-I'm in a destination known for its natural beauty.

It's a place where sparkling lakes are the backdrop to sparkling wine.

-Whoo!

-And the views are always there to drink in.

It's an area of small cities and even smaller towns that together form an historic center of innovation where motorcycles and planes first tested the limits, and the material that is still changing our lives today is rightfully respected and celebrated.

It's a place where art and science go hand-in-hand while beauty and the goodness of people surrounds you.

I'm in Corning, New York, and the Southern Finger Lakes.

[ Upbeat tune plays ] I'm Samantha Brown and I've traveled all over this world.

And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

-I'm exploring Upstate New York and its beautiful Finger Lakes region.

One look at the map can tell you why they were named that way.

I'm making a few stops in some of the charming towns along the way, but I'm starting in Corning, which is synonymous with one thing... ...and there's a museum that celebrates it.

-Welcome to the Corning Museum of Glass.

Everything you expected, right?

-[ Laughing ] Nothing that I expected, not at all.

I mean, this is -- It knocks your socks off.

-Well, glass loves light, and these galleries are all about the interaction of glass and light.

And unlike other museums, we can really pour a ton of light onto glass without fear of damaging the material.

-I'm Rob Cassetti, and I came to Corning 32 years ago as a glass designer.

It's where I fell in love with glass, and I've never looked back.

-This is the first thing you allow people to walk into, so obviously, this is the statement.

-We begin the story of glass with what's happening today in the world of art and contemporary design in glass.

All across the board -- color, scale, texture... Well, what you have is artists really exploring what glass can do.

-And you won't believe what glass -- and the artists who work with it -- can do, like a lynx made of all broken glass or a glass dress that drapes an invisible form.

-This is called "Woven Heaven, Tangled Earth," and it's arguably the most fragile object in the museum.

-Wow.

-The artist started in the middle and worked out.

-Okay.

[ Chuckles ] -[ Chuckling ] And once it set, it was placed here safely, and we closed the door.

It's like, "Let's just leave it there."

-You would think that everything in a glass museum would be fragile, but this is a destination for people to interact with glass in large theaters where master glassblowers create large pieces in front of your eyes... -And watch what happens as Helen takes this final heat, and then she'll start to turn a little faster and a little faster.

Alright.

Nice job.

[ Applause ] Let's hear it for Helen Ben-Ewing.

What a beautiful fluted bowl.

-...where kids are even encouraged to break glass... -You're gonna pull this mallet all the way back, and then you're gonna let it go.

-Ooh!

-Nice.

-...and, of course, make it.

-Nice and hard now.

♪♪ Double high five.

-Where the Corning Museum really shines brilliantly is making it crystal clear how this material created in this small city literally changed the world.

-This is where Thomas Edison came to have his lightbulbs made.

This is where the glass for television was developed and then the glass for flat-screened televisions, the glass for your phone, optical fiber for telecommunications.

This is where the glass for every spaceship launched by NASA was invented, and all of those inventions came from here.

♪♪ -You know, America has a lot of charming towns with equally charming main streets, but here in Corning, New York, their Market Street has National Historic Places status.

It's won awards, and you can see why.

It has a legacy of 19th-century architecture, and within all these buildings are shops, restaurants, and stores.

Over 250 of them, all individually owned, and so it's this beautiful space to wander under a tree-lined street, to linger, to shop and just to enjoy.

-And one thing to enjoy is glass, whether it's searching for vintage pieces for your soon-to-be improved casserole skills or enjoying an ice cream soda prepared in the only proper vessel, like they do at the Old World Cafe.

-Oh, that is gonna hit the spot.

-Good.

-Oh.

-Jennifer Herman has owned this cafe, a little scoop of heaven that makes it impossible not to have ice cream, for close to 20 years.

-No one I've known has ever been saddened from eating ice cream.

-[ Laughs ] And yet Market Street is mainly known for the more serious pursuit of finding one-of-a-kind collectors' pieces of glass, which I found in Max and Kitty Erlacher's gallery of Steuben glass.

Max Erlacher is a master engraver who came by way of Austria, and Kitty, who was born here in Corning, specializes in hard-to-find pieces from the classic Steuben collection.

-How long have you been collecting Steuben?

-Since 1960.

-Whoa, okay.

Nice.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Yeah, I saw the beauty, and I saw such a variety... -Mm-hmm.

-...of modern and traditional.

-Why is Steuben revered so highly?

-Well, I'll tell you in one word, actually not a word.

-I love how you're holding that with one hand -- oh!

[ Glass ringing ] [ Whispering ] Wow... [ Ringing stops ] Many people that come in here have received for a wedding gift, some beautiful vases and bowls.

