Hudson Warren Street. (Bild: Dan Region)
Anyone visiting New York City shouldn’t miss an “upstate” weekend. In the Hudson Valley you will encounter picturesque villages and creative minds who ensure a diverse range of options.
The multicolored fall foliage, the Victorian architecture that alternates with the federal style along the busy Warren Street, the small antique shops and people dressed like Annie Hall and other city neurotics – it all seemed like a movie set when we arrived. This impression was reinforced by the fact that we passed many charmingly decorated cafes, vintage and record stores, so that the question arose whether we were in Brooklyn. A rural-village version of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens or Park Slope.
No, we were traveling in the Hudson Valley, a vast valley north of New York City, where bodies of water, forests, vast hilly landscapes and high mountains such as the Appalachians, Adirondacks and Catskills create a varied landscape that can also impress Swiss people. The Hudson Valley is home to numerous artists, NYC expats, historical buildings and cultural institutions such as the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon or the Magazzino in Cold Spring.
Surprisingly diverse offer outside of New York
The town of Hudson is one option among many, but it is particularly suitable for travelers who want to add an “upstate” weekend to their Big Apple city trip. From Manhattan, the train ride takes two hours; a car is not necessary on site.
–The Rivertown Lodge was once a cinema. (Image: PD)
Thanks to creative restaurateurs (Lil’ Deb’s Oasis) and designers (Elise McMahon from Like Minded Objects), long-established second-hand shops (Five and Diamond), creative accommodation (Rivertown Lodge in the former cinema), multidisciplinary art spaces (Hudson Basilica in a former iron foundry), delicious pickling (Baba Louie’s) and a bookstore that doubles as a bar (Spotty Dog), surprisingly diverse.
–The design shop Like Minded Objects by Elise McMahon. (Image: Kyle Knodell)
Water that always flows
If you are also interested in history, you will not miss out in the Hudson Valley. Hudson itself is named after the British navigator Henry Hudson, who sailed up the river in 1609. Whaling and investment in brickworks was pursued here in the 18th century, the textile industry followed later, and in the mid-19th century landscape painters founded the Hudson River School, an art movement that mythologized the Triassic discovery, exploration and settlement.
–The Lil ‘Deb’s Oasis in Hudson is definitely worth a visit. (Image: Heidi’s Bridge)
One of its most important representatives was Frederic Edwin Church, whose huge eclectic estate “Olana” can be visited outside of Hudson. As everywhere in this country, indigenous people once lived here: the Mohicans who christened the Hudson River Mahicannituck, “water that always flows”.
–The “Olana” estate outside Hudson. (Image: Andy Wainwright)
Free mind
Before Hudson became the film set we thought we were in during our stay, it was a destination for gambling, prostitution and alcohol smuggling at the beginning of the 20th century. The dropouts, antique dealers and artists who moved here in the 1980s redesigned the place so that it was perceived as utopian, alternative and LGBTQ-friendly. Whether this original free spirit is still there is difficult to assess: The town is really skillfully set up as a film set, which does not mean that we did not enjoy it.
But next time we dive deeper into the Hudson Valley to swim in Lake George, where Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz once spent their summers to hike in the Shawangunk Mountains to see icons of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Marcel Breuer to visit Bethel Woods, where the legendary Woodstock Festival took place in 1969 – but above all to make the energetic Big Apple city trip even more varied with an “upstate” weekend.
–
