We’re starting our day sat in Dennys waiting for our breakfast to arrive. Char’s in coffee heaven with her bottomless filter coffee, which Liz decided to sample and me with a tea.

My tea was served with Liptons bags, lemon and honey. 

Who knew it was a huge breakfast magnet for the silver surfers? Shock! But its proper buzzing in here with the American country/pop/jazz tunes turned down low in the background, and a hubbub of my excited chatter hanging in the air like spray off a waterfall. 

Sausage, bacon, minus fried eggs with hash brown. (pancakes are the same one in the pic below)

French toast sandwich with bacon, sausage and cheese minus scrambled egg, and brushed with maple syrup. And a brace of pumpkin maple panckaes to share.

Liz’s French Toast Breakfast. Delicious but very filling. (Note her expression – hurry up, I’m hungry!)

The portion of maple pecan pancakes we had to share were so light and fluffy they needed the maple topping to prevent them from floating away like a helium balloon! 

From here we drove onwards to Albany along the interstate while it was quiet(er). Albany is the capital of New York State. Well, almost. Instead, we opted to drive along their equivalent of an A road that wound its way through lots of pretty little towns and villages. Char tackled the two-hour drive with her usual style and flair. At one point the directions on the satnav read “Turn right in 103 miles”!

We began our exploration of Albany with a cruise along the Hudson River. And yes, it’s the same river that flows beside Manhatten, which is 70 miles downstream. The tour was really informative. Peter (our host), described the different buildings or other historical artefacts aling the shoreline. E.g. We saw a pile of granite blocks that were the last remnants of a railroad bridge. Or a disused gasoline refinery. I didn’t take a stack of photos of the different stretches of river bank as I appreciate they’re all a little mundane without the running commentary.

 

The HQ for the local railroad company back in mid/late 1800s. Note the little ship on top of the weather vane, it’s a replica of the ship first used by Dutch merchants who settled here. The building was later sold to Albany University who still own it today.

The navy arrived to set up a base in early 1900s and one of their first tasks was dredging the Hudson so larger ships could pass along it. Prior to that there were many sandbanks and rocks making it a hazzardous task due to the tidal nature of the river.

After we returned to shore we wanted to discover Albany city centre. But I suggested we pitstop at an ice cream parlour on route. It was amazing. I had four flavours in a large cup. Liz and Char both had one scoop in a standard cone.

Pimp up your cone!

Ice-cream menu, which would you have?

Once we’d worked out where the parking was looking located it wasn’t many steps to the capitol building, a bunch of other Frederal buildings, and an “I heart NY” sign. And from there you’d exect us to be able to stroll onwards to the city centre. Sorry, no. Nothing to see. I’m serious. Apparently, Albany is just a bunch of federal buildings, a lot like Washington DC. 

The Corning Tower is the tallest buidling between here and Montreal, accrding to Peter our guide from the boat tour. Shown beside it to the right is the museum (square bulding on pillars), The Egg arena – with the white roof. It hosts performances of all genres from plays through to opera and everything in between. And finally behind The Egg on the right edge of the photo you’ll see the pointed red roof of the above photo with I heart NY.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is basically the federal capitol of NY State in one aerial photo which I stole borrowed from the local tourism site.

Five miles out of town we found a shopping mall, and had a little wonder around that instead. One cup of Auntie Annes cinnamon pretzel bites and a coffee later, we were rolling around browsing the shopping centre.   

That done, we hunted for a place to eat tea because our Google search had informed us that there wasn’t much on offer around our digs. ‘Standard’ seemed to fit the bill do we gave it a try and it didn’t disappoint. The ladies both had a cheese burgers and I opted for a grilled chicken salad with black beans, sweetcorn, iceberg lettuce, tomato salsa and tortilla chip bits. 

From there we went to find our digs which will be our base camp for two nights.

Welcome to the Tangerine Door, a comfortable three bed, single storey house complete with basement (just like in all the best films) and loft.

It also boasts a huge deck with some gorgeous little lanterns around it, a reasonably large lawn (unless you live at Hillside, then it’s small to you), and ride on mower.
So, all you peeps who dodge the lawnmowing, or historically have rarely indulged in grass cutting over the years, imagine having a ride on mower at your house, how excited would you be to do the mowing then?