Experience the best of Rochester

Rochester stands on the Genesee River a few kilometres south of Lake Ontario, and the river tumbles over High Falls, about 30 metres high, right in the city centre. George Eastman founded Kodak here, and his mansion is now the George Eastman Museum, devoted to photography and film. Susan B. Anthony lived in the city, and her house is a museum, while Frederick Douglass published his newspaper The North Star here, and both are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.

The Strong National Museum of Play holds a vast collection of toys and video games, and the Memorial Art Gallery and the Eastman School of Music add to the city's cultural weight. Highland Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, is covered in lilacs that bloom in May. Letchworth State Park, nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the East, has three waterfalls and lies to the south, and the Finger Lakes wine country spreads out to the south-east.

The garbage plate, a heap of meat, home fries and macaroni salad, is Rochester's invention, and white hots, pale sausages, and salt potatoes are other local dishes. Winters bring heavy lake-effect snow, summers are warm and green, and the autumn colours are lovely in the Genesee valley.