Wildlife, design, food & drink, travel, real estate, country characters, adventures, waterfalls.
A new Catskills ice cream shop is taking milkshakes to the next level. At Cutie’s Sweets & Treats in Cairo, the rims of old-fashioned milkshake glasses are rolled in cake frosting, which works as a sugary glue to blanket with candy, sprinkles, popcorn, or graham cracker crumbs. Then, the glasses are filled with creamy shakes and piled high with treats.
Travel back to 1663 at the oldest house in the Hudson Valley. At the Bronck House and Museum, run by the Greene County Historical Society in Coxsackie, history buffs can see first-hand how a single-room stone house grew into a Dutch Colonial home with a standalone kitchen and learn about how much life has changed in 350 years.
Serving Catskills-brewed craft beer, wine, cocktails, and a full food menu, Cairo's Old Factory Brewing Company has what you need, whether you’re looking to bring all your friends to a ginormous sports bar or just want to sip a local beer on their breezy 95-foot porch. Plus, they've got a kids menu and brunch deal for early birds.
Mansion + Reed, our favorite general store in the Hudson Valley, is now serving some of the best coffee for miles around. The owners, twin sisters Lia and Justine Post, pour a fine cup of cappuccino, a smooth and chocolatey cold brew, and signature espresso drinks like the Maple Cinnamon Latte, made with a shot local syrup, a sprinkle of spicy Ceylon cinnamon, and oat milk or Ronnybrook farm creamline milk. It’s caffeine heaven, and when it gets too hot for a steamy latte, you can order it iced.
Furlong’s, one of the classic East Durham Irish pubs of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, reopened last August after it had been closed for a decade. The new owner of what is now called Five Furlong’s Tavern is native Irishman Garrett Doyle. He also founded Manhattan’s Tuttles Bar & Grill in Murray Hill, and he has made the most of Furlong’s enormous backyard by building out some of the best outdoor seating in the area.
Boston makes a great kid-friendly vacation destination, especially if your family includes some history buffs. We visited Boston with our 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. Here’s our #1 hotel recommendation, plus the most family-friendly historical highlights, some fun finds for younger kids, and the tastiest things we ate.
Black Horse Farms in Athens, NY is so much more than a typical farm stand. With two balmy greenhouses, tons of plants and garden supplies, ridiculously delicious house-made cookies, loads of local food, and everything you need to make a simple-yet-delicious meal, it’s a destination-worthy shopping experience, especially on a cold and rainy spring day.
Milkwood, the soon-to-open children’s book retreat in South Kortright, NY, feels like a dream realized. For its wife-and-husband owners, illustrator and author Sophie Blackall and Ed Schmidt, a playwright and high school English teacher, that’s exactly what it is—a dream that took a whole lot of work to come to life.
Just a short drive from Hobart Book Village, they’ve transformed an old dairy farm into a place where authors, illustrators, teachers, and librarians from the can all come together and celebrate children’s literature. Today, Milkwood actually feels like walking into one of Sophie’s illustrations.
The World’s Largest Map of Ireland lives in the Emerald Isle of the Catskills. Constructed of over 170,000 bricks in 2001, this awe-inspiring map lives at the Michael J. Quill Irish Centre in East Durham. Each of the 32 counties of Ireland are represented and marked with their county flag. A bricked path bridges the gap between a map of Greene County and Ireland.
If you found a lone refrigerator advertising fresh milk in an empty field in the Catskills, what would you do? At End of the Lane Farm in Cornwallville, you’d be smart to pool all the money you’ve got in your car, pop it in the cash box affixed to a nearby tree, and grab all the creamline cow’s milk, cheese, butter, and goat milk you can afford.
Some of the best tea in the Catskills comes from Catskill Mountain Tea Company, a one-woman business run by Ashley Carr in South Westerlo. A native to the Catskill and mid-Hudson Valley area, Ashley curates a health-promoting collection of black tea, green tea, and herbal tea blends that celebrate the aromas and flavors of her home in the Catskill Mountains.
Foreland brings art studio space to Catskill. The project includes three giant old mill buildings, two of which are now connected by a floating glass pedestrian bridge, that were empty for decades before artist and developer Stef Halmos re-imagined and revitalized them to house 30 artists' studios, three art galleries, two event spaces, and two eateries.
Here are our 10 favorite kid-friendly Catskills restaurants that we’ve gone back to again and again. Each of these family-friendly spots has tried-and-true options for picky kids, plus delicious eats and drinks for grown-ups, too.
THE ULTIMATE KID-FRIENDLY GUIDE TO THE CATSKILLS AND HUDSON VALLEY! After 5+ years of research, we’ve finally compiled all our favorite family-friendly destinations in the Catskill Mountains. This is the post you can send to your friend who is coming upstate for the first time or save for yourself to use as a Catskills day trip bucket-list. We hope it inspires many fun adventures in the months and years to come!
At Woodhouse Pizza, the new restaurant at Woodhouse Lodge in the Catskills town of Greenville, NY, the pizza is made with fresh ingredients from neighborhood farms and they’re pairing pies with excellent cocktails, natural wines, local beer, and crave-worthy small plates.
Subversive Malting and Brewing is joining the ranks of the best breweries in the Catskills and Hudson Valley. Subversive also brews with their own malt, lending a depth of flavor to their lagers, IPAs, saisons, and sours, along with my own malt-forward favorites — like Elemental Confluence, a crisp ale with the roasted caramel goodness of an English mild, and Dark Harvest, a stout with notes of chocolate and coffee. Plus, they’ve got great pizza.
Where’s the best place to hike with kids in the Catskills? Easy trails, waterfalls, gorgeous views, and proximity to good food turn kid-friendly hikes into happy family memories. Here are 10 Catskills and Hudson Valley hikes we’ve experienced first-hand and loved.
Howe Caverns or Secret Caverns? Both of these Upstate New York caves make super-fun, memorable, family-friendly adventures. Both promise otherworldly landscapes, fascinating tours, and incredible water features. However, they’re geared toward different types of visitors. What’s your cavern personality? Take our quiz and find out!
Looking for an easy, kid-friendly waterfall hike in the Catskills that’s just 10 minutes from a diner with outdoor seating and soft-serve ice cream? Mine Kill Falls is the holy grail of family hikes in the Catskill Mountains.
Niall Connolly, an Irish-born singer-songwriter who splits his time between Rockaway Queens and East Durham (a.k.a. The Emerald Isle of the Catskills), has a gift for crafting songs of hope during hard times.
