Vaughan to Albany: the capital on the Hudson by chauffeured car

Albany, the hinge of the roads east

Albany is where every eastern road on this site bends: the Thruway from Buffalo meets the Hudson here, I-87 turns south to New York and north to Saratoga and Lake George, and I-90 continues east as the Massachusetts Turnpike to Boston — which makes it the night Vaughan families sleep on the way to either, seven and a half hours from the driveway and three from both cities. It is also a capital worth a day: the New York State Museum, free, with the Adirondack and New York City halls, the 9/11 gallery with the crushed fire engine, the Iroquois longhouse and the 1912 carousel on the fourth floor that children ride free; the State Capitol, the Gilded Age palace of 1899 whose tour shows the Million Dollar Staircase's carved faces and the Senate chamber; the Empire State Plaza, Rockefeller's 1960s marble acropolis with the Egg's performing-arts hall and the Corning Tower's free observation deck; the USS Slater, the last destroyer escort afloat, on the Hudson; and Troy across the river, with the Erie Canal's start and Uncle Sam's grave. The Discover Albany site has the city; the border guide has the bridges.

Two roads to Albany

The western road is the QEW, the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge and the Thruway's whole length — Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, the Mohawk valley — to Albany's exit 24; the northern road is the 401, the Thousand Islands Bridge, I-81 to Syracuse and I-90 east; seven and three-quarter hours by the estimate on either and eight with the booth and stops, and the chauffeur picks by the waits and the family's lunch — Kingston on the northern road, Rochester's Strong museum on the western. The SUV carries a family of four to a Boston split; the Sprinter two families.

The State Museum

The New York State Museum on the Plaza's south end is free and a family's three hours: the Adirondack Wilderness hall with the moose and the fire tower, the Metropolis hall with the New York City subway car, the Sesame Street set — the original Hooper's Store and the stoop of 123 Sesame Street — the 9/11 gallery with the twisted steel and the fire engine from the World Trade Center, the Native Peoples of New York's longhouse, the Cohoes mastodon, the Birds of New York, and the carousel — a 1912 Herschell-Spillman with its horses restored — that turns on the fourth floor with free rides on the hour. The museum's site has the hours; it closes Mondays.

The Capitol and the Plaza

The State Capitol's free tours leave from the Plaza concourse several times a day — the Million Dollar Staircase's seventy-seven steps carved with the faces of New Yorkers famous and anonymous (the stonecutters carved their families), the Senate chamber's Mexican onyx and Siena marble, the Assembly, the Hall of Governors — and the building's thirty-two years of construction under five architects, including H. H. Richardson, are the guide's story. The Empire State Plaza outside is Rockefeller's marble mall with the reflecting pools, the Egg — the performing-arts centre on its pedestal, tours and shows — the Corning Tower's forty-second-floor observation deck, free, with the Hudson valley and the Catskills below, and the Plaza's modern art collection along the concourse. The Plaza's site has the tours' times.

The Hudson, the Slater and Troy

The USS Slater at the Hudson's Broadway dock is the last destroyer escort afloat in the country, a Second World War ship restored by volunteers with a guided tour of the decks, the gun mounts and the engine room — the Grade 7 student's hour; the Corning Preserve's riverfront path and the Dutch Apple's river cruises are the summer afternoon; Troy across the river has the Erie Canal's eastern terminus at the Waterford flight of locks, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Saturday farmers' market on River Street and the grave of Samuel Wilson, the meatpacker who was Uncle Sam; the Slater's site has the tour season, April to November.

The split night, and the weekend

The split-night version is Vaughan at 7:30, the bridge, the Thruway's rest areas, Albany's hotel — the Renaissance across from the Capitol or the Plaza's hotels — by 4, the State Museum's last two hours, the Corning Tower at dusk, dinner on Lark Street, and the morning's Capitol tour before the SUV leaves at eleven for Boston by 2:30 or New York by 2. The weekend version is two nights with the Slater, Troy and Saratoga's springs forty minutes north as the second day, the travel desk holding the hotel, and the booking engine pricing the return with a Saturday on daily hire.

What the chauffeur replaces

Seven and three-quarter hours across New York State as a driver, which is the whole reason the family stops here; the bridge; the Thruway's Mohawk valley in the dark; the Plaza's garages; and the morning's second drive to Boston or New York with a family that slept. For a couple Albany is a car's night; for a family of five or two families in a Sprinter it is the split that makes the eleven-hour Boston drive two comfortable days for one fare.

