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Get to know Kingston

New York State’s original capital, Kingston is a thriving, diverse city that’s the gateway to the Catskills and unique for its three distinct districts. Uptown, called The Stockade, teems with art galleries, eateries, and eclectic retailers — an antique store is the go-to coffee bar and a lively bookshop, open late, pairs craft drafts with paperbacks. Midtown, with its ample warehouse space, serves as an emerging hub for the city’s growing creative economy, bursting on both sides of the tracks with Brooklynesque entrepreneurial energy. And, the waterfront Rondout, where canal barges once unloaded from the Pocono coalfields, vibes of a salty maritime village where one can sip natural wine on a sidewalk table or hop a clanging old trolley by the harbor. This is a city that knows how to contextualize its past in present tense, making Kingston unlike anywhere else. It’s just across the river from Rhinebeck, reached via the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, and directly off the New York State Thruway.

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Living in the Hudson Valley

This cultured countryside needs little introduction. It’s been called New York’s Napa, the anti-Hamptons, or simply “upstate.” From rolling farm fields to mom-and-pop Main Streets, the region is blessed with easy highway access, train service via Metro-North and Amtrak, and even its own international airport, making it exceptionally attractive to New York City residents seeking a little more nature and a lot less bustle. Most of the area falls within a two-hour radius of Manhattan, making it practical for weekend or full-time residence. Straddling both sides of its namesake river (much is actually a tidal fjord), the Hudson Valley’s traditionally defined core consists of Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia counties to its east and Ulster, Orange, and Greene to the west. Their mélange of art colonies, rustic-chic hamlets, and charming post-industrial cities — set to a landscape so breathtaking it inspired an eponymous 19th-century art movement — welcome infinite possibilities, from slow-paced small-town living to total off-the-grid seclusion. Bordering both the Berkshires and the Catskills, outdoor recreation runs aplenty, whether skiing in winter or climbing wilderness peaks in summer.