An off-season weekend getaway to Cape May, New Jersey

by Jessica Marati on

A few weeks ago I felt the urgent, desperate need to flee New York City.

There was something about the city’s noise, its attitude, its frenetic pace that was driving me out of my mind. I felt caged in by the narrow tenement buildings of my Lower East Side streets. A taxi driver honked unnecessarily and I felt the irrepressible urge to slam on his front hood and yell “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?”

It was clear that I needed a break.

My requirements were simple: a place outside of the city where I could unwind with a good book, a fireplace and maybe a bottle of Pinot Noir. My top priority was silence.

I found what I was looking for in Cape May, New Jersey. While in the summer it’s a hotspot for vacationing tri-staters, in the winter it’s close to deserted. I recruited my boyfriend, rented a car for the three-and-a-half hour drive and booked a room at Congress Hall, a charming Victorian hotel that once served as the summer residence for presidents Pierce, Buchanan, Grant and Harrison. With a friendly yellow exterior, a tiled lobby reminiscent of Havana and a daily schedule of events, the Congress Hall had the look of a coastal resort and the feel of a grown-up summer camp.

But most importantly, in a section of the hotel called the Brown Room, Congress Hall had a fireplace and in front of that fireplace were a scattering of leather armchairs and a bar with an extensive wine list. Behold, the resting place I’d been dreaming of.

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Turns out, the Brown Room and adjoining Blue Pig Tavern are among Cape May’s only hotspots during the off-season months of October-March, and by 5pm the area was bustling with locals taking advantage of happy hour. After a relaxing evening of reading, wining and dining on delicious mussels, I fell into one of the most restful sleeps I’d had in months.



The next morning, we woke early to explore the town. The streets were dead silent, except for the sounds of waves crashing on the shore. Further inland, quaint multi-colored storefronts advertised shop names from a different time: Good Scents, Just For Laughs, Whale’s Tale, the Cape May Popcorn Factory.



The only store open at 9am on a Monday was the Original Fudge Kitchen, where I picked out a selection of salt-water taffy and gulped what tasted like stale Folger’s coffee (even though it was a retreat, I am still a New Yorker, and I was desperate).



After the pit stop, we continued our stroll. The roads were deliciously devoid of cars, and only a handful of pedestrians shared the sidewalks. After ascertaining that nearly every shop had closed for the season, and that there was in fact very little to do, we made our way to the waterfront. The late winter day was fresh, and we had the beach entirely to ourselves. After tiring of splashing in the surf, we headed back to the hotel. A fireplace was waiting.




[Flickr image via Alan Kotok]

D.C.’s Cherry Blossoms turn 100

by Dave Seminara on

Washington, D.C. is a city of posers. Especially during the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival when camera-toting tourists and locals descend like locusts to D.C.’s Tidal Basin to bask in the ethereal beauty of these Japanese trees in bloom. 100 years ago Monday, 3,020 cherry blossom trees arrived in Washington as a gift from Japan, largely thanks to the efforts of a journalist and traveler named Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, who was also the first female member of the National Geographic Society.

Aside from an incident in 1941 when four of the trees were chopped down in retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it’s been a century-long love affair ever since. If you visit the Tidal Basin on a warm sunny day, as I did on Thursday, good luck trying to find a place to stand, let alone somewhere to park. Everywhere you walk, you’re intruding on someone’s photo opportunity.

According to the April 2012 issue of National Geographic, Americans took 80 billion digital photos in 2011. By my own calculation, approximately 43 billion of those were taken at the Cherry Blossom Festival. If you think the commuter trains in Mumbai are snug at rush hour, you haven’t tried to see the cherry blossoms in bloom on a sunny day.

Every year, I vow that next year I’ll go see the cherry blossoms on a rainy day, in the middle of the night or, even better, during a lightning storm to avoid the crowds, but somehow that never happens. Still, there’s a magnetic pull that keeps me coming back. When the trees are in bloom, you’ve got to go take a look. It’s kind of like a nude beach — you know it’s just going to be fat guys from Dusseldorf, but you need to see it for yourself.

