

The former Doris Duke estate near Somerville, now known as Duke Farms, holds a unique place among New Jersey visitation sites because, rather than growing crops in the traditional sense, the farm serves as a “living lab and research institute … dedicated to sustainable nature restoration.” In other words, behind-the-scenes experimentation rules the day here.

We roam freely among its 2,700 acres, beginning at the massive visitors’ center that once stabled thoroughbreds. Continuing past a hay barn and orchid greenhouse, we follow the sound of the falls, to where the river flows over the lip of a steep decline, tumbling against artfully arranged boulders and generating frothy swirls of water.

Doris Duke’s father, James Buchanan Duke, purchased this New Jersey tract of land along the Raritan River in the late 1800s and, using his hydroelectric expertise, formed several lakes on the property, all aerated by the Great Falls.

The falls were not J. B. Duke’s only water marvel. In addition to gaining a quasi-monopoly in the tobacco industry through automated cigarette-rolling machines, Duke also pioneered hydroelectric power in the South (along with founding Duke University).

The falls stay dry except for four ten-minute intervals during each day when they come to life, flushing out the lakes and keeping them fresh. According to an employee we talk to at the visitors’ center, the Great Falls receives no maintenance yet has run continuously (except for a few spells of drought) for over 100 years.

We time our 1.5-mile walk to the Great Falls and arrive ten minutes before it starts up, water cascading down stepped blocks. This remains one of the more unique sites we have visited.

Somerville County Courthouse Green

Somerville rose as the county seat for Somerset County because of its proximity to the Raritan River. The Somerville County Courthouse Green hosts two buildings of architectural interest—the marble courthouse and adjoining Dutch Reformed Church, built in the English gothic style, now used as the jury waiting room.

Both structures are closed to casual visiting, but we take a few minutes to explore the grounds before heading to dinner.

1933 Room and Verve Restaurant

Verve, directly across from the courthouse on Main Street, serves dinner French-bistro style. It has always been one of our favorite restaurants, with a lively bar scene up front and a more intimate dining room in back. Upstairs, though, sits a speakeasy, the 1933 Room, so called because, according to local legend, politicians from the courthouse across the street raced over here for their first legal drink when Prohibition ended in 1933

Duke Ellington Statue, Conservatory Garden, Albertine Books, The Frick Collection & Au Za'atar

Duke Ellington Statue

We alight from the subway at 110th Street & Eighth Avenue to walk across Central Park along its northern border, past the picturesque Harlem Meer, an artificial lake built on a former tidal marsh, on our way to the northeast corner of the park and the Duke Ellington Statue, conceived by pianist Bobby Short and completed in 1997. The statue sits atop 10-foot pillars and features the great musician beside a grand piano. It’s an unusual work and worth a look.

Central Park’s Conservatory Garden

Then we head south through the park, this time along its Fifth Avenue border, until reaching the recently completed Conservatory Garden at 103rd Street, a six-acre tract featuring Italian, French and English formal gardens side-by-side. Though we prefer the intimate English garden, the photography-friendly Italian garden serves as the centerpiece of this gorgeous addition to Central Park, which continues to get better and better.

Albertine Books

We next catch a cab down Fifth Avenue, hopping off at 79th Street where the Stanford White-designed Payne Whitney mansion now houses the cultural services of the Embassy of France and, more importantly for our purposes, Albertine Books, a small bookstore of mostly French titles. We speak limited French, so browsing isn’t our purpose here. Rather, climbing a narrow staircase to its second floor delivers us to an intimate reading room, complete with charming ceiling mural and chandelier rope hanging through a hole to illuminate the floor below. Albertine Books is a unique New York spot.

The Frick Collection

Our main stop of the day is eight blocks farther south on Fifth Avenue— the refurbished Frick Collection that reopened in April to well-deserved praise. Even if you don’t particularly care for a world-class collection of Old Masters’ paintings, the interior pleases from beginning to end. Where to start? The Garden Court and West Gallery are most dramatic, but each room tells a story, and the paintings represent a who’s who of famous artists pre-1800, including Vermeer, Rembrandt, and van Dyke. We highly recommend a visit to this restored treasure.

Au Za’atar

Dinnertime has arrived, and we are ready for it. Au Za’atar serves Lebanese cuisine from two Manhattan locations — the Lower East Side and Midtown East, the latter of which we patronize because it is closer to the Frick. As usual with Middle Eastern food, small plates abound along with a nice balance of vegetarian and meat dishes. The décor is superb, and we sip on Lebanese wine and arak (The Milk of Lions), a milky spirit that tastes of anisette, licorice and peppermint, while dining on lamb shank and vegetable kebab.

