Vaughan to Corning: the Museum of Glass day by chauffeured car

Corning, the glass town

Corning is the town Corning Incorporated built — the company that made Pyrex, the glass for Edison's bulbs, the mirror of the Hale telescope and the Gorilla Glass on the family's phones — and its museum is the reason a Vaughan family drives five hours to a town of ten thousand: the Corning Museum of Glass, the largest collection of glass in the world, thirty-five centuries of it from Egyptian vessels to Chihuly, with the Hot Glass Show's glassblowers narrating as they work, the Innovation Center's optics and the science of the material, the Contemporary Art + Design wing's white galleries of 2015, and the Make Your Own Glass studio where a child of five blows an ornament and a teenager makes a paperweight or a flower — the hour every family books first. Across the river the Rockwell Museum holds American western art in the old city hall, and Market Street's Gaffer District is the brick main street the company restored after the 1972 flood. The Visit Corning site has the town; the border guide has the Lewiston bridge.

The road

From Maple the 400 and the 407 to the QEW, the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge, I-190 and I-90 to Rochester's exit 46, I-390 south to its end at Avoca and I-86 east to Corning's exits — five hours by the estimate and five and a quarter with the booth; the Letchworth gorge is forty minutes off I-390 and Watkins Glen is thirty minutes north of Corning on Route 414, which is how the museum day becomes the Finger Lakes weekend.

The museum, in order

The doors open at nine and a family's day runs: the Make Your Own Glass session first if it is booked for the morning — the studio's slots fill on summer weekends and the museum's site books them weeks ahead — then the Hot Glass Show's amphitheatre for a thirty-minute demonstration of a vessel blown from the furnace with the narrator explaining; the 35 Centuries of Glass galleries — the Roman cage cup, the Venetian goblets, the Tiffany windows, the paperweights the children stop at; the Innovation Center's fibre optics, the telescope mirror's story and the glass that bends; the Contemporary Art + Design wing's light; lunch at the café; the GlassMarket shop, which is a museum of its own and the reason the SUV's bay matters; the afternoon's second Hot Glass Show for the child who wants to see it again. Six hours, and the ticket is good for two days, which the overnight version uses.

Make Your Own Glass

The studio's sessions run every day and put the visitor at the bench with a gaffer: a blown ornament or a flower for the youngest, a pulled-glass pendant, a sandblasted glass, a fused-glass picture frame, a paperweight or a glass flower for the older children and adults — forty minutes, an apron and gloves, and a piece that is annealed overnight and shipped home or collected the next day. A Vaughan family books one session each at booking time and the children carry the memory home before the glass arrives; it is the reason the museum is a family's day rather than a parents' hour.

The Rockwell Museum and Market Street

The Rockwell Museum in the 1893 city hall across the Chemung River is a Smithsonian affiliate of American art — the western paintings and bronzes of Remington and Russell, the Native American art, the contemporary pieces, with a family scavenger hunt through the galleries — and the hour after the glass; Market Street's Gaffer District is the brick blocks of the restored downtown with the glass studios where the gaffers who trained at the museum work — Vitrix Hot Glass and the others — the Hand + Foot and the Cellar for dinner, the ice cream, and the Wine Bar's Finger Lakes list. The Gaffer District's site has the studios and the summer's GlassFest in May.

The day, in shape

From Maple at 6:30: the Lewiston bridge at 8:10, I-390 and I-86, the museum's door at 11:45 (the routing estimate's five hours proving right), the Make Your Own Glass session at noon, the Hot Glass Show at one, the galleries and the Innovation Center until 3:30, the GlassMarket, the Rockwell at four, Market Street's dinner at 5:30, the SUV at 6:45, the Lewiston bridge at 10:15 with the GlassMarket's bags declared under the 24-hour rule, and Maple by midnight. Seventeen hours of the SUV on daily hire — the long-day version — or, more often, the museum as the Saturday of a Finger Lakes weekend with a Corning or Watkins Glen night and the travel desk holding it.

What the chauffeur replaces

Five hours each way on four interstates; the Lewiston bridge as the driver; the museum's parking, which is free and ample, and therefore not the point — the point is the seventeen-hour day, which a driving parent does once and a chauffeured family repeats; and the GlassMarket's boxes in the bay, wrapped and upright. For a couple the SUV is the day's luxury; for a family of five with three Make Your Own sessions it is one fare and a museum that a parent saw rather than drove to.

