Friday was a day of great Italian cuisine.

In the Newark, N.J., Airport, my wife and I were beckoned by three young Italian guys whose sales pitch finished with a Tony Soprano refrain: Badda .Badda. BING!

We consumed their Stromboli a stuffed sandwich to our delight. Great characters. Great food.

After landing in Albany and collecting our rental car, it only took my wife 20 minutes to erupt at another driver. The delight of East Coast driving all comes back, doesnt it? I asked in consolation.

We traveled to the Adirondacks for the wedding of an old family friend. Driving from Albany to Brant Lake, we stopped for dinner at a roadside diner that is typical of this region entryway, bar, dining area, fireplaces that dont work. Our waitress could have been Rosie ODonnell in one of those gritty comedies about life in rural New England. This restaurants lasagna was memorable, in the best sense.

Our hosts at Brant Lake own a summer camp, which goes back four generations in the wifes family. Knotty pine paneling and Adirondack furniture gave their home an elegant camp feel.

Brant Lake is a storied place. Our host is related to the late songwriter, Jimmy Van Heusen (Swinging on a Star, Love and Marriage). Van Heusen had an island in the lake. A curiosity of the home where we stayed is a large round dinner table that belonged to Van Heusen. One side of the table was squared off, for the back of Van Heusens piano.

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The fun of travel is the moment of serendipity or discovery. Our find was a model railroad layout of 5,000 square feet. After reading about this place in an Adirondack newspaper over lunch, we drove to nearby Pottersville, a town of less than 5,000. As we stepped through the front door, we could hear the hum of the model trains running in the large exhibit space some 30 feet away.

Seeing scale models of small towns and New York City induced smiles in children as well as adults. In one model village, there was a drive-in theater showing a black-and-white movie (Gary Cooper in High Noon), with cars parked in front of the screen. On a hilltop was the Bates Motel, and the mothers silhouette apparent when night fell. Every 31/2 minutes, the exhibits lights went up or down, to mimic day or night.

Clarke Dunham is the main force behind the massive train layout. His bread and butter is designing sets for Broadway shows and operas. He is a small, bespectacled man with great enthusiasm for stage mechanics. After learning we had seen his set for Madama Butterfly in San Francisco, he talked with us for almost 30 minutes. Dunham had done a train layout for Citicorp and obtained ownership when the banks special occasion was over. That setup is part of what we saw.

Dunham said the occupational hazard of being a set designer for musicals is that once the show ends, your work goes to the dump. But these model railroad displays have enduring audience value.

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For some of the weekends wedding guests, the subtext of this event was nursing. My wife and the brides mother met in graduate school, where they became certified nurse midwives. The man who performed the ceremony lakeside was a former Congregational minister who had since become a certified nurse midwife.

The brides father, a family-practice physician, is an avid runner. In fact, hell be on a team in the August Hood to Coast run. At his own wedding in 1980 on this same lake, he wore a short-sleeved knit shirt. For his daughters wedding, he bought a suit, and looked terrific.

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The thrill of flying into and out of Newark Airport is seeing the Manhattan skyline in the distance. In our descent Sunday, the Statue of Libertys green patina glowed in the late afternoon sunshine.

S.A.F.