Seasons

Any season for the split night; the Tulip Festival in Washington Park on Mother's Day weekend, when the city's Dutch founding is celebrated with a hundred thousand tulips, for the weekend version; October for the Hudson valley's colour from the Corning Tower; the State Museum's air conditioning in July; December for the Plaza's tree and the Capitol's holiday lights; the Thruway's winter snow in the Mohawk valley is the chauffeur's care.

Pairing it

Albany pairs with Boston and New York as the split night for both, with Saratoga Springs forty minutes north for the springs and the track, with Lake George an hour north, and with Cooperstown ninety minutes west for the Hall of Fame on the way.

The split night, in order

A family of four from Thornhill on the Boston road: the SUV at 7:30, the Lewiston bridge at 9:10, the Thruway's Angola and Chittenango service areas, Utica at 2, the Mohawk valley's last hour, Albany's exit 24 at 3:20 and the Renaissance hotel across from the Capitol by 3:45; the State Museum's carousel at 4 on the hour, the 9/11 gallery and the Sesame Street set until the five o'clock close, the Corning Tower's deck at 5:15 with the Hudson valley below, dinner on Lark Street; Saturday's 10 a.m. Capitol tour, the Slater's deck at 11:30, the SUV at 12:30 and the Massachusetts Turnpike, Boston's Back Bay by 3:30. One night that turns an eleven-hour drive into two days with a museum, a capitol and a destroyer in it, and the travel desk holds the room.

Washington Park, Lark Street and the Tulip Festival

Washington Park is Albany's Olmsted-style park at the top of the hill — the lake, the Moses fountain, the Lakehouse's summer theatre — and the Tulip Festival on Mother's Day weekend fills it with a hundred thousand tulips, the Dutch-heritage crowning of the Tulip Queen and the street scrubbing on State Street that the city has done since 1949; Lark Street beside the park is the neighbourhood of restaurants, the Lark Fest in September and the Victorian rowhouses that a family walks to dinner. The Discover Albany site has the festival's dates.

Costs, plainly

The Albany night inside a Boston or New York return is the hotel's cost and nothing on the fare; the weekend version is a return with a Saturday on daily hire in the booking engine, and the State Museum, the Capitol tour and the Corning Tower are free. Against the fare are seven and three-quarter hours across the state as a driver, the bridge and the Plaza's garages; a couple does the split in a car, and a family of five or two families in a Sprinter book it for one fare and a Boston arrival with everyone rested.

The Erie Canal's end, and the Waterford flight

Ten minutes north of Troy the Erie Canal meets the Hudson at Waterford through the Waterford Flight — five locks that lift boats a hundred and seventy feet in a mile and a half, the steepest lift in the shortest distance of any canal in the world — and a family on the Saratoga road stops at Lock 2's park to watch a pleasure boat rise through the chambers; the Waterford Harbor Visitor Center on the canal's wall has the story and the canal's boats tie up outside it in summer. The Erie Canalway's site has the locks' hours, and the Syracuse post's Erie Canal Museum is the canal's other end of the story.

The Hudson valley south, for a New York-bound family

A family splitting the New York drive at Albany takes the Hudson's east bank down Route 9 rather than I-87 for the morning: Hyde Park's Franklin D. Roosevelt home and library and the Vanderbilt mansion on the river, Rhinebeck's village, the Culinary Institute of America's restaurants at Hyde Park for lunch, the Walkway Over the Hudson's mile-long rail bridge at Poughkeepsie, and I-84 and the Taconic to the George Washington Bridge by five; the New York post has the city, and the National Park Service's Hyde Park page has the Roosevelt tours. It turns the split's second day into a Hudson valley day.

The Albany Institute and the Dutch city

The Albany Institute of History & Art on Washington Avenue — the Hudson River School paintings, the Egyptian mummies the children ask for, the Dutch colonial silver and the city's four-hundred-year story from Fort Orange — and the Ten Broeck Mansion and Schuyler Mansion, where Hamilton married Eliza Schuyler in 1780, are the weekend version's afternoon for a family with a Hamilton-obsessed teenager; the Institute's site has the hours, and the Schuyler Mansion's tours are the New York State parks'.

The Plaza's art, for the walk

The Empire State Plaza's concourse and its lawns hold ninety-two works of the New York School — Rothko, Calder, Noguchi, David Smith, Louise Nevelson — bought by the state in the 1960s as the largest public collection of modern American art outside a museum, and a family walking from the hotel to the State Museum passes a dozen of them; the Plaza's art collection page has the map and the free guided walks.

Booking it

Book the split night inside a Boston or New York return, or a return from your Vaughan address with a Saturday on daily hire for the weekend; tell us the hotel, the Capitol tour's time, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the road and the plan the evening before.

Book the Albany night