2023-09-25 07:11:32
It is considered a romantic railway route on the East Coast – the one through the Hudson Valley. This country trip from New York City is easy to take on the Metro North Liner.
For a price of 18 euros, the train starts every hour from platform 25 in Grand Central Terminal station in Manhattan, always runs along the Hudson River and stops in every small town along the way. It’s hard to find a more sustainable and inexpensive way to travel through the river valley.
As soon as the train has passed the last apartment blocks of the Bronx, which tower into the sky like gray fortresses, another world begins: outside the window, nothing but nature. The peace and quiet out here is the antithesis to the flood of stimuli in the metropolis.
Source: Infographic WELT
The river winds through a peaceful scene of hills and forests. The deciduous trees grow right up to the shore and are reflected in the water – bright yellow and flaming red in autumn. A riot of colors.
The best time to travel: autumn
In this region, this is due to the interaction of extreme temperature fluctuations between day and night and a lot of sun in autumn. The end of September to the beginning of November is the best time to travel to experience this natural spectacle.
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The Hudson Valley also offers great art – sometimes outdoors like in the “Storm King Art Center” with more than a hundred sculptures that stand in meadows and hills, sometimes in former factory buildings. The “Dia Beacon” art museum is housed in a former biscuit factory.
Symmetrically mirrored colors: Indian summer is in full throttle at the gates of the city
Quelle: Shutterstock / Nancy Kennedy
It shows, among other things, sculptures by Richard Serra, installations by Dan Flavin and Donald Judd on a spacious area. In 2003, in a separate room, Gerhard Richter created “6 Gray Mirrors,” a site-specific work especially for the “Dia Beacon.” It’s less than a ten-minute walk from the train station in the town of Beacon to the monumental show of contemporary art.
You can then rent canoes and kayaks from Hudson River Expeditions nearby for a few hours on the water, but there is also so much more to see on land.
Contrast program to the consumer world
Beacon is considered a favorite for a getaway by New Yorkers and Big Apple tourists alike. On its two-kilometer-long main street, art galleries, restaurants, boutiques, delicatessens, antique and book stores are lined up, only interrupted by street cafes and ice cream parlors – a small-scale contrast to the consumer world of Fifth Avenue.
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36-year-old Tracey Arms is also a Beacon fan and moved here from New York “long before the pandemic,” as she emphasizes. Since then, house prices in the small town have doubled or tripled, which is also due to the lack of supply. Because hardly any homeowner wants to sell and move away.
More than a hundred sculptures on meadows and hills: the outdoor museum “Storm King Art Center” in New York’s Hudson Valley
Quelle: picture alliance/Xinhua News Agency/Li Rui
Tracy could be a millionaire if she wanted to: “I find a note in the mailbox almost every week asking me whether I would sell my house – some with astronomical offers.” She still doesn’t want to make the deal.
For beginners who just want to take a short break from New York and be back at the hotel in the evening, a trip to Cold Spring is enough. The journey from Grand Central Terminal takes just 70 minutes, with the last train back leaving just after midnight.
At 65 meters above the Hudson
Cold Spring is also a small town, its Main Street starts right at the train station with a mix of shops and art galleries. Cold Spring Cheese Shop (104 Main Street) sells sandwiches and cookies, and drinks are available at Eliza Starbuck’s Wine Shop (82 Main Street).
Cold Spring is also a good address for fans of leaf coloring: in autumn, a trolley takes guests from the train station to the nearby “Boscobel House and Gardens”, an authentically furnished museum villa from 1804.
It lies high above the river valley with views over water and forests. For the equivalent of 13 euros entry, visitors can stroll through the orchards and flower gardens and enjoy the autumnal play of colors on a hike on the “Woodland Trail of Discovery”.
The “Walkway over the Hudson” offers a different view of the natural spectacle. The two-kilometer-long pedestrian bridge leads over the river not far from the Poughkeepsie train station at a height of 65 meters.
A glass elevator takes visitors up to the bridge – and into the middle of an unobstructed 360-degree panorama, another lookout for the “fall foliage”, as the leaf coloring during the Indian summer is also called in the USA. Poughkeepsie (pronounced Pukipsi) is already the terminus of the Metro North Liner.
