Villa Roma

We had a "free" Interval week that for some reason I thought we should use for a getaway in January. We picked the Villa Roma in the Catskills and thought it would be fine for snowshoeing, cross country skiing or other winter activities.  The week before we went we had 2 feet of snow but then it warmed up into the 50s and rained.  When we came here there wasn't any snow, we had more rain and needless to say we didn't get to do anything we thought we would.

We were being fairly optimistic by bringing our snowshoes but more realistic by leaving home our skis. They did say they had indoor tennis so we brought our tennis rackets but when we went to explore the facility we found that they use it for all these blow up bouncy things for kids.

OK - what are we going to do now that we're here.  The first day wasn't a problem, check in was at 4, we unloaded and hung out in our space.  Nice and spacious, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, living room, kitchen and eating area.  Three televisions so I could watch the Golden Globes in one bedroom and Larry could watch whatever he wanted wherever he wanted.

Monday morning after we were dressed and I successfully managed to flood the bathroom so that it leaked through the ceiling of the floor below from my long, luxorious, hot, pounding shower we went out to explore the facility.  We went to the main building, checked out the game room and pool and then went across to the tennis complex where there are lots of racquetball courts that they use for Wallyball and two indoor tennis courts with deflated blowups.  There was also a bowling alley and a gym.  We decided to bag all the activities to drive to Roscoe for some gas and to go to the Prohibition Distillery that we read about in the Sullivan County Catskills magazine.

While we were walking around the town we happened to stumble across the distillery which is located in an old firehouse building and did a tasting of their corn vodka and a sampling of a Bloody Mary with a Bloody Mary mix that that they sell.

We went home with a bottle of each.  We were then on our way to the Catskill Distilling Company when I felt that I already had a buzz and maybe we should save that outing for another day so we turned around and went back.  At 5 PM there was a welcome wine and cheese that we went to and met some people that were sititng near us from Fairport, Churchville and Buffalo.

Tuesday it was wet and dreary but in the afternoon we ventured out to the Sullivan Distilling Company and found that it was a real short ride going directly from Villa Roma than by way of Roscoe.  There was also a really good priced Mobil gas station on the way.  They were making corn Bourbon when we got there and it smelled good enough to eat.  More like a corn casserole than a bourbon.  We did some tastings of the various liquor they had, bourbon, wheat vodka, smelled the gin, I learned that gin is made with juniper berries and the kind they make smelled just like what I remember a Tom Collins smelling like when I was a freshman in college and brought to mind lacrosse games at Union College. After purchasing two small bottles of bourbon for the price of two large bottles of your standard bourbon we drove back.

Wednesday morning was a continental breakfast for timeshare owners where they didn't have a sales pitch, just information on Intervals Point system and the best fruit salad.  The afternoon was warm and sunny so after lunch we took a walk on the golf course so now we don't have to feel guilty about being lazy slugs.  It felt good to be able to get out in the fresh air and do some walking up and down the very hilly golf course.

And Larry managed to find 4 golf balls (like he needs more).

I should mention that although there are tons of things to do and see in this area, none of them are opened in January, so without snow we pretty much used up most of what there was to do here.  After the breakfast we went to the game room and played a couple of games of shuffleboard, I won and 3 games of ping pong, Larry won, and the last one was a shutout!

We decided to go home on Friday, before some more bad weather was going to hit but when we woke up on Thursday we decided we might as well just go home then rather than kill time at the resort.  There was a surprise snowfall overnight and it looked really pretty but we still decided to go home.