Placing Bets & Taking Names 🐎 a Fun Day Trip to Saratoga, NY with Some of My Favorite People
One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.
— Georgia O’Keeffe
New York is a brilliant piece of land filled with history, wonder, beauty, and fun. In addition to the marvels of the island of Manhattan and New York City, New York State is home to many more beautiful and interesting places.
One of New York’s finest areas is upstate in old Saratoga. From the “most beautiful racetrack in the world” (according to a 1964 Sports Illustrated article) to the charming nineteenth-century houses surrounding it, to the classic Main Street nearby, Saratoga Springs offers a warmth and charm of years past that simply doesn’t exist where I grew up in Southern California.
Summers in New York are full of opportunities to travel and after speaking to New York Racing Association (NYRA) we decided it would be so fun to take a day trip with some of our closest friends, Jaclynn Brennan and JC Carvajal, to the Saratoga Race Course.
Arriving in Saratoga, I felt like I stepped back in time to the late 1800s. The first sanctioned race in Saratoga happened just one month after the famed Battle at Gettysburg in 1863. The town is so charming, the architecture is so diverse and enchanting! After the race, we walked around downtown and found ourselves swooning over the beautiful neighborhood. As we strolled down the streets, we were greeted with a variety of unique houses that were mostly built in the late 1800s. One common theme that we noticed was that nearly all of the homes included a front porch. I could just imagine in the summer a hundred or more years ago, all the neighbors sitting out on the porches with a glass full of lemonade raising their glasses to their neighbor across the way.
There was so much excitement at the race! I really recommend reserving a table at The Porch to watch the races — drink, eat, and be merry! I loved their selection of cheeses – Murray’s is one of my favorites and I was thrilled to add it to my experience. The Fried Chicken Basket with Waffle Fries, the slow-cooked Korean BBQ Sliders, the Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail, and Sweet Potato Pie were among my favorite! Comfort food is another slice of history that brings the experience to life!
Betting is fun! And a great tip the boys taught me was to check out the horses in their paddock. It gave us a good sense of which horse looked strong, happy, or even agitated right before the race. We were lucky enough to get a chance to walk right in for a close look, but it is possible for anyone to stand by the fences and look in at the horses. There’s an old superstition that if one of the horses happens to poop, then he’s going to run faster in the race. Fortunately, we didn’t have the chance to find out.
If you do happen to pick the winner, there’s no better place to watch the race than in the Winners Circle! With a front-row view of the action, it’s a thrilling place to watch the race. On this occasion, we didn’t quite pick the right number, but we did luck out on a few races throughout the day.
One bit of info that I learned is that horses have a strong survival instinct and when they lose sight of their rider, like when they’re entering the race path, they have to be escorted so they don’t just jolt off in survival mode. It can be easy to forget that these magnificent animals are wild at heart and it’s remarkable that man and horse can work together so beautifully.
Chanteline wins the Smart N Fancy with Ricardo Santana Jr at #Saratoga pic.twitter.com/IgbQRwUHi4
— NYRA (@TheNYRA) August 26, 2018
Every time I return to NYC from my travels I feel like a piece of my puzzle has been put together. I truly love this place and the more I explore the state it’s connected to, the more I love the whole region. Before this summer is over, think about taking a day trip to Saratoga and visit a living piece of history.
