Wednesday 16th August
The thick band of cloud that brought misty rain has passed overnight leaving a patchy blue sky and fluffy white clouds, you can feel the heat of the sun sucking out the moisture from the wet earth into the atmosphere.
Troy and Heather have left us the Mini Cooper today, so that we can run some errands and take a trip into New Hope about 35 minutes away.
Jay the tiler is the only tradesman on sight today, laying the last of the tiles and starting the grouting. The kitchen and laundry (a homes most used rooms) still no go zones for the day. The children are all up early, showered, breakfasted in the makeshift kitchen, with toaster on a chair and coffee pot on the wine fridge, paper plates and plastic cutlery. Then departed for their prearranged summer activities by the time we are up, definitely a morning rush hour in this house. Calsita and Justin both band members are all consumed with this activity, by day they rehearse by night they do rounds of the seemingly endless summer party’s put on by parents of the band member who have the facilities to cater for sometimes up to forty teenagers, brave souls indeed!
The heat has built up to the low 30’s by the time we take off for New Hope, I swing back into my left hand drive mode and Amanda navigates with the aid of her phones GPS. The Mini is a zippy little car, really not so small, spacious interior, bristling with tech. Personal settings for each driver like colour of interior lighting, music preferences, seat settings etc. I bypass them and we are on our way, through lush agricultural land, large almost manorial estates to New Hope. No freeways here just a pleasant country drive to this river town that sits on the Delaware. Once there we find a park and decide first to walk across the bridge that separates New Hope from its neighbouring state New Jersey. The rivers here are large and wide, I have seen a few now, these rivers fed from high mountain ranges also fed Americas growth and prosperity in earlier times. Halfway across the bridge we cross the border, a painted sign across the walkway tells us we are crossing from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
The town on the New Jersey side is Lambertville, rows of historic buildings dating back to the 1800’s are today filled with antique shops, cafes and restaurants. The first antique shop we enter is the People’s Store, three floors of the most amazing antiques and collectibles of all types.
We rummage around looking for lighting and do find some interesting items but decide they are not quite right. We are also looking to add to Kylie’s Federation Moonglow tableware collection but none is evident here today. Moving on we browse through a few more shops, all large, all with a basement and second floor as well as the ground floor loaded with antiques, some more upmarket than others. In one store we spot an elaborately carved wood buffet dating back to the 1600’s for US$24,000.00 Ouch! Apparently this area is regularly featured on the American version of Antiques Roadshow and one of the presenters actually lives here. Moving on we find ourselves outside a smaller, but still three story Antique Shop this one in a small stone building, we see a mass of hanging light features dangling from the ceiling. The store is jam packed to the rafters with small furniture and brick a brac, lighting hangs from the rafters covering every space. We spot a beautiful hand made copper lantern that is perfect for our front porch pendant. The store keeper is helpful and directs us to a nearby pack and ship store, we visit the store after lunch but the shipping charges are astronomical, at least we have design concept direction to pursue.
We stroll back across the bridge again stopping to take a photo of the border line. We look over the bridge railing at the river below and spot a dozen or more turtles swimming for the island bank formed by the bridge support below, some turtles having made landfall are sunning themselves on the concrete beach.
Once back on the Pennsylvania side we walk the street looking for a lunch spot overlooking the river and find one in Martine’s. The place is rustic, but has a deck overlooking the river back to New Jersey, perfect, we are shown to an umbrella shaded table for two on the edge of the deck, a gentle breeze blowing up from the river beneath us. We share a toasted sandwich of melted yellow cheese, layers of turkey, sliced apple and cranberry sauce. Just as well we have walked all morning. I ask if they serve cappuccino style coffee, the waitress reply’s if the machine works, I should have said don’t worry about it, what was served was a hot but milky weak coffee in an Irish whiskey glass with a micro thin layer of froth that dissipated within seconds.
Still the view is spectacular, the cumulus clouds in the sky the painted green iron bridge and their reflection makes a shimmering image on the water.
Lunch over we investigate the aforementioned shipping company, Australia might as well be in another planet though, then head back to the parking lot and home. When we arrive Jay the tiler is diligently finishing off the grouting, he has completed most of the floor leaving only a very small section to complete tomorrow. The kids will be happy.
Calista and Justin arrive home from today’s engagements then Troy, Heather and Aubrey. They are all going out again tonight to end of summer party’s or to be with friends leaving the adults alone to fend for themselves. Troy wants to take us to a new place tonight “Almshouse” but it is packed when we arrive and there is a good fifty minute wait, this on a Wednesday night. There are no shortages of eating places here in Newtown and surrounds so we move on calling ahead to La Stalla, an Italian restaurant that again is very popular, but we manage to secure a garden table outside, on an evening like this is perfect.
La Stalla is an authentic style Italian restaurant in a building with a rustic feel, the waiters even speak with Italian accents. We have to wait for a short while for our table to be reset, in the meantime we sit at the bar, order a beer and watch the bartender flip bottles and shake cocktail mixers, skilfully and busily making cocktails for a group of men at the bar next to us. The New York Mets are playing baseball on the TV above the bar, the young strikers action being compared with his own younger self in replay from archival footage from when he played in a junior league, probably not many seasons ago.
We are soon called to our table, the night has cooled, the day was a hot one, the time as ticked on to 8.00pm suddenly I am hungry. The dishes on offer are a variety of pasta dishes with authentic looking names, anti pasta, suppa, chicken, fish and shellfish as well as meat dishes, Amanda and I again in cinq order the waiters special a veal chop prepared medium rare with a fig and feta topping on a bed of potato matchsticks, onion and tomato. We are not disappointed, a large dish that we both couldn’t finish but delicious. Troy has a chicken parma, an Italian schnitzel, while Heather has penne in a vodka sauce, sounds more Russian than Italian. Once again another day draws to a close. Tomorrow the house will be full of trades people putting in every effort to complete the forced remodel before Troys Friday deadline.