Cora Hartshorn Arboretum & Bird Sanctuary, Magic Fountain, The Raptor Trust, Hills of Herat

Cora Hartshorn Arboretum & Bird Sanctuary

Tucked away in Short Hills, New Jersey, lies a hidden gem — 17 acres of sanctuary for native trees and birds. Short Hills itself began as a planned community by Stewart Hartshorn (derived from and pronounced “HARTS horn”), whose money came from a patent on the spring-roller window shade. He ultimately purchased 1,500 acres in the area, and his daughter, Cora, developed the arboretum, later bequeathing it to Millburn Township in 1958.

We walk along much of the arboretum’s three miles of trails that are surprisingly hilly and then spend time in the fascinating visitor’s center, with its rustic architecture and indoor beehive. A very peaceful place to spend a couple of hours.

Magic Fountain

We’ve written before about Magic Fountain, located in Summit, one of New Jersey’s many excellent ice-cream shops. But Magic Fountain specializes in an especially creamy soft-serve variety, which hits the spot after walking around the arboretum.

The Raptor Trust

It’s our day for birds. The Raptor Trust finds injured predatory birds in the wild and gives them a place to heal, allowing the public to visit for free and observe these magnificent creatures in large enclosures. We’ve visited the Raptor Trust, in Millington, many times, and do so again today on our way to dinner.

Hills of Herat

We dine at the Afghan restaurant Hills of Herat in Basking Ridge (there is also a sister restaurant in Martinsville). Afghani food presents a nice balance of moderately-spiced protein and rice. The meat is organic and halal (meaning following Islamic dietary laws), and Hills of Herat follows traditional cooking methods, with the rice blanched for a day before cooking and the meat marinated.  As always in New Jersey, plenty of expats are available to support the cuisine from their homeland, and we dine among women wearing hajibs and their male companions, evidence of the restaurant’s authenticity.

PepsiCo Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden, Aquario Restaurant, Neuberger Art Museum & Greenwich Chorale Society

PepsiCo Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden

Where better to while away the day in beautiful weather than an outdoor sculpture garden? One of the best occupies 168 acres on the grounds of PepsiCo world headquarters in Harrison, New York. Security is tight on arrival for some reason (possible saboteurs from Coca-Cola?), but the beautifully manicured grounds, home to 45 outdoor sculptures, are free and unsupervised once you get in. A large pond in the middle provides a focal point while sculptures are scattered about in visually pleasing and luxurious spacing. Meanwhile, the Pepsi building looms in corporate splendor, built on the proceeds from tasty sugar water. The sculpture garden is a fine give-back to the public and undoubtedly a plus for Pepsi employees as well.

Aquario

We arrive early for our ultimate destination, with plenty of time before a 4 PM concert we plan to attend. The Portuguese restaurant Aquario in West Harrison gets good reviews, and we drive over for lunch. On top of the obligatory kitschy décor, the cuisine seems smoothed out for upper Westchester tastes, not as spicy as one might find in the Ironbound section of Newark, for instance, but plenty serviceable, with a fisherman’s stew accompanied by a good steak menu. Sangria served in a porcelain jug also helps, and we leave Aquario in a sangria-fueled good mood.

Neuberger Museum of Art

With a wedge of time remaining before the concert, we decide to squeeze in a visit to the Neuberger Museum of Art on the Purchase College campus. The wedge turns into a sliver as we wander around looking for the museum (plenty of signs out on the road but none on campus). Once inside we receive a treat, as the spacious gallery displays works from the collection of Roy Neuberger, a German immigrant who made a fortune on Wall Street. He devoted his philanthropic efforts to buying works of living artists, having seen too many starving ones in his day.

Greenwich Choral Society

Finally, we arrive for the concert in the O’Byrne Chapel on the grounds of nearby Manhattanville University. We’ve attended Greenwich Choral Society events before, but this one features a dual effort with Brian Keener, who masterfully arranged the pieces for the choristers, guest soloists, and his lively jazz orchestra. We listened anew to familiar songs from the Great American Songbook, tapping our feet and swaying to the rhythm, joining in spirit the   dancing children, stage right.

Sterling Hill Mining Museum, Lake Mohawk, Boeh’s Cabinet Shop, PH Tavern & Steakhouse

Sterling Hill Mining Museum

In the early 1800s mineralogists noticed that ore deposits at Sterling Hill in northwestern New Jersey had a different composition from the iron otherwise mined in the region. These deposits turned out to be a unique form of zinc that  ended up being called franklinite (franklinite is now the state mineral of New Jersey). Various small-scale mining operations extracted this mineral from Sterling Hill with varying success until 1897 when the New Jersey Zinc Company consolidated everything into one mining operation that continued successively  until 1986, at which point the played-out mine was converted into the Sterling Hill Mining Museum.

