A gift basket from Rich and Naomi contained several fun and whimsical items including this flowering tea pot.  A dried and compressed ball of tea and flowers is placed in the hand-blown glass teapot.  Hot water is poured over it and it unfolds into a flower arrangement and brews the tea at the same time.  You get a little blooming drama, a flower arrangement, and some brewed tea, all in the same experience.  Way cool.

Lori’s brother, Rich, visited for a few days and we seized the opportunity to indulge in some intensive touristing.

Let’s start with food.  We visited our old favorite, the Ithaca Bakery, but also had some pleasant new experiences. In Hammondsport, we had a very nice lunch at The Village Tavern.  Dano’s Heuriger on Seneca was recommended to us neighbors Bill and Anne some time ago and we seized this opportunity to give it a try.  Fabulous!  It’s a beautiful restaurant at a beautiful location and the food was superb.  We will, no doubt, be going back.  Bill and Anne also recommended Cayuga Lake Creamery in Interlaken.  We’re reasonably sure the ice cream there is excellent but we’ll have to do numerous visits and extensive sampling to confirm our impressions. We want to be thorough.  We also dined at one of our perennial favorites, The Heights Cafe and Grill–they always come through with great meals.

We visited two museums.  The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport was primarily about Glenn Curtiss and his seminal contributions to American aviation. Numerous models, reproductions, and original aircraft and motorcycles taught us how fast the development pace was and how amazingly prolific Glenn Curtiss was in moving things along. The museum also includes a lot of other unrelated items, some of which were probably donated by enthusiastic locals without regard to relevance to the primary purpose of the museum.

We also visited Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.  The building itself, by I. M. Pei, is quite interesting and the museum’s collection is diverse.  The admission is either free or $30, depending on whether you park legally or get nailed with a parking fine.  We opted to pump the meter with quarters rather than provoke the zealous and efficient parking authorities. (By the way, the Morgan Garden is a gem, worthy of some time spent in quiet contemplation.  There is a fascinating description of its design and installation on the designer’s Web site.)

For moseying, we spent time at the F. R. Newman Arboretum at Cornell, enjoying the rich fall colors.  The next day we went to Taughannock Falls State Park and strolled along the beautiful and easy gorge trail to Taughannock Falls.  It was a beautiful walk on a perfect fall day.

It was great to use Rich’s visit as a pretext to be tourists and tour guides.  We look forward to future visits.