2013 was my first New Year living in New England, but I spent the holiday in central New York. My boyfriend Aaron and I decided last minute to make the 5 1/2 hour drive to Ithaca to celebrate the New Year with his friends (and now also my friends) Kristen and Lin. Aaron studied at Ithaca College for undergrad, so the town is very much his old stomping grounds. I can't wait to go back when it's not below freezing temps!
We drove up on the 30th of December. It had snowed just a little the night before, but thankfully Aaron is a very experienced snow condition driver. We stopped in Albany for brunch at a cute cafe, and once we entered central New York I felt like we were driving through Missisissippi! It's a very rural area with lots of farms, bright red barns, and rolling hills, and you can see really far across the landscape from the highway. It was beautiful.
When we arrived outside of Ithaca that evening, we first stopped at Aaron's friend Erik's home where I got to meet his wife and their new baby. Erik also showed us his top-of-the-line beer brewing facility in is basement, and we got to taste several of his brews. We left Erik's to meet up with Kristen and Lin for dinner. I had never met them before but am so happy that I did! They are both so awesome, and I can't wait for them to come visit us in Boston (hint, hint, Kristen if you read this)! After our Mexican meal, Aaron and I decided to walk around the commons in Ithaca, where we did some geo-caching. The Commons is the cute downtown area with shops and restaurants. We never found a cache, even though there were two in the Commons. We blamed the snow.
The next day on New Year's Eve, Aaron took me to his favorite coffee shop in Ithaca, right next to Cornell University. On our walk to the coffee shop, we walked across a bridge that spanned a huge gorge. I learned that Ithaca is full of these gorgeous gorges that carry streams and waterfalls throughout the town and region. Now do you get the patch? I'm really looking forward to going back and doing some hiking in Ithaca and seeing more of the gorges and cascades.
After we had coffee, we visited the Ithaca visitor center. Aaron had a great idea to take me to Stewart Park, which is right at Lake Cayuga. Have you ever looked at a map of New York? If so, you may have noticed what look like long scratch marks going North to South in the center of the state. Those are the Finger Lakes, and they are well known for the wineries surrounding them. Lake Cayuga is the longest of these lakes. It's 40 miles long with an average width of 1.7 miles. The view from where we were standing at the southernmost tip of the lake was amazing.
When we left the park, Aaron, Kristen and I had lunch a a local micro-brewery. We then did some shopping in the local stores, bought some Lake Cayuga wine, and later we went to Lin and Kristen's apartment. After we made dinner, we all decided to head back downtown for a pub crawl to ring in the New Year.
When we were counting down the minutes until midnight, I remember thinking back on how far I had come in just half a year. I finished graduate school in May, moved to Boston two days later, did an internship at the State Library of Massachusetts, found my first professional job at American Experience, met my awesome boyfriend, and at that moment I was so far from everything I had ever known. I missed my family and friends and my home and being in school and being in what was very much my comfort zone, but at the same time I was equally excited about where I was in life and what was to come. In 2012, my New Year's resolution was to take it to another level. That night, I felt like I had succeeded in that goal. In 2013, I again resolved to take it to yet another level. I'm on my way.
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