We tour this dark, wet, fascinating place where the temperature stays a steady 56 degrees,  learning about pre-electricity miners who had nothing but candles to illuminate the depths and were paid the modern equivalent of $20 per hour. The mine itself goes as deep as two Empire State buildings stacked on top of one another, though this tour is confined to one floor, which is plenty.

We highly recommend the experience, lasting from one to two hours, depending on how long you spend in the adjoining museum.  Tours take place only on weekends except for July and August, during which they are conducted daily.

Mohawk Lake (and Alpine Creamery)

Needing to shake the darkness, we drive south to Mohawk Lake as a midpoint to our dinner destination and walk along its short boardwalk. Mohawk Lake is a weird place, entirely manmade from a natural grassy bowl that was flooded to create this semi-resort. Maybe it’s the high unseasonable winds that day, or the out-of-place Bavarian architecture, but unhappy spirits seem to rise from these waters. We can’t put our finger on it, but there’s a good homemade ice cream place called Alpine Creamery down the street that is worth a visit if you’re in the area.

Boeh’s Cabinet Shop

We arrive in Chester well before dinnertime and walk down Main Street to maybe do some shopping, stumbling on a workshop and adjoining store with the enticing name of Boeh’s Cabinet Shop: The Warmth of Wood that sells raw wood products made exclusively by them. We’re tempted by many items in this store and buy a tic-tac-toe set before leaving.

PH Tavern & Steakhouse

PH Tavern & Steakhouse operates inside the historic Publick House Hotel in Chester. Once a stagecoach stop, the Federal-style building dates from the early 19th century (around the same time as the discovery of franklinite), and PH Tavern & Steakhouse occupies the ground floor with a full bar and plenty of dining space. The menu is varied, there’s plenty of exposed brick and what appears to be a working fireplace, and we enjoy crabcakes along with a New York Strip steak.

The Hot Grill, Flat Rock Brook & Fort Lee Historic Park

The Hot Grill

We travel to Clifton this week on a well-worn path to one of New Jersey’s great hot-dog destinations — the Hot Grill. Does any other state specialize in deep-fried hot dogs? Doubtful. This seems to be a Newark innovation from back in the day. Either way, the Hot Grill (great name!) offers prompt service and ample seating with a wood-paneling-fast-food-vibe dating from 1961. We step up to the counter and order two hot dogs, and when the response is “with the works?” we answer yes, because the works consists of deep-fried hot dogs on buns smothered in mustard, onions and chili sauce. Delicious!

Flat Rock Brook

We need to work off this treat afterward and  drive twenty miles  to another New Jersey specialty — the suburban nature center —  which delivers a necessary greenspace to the  densely populated area. A mere three miles from the George Washington Bridge, Flat Rock Brook nature preserve offers 150 acres of tranquility. We take the 2.2-mile White-Red Loop Trail, which begins with the white trail behind the visitors center and intersects the red trail about a half mile later. Joining the red trail takes us on a loop to a pond and a brook with picturesque miniature waterfalls and then back again to the white trail and the parking lot. If not for the deer fencing and the occasional glimpse of suburbia, we might imagine ourselves a hundred miles away from all the bustle surrounding the preserve. A nice walk if you’re in the area.

Fort Lee Historic Park

Finally, we drive a few miles to Fort Lee Historic Park, just south of the George Washington Bridge. Here we can take a scenic 1-mile-loop walk with panoramic views of the Hudson River, but our mission today is the bridge, plus we already had a two-mile walk and the hot dogs seem to be coexisting with our system fairly well.  

Open for traffic in 1931, the GW carries over 100 million cars per year, built on this site because the Hudson narrows by 1,000 feet here, plus high ground rises on either side, formerly manned by two forts (Fort Lee and Fort Washington) on opposite sides of the river for strategic reasons.

Driving over this bridge isn’t always a pleasant experience, but sometimes it’s good to step back and view things from another angle. Bridge aficionados will find interesting reading in the history of the bridge, including many alternative proposals, such as a massive crossing between 57th Street and Weehawken that would have been twice as long as the GW with 16 lanes devoted to trains and 12 to cars.

A final note: If you are looking for fine dining instead of deep-fried hot dogs on this trip, one of New Jersey’s finest steakhouses — the River Palm Terrace — is a mere half-mile down the road from Fort Lee Historic Park.

If you would like to subscribe (it’s free!), please send your email address to sbalch@marketwaynj.com and use DAYTRIPPER in the subject line.

