New Jersey

We were up in Montclair, NJ last week.... street after street filled with old and lovely Victorian homes. We stayed at a B&B in that town, a beautiful home built in 1895.  The view from the balcony on the second floor staircase was worth the price of a night's sleep there, and the home's owner reminded us of our friend V who lived next door to us in our Clear Lake house. Gorgeous vintage home, and staying there made us feel right at home during our stay.

We toured the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange, NJ.... my husband was over-whelmed with Edison's workshops and I was enthralled with Edison's three-story library. I stayed in that library for nearly an hour, just soaking up the ambiance in that beautiful room and looking at the books, the sculptures, the paintings, the extraordinary woodworking.

In Morristown, we went to The Morris Museum... beautiful displays of vintage music boxes (furniture-sized mechanical music boxes). One of the docents there played some of the music boxes not offered on the usual tours... which was a special treat.  That museum also boasts a very large display of animated musical figures, mostly made by the Swiss, the Italians, the Germans, with a few of them being American-made. Lovely museum.

We were lucky enough to find a Greek diner along the way, and we stumbled onto Cliff's homemade ice cream in Ledgewood.  Temperatures were in the 80s there... much more comfortable than the 100+ degrees we left here in Texas.

If we ever were to move to New Jersey, I'd be heading straight to the town of Montclair, and looking for a "For Sale" sign in front of one of those vintage Victorian homes.