Rhinebeck

We heard the biplanes before we saw them — a stuttering, coughing drone rising over the tree line as we pulled off the Albany Post Road. At Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, a grass airfield tucked behind the village, pilots in leather helmets were warming up machines built before either of our grandparents were born. Lia grabbed my sleeve as a bright yellow Curtiss Jenny wobbled into the sky, and for a moment the whole valley seemed to hold its breath with it. Rhinebeck does that: it makes you slow down to the pace of something older.

Main Street and the antique trade

Rhinebeck’s Main Street is a single, unhurried run of nineteenth-century brick and clapboard, anchored by the Beekman Arms, which bills itself as America’s oldest continuously operating inn. Lia and I ducked in and out of antique shops crowded with Hudson Valley farm tools, Staffordshire china, and racks of chenille bedspreads, while the smell of fresh bread drifted from a bakery two doors down. There’s a comfortable clutter to the town — nothing overly polished, nothing performing for tourists — just a village that has been selling old things to curious travelers for two centuries and sees no reason to stop.

The river and the estates

A few minutes west of the village, the land drops toward the Hudson, and suddenly you’re among the Gilded Age estates that once lined this stretch of river — Wilderstein, with its Queen Anne turret, and the grounds of the Mills Mansion just across the county line. We walked a riverside trail at Poets’ Walk Park as the afternoon went gold, the Catskills laid out hazy on the far bank and sailboats tacking slowly against the current. It’s easy to forget, wandering Main Street’s boutiques, that this whole region was once the country retreat of robber barons; the river views explain exactly why they chose it.

Getting There

Rhinebeck sits about ninety minutes north of New York City by car via the Taconic State Parkway, or a scenic two-hour Amtrak ride up the east bank of the Hudson to the Rhinecliff station, a five-minute taxi from downtown. We came by train and were glad of it — the ride alone, tracing the river past crumbling estates and small stone depots, felt like the first chapter of the weekend rather than a way of simply getting somewhere.