Poets House, Mercer Labs, Printemps & Fraunces Tavern

Poets House

Poets House has occupied this choice spot on River Terrace in downtown Manhattan since 2009. The river in question is the Hudson,  and we enjoy watching it flow by while standing at large windows facing west, the skyscrapers of Jersey City on the other side.  A noncirculating library, Poets House contains a large assortment of poetry to be read on the premises.  Comfortable chairs, tables and couches array along the main reading room, and it’s a quiet place for us to escape the hubbub of the city.

Mercer Labs

From the sublime to maybe the ridiculous, depending how you feel about immersive art exhibits, we leave Poets House on foot for Mercer Labs. Our path meanders along the Hudson to Brookfield Place, then up the grand marble staircase and back down the other side and beneath West Street, continuing underground to the Shops at the Oculus (don’t call it a mall!) and then back to street level and Mercer Labs on Dey Street.

Immersive art exhibits combine light, sound, mirrors and other sensory tricks to disorient the viewer, and Mercer Labs effectively makes this happen within 15 display rooms, some vertigo-inducing but many worth lingering in. It takes us nearly an hour to complete the journey, a series of visual, audio, and tactile experiences.

Printemps

Next we try to visit the luxury Parisian shopping complex (don’t call it a department store!) Printemps, which has opened a New York outpost at the fitting address of 1 Wall Street. We love browsing through things we can’t afford, but our arrival is one day short of the grand opening, so we content ourselves with looking in the windows like peasants. Let them eat cake.

Fraunces Tavern

Then on to simpler colonial roots for dinner at Fraunces Tavern, which has been a Pearl Street tavern since 1762. The ubiquitous George Washington dined here. We expect it to orient toward tourists because of a museum attached to the restaurant, but Fraunces Tavern is a delightful place to dine, with dark wood and candles in two dining rooms. Some foodies diss the cuisine here, but we enjoy the chicken potpie and lobster, mac, and cheese. Don’t tread on me, we say.

Grounds for Sculpture, Herrintown Woods & the Meeting House

Grounds for Sculpture

The brainchild of artist (and Johnson & Johnson heir) Seward Johnson, Grounds for Sculpture has occupied this Hamilton site since 1992. We’ve visited many outdoor sculpture parks, and Grounds for Sculpture’s 42 acres provide an excellent walking space, not too big and beautifully landscaped with surprises around every corner. Bamboo groves sprout throughout, and imaginative sculptures of different sizes populate the terrain.

It's a cold, windy day on our visit, so we have the place mostly to ourselves, but Grounds for Sculpture can get crowded in nice weather, so reservations are recommended.

Though our plans will take us farther north this day, pairing Grounds for Sculpture with the adjacent, and unfortunately named Rat’s Restaurant makes a good day trip also. You can walk between the two facilities, and Rat’s is beautifully decorated in French chateau style, with cuisine to match.

Herrontown Woods

The sun beams down, mitigating the wind. We need to rid ourselves of cabin fever, and after Grounds for Sculpture we drive a half hour north for a hike in Herrontown Woods outside of Princeton. This nature preserve — the oldest in Mercer County, dating from the 1950s — recruits a large volunteer force who build and support the trails with boards and large stones over the muddy parts. We choose the 1.3-mile red trail, which forms a loop with some elevation rise at the beginning but fairly easy. It takes us 45 minutes to complete the path, and we vow to return later in the year when the trees have leafed out.

The Meeting House

We then drive a few minutes to a new restaurant on Witherspoon Street just north of downtown Princeton. In addition to an a la carte menu, the Meeting House offers a three-course $45 prix fixe menu that is a great value considering the quality of the food. The bar bustles with young people, and wide windows pull in plenty of light. A good choice when in the Princeton area.

Liberty Science Center, Maddy Rose & Liberty State Park

Liberty Science Center

Liberty Science Center, the 300,000-square-foot interactive science complex adjacent to Liberty State Park, houses 12 exhibition halls, a planetarium, and a 3D movie theater—a mecca for schoolchildren. We haven’t been here in a long time and decide to do so today sans children to see if this site also works for adults.  The answer is yes! We scheduled a one-hour visit but easily could have stayed for two.

Kids swarm the 35-foot-high climbing gym, observe a robot solving a Rubik’s Cube, and point out details of the elaborate train set. Marching ants, twisting pythons, and hungry turtles among other creatures also command our attention. For a reasonable additional price, we could have seen one of four special features, like the show about the recent and rare nighttime planetary parade.

The seemingly air-borne gym floats within the atrium.

Gravity-defying ball that kids can remove from or place in the air stream coming from the fan below.

