A couple of hours from us is a region called the ":Finger Lakes" which I always think sounds a little creepy as a name but that's really not fair because the lakes are beautiful and formed long and thin like the fingers of a hand - with a couple of extra ones thrown in. Around them grow copious vineyards, the wine growing first popularised by a chap called Konstantin Frank, who once managed a collective farm in the old USSR and then upped sticks to New York state. If grapes could grow in Siberia, he reckoned, they could grow anywhere.
Here's the pretty town of Canandaigua, on Canandaigua Lake. If you look closely you can see an Olde English House.
And, as in many American towns, a lovely courthouse.
This house, by St Mary's Church, was once a convent.
The church itself has a nice, unwreckovated interior.
I'm amazed how so many of these upstate New York churches have such splendid stained glass.
And how the towns have such exquisite houses.
Unlike around our way, though, in prosperous lakeside Canandaigua, they're mostly in very good condition.
Like this street of small mansions which must have been a sight to behold in carriage horse days.
I think they call this style "Carpenter Gothic".
And at the end of the street, the grand entrance to Sonnenberg Mansion and Gardens - a place to come back to in summer, when the roses are out.
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