-Do they want to know how much it is, so they can sell it?

-Oh, they want to know what it's worth, yeah, yeah.

-[ Laughing ] -Yes.

I think that if you've got a beautiful Steuben vase or bowl or candlesticks or -- You should keep it and enjoy it and put it some place, an important place, so that you can look at it and enjoy it.

-You know, copper-wheel engraving is what I do.

But there's also stone engraving, diamond-wheel engraving, cameo engraving and intaglio engraving.

And this is a three-layered piece of glass that has white on the inside, green in the middle and then another layer of white over it, and I engrave away the white layer to expose the green and then shape the forms that are leftover in a cameo technique, where you grind it away... -That is... -...and then cameo.

-Oh, my goodness.

That is phenomenal work.

-The tricky part is not to go too deep, or you expose the white layer on the inside.

-Oh.

-So you have to be very careful to get to the green and not further than that.

-But then, how do you know that?

Is it something you feel?

-Well, I've been engraving for 65 years.

-Engraving for 65 years on a machine that's 100 years old.

-You have these spindles.

They have copper wheels mounted on the end of them.

-Where is the copper wheel?

Is this considered the -- -No, right here on the end of each spindle, see?

-Those are copper wheels.

I get it.

'Cause I've heard about that, with the copper-wheel engraving.

-You bring the glass to the wheel, and you cut -- You can hear it.

I don't know if you can hear it cutting.

-Yes.

[ Glass grinding ] -And you then blend all your cuts together, so you get one uniform form, and you proceed doing that until you get to the depth or, you know, the shape that you want to achieve.

Each cut that I cut requires a different shape of the wheel, so I have to have... On my studio, I have like 100 wheels, different wheels that you use for each different cut.

-And that is what you are known for, just that level of detail.

That's what you're looking for when you see this glass.

-That's what I love to do, yeah.

-The small towns of the Finger Lakes all have their little discoveries, and if you just drive through... you'll be so disappointed you missed them.

♪♪ -Good morning.

Can I help you?

-Good morning.

Oh.

What a beautiful bakery you have.

-Thank you.

-How old is it?

-It was 1872 the building was built, and it's been a bakery ever since.

-Obviously, you haven't been here since 1872.

-No, not quite.

-[ Laughing ] -A few, but not that many, yeah.

-Are you Betty Kay?

-No, I'm Emy Lou, and Betty and Kay were the two wives of the two families that bought it in World War II.

-It looks like a slice of time, a different time.

How old are the display cases?

-They were brought in after there was a flood in '35, so they had to redo a lot, so... -And, of course, if the wallpaper could talk... -Yeah, the wallpaper came in in the early '50s.

I love the wallpaper.

-I love the wallpaper.

-Every time I paint, I have to do something that kind of goes with it.

-Emy Lou loves more than just the wallpaper, and when this 158-year-old bakery was set to close, she stepped up.

-It was gonna close down.

They actually had closed down in May of the year I bought it, and I was like, "I don't want to see it close."

It's a very vital part of our community.

So my husband and I kind of looked at each other, and we had somebody approach us and say, "Well, what do you think?"

So we just kind of jumped in with both feet and said, "You know, we can do it."

-Now Emy Lou makes certain the entire town has their favorite baked treat, including a rare doughnut that can only be found in the town of Bath -- the English cut.

-Yeah, these are actually our most popular doughnut.

We ship them all over the country.

People that grew up in Bath know that they taste very unique.

They look like doughnuts you'd see in other places, but they don't taste like it.

They really have their own unique flavor.

-Oh, you've sparked my interest.

I'm just gonna eat it right here.

I don't need to even put it in the bag, yeah.

-Oh, okay, you want it in a paper then, okay.

-Oh, that's wonderful.

-I'm glad you like it.

-I'm tasting a real piece of history.

-Yeah.

-What a great, great business has been here for 150 years.

Thank you.

-You're welcome.

-There's one woman in Bath who has a way of putting life in perspective like few others can.

Well, this is a beautiful cemetery.

-People were buried here beginning in 1819.

-Wow.

-There's a history in every one of these stones.

There's a story, something in everybody's life.

It might not be newsworthy, but it was to them.

Each one of these stones, at one time, somebody stood here crying.

Here they are, like we will be.

-Mm-hmm.

-And God bless them.

They deserve some respect.

I'm Helen Brink.

I live here in Bath where I'm known as "The Cemetery Lady."

Every year on Columbus Day, I give a cemetery tour.

We hit about nine or 10 cemeteries, fill a 55-seater covered wagon bus.

And every year, so far, we've had a waiting list.

This is one of my favorite ladies buried here -- Bessie Hille.

She decided she wanted to be a missionary to China.

