Travelogue: Lambertville, N.J. & New Hope, Penn.

I sat down to write this post on Friday in Lambertville, one of my favorite towns on the Delaware River.  Lo and behold, four pages and 2,200 words later I realized I had an epic travelogue on my hands.  It’s my hope that I’ll be able to post travelogues like this on a semi-regular basis – oftentimes these will be places where I have run, lived, or otherwise visited in some fashion.  I’ve broken these up into two parts, so you get Lambertville today, and tomorrow, New Hope.

While attending college I was a full-fledged member of what many people call the “Princeton Bubble,” which they characterize as having an extensive knowledge of everything that exists within a 1-mile radius of the Princeton campus, and extending along Route 1, I-95, and the New Jersey Transit rail line between Princeton and Penn Station in New York.  And that’s it.  Being an explorer myself I would like to think I ventured beyond the bubble a bit more than most, but in reality my college existence was primarily concerned with those places most often visited by other Princeton students like myself.

After graduating and a brief stint working in Lansing I returned to Princeton for three years where I lived on the very edge of the township and taught high school and coached cross country and track in a neighboring community.  I began to meet and work with people who had grown up in and spent their entire lives in the greater Princeton/Trenton area, and instantly I discovered how much I really had not seen during my years as an undergraduate.

One of the great treasures of the region that I discovered was the Delaware River valley, and in particular two neighboring towns connected across the river by a two-lane, steel girder bridge: Lambertville, on the New Jersey side, and New Hope, on the Pennsylvania side.

I love these two towns.  Admittedly, the average teenager would likely find them incredibly boring but from the moment I spent my first day here, it became a place that I came back to again and again until I moved away from New Jersey, and have returned to again and again since then (in fact, I’m sitting in Buck’s Ice Cream and Espresso Bar on Bridge St. in Lambertville writing this blog post right now).

Lambertville, N.J.

Approximately 20 minutes north of Trenton on Route 29, and 15 minutes north of the spot on the Delaware where George Washington crossed with his army to surprise the Hessian mercenaries in Trenton on Christmas night in 1776, Lambertville comes into view on the Jersey side of the river.  Perched between the river and a high hillside that comes to an abrupt stop at a steep cliff, the town extends for about a half-mile from south to north in a narrow strip, with the 180-year-old Delaware & Raritan Canal bisecting it down the middle.  In the early part of the twentieth century, a rail line ran alongside the canal and stopped at the town’s train station, which today exists as the Lambertville Station restaurant.

Today the railroad right-of-way and canal towpath are a part of a 23-mile long trail system that hugs to the river and that you can traverse from seven miles north at Bull Island all the way into downtown Trenton.  I have run along every section of this trail and it’s one of my favorite places on earth to run.

Lambertville was first settled in the 1700s and many of its buildings from the 1800s are still standing.  A walk down Bridge St. makes you feel like you’ve stepped back in time, with the historic buildings that grace each side of the street and the quaint look of the small mom ‘n’ pop storefronts.  Lambertville House, in the center of town on Bridge St., is a historic inn where presidents have stayed (and me too, but I’m not in their informational pamphlets).

Venturing off Bridge St. you can find the Inn of the Hawke restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere for its food but especially for its atmosphere – when you walk in, you’re greeted by the centrally-situated horseshoe-shaped bar, and the dining rooms surrounding it are dark-paneled and candle-lit and each features its own fireplace (or two).  The large Victorian-era house that houses the restaurant also features a fieldstone patio, which is candle- and torch-lit in the summer and an amazing place to eat dinner and have drinks.  And while you’re at it, one of the neighborhood cats might just stop by and say hello.

Around the corner from Inn of the Hawke is Swan Bar, a one-of-a-kind establishment with historic paintings, trinkets, figurines and furniture covering every open space once you step down into the bar from street level.  Also notable is Ota-Ya, a place I haven’t eaten at in years but its sushi rivals some of the best I’ve had on the west coast.

Venturing north of Bridge St., you can wander into galleries, marvel at St. John the Evangelist Church, or sample some fine microbrews at River Horse Brewing Co., located right along the river.  In my opinion the most impressive homes in Lambertville are on the few blocks just north of Bridge St., many of them stately Victorians impeccably maintained by their owners.

Following the canal towpath north you’ll run by Lilly’s on the Canal, an elegant restaurant that looks out on (you guessed it) the canal.  In the summer, they have an outdoor patio as well, with an atmosphere similar to Inn of the Hawke’s that you can take in while the D&R Canal flows silently by.  Heading further north on the canal you’ll pass by an old, forgotten canal lock, and several of the most unique backyards you’ll ever see.  Each one has its own character and charm, from the small, short lawn full of clutter with short fences, to patios lined with tiki torches that burn into the evening.  I’m never able to walk past here without wishing I was the lucky owner of one of these homes, where ducks often wander up out of the canal looking for handouts, or simply a good place to rest.

Heading further north past the edge of town, you’ll cross under the highway bridge for Route 202 before the scenery turns wild.  This is the Delaware as it was ages ago; indeed, it hasn’t changed much in the last two centuries.  The canal banks are covered with trees and foliage that in the summer floods your eyesight with infinite hues of green.   Occasionally an old stone house, likely built in the 18^th or 19^th centuries, will appear off of Route 29, before it’s back to nothing but you, the canal, the road in the distance to your right and the river off to your left.  I love running here.

Venturing back toward the center of town, and approaching the river itself, the first thing you notice is how calming it is.  The Delaware, I’ve always thought, is the ideally sized river.  It takes about 10 minutes to walk across from one bank to the other, a distance of about a quarter mile at this particular spot along its course.  It’s not so small that you would feel obligated to call it a large stream, or a brook, but it’s not so large, like the Hudson near Manhattan or the lower stretches of the Mississippi, that you can’t feel any connection to the other side.  It’s the kind of river I would want to live along (though situated high enough to avoid the river’s floods, which it produced to historic proportions in 2004, 2005 and on my birthday in 2003).

Walking across the bridge, you can look north, where the first ridges and foothills of the eastern edge of the Appalachians begin to make their footprint known.  Looking south, more ridges, one of which is home to Bowman’s Tower, a lookout point serving as a monument to George Washington and offering panoramic views of the valley.  The word that always comes to mind for me when staring out at the Delaware is serenity.

To be continued…

Photos by aturkus.

Tagged as: D&R Canal, Delaware River, Lambertville, New Hope, New Jersey, Pennsylvania