Maddy Rose

A short drive from Liberty Science Center and inside Liberty State Park, the charming Maddy Rose restaurant offers spectacular views. While enjoying an excellent lunch, we view, across a wide tree-lined field, the intersection of the Hudson River and New York Harbor with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop. We plan to return one evening as the sun goes down and the lights come up.

Liberty State Park

Just 2,000 feet from the Statue of Liberty, Liberty State Park holds  several postlunch options. Ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island shuttle to and fro just down the street. And families fly kites in the open fields beneath the sunny skies. We opt to follow the two-mile promenade skirting New York Harbor. Along the way we scan the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and an impressive panorama of lower Manhattan—all of which we vow to see on our return nighttime visit.

New Year’s Eve in New York City—MOMA, Tree at Rockefeller Center, Grand Brasserie & Oyster Bar in Grand Central

One of our favorite traditions is to spend New Year’s Eve in Manhattan while the city is all decked out and relatively unpopulated, then to exit in the early evening before the madness begins.

MOMA

First, we walk uptown to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), past huge crowds on the west side of Sixth Avenue, waiting to be let into Times Square, which is blocked off. It will be ten hours before the ball drops at midnight, so this will be quite a wait for them, so good luck!

MOMA, on the other hand, is open but lightly populated. We tour miles of artwork that was revolutionary in its time and in many ways still seems so.

The highlight for us is Otobong Nkanga’s tapestry titled Cadence, which hangs ceiling-to-floor against the tallest wall of the atrium, 60 feet long.

Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center

The Christmas tree still stands at Rockefeller Center. Although a few feet shorter than last year’s Norway spruce, this 2024 giant reigns supreme over the ice-skating rink and photo-shooting tourists. We approach beneath the trumpeting angels, grateful that the crowds have thinned since before Christmas. Always nice to see the tree!

Grand Central terminal

Grand Central, where we plan to spend the rest of our evening before heading home, beckons just a short distance from Rockefeller Center. The Main Concourse, as always, is bustling and beautiful—probably our favorite space in New York. We plan to have drinks and dinner in the terminal but decide to explore first, including the Grand Central Market, where we would shop every day if we lived closer.

Grand Brasserie

Occupying 16,000 square feet in Grand Central’s historic Vanderbilt Hall, the Grand Brasserie restaurant with towering ceilings seats 300 in the main room and another 100 in the Green Room in back. We choose the Green Room for our New Year’s Eve celebratory drinking. It’s more intimate and beautifully decorated. In fact, the whole of Grand Brasserie delights the eye.

The Oyster Bar

Then we head downstairs to the Oyster Bar for dinner. The food here gets deservedly mixed reviews, but it’s a night for tradition, and this tiled, arched space has been around since 1913. Gourmands recommend ordering a dozen oysters or clam chowder along with a martini if you want the best results. Agreed!

And with that, we’re done, safely exiting the festivities by 8 pm. Happy New Year!

New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show & Hudson Garden Grill

New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show

Normally we visit the Botanical Garden in warm weather so we can walk the grounds, but this year the Holiday Train Show beckons. (It continues through January 25.) The temps have barely cracked 20 degrees by the time we arrive, but inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, it’s nice and warm.

Here, the sprawling train display meanders through three glasshouses and an exhibition tent. More than 25 G-scale model trains rush past hundreds of scaled New York City buildings, trundling over and under bridges and churning through tropical, desert, and temperate plant habitats. It takes nearly a magical hour (but who’s counting?) to wind our way from beginning to end.

Trains trundle under and over bridges near a miniature Central Park.

Hudson Garden Grill

Another norm breaks when instead of wandering down nearby Arthur Avenue to our favorite restaurant, we walk next door to the high-ceilinged Hudson Garden Grill. The hungry preschoolers among us are grateful. Tucking into cauliflower steak, cobb salad, and (the reportedly excellent) chicken fingers, we feel cozy and warm by the huge windows that frame a scene of snowy lawn and trees.

A spacious dining room and a member of the excellent wait staff

InfoAge Science & History Museum, Asbury Park Boardwalk & Kimchi Mama

InfoAge Science & History Museum

In the planning stage, the trip to the InfoAge Science and History Museum in Wall, New Jersey, seemed like an afterthought, an add-on, a place to visit in cold weather where we could view some decommissioned military equipment and then head for lunch. So wrong! We could have spent a day here and not seen everything.

First, the trains. With two large rooms filled with active train sets, there’s lots of noise and plenty to see. Some tracks even allow kids to operate the locomotives.

Then on to the military stuff. This museum is heavily oriented toward early stage military communications, like radio.  The buildings were originally constructed as Camp Evans during World War One by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company as part of a project to wirelessly surround the planet. The equipment on display in this museum is the ancestor of all the wireless gadgets we use today.

