Day 15: Corning, NY

We started the day and went straight to the Corning Museum of Glass. Holy crap, that place is huge. There’s a contemporary art exhibition, a history of glass exhibition, an entire area dedicated to the science of glass and so much more. There were some live demos of artists, including two glass blowing demos. In one of these demos, kids submitted pictures and the staff made it for them. We got to see them make a lady bug – the kid was so happy!

Well, here are some pictures, naturally of glass musical instruments:

and finally, a glass chess board and pieces – Hasidic Jews Vs. Roman Catholics:

Other side:

On the Jewish side, please pay special attention to the dude waving a chicken over his head (Kaparot for Yom Kippur) anb the Mohel (the one circumcising a baby).

We practically had to force ourselves to leave. We started driving towards Baltimore. We got hungry pretty late, and local restaurants in… whatever town we were, were already closed. We decided to pop my KFC cherry, and yes, it hurt pretty bad. Who eats that crap, and why?

We spent the night at the Comfort Inn in Bethlehem PA. That’s pretty much it.

Day 14: Beacon, NY

We woke up at Sturbridge. Turned out we had a nice porch with a view to a pond.

Our aim was to get to Corning NY at nighttime, so we can have plenty of time the next day to spend at the Corning Museum of Glass – I saw signs for it about a week before, as I was driving through the state of New-York, and Julia and I decided we’ll check it out together on our way to Maryland.

We started by stopping at a Shaw’s to get some veggies, bread, cold-cuts and cheese. We then drove a little and stopped at a rest area for one of those wonderful fresh, basic kind of lunches. As we were driving on, we saw a sign that said “Hudson Beach Glass”. Well, we thought, we might as well follow. Adventures!

We found ourselves in Beacon, NY. It seemed to be a pretty small town. In a small park on the main street there were some young heavy metal bands performing to mostly to themselves. They were pretty terrible.

We walked up and the street and came across Zoradora, a home-made Popsicle shop. They had flavors like lychee-sake, vanilla-beet, avocado, and pumpkin-chiptole-chunk. I had the blueberry pie and Julia ha the strawberry-kiwi-ginger. That was awesome.

We then found Hudson Beach Glass, a glass studio and gallery. The shop store had a lot of beautiful pieces:

Julia mentioned to the dude that she blows glass, and of course a very vivid conversation started. He was sad to hear we were just passing through the town, and suggested we go up to the gallery on the second floor, where artist Jill Reynolds was installing her works for an exhibition. Reynolds herself and and her husband who was helping her were both extremely nice. Even as they were working towards the opening of the exhibition, they took the time to talk to us about the works, which were very interesting:

We then continued all the way to Corning. We got a room in a motel (with Indian owners, what do you know…) and drove to the downtown area. It was very cute with tons of glass shops on the main street.

We decided to go for a semi-fancy dinner at the Cellar. Unfortunately, NASCAR was also taking place in the area, so we shared the restaurant with a table of loud, drunk drivers and their… I don’t know, women. Complaining to the waiter resulted, as expected, in a free dessert.