Tarrytown

Today, I met up with my mom and cousins in Tarrytown, NY. Mom had wanted to go for awhile and was waiting for good weather and another body in the car for the trip. Her favorite show back in the day was "Dark Shadows", and the feature length films had scenes filmed on location at the Lyndhurst estate, and the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. I was interested too. I figured I'd pay homage to Washington Irving, whose name graces a street and the school that are in close proximity to me.

Turns out, the cemetery was a blast. An old and absolutely huge Victorian set up, complete with mausoleums and beautiful landscaping. The weather was totally agreeable and perfect for exploring. You could get lost here, and at times, we did! We found Washington Irving's grave (who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and several cool mausoleums. Oddly enough, they are not really built for the living to enjoy. We found this out from all the effort it took to peer inside where we saw busts and statues, stained glass windows and mosaic tiles. Beautiful. The Rockefeller's mausoleum looks like one should be taking an oath in front of it. What we didn't anticipate were deer - lots of them. With the cemetery situated near woods, and the isolation and greenery of the cemetery, it makes it ideal for their lifestyle.

Naturally, any outing with family results in dirty jokes and much laughter. Some of the surnames on these graves left us in complete stitches with our jokes expanding into "what ifs" and "imagine ifs".

I think we all underestimated how much there was to do there, because we focused on the cemetery for the better part of the day. The center of town was like any other in Westchester County, complete with antique shops and such sprinkled all over. On a recommendation from my co-worker, we ate at Bella's for some good diner food, and had homemade ice cream at Main Street Sweets. Afterwards, we strolled up and down Main Street stopping into the quaint shops.

In the end, we had no time for Lyndhurst, the Rockefeller estate, or Irving's Sunnyside home.

I'm still waiting for photos back from my cousin's camera. She managed to get perfect pictures with a cheapo camera, close up, of the deer. Isn't that always the case? I'll add them when she gets around to sending them to me.

You can see my pictures here.