The museum is stocked with a small army of retired guys who are dying to impart their knowledge. We let them tell us everything they know—good for them and good for us.

Five Sullivan brothers enlisted in the Navy and requested to serve on the same ship, which sank with all them onboard.

Exhibits include the 1940s-1960s mainframes, 1960s-1970s minicomputing, 1970s-1990s microcomputing, and modern technology.

The M-209 converter was a small and rugged machine that required no batteries to encipher and decipher messages in the field during WWII.

A wedding dress constructed from parachute material.

Asbury Park Boardwalk

Asbury Park is a short drive away. Our original intent was to Christmas shop in historic Convention Hall. The shopping there is somewhat disappointing, though, but it’s a brisk, beautiful walk along the boardwalk (one of the best boardwalks on the Jersey Shore) to get there. Most of the stores along the way are closed for the winter, but not the Silverball Retro Arcade, well worth a visit if you’re into pinball machines.

Kimchi Mama

We heard about this Korean restaurant on Asbury Park’s Main Street, and it does not disappoint. A family-run operation, they serve bowls of kimchi and piping hot tea both before and during the meal. The Korean pancakes and chicken hot stone bowl counter the cold and satisfy our tastebuds. We also like the décor, subdued and a world apart from the street scene outside.

In sum, a surprisingly interesting museum, a great lunch, and a good walk on the boardwalk.

The Strand Bookstore, Henry Street Galleries, the Bar Room at the Beekman Hotel, the Mysterious Bookshop & Frenchette

The Strand Bookstore

The Strand was founded in 1927 and has occupied this choice spot on lower Broadway since 1957. Iconic doesn’t describe the half of it. The Strand used to boast of “18 miles of books,” and we have fond memories of meandering through its disheveled, dusty rows that had everything you could possibly want — and then some. The store has been remodeled in recent years, with  a more modern floor design, lots of light and space to browse. We won’t wax nostalgic about the old Strand. This bookstore is still great!

The Galleries of Henry Street

Artists and those who display their works need cheap rent, and although nothing is cheap in Manhattan anymore, the best value might be on Henry Street, down here on the southern edge of Chinatown hard by the Manhattan Bridge.

We go to 56 Henry Street because that is the name of the gallery that is displaying ceramic pots we want to see, but the display — called Pot Shop — is not at 56 Henry Street for some reason but rather at 105 Henry Street, which we have difficulty finding because there is no signage outside.  When we do find the gallery, the two employees who work there, once we get them to look up from their laptops, tell us that they put a sign outside a week ago but it was quickly covered with stickers from Chinatown street entrepreneurs.

Here is nostalgia, finally, washing over us as we recognize the unique dysfunction that once was New York City. Could Henry Street be the next Spring Street, raffish and underpopulated now but soon to be cool and impossible to afford?

And Pot Shop? Very interesting. We almost buy a pot.

The Bar Room at the Beekman

It’s time for a drink after all that runaround. The Beekman Hotel is close by in the Financial District, styling itself as a taste of old New York, but it’s really a modern sort of place, with a large area serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner at low, casual tables (though nothing casual about the prices) and a bar along one wall dishing up craft cocktails. Farther from the entrance is the cool section, above which rises a nine-floor atrium. Much is made of this space with its used books and throw pillows, but we think it would benefit from more separation from the rest. Still, a good place for a drink downtown.

The Mysterious Bookshop

We’re early for our dinner reservation at Frenchette, which is a 20-minute walk away in Tribeca, so we dawdle along the streets and accidentally stumble on a place called the Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street, selling mystery and suspense books exclusively, with an entire section devoted to Sherlock Holmes. We hang out for a few minutes and then continue to the restaurant.

Frenchette

Something has gone awry with our dinner reservation. The restaurant thinks we cancelled it but seats us anyway because we’re early. We get the perfect server, experienced and quick to share the information he’s stored over the years, though we do miss the New York servers from our youth, haughty and arrogant, as if we weren’t quite good enough to dine there. They amused us no end.

 The menu gets a complete rundown (“the steak is good but where else are you going to get duck au poivre?”), and we settle in, enjoying both the food and the bustle of servers and fellow diners.

A day well spent.

Ringing Rocks County Park, ArtYard, Gemstone Gallery, Modern Love, Frenchtown Bookshop, FiNNBAR

Ringing Rocks County Park

We are drawn to this park on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware by tales of a strange field of rocks that ring loudly when struck. “Bring a hammer!” the marketing people advise. The field of rocks is visually arresting, but our hammer produces a dull sound much like hammers do when hitting rocks. Apparently the children roaming the middle of the boulder field are having better luck, or so we’re told. But our mature ankles aren’t going to complete that trip in one piece, so we head elsewhere for natural entertainment.