-Wow.

-So she went to China in 1913 and was there for 38 years.

But that really got tough over there then, and by 1950, she realized that if she stayed, she was apt to be imprisoned again.

-Yes.

-So she adopted three Chinese girls... -Oh, my goodness.

-...brought them up.

-So you knew Bessie?

You belonged to the same church.

-I now belong to the same church, yes.

-Ah, okay.

And it's some church!

Oh, my goodness... [ Gasping ] This is...

This takes your breath away.

-It does.

-It's beautiful.

It's hiding in plain sight.

You have no idea from the street that you're gonna walk into something... -A lot of people in Bath don't realize it's here.

This is a Tiffany-designed sanctuary.

We're only one of eight churches in the United States that has one.

-Is all the glass we're seeing Tiffany glass?

-All the glass is Tiffany glass except the lights.

Now, when Tiffany did the work, of course, we had no electricity.

We have the two lights -- the acorn lights and the light in the narthex.

Those are Tiffany lights.

-Wow.

But they would've been gaslit?

-Yes, that's what the pipe that comes down to each one.

Then, of course, the windows -- The first thing he did when Tiffany came here was to replace our windows.

All these windows are Tiffany glass.

The arches were there.

-Mm-hmm.

-But he designed the three squares in back of the pulpit.

-Tiffany designed all the mosaics, as well.

There are over 30,000 pieces embedded in the pulpit and font.

-Yes, it was quite a feat for him to do this church.

How did Tiffany happen to come to Bath, New York?

Like, we're at the end of the Earth.

-[ Laughs ] -Now we have people from all over the world, really -- from Europe -- so we're getting better known than we used to be.

-You are not at the end of the world.

-No, we're not.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Op!

[ Laughs ] -My name is Rodi, Rodi Rovner.

We have a glass studio in Corning, New York, and this is my son.

-I'm Aaron Rovner-Buck, and this is my mom, and we are artists who work with glass.

-We were the first studio of its kind in Corning to offer a hands-on experience to the public that would allow anyone of any background or any age to have an experience and learn to work with glass.

-I'm gonna be hands-on making my own paperweight, and even though it's only a 30-minute process, it is one of choreography and intensity but always with a soft touch.

Even though we applied many different colors to the molten glass, it remains a bright orange because, well, it's really hot.

♪♪ ♪♪ -It's just taking the time.

-Wow.

-Hang on just a second.

-Yeah.

-And just very gently... -Oh, beautiful.

-...dip it in the water.

-And so this tool is cooling it as well as shaping it?

-It is, but the glass is drying the wood very quickly, which is why we have to replenish the water.

Alright, and now, we're gonna start the jacking, and do you see where that groove is started?

-Yep.

-You're gonna go in the same position, same tool... -Okay.

-...and squeeze right in that groove.

-Oh.

-And release.

♪♪ There you go, and I'm gonna heat the glass because now the glass has already cooled.

Again, it is about 1,000 degrees now.

You can press down.

-Press down?

-Perfect.

-My finished paperweight has to be cooled slowly in an oven for about 12 hours.

As the hot glass transitions to a cool solid, the color will be revealed but, for now, is a mystery.

Lake Keuka is one of the larger of the Finger Lakes.

It's also one of the few in the world that is Y-shaped, but that's not its only distinction.

On its south end is the town of Hammondsport, New York, where one native resident built, tested, and improved upon people's need for speed.

How do you even begin to describe to people who Glenn Curtiss was?

-I would call him a pioneer.

-Okay.

-He really founded the industry.

-So he starts out building bicycles.

-Right, right, bicycles just like the Wrights did, and then he got into motorcycles.

-Put an engine on it.

Let's go faster.

-We've got a reproduction of this eight-cylinder motorcycle out there.

Imagine driving that thing 134.-whatever miles per hour, and that was 1907 or '08.

-And then he thought, "Let's get this up in the air."

[ Laughs ] Being up in the air was, shall we say, a new goal for the earliest aircraft.

On July 4th, 1908, The June Bug traveled 5,360 feet, or 1,634 meters, in 1 minute and 40 seconds.

-It was to be more than a kilometer, and he flew more than a mile.

Ran out of places to land, but he wasn't the first to fly.

Everybody's taught in school it was the Wright brothers.

-Mm-hmm.

-However, by 1916, the Wright brothers built their last airplane, and by that time, Curtiss was banging them out by the thousands.

-In 1910, Curtis flew from Albany, New York, to New York City, the first appreciable distance city-to-city flight that anyone had made in the world, and with that flight, the idea of the airplane was no longer seen as a spectacle but one that could have a very practical use.

