Trip to Sleepy Hollow & Tarrytown
I spent the past month living in NYC at my mom’s apartment and life was very sweet. I didn’t have to pay rent, I didn’t have to work. I didn’t have to do anything other than look for employment and walk around NYC. Life was very good. Fortunately, in the past couple weeks I’ve had positive responses from a couple companies I applied to and I may be in a very good situation in the next couple weeks. Then again, I may not be and I’ll return to the weirdness of unemployment. Tomorrow night I do begin my cashiering gig at a supermarket just to make some extra cash while I wait for other jobs to fall through…that should be interesting.
So after finishing Time Out’s “New York Walks” book which took me about a month, or a little over to complete 28 walks in NYC I wasn’t really sure what to do. Fortunately I found the Lonely Planet “New York State” book a couple weeks ago, so I knew that I still had plenty to do after I finished my walk books for NYC. I was actually getting kind of excited towards the end of my walk book because I was getting a little weary of NYC and yearned to see something new, something different. So after returning to Long Island yesterday afternoon I thought about what I wanted to do before I started “work” and decided that I definitely had to leave Syosset, and I thought Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow would be a cool place to escape to for a day or longer, especially with Halloween right around the corner.
I’m so used to having to drive hundreds of miles to get to my next destination that it seemed very strange that my drive to Sleepy Hollow was only 45 miles long. That’s ridiculously short to me…I was used to a few hundred miles separating cities from my summer road trip, and thought that I was so fortunate that my trip was less than 50 miles. Wow…traveling in NY is so easy.
I asked one of my friends from home if he wanted to join me but he showed so much hesitation and uncertainty about traveling to Tarrytown that I decided that he wasn’t really interested so I left this morning at 8 to get to Tarrytown. After driving for 20 minutes I realized that I didn’t have my EZ Pass attached to my car and became extremely frustrated because this forced me to return home, find the EZ Pass and then start driving again and hope that I wouldn’t get stuck in traffic. Fortunately I didn’t get stuck, and my second attempt to Tarrytown was successful and rather quick…not much longer than an hour…if that.
As I pulled into Tarrytown I noticed how much of a contrast it was to New York City. Less than 30 miles away lies Manhattan island and the “heart” of New York City, but you’d never know that in Tarrytown. Downtown Tarrytown consisted of Broadway and Main Street running perpendicular of each other. Main Street had a Theatre, a few restaurants, a bar and some shopping, while Broadway consisted mostly of shopping options, and a church. I was immediately charmed by this small-town quaintness as I took out my guidebook for information on my first stop.
I called the number in my LP to get directions to Washington Irving’s house because they only provided a street, but I learned that there was only one house on the street…Irving’s. So using my trusty GPS system I drove to the house, parked my car and made my way to the ticket desk. I asked for a ticket and was told it’d cost $10 for a student and paid my money since my guidebook had it atop all the other attractions as I assumed it was the best attraction. Eagerly awaiting my ticket, I was told by the woman behind the counter that I should first check out the Kykuit House, the city’s main attraction.
As I thanked her for the information and began to return to my car she told me that odds were low that I could just walk over to Kykuit and get a ticket because they were always sold out, especially on fall weekends. I returned to her desk and asked her for the number to Kykuit, but she insisted that she’d call them for me, which I was very grateful for. I suggested she stress that I’m a single person and would easily fit into any tour group. After a few minutes of talking to a mysterious person on the other line, apparently someone from Kykuit the elderly woman told me that I could join the 11:30 tour, but I must head over to Phillipsburg Manor immediately.
“Phillipsburg Manor?” I asked with much doubt to what this woman was trying to pull on me. I wanted to see Kykuit, not Phillipsburg Manor, and now she had me on some wild goose chase to see other sites before going to Kykuit.
“Yes, that’s where you purchase your tickets for the Kykuit House,” she reassured me. “But you must go now, because they’re holding a ticket just for you. So hurry, you can come back any time for the Washington Iriving House. Our tours run thru 4PM and they’re a lot more informal than Kykuit. Hurry, run off, and be back…”
I was out the door before she finished her thought and sprinting to my car. I can’t imagine many other people, especially 22 year old guys being as enthusiastic to see Kykuit as I was at that moment. It was Kykuit or nothing, and no one was getting in my way. After an eight minute drive back across downtown Tarrytown I entered Sleepy Hollow and found Phillipsburg Manor. I found a parking spot in their main lot which was something that one could only do if they arrived before 1030AM probably, and scurried into the ticket office. I asked an elderly man (everyone seemed to be over 65 in these places) where to find the Kykuit ticket office as he pointed above his head to a sign that directed tourists to Kykuit’s ticket booth. I thanked him and made my way down a short hall before getting in a line behind 2 people.
