Weddingbee Blog

Instead of taking you through day by day, I’ll break up our honeymoon into chunks to make it easier for you to plan according to your interests (if you plan on going to the Finger Lakes for a vacation).

The day after the wedding, we hopped in our car, left the hotel and the city behind, and drove home to drop off all of our various wedding crap that we had stuffed in the car. Then we made the five-hour drive to the Finger Lakes in New York (stop “B”)!

We were staying in Geneva on Seneca Lake for three days.

We arrived in time for dinner and picked a Viennese restaurant called Dano’s Heuriger. They had delicious small plates and local wines—they also had homemade spreads, ranging from hummus to olive spreads and cheese spreads. It was delish!

Since it was harvest-time, the fruit flies were TERRIBLE and we had to cover our glasses with napkins to keep the little pests out.

In the morning, we started out bright and early with a walk around the hotel and the lake!

Mr. Socks is so casual and nonchalant, no?

After I had my fill of fresh air and walking, I decided it was time to DRINK!

Our first stop was Belhurst Winery, which is also a hotel and houses two restaurants. We bought a few bottles of their dry Riesling that smelled and tasted strongly of grapefruit, which we thought was interesting.

The castle was beautiful, the view was gorgeous, and it was a bit commercial, but many of the wineries in this area were, so we rolled with it.

Other wineries we visited around Seneca Lake:

• Fox Run
• Anthony Road
• Glenora
• Ventosa
• Lamoreaux Landing
• Red Newt Cellars
• Chateau LaFayette Reneau
• Atwater Estate Vineyards

What you should know if you go:

• The wines are actually much better than I thought they would be! I had never had a New York wine prior to this vacation, and I was afraid they wouldn’t be great. The region specializes in Riesling, and you really couldn’t go wrong with any winery’s Riesling. They also touted Gewurtztraminer (Gah-vertz-trah-meener) as a specialty of the region, but we weren’t as crazy for them, as we prefer Gewurtz’s from the Alsace region in France.
• Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, will tell you all about their award-winning wines. Let me tell you, a third-place regional medal doesn’t necessarily make a wine good, but they tell you ALL about them to sell more.

We took this picture at Chateau LaFayette Reneau winery. It was pretty ridiculous. Their wines were decent, sure, and we walked away with some Cabernet Franc, but the amount of medals on the walls was comical.

• Stay cheap at the Ramada (or a similarly cheap, clean hotel). Sure, we could have stayed at Belhurst Castle, but usually we treat our hotels on vacations just as a place to dump our stuff and sleep in between adventures, so it isn’t exactly necessary to have the best of the best if that’s what your goal is as well.
• Where to eat: Dano’s Heuriger was delicious for dinner, and Fox Run Vineyards had a great little cafe with wonderful soups and sandwiches for a quick lunch. Belhurst’s Stonecutters was also a cheaper option for lunch, and Suzanne Fine Regional Cuisine was great for an expensive, yet pleasant dinner. Ithaca had plenty of restaurants but was about an hour away.

Overall, I was really blown away by the fall foliage, how beautiful the lake was, and how surprisingly good the Rieslings were.

Next up, I’ll tell you all about our non-alcoholic adventures around Seneca Lake!