New York Traveler.net

New York City Car Service

Doing a little traveling to or through the Big Apple? Don’t take your car! It is murderous, trying to navigate the narrow and congested Manhattan streets (not to mention horridly expensive due to high gasoline prices). Here’s a tip: use a car service. There are various car services available, but only a few have been around for over three decades. And few have such a memorable telephone number as 212-777-7777! It’s Dial 7 New York Car & Limousine Service, and they specialize in LaGuardia airport car service. They also serve the tri-state area plus Pennsylvania to and from JFK Airport and Newark Airport, too. Dial 7 currently has over four hundred new Cadillac Luxury Sedans, Mercedes Benz and Lincoln Town Cars, plus stretch limousines and SUVs. They’ve also got minivans and larger vans for shuttle service. Prices are very reasonable! New York Magazine called them “the best ride in town”! You can make online reservations; check out their website for more details here.

Viral Film Festival in NYC

Thanks to YouTube, we all know what viral videos are. Spoofs are usually the most popular (as far as I am concerned!), and the rise of viral videos is changing the face of the Internet and Internet marketing. Therefore it is not surprising that a “best of the best” festival would be held for the most effective and popular viral videos. The Viral Film Festival of 2008 will be held on April 28, in New York City. It sounds like fun!

Here’s the scoop from the website:

Vanksen Culture Buzz and BEFILM The Underground Film Festival are glad to invite you to a special “Viral Screening and Party” at: The Dolby Screening Room, April 28th 2008 at 7PM. The Dolby is conveniently located at 1350 Avenue of The Americas (at the corner of 55th St & 6 Ave).

Videographers have the chance to submit videos, until March 22 (better hurry!); see here. And if you want to attend the festival, register quickly, as space is limited.

Living in Manhattan

I lived in Manhattan for a year in the mid-80s, attending a drama school. I look back now, and wonder where I got the pluck to leave home at age 17, go to one of the world’s largest cities all by myself, and try a career in drama and music! It was an interesting experience for a young country girl.

I lived alone in a dormitory-like high-rise building, close to the school I attended (the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on Madison Ave). Here’s a snapshot of the view from my window.

I lived at 28th and Lexington, in the vicinity nicknamed “Little India” for the many immigrants from India who chose to cluster here. Every morning at 8am, the pungent smell of curry would rise from the streets, all the way up to my seventh-floor room. I didn’t mind curry at 8pm, but at 8am it was sickening. I couldn’t eat anything with curry in it for years.

Here are a few other photos I managed to dig out.

>>> Read more of ‘Living in Manhattan’

The Boring Traveler

The New York Times has a colorful travel section online, but I’ve generally avoided it because it revolves a world apart– a higher echelon– from me. I just can’t make myself get excited about wild nightclubs in Slovenia (the new liberation) or “Hawaii on a dime” (face it, if you’re going to vacation in Hawaii, you’re going to want to spend more than a “dime.” Money is relative to the New York Times jetset crew, I guess).

Perusing the section today, one headline did catch my eye, “The Frugal Traveler.” Aha! Perhaps this was a worthy travelogue, filled with heart-warming homilies and inspirational photos of the wide open spaces of the Land of the Free! Unfortunately, I became disappointed.

Now before you write me off as being overly critical, remember, I’ve seen some outstanding travel blogs out there, so I am drawing from a good deal of experience. And some of the stories were truly interesting (like the car failure in South Dakota and accepting an invitation from a local family to stay with them– all the while concealing the fact that their new guest– this Frugal Traveler– is a NY Times reporter). Actually, the segment on South Dakota was the most entertaining, in my opinion.

But the Zen meditation and joking with locals in Colorado about getting drunk wasn’t terribly frugal to me. It had “New York Times” plastered all over it. The stories never got beyond my head and into my heartstrings, which is how I feel about the New York Times in general. Moreover, I failed to see how this travel was particularly frugal, besides the “mingling” with the unwashed masses and driving a beat-up old Volvo across the continent.

Though frugal travel has required me to embrace certain Buddhist conventions — shedding attachments to luxuries, for example — the closest I’d ever come to spiritual enlightenment was drinking bourbon from a silver Tibetan flask I bought in India.

