The following day we had
a second round of bagels before jumping in the car and heading upstate to Julia’s
parents’ farm. En route we passed a turning off to Sleepy Hollow, a horrific
amount of storm-damaged trees, a conveniently-placed Starbucks drive-through,
and the occasional surreptitiously-parked copper. A couple of hours after
leaving NY, we stopped off at a petrol station to fill up (right before getting
to the farm). I was craving sugar, in the form of some delicious chocolate, so
quickly grabbed a couple of bars off the shelves. An English accent heard in
the middle of upstate New York clearly threw the locals! In my hurry to get
back in the car, I’d unwittingly bought a peanut-based confectionary snack,
which was a terrible, terrible mistake!
At the farm itself, I
finally met Bean (Julia’s dog), and her parents and their three dogs. We had a
quick walk round the immediate buildings before sitting down for dinner. We
spent the evening watching TV with big mugs of vodka/rum, being drunk through
silly “glasses” straws. In the morning we took a trip to the nearby town of
Rhinebeck, which is a pleasant place. All the houses are very much in that
American style of sideways slatted boards, all singly coloured with (often)
white trim. Julia found her dream place on the corner of Mulberry and Chestnut
(which sounds like a pleasant enough place to be!). We stopped for coffee and
then went to the local bookshop, where Julia found herself in Kids’ Book
Heaven...
Back at the farm, we took
a walk round the farm with Julia’s father. It was blistering cold, a brisk -16°C, and by the
time we’d finished our circuit my knuckles had frozen almost solid from their
exposure whilst taking photos. After eventually defrosting our hands, I was
treated to my first experience of s’mores by the fire, and we then lounged
around chatting for a bit before grabbing some food. We all sat and watched a
rented film that night, although I know for a fact I was in and out of sleep
for the duration of it!
The following day, we had
a play around on the ground-sunken trampoline, I fooled around in the tree
house, and we packed up our stuff for the trip back to the city. We were
originally going to drive back by ourselves, but Julia’s parents were planning
to head back to their house as well, so we all went in the same car. We were
dropped off back at Julia’s flat before going back to Stumptown to try and finally
have some photobooth fun. We went back to the house to collect Bean, where we
finally decided on my final dinner in NY: a rather nice pizza. We opted for a
large base, at a reasonable cost, but by the time we’d added a multitude of
toppings it became a $42 pizza! We had it delivered to the flat, so coincided
our return there accordingly. It was delicious, but we could honestly only manage
a couple of slices each. You almost had to roll the slice into a ball to pick
it up, it was that loaded!
I had an early flight home in the morning, and needed to be at the airport even earlier, so I turned in for the night at a more reasonable hour than I had done the rest of my trip. And so ended a thoroughly enjoyable visit to New York, one that I hope to be able to repeat sometime soon.