A former railway line: the “Walkway over the Hudson”, which leads from the Poughkeepsie train station over the river at a height of 65 meters
Quelle: The Washington Post via Getty Images/The Washington Post
If you want to follow the river further north, you can rent a car at the train station. On the journey it becomes apparent that the valley has always been a summer retreat for the rich and powerful.
Splendid villas, castles decorated with towers and mansions come into view again and again. Two dozen of these “mansions” are now open to the public as museums.
A villa with 21 fireplaces
Don’t miss the Vanderbilts’ mansion in the town of Hyde Park from 1896. The Vanderbilts, then one of the richest families in North America, built this 54-room palace with 21 fireplaces on the Hudson.
The property is filled to the brim with brocade and velvet, stucco and marble, crystal and French tapestries – reflecting the aristocratic lifestyle that the East Coast upper class was so fond of at the time.
The neighboring Franklin D. Roosevelt Library is the oldest presidential library in the USA. Together with the private home of the 32nd President, it offers an insight into his life and his time in office from 1933 to 1945. He was disabled by polio and exercised like that The exhibition shows a remarkable effort to conceal this.
A palace with 54 rooms and 21 fireplaces: the Vanderbilt Mansion in the town of Hyde Park
Quelle: LightRocket via Getty Images/John Greim
If you want to immerse yourself in the everyday culture of the Hudson Valley residents for a few hours, visit the Sunday farmers’ market in the town of Rhinebeck. New Yorker Lila Pague, who has settled in Rhinebeck and sells original accessories in her boutique “Winter Sun & Summer Moon,” also appreciates the ambience.
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“Everything is relaxed, everyone has time to chat, you always meet interesting people,” she says. Rushing is a foreign word at the Rhinebeck Farmers Market. Farmers sell finger food, visitors stand together chatting, many came by bicycle.
Two New Yorkers pull it out
Then we continue to the village of Tivoli, located directly on the Hudson and within sight of the Catskill Mountains. You can also meet a lot of ex-New Yorkers here.
Like Andrea and Michael Rhodes, both actors who lived in the bohemian Greenwich Village for 20 years. They moved here in 2009 and started a theater company. And even though Tivoli only has a population of just under 1,200, performances by their Tangent Theater Company are often sold out.
“Tivoli is a magical place,” says Michael, “all passionate people and, in the best sense of the word, crazy people have come together here.” In the evenings, the community meets at long tables on the terrace of the “Corner” restaurant or for a reading in the “Traghaven’s Pub”. “, with an impressive Irish whiskey selection.
“Fall foliage”: a special kind of feast for the eyes in the Hudson River Valley
Quelle: picture alliance/© Bruce Coleman/Photoshot/Ralph N. Barrett
If you’re lucky, you’ll get one of the eleven rooms in the “Hotel Tivoli” in the fall. It’s the only one in town. It belongs, no surprise, to an artist couple.
Owner Helen Marden not only paints, but also bakes bread. As she leaves, she gives the guests a saying: “We locals prefer to read our place name from back to front: Tivoli – I lov it.”
Tips and information:
Getting there: Lufthansa and United Airlines For example, they fly several times a day from Frankfurt to New York, and there are also direct flights from Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf. In the Grand Central Terminal In Manhattan, trains on the Metro North Hudson Line depart every hour to travel to Poughkeepsie. If you want to go further north, take a rental car.
Accommodation: The “Courtyard by Marriott“ in Poughkeepsie in a central location, double rooms from the equivalent of 110 euros. The list of prominent former guests in the historic “The Beekman Arms“ in Rhinebeck ranges from George Washington, the first president of the USA, to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, double rooms from 159 euros. In the “Hotel Tivoli“In the town of the same name, squirrels do gymnastics across the roof, double rooms with breakfast from 214 euros.
Information: dutchesstourism.com; travelhudsonvalley.com
Participation in the trip was supported by Dutchess Tourism/Hudson Valley Region. Our standards of transparency and journalistic independence can be found at www.axelspringer.de/unabhaengigkeit
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