Oh yeah, when I go frugal, I never leave home without my Buddhist conventions, not to mention my Ming vase and silver Tibetan flask I bought in India for those religious moments.

I am easily bored and, I assume, so is the typical travel blog reader. I like stories short, I like lots of “play by play” photos, and I love the historical aspect of the places I visit. And I must have some kind of inspiration, whether it be in the scenery or in the journey or in meeting new people. I think this element was missing from the narrative. Like I said, it never left my head to touch my heart.

And when I travel to “Middle America,” I don’t consider it “Middle America.” That’s a name given to us by “Upper America.” One segment has the author wandering into a Utopian society and calling the residents “pretty normal.” I wondered what “pretty normal” meant?

But from what I could see, Dreamtime’s residents were pretty normal: mIEKAL’s 19-year-old son, Zon, had just graduated from the Waldorf School in Viroqua, a couple of towns west; Camille, whom mIEKAL had married after he and Elizabeth divorced, was a cheerful, inquisitive filmmaker who had moved there from Romania only a few years earlier (Elizabeth, who had renamed herself Lyx Ish, died in 2004); and Ken, a handyman who’d been in West Lima longer than anyone, was quieter than the others but so what… and the sun was warming the town’s sole remaining business, a Pepsi machine (50 cents a can).

College, divorce, Pepsi. “Pretty normal.”

Face it, most people go “frugal” because they have to. Rubbing stories of grimy trailer parks and shady hotels in the faces of readers (who, like me, practice frugality as a lifestyle not for a story written to titillate Manhattanites) is depressing. The true frugal traveler looks for expensive stuff inexpensively (good deals), not cheap (non-Manhattan) stuff and calling it frugal.

I don’t think the author was intentionally condescending, but the overall story seemed to mock the average non-Tibetan-flask-drinking American. The segment seemed more like a travel story about the “little” people, for the “big” people to read, done with typical sneering New York Times style. Who likes that?

Interesting Places to Visit and Not to Visit

Well, well. January 1st, 2008. Amazing.

Lots of people seem to be still on vacation (or going). Here in Upstate New York, right after Christmas is when the snowbirds leave for Florida or some other southern state.

I’m not going anywhere (not yet). But I was browsing through some travel websites and blogs, and found some great resources. Rather than tuck them in my bookmarks, I’ll share them so you can get some use out of them, too.

Going to Manhattan? The food is excellent, and such a variety! Here’s a handy-dandy website showing 6,440 menus from Manhattan restaurants: MenuPages. The Empire State Building has it’s own official site. And NewYorkology, one of my favorite New York travel blogs, always has lively listings of things to do.

Traveling with kids and don’t know what to do? TravelHacker has a list of free games for kids to play during long car or plane trips. The main website has some good ideas for airline travel, too. Same goes for Family Travel.
If you are like me, and staying home for the winter, you can check out some new places I’ve been enjoying. Test your geography skills with a very fun TravelerIQ quiz.

Armchair traveler? I am. Right now I’m perusing The Fleming Family Global Adventure (traveling around the world with a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old?!), and Travel Diaries (nice and organized, a pleasure to read).

My young son is doing a report on Scotland, one of my favorite countries (aye, the clan!). We’ve been enjoying Travel Around Scotland. Yes, I hope we do someday.

There’s the “mainstream media” travel pages, at New York Times and CNN. They aren’t too bad, just a tad sensational. The photos are always so enjoyable.

The special thing about travel is you can do it literally and do it virtually. With the Internet, virtual travel is that much easier. Happy trails!

North of the Border

I was perusing the travel blogs again. I got very excited to see this title in my RSS feeds: The Luxury Hotels of New York. I’m not “into” luxury hotels, rest assured! But I was curious to see what great Upstate hotels were on such a list! I eagerly opened the page and skimmed the first paragraph. After six words, I literally deflated.

New York is a fascinating city that offers

Oh. Another New York CITY article.

I should have known. But there IS a New York up here, ya know! We do exist! Hello?