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Get to know Rhinebeck

We don’t know where Bob Dylan was headed when he wrote the song “Girl from the North Country,” but we’ve got a hunch that north country fair he sang of traveling to was Rhinebeck’s — it’s the state’s second-largest. The quintessential artsy upstate town, this storied community has long carried cachet in city circles. You might hear the gentle strum of a street musician’s guitar as you stroll its single-intersection shopping district, jam-packed with innovative eateries, avant-garde galleries, an art-house cinema, and purveyors of just about everything else from kitchen gadgets to cheeky letterpress cards. There’s no time more magical than the holidays when the streets are closed to welcome Sinterklaas in the old Dutch tradition, a spectacle witnessed from windows and rooftops. Tight-knit neighborhoods of cozy farmhouses and mansard-roofed Second Empires skirt the village, fading to farmsteads and old-money estates further out. Rhinecliff, the riverfront hamlet, hosts high-bluff views, marina slips, and the town’s Amtrak station.

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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.