Fortunately, there’s also a nice loop trail that leads down to a ravine and back again. No false advertising here. We were warned that the ravine’s waterfall would be dry this time of year, and it is, though the ravine itself floods our eyes with autumn color.

ArtYard

Next we drive a short distance to Frenchtown, NJ, and park just off Bridge Street. A stroll along the Delaware, beautiful as always, brings us to an exhibit space called ArtYard. We remember ArtYard when it was little more than an unfinished building with a few sculptures in it. Still free to enter, it now occupies a grand structure, at least by Frenchtown standards, with two floors of galleries and a small auditorium for lectures and concerts.  We enjoy, among other things, Unfinished Verses, a set of rectangular boxes hanging from the ceiling with peep holes for viewing pages from sketchbooks. The idea, according to the artist, is for the viewer to seek out the artwork rather than passively view it on a wall.

Shopping

We return to Bridge Street, bustling with small shops, including  Gemstone Gallery, seller of every type of gemstone imaginable, a specialty gift shop called Modern Love, and the Frenchtown Bookshop (always a good sign when a town supports an independent bookstore). Our ambition is to limit ourselves to window shopping, but of course we end up buying something from every charming store we enter.

FiNNBAR

We end our day at FiNNBAR, also on Bridge Street. This fine restaurant is run by chef and co-owner Cal Peternell, previously of famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley, where local sourcing was practically invented in America. The farm-to-table menu at FiNNBAR changes daily.  Our pasta in a delectable pumpkin sauce does the trick, and we leave Frenchtown with satisfied appetites, several gifts, and a hammer.

FiNNBAR exterior

FiNNBAR interior dining area. The restaurant’s profits benefit Studio Route 29, which aims to strengthen the art community at large by extending resources and access to those historically dispossessed of them.

Carriage House at Culver Lake, Glacial Trail at Kittatinny Valley State Park & Hope, New Jersey

The Carriage House at Culver Lake

We travel to beautiful northwestern New Jersey, stopping first for lunch at the Carriage House at Culver Lake, a nice little German restaurant overlooking the southern tip of Culver Lake. Our preference would have been dinner at the Carriage House, taking advantage of its full bar, but the prospect of an inebriated long drive home in the dark decides lunch for us.

There’s an expansive view of the lake from the tables along the back windows where we sit. The waitstaff is friendly, the interior pleasant, the cuisine outstanding, with classics like Hungarian beef goulash and wiener schnitzel on the menu.

Glacial Trail at Kittatinny Valley State Park

Fortified, we head south to Kittatinny Valley State Park, which sits adjacent to Lake Aeroflex (named very unromantically after the company that acquired the lake in 1957).  It is the deepest natural lake in New Jersey at 110 feet, carved out by glaciers. We choose to walk the Glacial Trail, which runs along the shoreline for half a mile before turning inland. Here we wind past enormous, house-size boulders that were deposited during the last Ice Age.

Hope

There’s still plenty of light by the time we finish our hike, and so we keep up the German theme by stopping at Hope on the way home, a small town of fewer than 2,000 that was founded by Moravian Germans in 1757. The Moravians only lasted about 50 years at this site but left behind wonderful stone architecture that still stands today, including a grist mill, distillery, church, bridge and meetinghouse, most of which are still in use, though for more modern purposes like the charming Inn at Millrace Pond, a popular spot for weddings.

With headstones so old they cannot be read, the cemetery sobers us. Lives lived and seemingly forgotten, even by the elements. But then we find markers with women’s names who died in their twenties possibly from childbirth. Just steps away are stones for children who lived for so few years we can count them on one hand.

It’s been a rich, meaningful day as we ponder the opposite poles of glacial deep-time against the transitory nature of human existence.

Artechouse, Mast Books, Apotheke Nomad & Libertine

Artechouse

It’s time again for a New York City splurge, and we start our day at Artechouse on West 15th, an immersive art exhibition space that features digital artworks, essentially color-in-motion plus sound displayed on walls, ceilings, and floors. Note to psychedelics users: there’s no need for medicinal help at Artechouse. The shows do the trick.

Mast Books

Then it’s across town to Mast Books, which specializes in photography but also has a wall of older used books, many of them first editions. We try to support local bookstores wherever we go, and Mast Books, though small, is fun to browse.