“The next tour will be at 230, no now 330 for Kykuit. Do you want to get a ticket sir?” I overheard the woman behind the desk selling the ticket.
“230!?!” I thought frantically to myself. This couldn’t be right, I didn’t have that much time to wait until I got to see the house. I had things to do and only that day to see everything Tarrytown had to offer. I walked up to the desk after the family ahead of me purchased their tickets.
“I just had a woman from the Washington Irving House call you guys. She said I could join your 1130 tour this morning. I’m just a single. Can you help me out?” I tried my best to create the “have mercy on me, I’m just a young guy trying to see the world, can’t you understand and help me out,” act, and they complied.
“O yes! Of course!” the woman behind the counter seemed overenthusiastic for my arrival. I was wondering if I got her daughter as well as a ticket for my arrival due to her reaction. It was probably fortunate I only got the ticket, but it cost me $20. This is Tarrytown, not London or Paris, or NYC. $20 for a site seemed astronomical to me, but it was the city’s main attraction, and I’ve spent more money on meals than that, so I paid without much remorse. I was put on the 1130 tour, so I still had 45 minutes until I could aboard the bus and head to Kykuit, so I headed to the Phillipsburg Manor ticket desk, was told I could get an admission ticket for $6 because I was going to Kykuit, so I paid the money and made my way to my first attraction…Phillipsburg Manor.
Phillipsburg Manor was owned by a Dutchman, Frederick Phillips, where he built a home a water powered gristmill, and a church. He acquired thousands of acres of land from the Native Americans and European settlers and was once one of the largest land-holders in America. He rarely visited this Manor, but had his slaves work and live there where he was able to build on his fortune.
When I left the ticket office I crossed a bridge and was greeted by a woman who looked to be in her 30’s and was definitely one of the youngest people I had encountered thus far. She was decked out in 1750 attire and welcomed me to the Manor. I asked her what there was to do around the area, and she told me that I was free to walk around but there were tours that ran every half hour for the grist mill and the house. I was taken aback by the beauty of the Manor and its surroundings that the idea of being couped up in a house or a grist mill didn’t seem to be the best way for me to spend my few minutes at the Manor. I was curious about that grist mill though and thought that I could look at its interior by myself, but was stopped by a man who was also decked out in 18th century clothing that he’d have his tour in 15 minutes and I wasn’t allowed to walk around prior. I left the grist-mill without any complaint and checked out the grounds…the cows lying in the grass, the nearby body of water that ran into the Hudson and the stables. This didn’t take more than 15 minutes and I joined the mass of 20 people to go on the grist-mill tour at 11.
I only had 20 minutes until I was supposed to be bused over to Kykuit, but I didn’t think it’d be that difficult to slip out of the group. While I partook in the tour I learned how the Phillipsburg’s used their slaves (they were one of the largest slave-owning families in the North…) on their Manor to help them build their fortune. The guide showed us how they used the mill to make corn flour, which I was able to taste, as well as how the mill was powered by the water. This took up 20 minutes as I quietly left the group and made my way back to the ticket office to join the Kykuit group.
I have to mention a few things before I forget…When you buy a “ticket” of admission for any sight in Tarrytown you are given a white sticker which you place on your jacket or sweater or shirt, somewhere where it is easily seen. I was given a sticker for 1130 for Kykuit and a sticker for Phillipsburg Manor. The other thing I wanted to mention was that I was treated or viewed very differently almost like a “rock star” (this is a huge exaggeration) by wearing a Kykuit sticker. Not everyone was willing to shell out the $20 apparently, or more likely, the Kykuit tours quickly sold out and I was viewed and people had strong positive reactions to my Kykuit sticker. It was kind of bizarre, but also cool to be thought of the guy going to Kykuit.
So after leaving the grist-mill and making it back to the ticket office where I was ensured that I’d be able to re-enter the Manor later in the day I found my 1130 group to Kykuit and waited outside for the bus. I grabbed my scarf and hat from my car because the air was getting cooler and boarded the bus with our tour guide - a woman with silver hair who looked to be in her 60s, but also had enough spunk to keep the group moving for 2 hours. During the seven minute bus ride from the Phillipsburg Manor to Kykuit we were addressed by a voice blaring from a speaker on the bus which provided some basic history on the Rockefellers…”The Rockefeller’s had a lot of money, and they have a humongous house and property, and you’ve paid even more money to see a house and property that you will never be able to acquire.” It had that type of ring to it…
We arrived at the house and as I disembarked from the bus I was enthralled by the beauty of the house as well as the fountain that stood before it. I couldn’t believe I was so close to home and NYC and I was staring at something that really seemed beautiful to me. It wasn’t like looking at Versailles, or even Hampton Court Palace, but that was the kicker that made it so amazing…this was once a private residence, it was actually just a “summer weekend home.” I had a little flashback to my road trip when I approached the house as I remembered a similar bus-ride, being impressed by the house feeling that overcame me when I was in Graceland visiting Elvis’ stomping grounds.
