Aaah, Ithaca!

On Wednesday morning, Brad, Mary, and I left for our trip to Ithaca to visit Cornell.  It's 250 miles from here, so an early departure allowed us to have pretty much all day exploring campus.  Mary had never been there, I hadn't been back in 18 years, but Brad's been back lots (for work) over the years.  All in all, it was a magical day and an excellent and thorough college visit for Mary.

After the university's college tour, we met up with Mary's friend Laura (from Shorewood), who is a sophomore at Cornell.  We had lunch with her, and then she walked us through many more parts of campus.  We saw a lot of campus, and given how large Cornell is, that's saying a lot!

You have to see Cornell to believe how pretty its natural beauty is.  Here is a photo of one of the many gorges that runs through campus.  This is a small gorge.  I didn't/couldn't take photos of the larger gorges because, unfortunately, the bridges over the deeper gorges have had tall (8-10 foot) chain link fences installed over the standard railings.  This is to prevent anyone from jumping into those gorges as, sadly, many students did this year.  We were told that there are plans to take the chain link down eventually - so thankfully it's not permanent.

Me, Mary, and Laura on our walk through the Cornell Plantations.  Laura is a Landscape Architecture major, so she knew a lot about the plants in the plantations.  She also took us to the building that houses her major and showed us around, including her studio space.  It was really interesting for Mary to get such an in-depth understanding of Laura's major, how she discovered it, what classes she takes, etc.

After we said so long to Laura, we took a breather on the main part of campus, where there are many beautiful brick and stone buildings.  And, as you can see, spring was in full bloom in Ithaca.

Of course, no visit to Cornell would be complete without stopping by the Johnson Graduate School of Management.  When Brad was an MBA student there, the JGSM was housed in a very dumpy building.  A couple of years after he graduated the renovation and remodeling of Sage Hall was completed and that's where the JGSM is now housed.  (This is Brad and Mary in front of Sage Hall.)  It's a beautiful space!  While there, we popped in on one of Brad's professors - someone he's kept in touch with over the years.  We were lucky that she was in; she pulled up chairs for us all and we chatted about Mary's college search.  Hearing her thoughts on the admissions process and her views on the schools Mary's looking at added another interesting facet to Mary's overall search and to Cornell in particular.

As terrific as our day at Cornell was, the icing on the cake was our absolutely delightful visit with Jim and Dorothy Spencer.  They are the parents and parents-in-law, respectively, of our dear friends Sue and Harry (classmates of Brad's at Stanford), and we have known them for many years.  They too were able to offer some great insight to Mary's thinking about Cornell, given their deep lifetime involvement with the university.  We also enjoyed getting to see their new home in a retirement community in Ithaca.  We thought it was the most ideal retirement environment we'd ever seen.  The residences, grounds, and facilities were top-notch.  But it was the residents we found most fascinating.  Many of the people who live there are past professors and administrators of Cornell - even a couple of Nobel laureates - as well as other professionals.  (Mary said she had never been in the same room with so many people who had buildings named after them.)  It's hard to imagine a more stimulating community of people - retired or not - to live in and around . . . . . And our visit ended with a stay at a bed and breakfast outside of Ithaca.  I chose it because the owners are Polish.  We were asleep before our heads hit the pillows, but after so much walking the previous day, we woke up very hungry!  We enjoyed a delicious Polish breakfast in our hostess' Polish kitchen, and we reminisced about Poland for the entire time we ate.  It was the perfect way to end a perfect visit to a place that is now so special to all three of us.  Next up:  Stanford!  (Brad and Mary are on their way there now.)