Apotheke Nomad

The original Apotheke on Doyers Street in Chinatown doesn’t open until 6:00pm, too late for our schedule, and so we visit instead at Apotheke Nomad on West 26th, their expansive bar with a beautifully lit downstairs space and an airier bar upstairs with outdoor seating. You know this place is cool because there isn’t any sign at the entrance. The drinks are complex, matched only by the surroundings, and we vow to visit the Doyers Street location soon.

Libertine

Then on to dinner at this West Village restaurant that opened this spring to great fanfare as an authentic neighborhood French bistro. Libertine restricts its menu to a small number of French classics, all made to perfection. The oeufs mayo is highly recommended by food blogs, but we choose instead saucisse purée (fantastic) and monkfish (also very good). We’re fans of neighborhood restaurants with limited menus, and Libertine checks all the boxes

Little Acre Farm / Rocky Point Trail / Twin Lights State Historic Site / Mule Barn Tavern

Little Acre Farm

Potted bamboo dapples the fiercest rays of summer sun on our patio, but not all. To expand the protective effect, we need one more plant.  So back we go to Howell, NJ, where we purchased the first two leafy specimens. At Little Acre Farm, we select a sibling, so tall its branches reach into the front seat for the rest of our journey.

Rocky Point Trail

Forty-five minutes later we land in Hartshorne Woods, northeast of Little Acre Farm on a high point above the inlet to the Navesink River. We choose the Rocky Point Trail, a 2.3-mile loop with overlooks of the Navesink where it meets Sandy Hook Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a fine warm day for a walk in the woods.

Twin Lights State Historic Site

A short driving distance from Hartshorne Woods is the Twin Lights State Historic Site. The discontinued  dual lighthouse rises on a bluff in Highlands, a spot we are surprised to learn is the highest point on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. After climbing both towers and enjoying the dramatic views, we inspect the magnification lenses. Back in the day, they projected light from the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb to seafarers 20 miles away.

Mule Barn Tavern

Then we drive north to the tip of Sandy Hook, where the remnants of a Coast Guard station are slowly being converted to civilian uses. The old mule barn is now Mule Barn Tavern, with casual food served both indoors and out. After lunch, we stroll past former officers’ houses, a movie theater, and the occasional cannon, on paths with expansive views of the harbor and Manhattan.

Café Sabarsky, Neue Galerie, Dashwood Books, New York Public Library & Bookmarks

Café Sabarsky

We begin our day with lunch at Café Sabarsky, which adjoins the Neue Galerie on Museum Mile in Manhattan. Or rather, we begin our day by waiting in line at the popular Café Sabarsky, which takes no reservations. The expected one-hour wait passes quickly as we people-watch and enjoy park views.

Inside the café we are transported to early 20th-century Vienna. With banquettes upholstered in Otto Wagner fabric and a grand piano in one corner, with every seat taken and a bustle of wait staff, the room serves as a reminder of how artists and intellectuals used to gather at the time.

The café serves purportedly the best wiener schnitzel in the city along with an impressive array of German/Austrian desserts and rich kaffee creme.

Tickets to the café enable entry into the Neue Galerie, three floors of primarily German and Austrian Expressionist art, including Gustav Klimt’s Woman in Gold.  We get around the gallery fairly quickly, and it is well worth the visit.

Cafe Sabarsky

Detail of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Dashwood Books

New York City is full of small, independent shops (still), and after the Neue Galerie we head downtown to Dashwood Books, a basement-level store on Avenue A in the East Village that deals exclusively in photography books. We buy an oversized volume for our nonexistent coffee table and then head to the mother of all New York book repositories, the New York Public Library.

Dashwood Books

New York Public Library

When visiting the NYPL, we always pop into the Rose Main Reading Room, the largest uncolumned space in America, but our real destination is the Polonsky Exhibition on the ground floor. It features rotating selections from the library’s vast collection of treasures that connect our species’ first written words to modern-day media. 

While seated at this desk, Charles Dickens may have written chapters of Great Expectations.

Leaving via the front steps of the library and crossing Fifth Avenue to 41st Street, we mosey down the sidewalk enchanted by bronze plaques underfoot. Each rectangle speaks to us from a different author, all the way to Park Avenue (actually, they are meant to lead you from Park Avenue to the library).

A word is dead/ When it is said,/ Some say./ I say it just/ Begins to live/ That day. —Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “1212”

Bookmarks

We follow these plaques one block to Madison Avenue and our final destination (completing today’s art-and-book theme), the Library Hotel. The hotel, whose name trades on its proximity to the NYPL but doesn’t resemble a library at all, has a nifty little rooftop bar called Bookmarks.

New York hosts loads of glitzy rooftop bars, but this one is our favorite with its open-air seating and stone parapets. Drinks in hand, we time-travel back to the 1920s.

The Bookmarks bar atop the Library Hotel