We learned about the Wright brothers, and then we have our, sort of, plane experience now today, and none of us can fill in the gap in terms of general aviation history, and this museum really seeks to do that.

-Yeah.

The purpose of the museum is to put Curtiss in his proper place in history.

-And what a history it was.

This is a Curtiss plane, and this one is, too.

-The P-40 was the only fighter that we had in production when Pearl Harbor happened.

-And while most of the aircraft here at the museum are reproductions, this P-40 Warhawk is the real thing.

So what we're seeing right now was pulled out of a swamp.

-It had been sitting there for 41 years, and when it arrived, most everybody said, "Take it to the dumpster."

-Yep.

-And I said -- -Why?

-Well, that's what I said.

"Why?

You got to have faith.

We're gonna make this into an airplane."

-And you are bringing it back to life.

-And we're bringing it back to almost life.

It's not gonna fly.

However, when we're finally done, the whole airplane is gonna move with you.

-Wow.

Wow.

-And if you look in your rearview mirror... -Wow, I have a rearview mirror.

-...you'll see the elevators moving up and down.

You got it.

-I got it.

The all-volunteer staff is restoring this plane so that all visitors to the Curtiss Museum will have a chance to sit in aviation history.

Just one word of caution... -Don't push the red button.

That'll fire the gun.

[ Both laughs ] -Hammondsport, New York, is still where speeds are tested but in the slower speeds of wine-tasting rooms.

-♪ Babe, it will cost us ♪ ♪ Cost us, I know ♪ ♪ Cost us down deep in my soul ♪ -Right now I'm testing how long I can not move and just enjoy the wine and the music.

♪♪ -We're here at Dr. Konstantin Frank Vineyards on beautiful Keuka Lake.

The shoreline is covered with trees now, but 100 years ago, this was all vineyards.

The grapes that were grown here traditionally were the native wild grapes such as Concord.

-It's the time of year that these now verdant vines are flowering, also known as the bloom, where pollination is taking place.

It's a critical stage that forms the crop in the fall.

Your great-grandfather planted these vines here.

-He did, yes.

-How long ago?

-They're some of our oldest vines planted in the early '60s.

He started out in 1951 with his family going through Ellis Island.

It's like the true immigrant success story that built this country.

-What Dr. Frank did was graft the European varietals, which were vulnerable to the devastating phylloxera, a root louse, with the more hardy and immune American vine, making a beautiful European wine that had strong American, well, roots.

-I love that.

So you have the best of both worlds.

-We do.

-The old and the new together.

-A marriage of the old and the new, yes.

-There have been three generations of winemakers in the Frank family and now for the fourth.

-I'm Meaghan Frank.

My father, Fred, is the third generation to manage the winery, and I am the fourth generation.

Not many people realize this, but the Finger Lakes is really well-suited to the production of traditional-method sparkling wine, the méthode champenoise.

-So right now, all these bottle are filled with what's going to be sparkling wine?

-Correct.

-Wow.

You may not know this about me, but I'm a really good riddler.

-A quarter turn and push... -A quarter turn... -Perfect.

-Yep.

Riddling allows the sediment caused by fermentation to collect in the neck for easy removal, and to see how vital this process is to a smooth glass of bubbly... -Here, we can see the sediment there.

-Oh, yeah.

Oh, beautiful.

-And if I turn it upside down, you can really see.

So we need to get this out of the bottle before we consume it, and the way we do that is, we freeze the yeast plug and we remove the crown cap through a process called disgorgement.

We disgorge some sparkling wine, and then we top off with a little reserve wine called the dosage.

-The wine is then corked and wire hooked.

-The bottles are labeled, and then they get sent out so they can go on to do this.

Whoo!

Yeah, nice!

-When the glaciers receded about 10,000 years ago, they left behind a really interesting array of soil deposits, so it gives our wines intense character.

So when you come to the Finger Lakes, you are gonna taste that.

-This is a place of invention, investigation, and discovery, of things that have completely transformed our world and our lives, and we're just at the beginning.

We're not done yet.

-We take it a little bit for granted because we work with this material almost every day, but when a visitor comes, and they kind of get that wow experience... -Here's your finished masterpiece.

-Oh, wow!

I did that.

Oh, isn't that neat?

Beautiful.

-...it makes it new for us again.

-I've been all over the United States and in Europe, and I've yet to find a place that offers anything more for the human soul than this place.

The people are great.

The scenery is great.

I just simply love living here.

-When a tucked-away museum shows us there's more to history than we know, when a small Main Street affects us with it's own brand of limelight, when an entire city shows us what the combination of craftsmanship, creativity, and science can accomplish, that is when we share a love of travel, and that's why Corning, New York, and the Southern Finger Lakes are places to love.

-For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