New York Adventures!

Part One-

New York Adventures! 

This past month, October 5-22, my parents, brother, and I went to New York and Pennsylvania for a getaway trip. We had been planning to go to Greece this fall, but due to Covid we can’t really leave the country so East Coast it was! Even then we could only go to certain states due to travel restrictions, but we made the most of our time and it turned into a wonderful trip! I wanted to do a couple part blog post series to share about all we saw and did! The time flew by so fast, but it was so nice to catch up with friends and family that we haven’t seen in years! 

We left the afternoon of October fifth and after having a super long lay over in the Los Angeles airport we took a red eye flight and arrived in Albany, New York around nine. Our lay over in Los Angeles was almost as long as our flight across the country! (but back to our story) We rented a really nice Ford explorer from 2020 and set off driving through the colorful countryside! Mom and I were the drivers for this trip, because dad was leaving a couple days earlier than the rest of us. Mom did most of the driving and I helped on the long day trips, so thankful for all she did during our trip! Super Woman! 

Our first stop was Jordanville, New York, Holy Trinity Monastery. Holy Trinity is ROCOR, Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and holds many amazing things. There is a seminary, a beautiful museum, bookstore, multiple chapels and gorgeous frescos and icons all over. It was nice to explore all the different rooms and see old historic icons and artifacts in the museum even though we were all pretty exhausted. It was such a calm environment, no loud noises, no traffic, just nature all around us. The monk there that showed us around had little tidbits of knowledge about pretty much everything. He was a walking encyclopedia! It was a good starting place for us before we all headed to our little hotel room and rested for a bit.

Mom and I ventured out after resting for a little bit in search of dinner. The Chinese place we had been told about only took cash and checks and we had neither so we had to come up with a quick plan b. We ended up driving to the next little town after finding a cute greek restaurant on google where we loaded up on Greek salad, pita and hot avgolemono soup. Avgolemono soup is a chicken lemon soup often with rice added and carrots, it was so delicious and definitely hit the spot after our long travel time and little to no sleep. The owner and her son were very kind and I loved being able to talk with them in the little bit of Greek I know and connect. On our way back mom and I got way into Hamilton and the fact that we were driving a new rental car and got pulled over for speeding down the back roads. We apologized and showed the officer we had gone on a soup run, and he was so nice and let us go after telling us to have a good trip and to watch our speed. phew….

 

Mom went to church early the next morning at the monastery before the four of us packed up and went to meet two sweet older ladies for breakfast. They were friends of one of my mom’s closest friends and my sister’s god mother so it was nice to hear stories from them. They made us their signature waffles for breakfast with homemade apple sauce! SO GOOD! Daniel ate like a wood chipper…. I haven’t seen waffles disappear that fast! I gave him one, turned to get the syrup to give to him, turned back and the waffle was gone! So crazy…. After visiting with them for a bit we headed out in the now stormy weather to drive to Pennsylvania to visit Daniel’s godmother and her family. We drove by SCRANTON! My office dreams… haha even though most of it was filmed in Los Angeles it was still so cool to pass all these towns that were in that show! We stopped at Popeyes for lunch and mom and I also switched driving so I drove us the rest of the way. It was really nice to just hang out and catch up with everyone that evening. They hadn’t seen Daniel for a few years so to see how tall he had gotten blew them away! He has gotten pretty giant! 

The colors on the East Coast during the fall are a sight to behold. All the rich vibrant reds, yellows, oranges…. the rolling hills covered by all of these. Some hills were covered with just yellow trees and it looked like the hills were made of gold! All the unique houses too tucked into the gorgeous colors… I saw so many houses I wanted! Maybe someday!!!! 

The next day the four of us after breakfast drove to Gettysburg for the day…. That trip deserves a post of its own because of how much history and landmarks we saw and experienced! SO that is part two. Gettysburg!