Downtown Hopping: Oneonta, NY

One of our favorite weekend activities is Downtown Hopping. Usually, we pick a local town and spend a couple of hours walking down their Main Street/ downtown area. We mostly strut aimlessly, but we are constantly on the lookout for a cozy coffee shop or a funky ice cream parlor or an antique store or a local restaurant with a unique menu. 

#downtownhopping

Today's feature is Oneonta, NY. It is small city located in central New York State, about a 3 hour drive from NYC. This was not one of our typical downtown excursions. We were visiting our friends so we stayed the entire weekend and did a few touristy things in addition to our usual routine. Our friends warned us that there wasn't much to do in the town, but we ended up having the most fun. Our year-old, particularly, had a ball! 

BEST RESTAURANT

A little research on Yelp resulted in brunch at The Tulip and the Rose Cafe. It was a multi-cuisine restaurant featuring various regional specialities including: Mediterranean, Malay, Indian, French, Thai, Persian, Russian, Vietnamese, and many more. The ambience was lovely, with Moroccan tiles and turkish embellishments. Fun fact: They serve Kangaroo meat and obviously, Bala had to try it. The waitress was very helpful with a good sense of humor. In spite of the diversity in their menu, we found all the dishes to be very authentic and delicious. 

L to R: Vietnamese coffee, Thai Bubble tea, Turkish coffee and American black coffee

ANTIQUE HUNT

Antique stores are full interesting finds and untold stories. Bala loves to chat with the owners and find out about the history of the place. They usually share their own memory of the town that is rare and personal. This particular store was owned by an old lady and her husband. She used to be a social worker and ended up collecting a lot of things left behind by her clients. In the dusty racks, I found the cutest buttons and some really adorable kids story books. I have been scoring through Pinterest for a project worthy of these buttons.

ICE CREAM

Our amazing friends took us to Golden Gurnsey's ice cream. They had more than 30 unique flavors and I spent 15 minutes simply deciding what to have. I had the Queen of Hearts and stopped paying attention to my surroundings for the next 10 mins. I faintly remember that one of my friends had the Birthday Bash, but that's about it. The ice cream was that good. A definite DO-NOT-MISS spot. 

Playing at Ommegang Brewery yard

ONE-TOURISTY THING (or may be more..)

We try to limit ourselves to one-touristy thing on each of our trips. This time we did two. We visited Ommegang brewery for beer tasting and some light snacks. The tasting was very affordable and they even let us take the tasting goblet as a souvenir. There was a food truck in the enormous yard which served a cheese/bread platter complimenting the beer. My daughter enjoyed running around the yard and walking around the hops garden. There were also yard games that we enjoyed as a group. A good place to hangout with friends and family.

To top off the day, we went on an hour-long boat ride across Lake Ostego. It was very pleasant and relaxing. We even got a glimpse of Rapunzel's tower. This is exactly  how I imagined it would be. 

Photo of Tower in Lake Ostego taken from the boat

UNEXPECTED SURPRISE

Our next stop was the Butterfly Conservatory. The entrance of the place was less than inviting except for a big metal grasshopper. We walked though a footpath with rusty, moth-eaten (this one I mean literally!) signages leading the way to a dingy reception room/ store selling memorabilia covered in dust. We then walked through an isolation room and into the actual conservatory. I was very pleasantly surprised. The place housed close to 30 bird varieties, at least 20 species of butterflies, a few lizards and even tortoises. Except for the butterfly larvae and some of the lizards, most of these animals were allowed to freely roam the halls which allowed us to interact with them. A friendly toucan tried to peck Bala's chubby toes and an extrovert butterfly tried to get to the flowers in my printed blouse. Anu had a lot of fun and so did we. Such places would be a great place for kids to learn about animals and their environment. I wish I could to something to get this place funded so they could have educational programs for local schools. Or at the least have labels and sign boards to identify the birds. I will definitely suggest visitors with kids to go to this place. 

WHAT WE MISSED

We did not have time to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, which I hear is big in Cooperstown. Also, there are a lot of waterfalls and trails around this area which are worth exploring. I think we will go again, may be even camp in the foothills of lake Ostego.