Wednesday, July 14, 2010

1000 Places to visit in Massachusetts includes two Bridgewater sites

Many were nominated, many were chosen...

Bridgewater State College and Bridgewater Historic District are listed among the 1000 Great Places to Visit in Massachusetts by the State Tourism Agency.

“The commission sought a geographically diverse tally of places that are important for their cultural or historic significance, or simply their natural beauty.”

Of course, any good tourist destination needs a cafe, and these two sites -- which abut each other -- have a selection that is good and likely to improve. In the Bridgewater Historic District, the Rockin' K Cafe offers fair-trade, organic coffee and family-style service at 14 Summer St (new location) every day of the week, 8-5. Also in the historic district, on the historic town common, is the Better Bean, which is open in the evenings (closed Sunday).

On the campus of Bridgewater State College are the usual assortment of campus coffee outlets, but with the possibility of a truly world-class cafe opening on campus upon completion of the new Science & Mathematics Center. If approved, the Benjamin Linder Cafe will feature fair-trade, organic coffee and a variety of educational projects around coffee, sustainability, and justice.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Village of Bridgewater, New York July 4, 2010

As we were driving our daughter to camp in upstate New York yesterday, James asked "is there a Bridgewater, New York?" I thought probably there was, so I checked the atlas, and there it was, due south of the camp. We decided to take a different route home than usual and stop in our town's New York "xará" (xará is a Portuguese word meaning one who has the same name).

The Village of Bridgewater is located at the junction of routes 8 and 20, just south of Utica. It is quite a small town with under 600 residents. Nevertheless the town has a library (with hours comparable to our own), a municpal building, a park, and a highway department.

Blogger and librarian, Pam, poses in front of the Bridgewater (NY) Free Library

As we took in the driving tour, which took about 3 minutes, we noticed the Bridgewater School. No longer a school, it now houses an antique store, indoor skateboard park, and the cleverly named Cafe'Teria - all run by Ron and Linda Inger. We had a wonderful experience meeting Ron, who was happy to show us around the school, chat, and make his signature iced espresso drink - his secret is to put half the ice directly in the cup, and the other half into the blender.

Cafe'Teria logo

Indoor Skateboard park in what had once been the gymnasium/auditorium. Ron points out that while the Bridgewater, New Jersey skateboard park allows bikes, his does not!


Interior shot of Cafe'Teria

Blogger James (aka Dr. Java) poses with his new coffee friend, Ron.

We took Ron up on his suggestion to eat at Dominick's Italian Bistro, right next to the old Bridgewater, New York train station. Our waitress, Pam (my xará!) was attentive and friendly, and the food was quite flavorful. James had chicken lightly breaded with a delightful mushroom sauce over fettuccini, and Pam had the baked lasagna. Normally we do not get appetizers, unless jalapeño poppers are offered, in this case they were, so we had plenty of leftovers of our main course to enjoy after we returned home.

Old Train Depot -- with a milk-crate basketball court


Good Unitarian Universalists that we are, we stopped for a photo op at the Bridgewater Universalist Cemetery, the print at the bottom of the sign reads "Site of the Universalist Church." Little did we know it was the 200th attainment day of famous Universalist P.T. Barnum.

On leaving Bridgewater, we decided to follow U.S. 20, a delightful transect which we describe in more detail on our Celebrating the States blog.