After her exhausting (if wonderful) spring travel orgy, Jessie swore an oath not to leave the District of Columbia for at least a month. She ended up adhering to the vow for a total of 53 days, but finally broke her travel fast to spend the last weekend of August in Ithaca, New York, with her newlywed friends Mia and Todd:
The last time I came to visit, Ithaca was encased in ice, so the purpose of this visit (other than enjoying borscht and backgammon with my buds) was to sample the town's warmer weather pleasures. Saturday, after a slow start involving a 'pre-breakfast' of ice cream, we made our way to the Ithaca Farmer's Market, on the shore of a Cayuga Lake inlet.
Under the roof of the open-sided, T-shaped market hall we feasted our senses on the jumble of products and people present. Among our fellow browsers were numerous infant-toting new parents (and pet-owners: we spied a pooch in a pouch and a snake worn like a bracelet), just-returned Cornell undergrads, and a West African musician playing the kora. We sampled pesto made from garlic greens, ogled brilliant blooms, and purchased picked-that-morning produce, organic yarn, fall flower honey, maple syrup, and a cutting board of many colors.
Our shopping complete, we hunted down some lunch. After contemplating the merits of Cambodian, Sri Lankan, and macrobiotic offerings, we settled on a duo of flatbreads baked in a wood-fired oven mounted on a trailer, one with herbed olive oil and Asiago, the other topped Southwest-style with beans, cheese and salsa. We desserted on unusual sorbets (Earl Grey and lime, rosehip and hibiscus) sold at the soup stall and an apple-berry fritter from the samosa makers.
Bellies full, we rambled up Cascadilla Gorge, which runs from the end of their block up to the Cornell campus. Once we'd had our fill of lush greenery and chattering falls, we found that the steep staircases had whetted our appetites anew. So, off to the Cornell Dairy Bar, for the day's third serving of frozen sweetness. Unfortunately, we arrived half an hour after closing, and had to content ourselves with a pint of Nutty Buddy Franklin purchased at the adjacent Dairy Store, and eaten at the bright red outdoor tables.
After a post-ice-cream nap, we headed out for a scrumptious dinner at Pangea, which began with mascarpone-stuffed artichoke hearts drizzled in truffle oil, continued with pasta tossed with fennel and summer squash, and concluded with two kinds of chocolate cake, accompanied by frozen dessert number four: espresso-chili gelato.
The rest of my stay was mostly mellow, involving many cups of tea and hands of cribbage, to a soundtrack of rain tapping on the windows. We took one more walk, to Ithaca Falls, confirming once more that Ithaca truly is "gorges."
Before my departure from Binghamton airport, we hit the road and made our way to Corning, birthplace of Pyrex and Corningware, and home to the Corning Museum of Glass. We checked out works by Dale Chihuly and Louis Comfort Tiffany, and mind-boggling creations from the age of the maharajas and now. The highlight was definitely the Hot Glass Show, which featured live, narrated glass-blowing, enhanced by screens running live feeds from three cameras, including one inside the 2300°F (1260°C) 'glory hole' (reheating furnace), protected from the heat by fused-silica glass, itself a Corning invention.
We grabbed one final bite at Corning's adorable Old World Cafe and Ice Cream (1 W. Market St., +1 607 936 1953), where we loved the tile floor, pressed-tin ceiling and dark wooden benches, but passed up the opportunity to try Ithaca-produced Purity ice cream. After all, I have to leave something for next time.
Hungry for more central New York? Sample chief researcher Marilyn Terrell's travelogue from her trip there earlier this summer.
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