Travel Blog

At the Miami Book Fair yesterday someone asked me and the other members of my panel to name our favorite hotel in the world. (I said The Atlanta in Bangkok, and added that it is so exceptional it gets an entire chapter in my book.) If someone had asked us our favorite road, I would have said with the same lack of hesitation: the road north of Trenton that hugs the Delaware River.

There are two roads, actually: Route 32 on the Pennsylvania side and Route 29 on the New Jersey side. Two weeks ago I took the former to New Hope, where Farley's Bookstore still sits on the main street, and then crossed the steel truss bridge into Lambertville. Its rambling used book store had closed since my last visit, but the smaller, more boutique-like second-hand bookstore across the street was still in business. From there I headed north along the straight stretch of 29 where seemingly the only thing that changes are the leaves, a dazzle of orange, red, and yellow this time of year. Even when they're gone you don't mind, because then the river appears through the bare branches.

In Frenchtown I got a cup of split pea soup at the Bridge Cafe, then walked down to look at the bridge I spent three college summers doing maintenance on (along with those in Milford, Riegelsville, Phillipsburg, and Belvedere). I stopped into The Book Garden and talked to the owner, Dr. Robert Rando, who had enjoyed an illustrious career specializing in STDs. He showed me the book he had co-authored about the town, with an afterword by occasional resident Elizabeth Gilbert, and I bought it with the hope that he would order mine.

I crossed the bridge - still looking good after four decades out of my care - and headed up 32 until it merged into 611. In downtown Easton I parked outside the Quadrant Bookstore and Cafe, where I found a beautiful hardcover copy of the final volume of Patrick Leigh Fermor's masterful trilogy about his walk, in the 1930s, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople: The Broken Road.