Interesting day. Surprised to learn that our Marriott Courtyard doesn’t give us breakfast. So we went to downtown Oneonta to the Oneonta Bagel Company, where the scrambled eggs were first class and the poppy seed bagels well poppylated. And the coffee? Eight choices for black coffee.

I chose French Roast. Good.

We saw that Oneonta’s downtown was quite nice and, on the way out of town  we saw Oneonta has an octagonal house (take that, AIA), built in 1870.

We then retraced our steps 25 miles and went back to the book village, Hobart. There are some smaller stores there, but only three full service used book stores, two of which were open (the Blenheims are on vacation). We had a nice conversation with the owners of the Adams Book Store. He is a retired physician and she a retired lawyer from Manhattan, and they first opened the store 20 years ago. They have quite a collection, specializing in older American and English books in all sorts of fields. The next time you are in Hobart, population 380, look them up.

The town itself looks pretty run down. These guys guard the entrances.

Too many houses look like this.

But the church has a good sense of humor.

And out of the blue, in this tiny town, two blocks from the book stores, we found a very large Mallinckrodt pharmaceutical plant. Who knew?

Driving on, we saw a skeleton driving a wagon and a church built in 1805, remodeled in 1839, and maybe not touched since. We stopped at a rural diner where we ordered pistachio and chocolate ice cream for lunch.

And the continued on our beautiful and interesting drive.

Soon we were going past Albany and crossing the Hudson, entering Troy.

Troy is an elegant old city with loads of beautiful 19th century buildings.

Because it has so many old and beautiful buidings (it was a major industrial city), it is often used as a set for films set in certain periods. There is one such film being made now, which explained a parking lot with no car newer than about 90 years. Examples:

And they all had their keys, ready to be driven away. Just one weird site. The cars by the  way included Fords, Chevys, Chryslers, La Salles, Packards, Studebakers, and Hudsons, to name a few.

The day ended with a nice Italian dinner at Bacchus, where we sat outside and split a salad and a veggie pasta with a creamy tomato sauce, which for some reason, they named after Aristotle.

Today, we follow the Hudson south and see where it goes.

Oh….and I am very sad about Dolly Parton.