Seasons

The museum is open year-round and busiest in July and August, when the Make Your Own sessions book out; the Finger Lakes' October colour makes the weekend version; GlassFest on Market Street in late May fills the town; winter's quiet is the museum without the crowds and I-390's snow the chauffeur's care. The museum closes only on the American holidays that are Vaughan work days, which a family checks on the museum's site.

Pairing it

Corning pairs with Watkins Glen thirty minutes north for the gorge and the wine, with Ithaca an hour northeast for Cornell and Taughannock, with Letchworth on the road, and — for a family continuing south — with the Washington route down I-99 and I-81, since Corning is on it.

The museum day, in order, for a family of five

From the Watkins Glen hotel at 8:15 in the Sprinter: Route 414's thirty minutes, the museum's doors at nine, the three children's Make Your Own Glass sessions at 9:15, 9:45 and 10:15 — an ornament, a flower and a paperweight — while the parents do the Innovation Center; the Hot Glass Show at 11 in the amphitheatre; 35 Centuries of Glass until 12:30 with the paperweights and the Tiffany windows; lunch at the café; the Contemporary wing at 1:30; the GlassMarket at 2:30 with the boxes to the bay; the second Hot Glass Show at 3 for the seven-year-old; the Rockwell at 4 with its scavenger hunt; Market Street's dinner at 5:30 and the Sprinter back to Watkins Glen by 7:30. The glass arrives in Vaughan by post ten days later, and the museum's site has the shipping.

The Innovation Center, for the older children

The museum's Innovation Center is the science half — the glass that bends into fibre-optic cable, the story of the Hale telescope's 200-inch mirror cast here in 1934, the windshields and the Pyrex, the Gorilla Glass demonstrations, the optics gallery's lenses and the periscope — and a Grade 9 student's hour that the art galleries do not offer; the Hot Glass Show's chemistry narration and the Flameworking demonstrations are the same hour's other half, and a family with a teenager who asks how things work does the Innovation Center twice.

Costs, plainly

The Corning day inside a Finger Lakes weekend is a return with a Saturday on daily hire in the booking engine; the museum's tickets — children under seventeen are free, which the site states — and the Make Your Own sessions are the family's own, and the GlassMarket's boxes ride home under the 48-hour exemption. Against the fare are the five hours each way, the bridge and a seventeen-hour day if it is done as a day; a couple does it in a car and a family of five books the Sprinter for the bay, the sessions and the parent who did not drive I-390 home.

Watkins Glen's night, and the weekend's shape

A Corning museum day usually sleeps in Watkins Glen thirty minutes north — the Watkins Glen Harbor Hotel on the lake, the Seneca Lodge's cabins in the state park — so that Sunday is the gorge trail at nine and two wineries before the Thruway; a family that sleeps in Corning itself has the Radisson on Market Street and the Gaffer District's dinner at the door, and the travel desk holds either. The Finger Lakes post has the gorge and the trail.

GlassFest and the summer's Market Street

Late May's GlassFest closes Market Street for a weekend of live glassblowing on the street, the 2300° evenings' music, the food and the studios' open doors — the weekend a Vaughan family times the museum visit to — and the summer's Thursday evenings bring the street's live music and the studios' late hours; the Gaffer District's site has the calendar. The Chemung River's Riverfront Centennial Park behind the museum is the picnic between.

The Southern Tier, on the road south

Corning sits on the road from the Finger Lakes to Washington — I-99 and I-81 down Pennsylvania's spine — and a family on the East Coast loop makes the museum its first day's stop: Vaughan at seven, the museum at noon, the afternoon inside, and Williamsport or Harrisburg for the night; the Washington post has the route and the Sprinter does the whole loop. A family coming home from Washington stops for the museum on the last day for the same reason.

The Rockwell's scavenger hunt and the children's hour

The Rockwell Museum hands children a scavenger-hunt card at the door — find the bison, the bronze cowboy, the beaded moccasins — and the hunt turns an American art museum into forty minutes a seven-year-old asks to finish; the museum's site has the family programmes and the Saturday art-making hours, and the Kids Rockwell Art Lab on Market Street is the studio for the rainy afternoon.

Booking it

Book a daily hire from your Vaughan address for the long day or a return for the weekend; tell us the Make Your Own sessions, the museum's day, the night's town, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Corning day