When we entered the house there was fine porcelain China in the hallway protected by a display case that actually was the same as when the Rockefeller’s lived in the house to protect the items from their kids destroying multi-million dollar pieces of art. The tour took us through the living quarters and I got some background to the family and house but I’ve been in so many houses/castles/palaces that they all seem to blur into one thing in my mind, but when we were taken downstairs to the basement, the house became memorable. The Rockefeller’s had turned their basement into a modern art museum, with the “highlight” being about 15 Picasso tapestries to end the collection. I was very impressed and was delighted when we got to leave the house and enter the grounds of the estate. The weather was beautiful and there weren’t any clouds in the sky so the view of the Hudson was immaculate. The Rockefeller’s had bought so much land in the area to protect cities from expanding along the Hudson that the beauty and the silence of being separated from the city was incredible. I thought to myself that I could easily summer vacation here for a weekend or two. The grounds were covered with pieces of art, but we didn’t have time to walk freely. After spending about 35 minutes outside we got back on the bus and were taken to the stables where the horse carriages were kept as well as another room for the Rockefeller’s collection of cars. It was all very impressive and I left Kykuit singing “If I had 100 million dollars, I’d buy me a portion of this land.”
I couldn’t imagine the rest of my day living up to the Kykuit experience, but I still had a lot to see and it was already close to 2PM by the time we got back to the Phillipsburg Manor. I went back to the Phillipsburg Manor estate and went on a tour of the house, where I learned about the slave situation in the North and how the Phillips’ treated their slaves. I then ran to my car and drove back to Washington Irving’s House where I thanked the woman behind the counter for helping me get a ticket for Kykuit, and purchased a $10 student ticket for the Washington Irving House.
The tour started with someone explaining to our group of 12 people that there were guides in each room who would explain what we were looking at. I wasn’t the youngest person in this group, a couple had brought along their two children, one who had a terrible cough that never ceased during the tour. I was wondering why they brought their kids to Sleepy Hollow. The oldest couldn’t have been much older than 5, and there was one who was maybe 3. They had no idea what they were looking at nor did they care, but I’d imagine that if you have kids you just can’t abandon them on the weekends and go on trips. I felt reassured that my personal decision to not having a family until I was much older - like nowhere in the near future - would allow me to be free to hop around the world and experience all of its wonders and not be distracted by coughing kids and the other “pleasant” hassles that are associated with being a father. Families and kids are great, but maybe 20 years from now.
The Irving House was nowhere as large as the Rockefeller Estate, however the house still was charming and I thought it’d probably help any writer to be living in almost complete isolation along the Hudson. You’d have so much time on your own that you’d be forced to write something good eventually. Unfortunately I haven’t read any of Washington Irving’s works but he is praised as being the first “respectable” American author. His “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” are known by everyone and I felt kind of weird not having read either of them, maybe I had when I was much younger. Identical to the Rockefeller House, no pictures were allowed, but I got a good sense of the house and thought it was weird that Irving never married or had kids during his life. A man who was as well-traveled (his house consisted of Spanish/French & English style architecture after living in Europe for 20 years) and successful as he was couldn’t find a girl to marry is interesting. He did reject the marriage proposal from Mary Shelley which I also thought was neat.
My camera died at the Irving House but I ran back to my car to get new batteries and had the only pics taken of me near the Hudson and the Irving House. I rushed back to my car and checked my LP to get directions to the Union Church at Pocantico Hills which was only open from 2-5PM Sunday. It was already 4 and I had to squeeze the Church in for no reason other than I wanted to see everything this town had to offer. I called the church for the address, plugged it into my GPS system and drove about seven minutes (everything in Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow is about 5 to 7 minutes away by car) to the church. I wasn’t all that impressed by its exterior design, but people came to see the stained glass paintings by Matisse and Chagall. I entered the church and was totally shocked/repulsed that the admission was $5. I thought that I had already spent plenty of money in Tarrytown and wasn’t going to shell over any money to a church. I’ve been to so many churches in the past couple years who were much more beautiful/grand than this church which didn’t cost me a penny and I wasn’t going to start paying for churches now. I did ask if I could stand near the ticket desk where you could see all the stained glass windows, and I was told that I could, so I saved my money and still saw everything I wanted to see in the church. I asked if the $5 ticket allowed people to take pictures, and was told that it didn’t, and thought that the people who had paid anything for this ticket had lost their minds…most people in the church were much older folk, and perhaps they had lost their minds, or maybe they had nothing better to spend their money on. I was confused why anyone would pay anything for the church as I left with one of my biggest interests of Sleepy Hollow next on my list.
