New York

Erica Eichelkraut Zilbauer:
I would describe Buffalo to someone that’s never seen it as a surprising city with beautiful architecture, art, excitement, amazing food at every turn.
The old Buffalo can be found in our historic architecture, especially our iconic City Hall, which is an art deco building set right downtown. You can also experience one of the first skyscrapers here in America, The Guaranty Building, and tour the Hotel Lafayette, designed by one of the first female architects. Now, they have renovated it and brought it back to its glory with a modern twist.
Frank Lloyd Wright built his Darwin Martin House here, which is one of his crown jewels, over 30,000 square feet combined with all five buildings. You can tour it and really see what a full complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright would look like.
If you’re only here for a day in Buffalo, you absolutely have to go to Canalside. It is our waterfront jewel. We have a boardwalk full of food and things to explore. The waterfront is my absolute favorite part about Buffalo, especially catching a beautiful summer sunset right over Lake Erie.
Buffalo is only a 20-minute drive from Niagara Falls, which everyone should see once in their lifetime. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. If you want to have an insider peek, be sure to hop on the Maid of the Mist. You can actually ride a boat right near the falls and get a super up close and personal view of it.
Buffalo is so vibrant and creative. The art and music scene is electric here. Wherever you go, you’ll find live music. We love music in this city. You can catch shows all over Buffalo, and it’s huge part of our culture.
A really fun way to spend a day here is to hang out in the Elmwood Village and go shopping. There’s a lot of beautiful shops, especially Everything Elmwood. It’s a great place to just walk around and enjoy what Buffalo is really like and to feel like a local.
One of the most unique things happening in Buffalo right now is Silo City. There’s a bar right on site, there’s a cantina there, you can tour it via the Buffalo River or go right inside and get to walk into these historic beautiful grain elevators.
And while we have an explosive food scene, we are definitely known and very proud of our chicken wings here. Every local has their favorite spot. Mine personally is Gene McCarthy's in the Old First Ward, where you can have beer made right on site and their special McCarthy wings.
Buffalonians love to talk, they love to share beers, they love to connect with people and they really love when people visit.

Brandon Walker:
Poughkeepsie is one of the focal points on the Hudson River Valley. The first things you’ll want to do when you arrive in Poughkeepsie is to go to the Walkway Over the Hudson. The Walkway Over the Hudson used to be a railroad bridge where now visitors, the community, we run across, exercise, come and visit. It has incredible views, it’s very serene, it’s very calm, it’s very quiet. That’s really one of the highlights of this city.
If you really love history and you love architecture and interiors, you should really visit the Vanderbilt Mansion. The Vanderbilts were a prominent family in the Gilded Age. The mansion, the way it is, is how they left it – a really, really great site for you to see.
The FDR property is the home of Franklin Roosevelt’s Museum. You can go and check out a lot of history about him and his family. It’s located in Hyde Park, New York, which is literally 10 minutes from Poughkeepsie.
The culinary scene in Poughkeepsie is very lively. We work with local farmers and use the ingredients to create menus. We cook and we brew and we distill with the seasons.
Rossi’s Deli is one of my favorite places to go to in the community because it’s an old-school, classic Italian deli, family-run. They make the bread there fresh. My favorite thing to get there is the chicken cutlet panini. You can eat half of it today and have the other half tomorrow.
There’s so much variety in food that if you’re really a foodie, you can come to our city and enjoy many different layers of flavor.
Poughkeepsie is, literally, one and half hours from New York City along the Hudson River. Poughkeepsie is also known as the Queen City, so if you ever want to visit the Queen City, all you have to do is take a one-and-a-half-hour train ride on the Metro North at Grand Central in New York City and you’ll be here in Poughkeepsie.