In order to make a manageable trip back, we interrupted our
journey with a night at Hotel Skyler, a former synagogue
turned into the first member of the Tapestry Collection. It's
right by Upstate Medical Center, so most of the eateries are
open business hours, so it was slim pickings on a Sunday night.

Opposite the front desk is a bar that also serves food, largely
premade of course, but it turned out to be less premade and
more good than we feared.

It seems an underutilized space, given it has a dedicated person
- tonight a summering student barely old enough to serve and not
old enough to drink - but given the one-beer transients and the
takeout orders, it must sustain itself.

Along with the usual swill, there's a number of premium brands,
such as Knob Creek, Bombay Sapphire, and Scotches such as
Macallan 12 and Highland Park Magnus. Bonnie had one of these
last, which was oddly both heavily peat-smoky and easy to drink.
There's also an impressive list of New York-brewed beers, of
which I had a Middle Ages Brewing Impaled Ale, a citrusy but
not hard to drink something between an APA and an IPA. Our bona
fides established, we went on and ordered snacks for supper. I
got a bowl of third-hand (not the menu's description) chili,
which had decent heat and spicing but was very tomatoey and had
chunks of carrot and celery - obviously a used beef stew (the
second hand) which itself had been made with substantial amounts
of 3/4" cubes of meat whose texture was distinctive - leftover
prime rib, very tender, fine-grained (the third hand). The dish
comes with a topping of New York Cheddar, and the kid was either
impressed or unimpressed enough with us so I got an inch-thick
layer of molten sharpish cheese on my stew.

Bonnie had the Upstate salad, chopped greens with blue cheese,
chicken, and some assorted nuts and garnishes. After hearing
the earnest young bartender chopping away, she was presented
with quite a large plate of pretty good (she said) ingredients
with a Caesar dressing on the side.

All in all, not bad, better than we deserved.

--
The place advertises an "artisanal breakfast," but that
looked and tasted very like the Hampton Inn industrial
breakfast. As a result, Bonnie felt hungry partway along
I-90 later and stopped for a double cheeseburger and
fries at a rest area McDonalds. She offered to buy me
something, but I looked elsewhere: there was a pretzel shop
that offered Gifford's ice cream (from Maine, not the late
lamented one on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring just outside
the District). The store had been catered with only vanilla
and strawberry, and the sad young mainland Chinese student
behind the counter had to break this to numerous parched
travelers and see them turn away. I got a scoop just to
cheer him up. Gifford makes shameful ice cream.

Heavy but manageable traffic, and Boston was a mere
6 more hours away.
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