weekend escape: kingston, ny

One of many public artworks in Kingston

If I’d listened to my Hudson friends, I might never have checked out Kingston. It’s historically gotten a bit of a bad rap—perhaps because it is really more of a big city than the quaint waterside towns nearby. In fact, Kingston was the original capital of New York! But, like many of these upstate towns, it’s going through a revitalization, with a huge focus on bringing back jobs and affordable housing to the city while keeping the artist vibe alive. The focus on empowering the existing community, instead of leaning into “weekenders,” might be what draws us to this area so much.

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weekend escape: warwick, ny

Towards the end of last summer, I had this itch to get the hell out of Manhattan and go to a big house somewhere with a pool. That was literally my only criteria. I searched high and low on Airbnb for anything within two hours of the city that had a pool and there was…. nothing. So, I learned my lesson, and in February or something nuts like that, I booked a house with a pool for August. Luckily, we were able to recruit my freshman college roomie and her man to come along and, it turned out, she actually knew the place that I’d picked totally randomly.

Warwick is a small town at the southern tip of Orange County, NY, just about an hour and a half drive from Manhattan. Jen actually has a bunch of family in that area, some of whom were very connected to one of our main points of entertainment… but more on that in a bit.

weekend escape: hudson, ny

Hudson waterfront

June 2015 was the first time we did a weekend trip upstate to Hudson, NY. We’ve been numerous times since then, in every season. (I even went on to work for a company with an office there allowing me to see it in an entirely new middle of non-summer weeks light).

Originally, though, I knew little about the town–I think I read about it in a New York Times article or just found a lot of cute Airbnbs there [and there are, seriously, a ton! Plus all the hosts seem to split their time between Hudson and Brooklyn, as painters or writers or other artists… right up my alley]. There is a ton of vintage shopping, too, which is one of my favorite ways to explore a new location.