Weekend Getaway: Hudson Valley

The only thing money can not regrettably buy you is time, which causes deep anguish in the depths of our souls and also, incidentally, can put quite a crimp in weekend plans.

A two-day romantic getaway in, say, northern Vermont can easily mean a total of ten hours of rapidly dwindling conversational topics in the car with your partner, at least for the average New York area resident.

And no sooner do you settle into your romantic inn than it's time to fire up the GPS, say a prayer to the god of conversation, and trudge home.

Even if you have the money, who has the time?

But for the better part of three centuries -- starting before stocks were traded under the buttonwood tree and even surviving and improving after being purchased at auction several years ago -- The Bird and Bottle Inn has been a high-end establishment that seems transported in time and place from old world New England.

It is actually less than an hour's ride from modern New York City and comes complete with unlimited opportunity for local antiquing in as quaint and throwback a setting as you can imagine.

At the mention of quaint antiquing, though, it may be time to drop some pretense.

While any time away with a companion has its obvious rewards, many have their limits with nights spent in rooms decorated with candles and dried floral arrangements like some VH-1 acoustic music stage set, followed by an afternoon spent buying dusty footstools at top dollar. But there is more to be had here.

The Bird and Bottle Inn is in Garrison, N.Y., otherwise known as Governor George Pataki's hood, and right near the picturesque village Cold Spring -- the Detroit of antiques stores.

A nearly undocumentable number are set right on Main Street, which slopes down to the Hudson.

If you're into antiques, you'll be in heaven; if not, you may be hard-pressed to distinguish one from another after the first five.

The inn itself, about five minutes from Cold Spring, had many incarnations as stagecoaches and taverns, and spent more than a century in private life as farm and gristmill.

But it eventually turned back to its lodging roots, in that classic old New England form, though still just a rock-skip away from Manhattan.

When the inn was purchased at auction two years ago, the new owners would not comment on their plans and there were fears that the inn would be transformed into a private home, or some unknown other business (antique store, anyone?).

But, in the end, the owners simply revived what was, which includes one of the most highly regarded restaurants in the Hudson Valley.