I’d imagine that anyone who’s familiar with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” must have some interest in checking out the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. So I was excited as I drove towards one of the most famed cemeteries in the States, if not the most famous one. I missed the parking section of the cemetery, so I had to backtrack a few minutes before parking my car within the cemetery’s confines. My LP told me that I only had 45 minutes until the cemetery was going to close, and I was suggested by the people who were handing out maps of the cemetery to park my car outside of the gates so I wouldn’t have to call the local authorities to get my car out of the cemetery. I parked my car next these people, told them to keep an eye on it for me, collected a map, and entered the cemetery.
I’m sure for some people, if not most, maybe not, walking around cemetery’s isn’t usually thought of as an enjoyable experience. You’re surrounded by tombstones and dead bodies are underground, and you don’t want to be by yourself because the dead people will wake up or something. I don’t know, there are a bunch of reasons in my mind why I don’t usually hang out at a cemetery, and for the most part, that’s true, but I do think that there is something serene and fun about walking around a cemetery, especially cemetery’s that have famous dead people. First of all, it’s like walking in a park, but there are dead people all around, but since they’re dead, they aren’t going to bother you, so it’s like walking around a park with lots of stones. At Kenyon there was a cemetery very close to the campus, and one even on campus (a much smaller one behind Rosse Hall - our music building) and I remember on one of my daily runs I decided that I wanted to explore the cemetery because I had never done that before. It wasn’t very large, you could walk its entirety in no more than 10-15 minutes, and I did that one day and thought it was really interesting to see the people - soldiers from the Civil War, and other regular people - who were buried in Gambier, Ohio. There’s something interesting/bizarre about it to me. Maybe death seems so bizarre and the idea of not being alive…it’s not scary, it’s just bizarre because I have no idea what it would be like to not be alive. One time when Suz and I were running and we passed the cemetery and I asked her if she ever walked around it, she looked at me as if I had ten heads. That’s the typical reaction though I’d imagine…the ten heads one.
So I walked around the cemetery, found the Rockefeller grave and the Carnegie grave and walked along the creek that ran through the cemetery before taking off. It was a really relaxing experience and it was nice to be able to just walk around a place without shelling out any money. I was relieved to see that my car was still where I had parked it and I hadn’t received any tickets, and was a little shocked to see the gates were still open. It was well past the time the cemetery was supposed to close according to LP, but I could see that people were beginning to be asked to leave the premises as I got back into my car.
The Rockefeller State Park Preserve was the next thing I wanted to see and I thought it’d be best if I hurried over to it now while the sun was still out. I was worried about the parking fee I was supposed to pay ($6), but when I got to the park no one was working the booth and I parked in the lot for free…yay! I got out of my car, threw on my scarf and hat and found a trail that was nearby my car and hopped on it. I’ve been heavily criticized for taking so many pictures of trees and nature that are really boring to look at, and I’ll agree, I don’t sit at home and look at my pictures of trees but there is something really incredible about being alone in a forest or park and being surrounded solely by nature. I can’t capture that moment in a picture nor can I describe it in words, but the feeling I get when I walk around a park or on nature trails is really phenomenal. It’s almost as if every worry or fear or concern I have in my life disappears and I feel free. It’s so amazing and wonderful and maybe I try to capture that feeling through my tree pictures, but that’s impossible unfortunately.
While I walked through the park I reminisced about Kenyon and my trip to Mohican State Park with Suz (yea, I still think about her every now and then, usually when there’s an association to make in my mind). I thought it was cool that a girl engraved my initials and then a heart and then her initials into different trees along our walk in the woods and that was something I never really thought would happen in my life, but I still think it’s one of the coolest things I’ve been a part of. So I thought about that memory when I walked in the park, but I felt wonderful as the sun set and I made my way back to the parking lot. I thought to myself that I couldn’t remember the last time I had had this much fun in a day as I got back into my car.
