RocWiki Tourists Guide

Tourism Wikicrumbs: Tour :

Rochester, in case you don't know, is not the world's most tourist friendly place. Sure, we get visitors and tourists, but due to some "strange quirk" of personality, location, and weather, our fair city is quite reserved and conventional. Finding the good places to go, and things to see sometimes takes months of living here. We at RocWiki aim to change that!

This page is a guide for people visiting Rochester. It won't take you to five-star hotels, or dinner at $200 a plate. It will show you the highlights of the city through the eyes of our contributors, who love this city like the back of their hands.

A good place to start is VisitRochester.com

• Artisan Works, a gallery and workspace for local artists, shares a winding maze of space networked together with the Metal Museum and Elizabeth Collection, all under (or not under) one roof. Many working artists lease studio space here and become part of the visitor experience.
  

• George Eastman House - Once the home of George Eastman (founder of Eastman Kodak Company), the house expanded into an adjoining a museum for photography and a world-renowned school for film preservation.
  

• Mary Jemison & Sam Patch Tour Boats - Scenic tours of the Genesee River and the Erie Canal. The Mary Jemison docks at Corn Hill Landing on Exchange Boulevard in Rochester and the Sam Patch is located on Schoen Place in Pittsford.
  

• Memorial Art Gallery is a great gallery for a city Rochester's size.
  

• Mount Hope Cemetery - The first Victorian cemetery in the country, formerly located south of the city, retains its original park-like atmosphere.
  

• New York Wine and Culinary Center, a recently completed gourmand's delight and gateway for New York agriculture, food and wine, offers a place to taste wines from all over New York. You can compare chardonnays from Long Island and the Finger Lakes, while learning and enjoying what makes each different.
  

• Public Market - On big mornings like Sundays, Thursdays, and especially Saturdays, people come from all over Monroe County and the region to hawk and sell or to buy produce, groceries, plants, and wares, or to sit and relax, gather for coffee, or watch the bustle.
  

• Rochester Museum & Science Center, on a campus of several sprawling buildings, combines interactive displays about science and the history of Rochester.
  

• Strong National Museum of Play, formerly Strong Museum and focused at children, recently grew even more awesome. Founded on the toy collection of Margaret Woodbury Strong, but now targeted to adults as well as children, the museum features interactive galleries, playscapes, and even a small butterfly zoo shaped like a butterfly.
  

• Susan B. Anthony House - Currently undergoing restoration, this home of feminist and patriot Susan B. Anthony, is a mecca for women's suffrage. You can stand in the very room where the meetings were held and in the room where she was arrested for voting.

Compared to dedicated sites, a wiki sometimes makes a poor format for gathering, organizing, and presenting geography and guides. Here are worthy alternatives.

• Rochester is just one place at 43 Places, a collaborative travel guide created by the Robot Co-op, along with 43 Things and 43 People. With leading-edge web-design, it organizes places and reviews in a socially-networked bulletin board. To solicit helpful comments and sometimes fanciful wishes, onto one page it organizes places you have visited along with places others wish to visit. Those participants' reviews and wishes, once gathered onto a personal page, help participants learn about each other too. Through a single login and identity, it works with 43 Things, to help people refine their goals and connect them with others who have accomplished those goals, and with 43 People, to connect participants to people they would like to meet, through places they would like to or have visited, their wishes and goals, and their comments, testimonials, and profiles.
  

• Tribe, a useful and powerful site, leverages social capital and networking for publishing listings and reviews, and for sharing personal content. Born of San Francisco culture like Craigslist and serving similar needs, but with less anonymity, it works better. It recently split upstate New York into distinct metros and gave Rochester a distinct domain. Now whether by fleshing out our profiles, inviting friends, and reviewing and rating local favorites, making it succeed here is up to us.
  

• RochesterNY.mobi, a mobile friendly guide to Rochester (there's also a version for desktop users). The site offers a unique way to get around Rochester when you're visiting or just out and about and need some information on the go. Some of the features of the site include a click-to-call feature (phone numbers clicked from cell phones will dial the number), driving directions to destination from your starting point, plus other information that you would generally find on portals. Please drive responsibly.

• New York Times
  

• USA Today
  

• Runner's World
  

• Footprint Press has published 14 guidebooks on the area, from skiing to hiking, and general outdoors guides.

• Places to Stay