Last week, I ventured on a two hour train trip to Poughkeepsie to view some of the spectacular fall foliage that I have wanted to see for so long. My fascination with fall foliage goes back to my obsession with all things New England and my only way of experiencing this was through my subscription to Yankee Magazine. Of which, my favourite issue has always been their special fall foliage edition. I was originally going to do a cruise up the Hudson River but with the bad AU dollar, this was a better monetary decision and it happened to be a fantastically gorgeous day and the perfect excuse to relax on a train.
First things first, I needed a fall foliage outfit. So here is what I wore –
Jacket from LL Bean, shirt by Michael Kors and jeans from Old Navy. By the way, that will probably be the last ever fashion post on this blog. 😉
Unfortunately for me, the 7 line ended up behaving like it did on my recent trip to Princeton. Normally it takes about 15 minutes to get to Grand Central. So I was at my station by 9.10am to get to Grand Central at 9.25-9.30ish and to simply walk up, buy a ticket and board the 9.45am Metro-North train to Poughkeepsie. Unfortunately, I alighted the 7 train at Grand Central at about 9.40am. Running up the escalator, then another escalator and then through the normal end-of-peak-hour crowd, it was frantic. I found a Metro-North ticket machine and looked at my watch, 9.43am. I did the quickest ticket purchase of all time (and waited for the real receipt and made sure I had all the tickets (a lesson learnt on the trip to Princeton!) and ran around in circles to find my platform. I had no clue where to go out of the 5 million platforms at Grand Central but when I eventually found it I flew down the staircase to see the train was still there. The train conductor must have sensed my panic so he yelled out “You’ve got plenty of time!” Ahhhh! Always the way! 🙂
Because I was so late I was forced to sit in a seat that –
* was facing backwards
* was not on the ‘river side’ of the train
* was infested with fruit flies
* and had a very annoying guy in the seat in front
Thankfully, when we got to Yonkers, the girl sitting on the side of the Hudson River, was getting off the train – so I was still backwards – but had an absolutely gorgeous view as the train travels right on the water – it is great!
Here are some random pics that I shot from the train –
Also, here is a video of some of the views I got along the way –
There are just some spectacular views along the way – including the West Point Military Academy and some cute little townships. Of all of the townships that we passed through, from the train line the one that was just gorgeous was Garrison.
Arriving into Poughkeepsie, I was yet to realise that the riverfront area where the train station is located is actually the nicest part of town. I had read about a farmers market being scheduled for the day I was visiting, so I had decided to venture up Main Street and into the township. Though before I did any discovering, I saw the most beautiful foliage on the river front.
Yes – it was even more beautiful in real life. I was speechless seeing the colours before me and it was really like every single one of my Yankee Magazine dreams had come to life in front of me. You can view the whole set of photos here.
I decided to then venture up Main Street. The Farmers Market consisted of three or four stalls that were hmmm and it seems Poughkeepsie is a bit of a dying town – the main street area anyway. The first five people I encountered after leaving the riverfront area could all have been featured on America’s Most Wanted and there seemed to be a lot of people just ‘hanging around’. Every third shop seemed closed down – which is a shame as the town could be gorgeous – and I am sure it was in its heyday. I settled on a dodgy-ish chinese restaurant for lunch where I just needed to eat as I was famished. As I sat down I looked around to take in where I was actually eating. I have to say, this is the first restaurant I have ever eaten in that had a BED in the restaurant. You can see it in this quick ‘I-am-not-a-health-inspector’ photo that I took –
Surprisingly, the meal wasn’t that bad and with that, my visit to Poughkeepsie was over. There was nothing really there to see.. so I walked back down to the station ready to get the next train back to the city. This time I was there early so got a great position on the train and enjoyed the Hudson River view all the way back to the city. Next year, I hope to make a real fall foliage trip out of my love of the leaves and would love to head up through New England taking photos and appreciating the beauty of having real seasonal weather changes.
For some reason, I tagged all my Flickr photos and my video with ‘Poughskeepsie’ instead of ‘Poughkeepsie’. I’ll go through and change these tomorrow… for now, it is goodnight!