I quickly drove to the Lyndhurst Home, the final sight I wanted to see in Tarrytown. I didn’t think it’d be open, but I was shocked to see that its gates weren’t closed as I drove along the road to the house and was amazed by the size of the property. The Lyndhurst Home “is a classic 19th-century Gothic-revival mansion designed in the 1830s” and “was built for the mayor of New York City, William Paulding.” As I drove further along the road, still amazed that I was able to enter the premises at this time I saw a very large house in the distance. As I approached the house I was impressed by the size and architecture. It was huge and reminded me of the time I visited the Middleton Plantation near Savannah, Georgia. I took a few pictures of its exterior and walked around the grounds before someone in a golf cart approached me.
“Excuse me sir. Are you part of the wedding?” The golf-cart woman asked me.
I couldn’t imagine that she seriously thought I was attending a wedding in my jeans and hoody sweater, so I decided not to lie, and told her straight up, “No Ma’am, I’m not.”
“Well, then. You’ll have to leave the premises immediately. There’s a wedding going on and no uninvited guests are to be here.”
“Sure thing,” I responded as she drove away and I continued my walk towards the house. I didn’t think anyone would bother me for the next ten minutes so I snapped off a couple more pictures and then was questioned again by the woman and this time I left after considering if it’d be any fun to crash a wedding.
My day in Tarrytown & Sleepy Hollow was reaching its end, but I decided to drive to the Van Cortland Manor. The Manor wasn’t in downtown, it was actually about 15 miles away and half way through my drive it was almost getting dark. I couldn’t find the Manor when I got to where my GPS told me to go, so I headed back to “downtown” for dinner. I wanted to eat at “Bella’s Restaurant & Donut Shop,” but they were closed at 8pm so I parked my car off the main drag - Broadway to be exact - and walked around downtown. I decided to eat at “Lefteri’s Gyro Restaurant” which seemed to be the liveliest place in town. I got a seat outside even though it was kind of brisk outside, and sat next to a couple girls who I assumed to be locals. On my other side were two adults, one woman who seemed to have eaten one too many gyros and a gentleman who didn’t seem to be from around NYC, so he could’ve been a local in Tarrytown.
“So what’s good to eat here,” I asked the girls to my left. Both of them seemed to be close enough to me in age that it wasn’t that weird and I thought that if I hit it off with either one of them perhaps there was a bar nearby.
“You’ve got to try their lamb,” I heard a voice grumble from the other side of me. As I turned my body to the table to the left of me, the gentleman to my right was scarfing meat down his throat similar to how I imagined Garfield eating lasagna in the comic strips I loved while I was younger. “I’ve never had anything like this before in my life.”
As I observed his plate to see lamb, french fries and salad (the salad untouched) I didn’t notice anything special about the lamb, but recognized it as typical Schwarma meat. I ordered a chicken gyro, which received a groan from the table to my left.
“You can get chicken anywhere. You HAVE to get the lamb. They don’t make it like this anywhere else I’ve been,” said the man to the left after a belch. I couldn’t imagine that this guy had been many places in his life if he thought the chicken gyro from Tarrytown was the best Greek food he had ordered, but I decided to appease him and asked the waitress if it was too late to switch my order to the lamb and she said it wasn’t a problem.
This immediately opened the doors to a conversation with the couple to my right. I can’t say they were a romantic couple, but what I gathered from the conversation I had with them they had been out before and were probably keeping each other company for a business weekend. They worked for a luxury hotel chain that charged around $450 a night for a room.
“$450 a night?? For a room??” I gasped and choked on my water. “What the hell do you get for that type of money?”
I had learned that the man I was talking to was from Texas and had been to NYC a few times before.
“Everything. A room, drinks and food,” the Texan responded. I decided that I shouldn’t go on a rant or question their establishment because I’ve stayed in places that my families paid that type of money if not more for vacations. But these hotels were in the Bahamas or Europe, or popular destinations….not Tarrytown, NY.
I got my food less than ten minutes after I ordered it and complimented the waitress for the wonderful service. I talked with the girls for the rest of the conversation and learned that one was from Brooklyn, while the other girl was a local.
“Wow, a local from Tarrytown,” my face responded in astonishment. I asked her the usual questions, “What do you do here for fun? What’s it like living in Sleepy Hollow? Have you ever encountered the headless horseman? Where’s the night life?”
She answered all my questions and then the girls took off as did the Texan and his obese mistress and I was left alone to finish my meal. I quickly finished the meal and paid the bill before taking my final stroll along Main Street and Broadway to get a feel for the city at night. The town was quaint, and such a great contrast to NYC, and as I walked to my car I thought that I had made the best out of the past 13 hours as I could have done and headed back to Long Island.
Tags: New York Road Trips, Travel
