Getting the flavor of … Delaware in a day or two, and more

Delaware in a day or two

Visitors can explore most of Delaware in a day or two, said William Hageman in the Chicago Tribune, because the state is only

96 miles long and from nine to 35 miles in width. Delaware sits on the Atlantic and offers beach lovers 30 miles of coastline. In the north, “the glory of the Du Pont family is on display” at Winterthur, a former country estate prized for its art collection and 60-acre garden. Nearby Wilmington is home to the Hagley Museum, which “began life as the du Pont gunpowder works.” Further south is New Castle, “a town that predates Philadelphia.” Its most notable building is the Court House Museum, which over the years has served as a courthouse, men’s club, and gymnasium. A day trip ends south of Dover, the capital, in Lewes. The Dutch settled the town in the 1630s, and the Dogfish Head brewery and Nanticoke Indian Museum are nearby.

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Contact: Visitdelaware.com

A very big art museum

A 59-mile train ride along the Hudson River was the perfect beginning to an exhilarating day, said Jane Margolies in The New York Times. Beacon, my destination in upstate New York, is “a former mill town reborn as a center of the arts.” Since 2003, a former Nabisco factory has housed Dia:Beacon, a “showcase of minimalist, conceptual, and post-minimalist” art. The vast, three-level brick complex, “where cracker and cookie boxes had been printed,” has been converted into a warren of galleries. Machine oil stains the wooden floors of the first two long spaces, which displayed Imi Knoebel’s 24 Colors—For Blinky, made up of irregularly sized wooden flats painted in different colors and strewn about the walls “like jigsaw-puzzle pieces made for a giant.” Other attractions on my visit included Richard Serra’s four enormous Torqued Ellipses and Zoe Leonard’s composition made from 3,852 vintage postcards of Niagara Falls.

Contact: Diabeacon.org