The Japanese have a special bond to the trees, which they call sakura. The Canadian writer Will Ferguson once hitchhiked through the length of the country, south to north, following the trail of the sakuras blooming and his book, “Hokkaido Highway Blues,” is a hilarious account of his attempt to penetrate the soul of the country.

%Gallery-151319%For me, the best part of the festival is watching people pose for their cherry blossom glamour shots. You see women trying to look seductive, stoic Asian men who pose solemnly, as though they were being booked into a state penitentiary, guys in suits holding their tablets awkwardly to frame photos, and me, taking about 300 photos of my sons for no good reason. Imagine how much that would’ve cost in 1912.

Photos by Dave Seminara

Where was Abe Lincoln’s summer home? Hint: it wasn’t in the Hamptons

by Dave Seminara on

Kennedy had Hyannisport. Bush 41 summered in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bush 43 favored his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Nixon loved his La Casa Pacifica Mansion in San Clemente, California. The Clintons had Martha’s Vineyard until Dick Morris, their pollster, told them it was too posh. A variety of presidents used Camp David to unwind. The Obama’s favor Hawaii. But what about Abe Lincoln? What did the man that most historians consider America’s greatest president do for vacation?

Perched on a hill in a gritty, working class neighborhood of Washington D.C., around the corner from stores with heavily fortified protective grills and an Eritrean Orthodox Church, sits one of the city’s most compelling, yet off-the-beaten-track tourist destinations. The Hamptons it is not. It’s the Soldiers’ Home, which served as the Lincoln family’s seasonal “cottage” retreat from 1862-4.

The Lincoln family moved into the Victorian style cottage 150 years ago shortly after the death of their eleven-year-old son Willie, who probably drank contaminated water from the Potomac and caught typhoid fever, one of the great scourges of the era. Like any grieving family, the Lincolns needed a change of scenery — someplace quiet, away from the bustle, foul air and contagious diseases that plagued crowded D.C.

The family moved into the Soldiers’ Home, a house that was built in 1842 for the Washington banking tycoon who founded Riggs Bank. The house is on the grounds of America’s first home for retired and disabled, enlisted veterans. When Lincoln moved in there were a few hundred veterans living on the grounds and there were also Union soldiers camping out in tents on the premises. Veterans still live on the grounds today.

Every morning from April or May through November, Lincoln would make the three-mile, 30-minute commute down the hill into D.C. on horseback. His advisors wanted him to make the trip with a cavalry security entourage, but Abe preferred to leave before they arrived, so he could go alone, stopping on the way to chat with soldiers and freed slaves who gave him a real picture of what life was like for ordinary people during the war. Last year, museum staff tried to reenact his horse ride and it took two hours due to traffic and lights.

Other presidents aside from Lincoln also spent time at the home, including Presidents Hayes, Buchanan and Arthur, but none were as attached to the place as the Lincolns reportedly were. After it fell out of fashion as a presidential retreat, it went back to being used as a veterans’ office, and part of it was turned into what was called Lincoln’s Lounge & Pub. (Never mind the fact that Abe was a teetotaler.)

According to my GPS, the home sits at an elevation of just 460 feet, but that’s a few hundred feet higher than the White House, so they believed that the place was a bit breezier and healthier as well. Today, the notion of traveling three miles away to “Get away from it all,” seems absurd — but it wasn’t at the time. There was no morning Tai Chi or organic food, but it was a kind of holistic retreat for the family before that term was invented.

Lincoln was seen riding his favorite horse, Big Bob, around the grounds of the cottage on April 13, 1865, the day before he was assassinated. 135 years later, President Clinton declared the site a National Monument, and after an eight-year restoration project it was opened to the public on President’s Day in 2008.

It’s the only tourist attraction in D.C. that offers free parking, and the $12 entry fee buys visitors an informative guided tour as well as entry into the small but well organized museum in the visitor’s center (reservations recommended). The lifelike statue of Lincoln out front is exactly six feet four-and-a-half inches tall, so step right up to it to get an idea of what it might have been like to stand toe-to-toe with Honest Abe. (The hat brings him up to seven feet tall.) If you’re interested in knowing more about Lincoln’s life, this is a must stop in a somewhat obscure area of D.C.

These days the neighborhood isn’t the quiet, country retreat it once was — on my visit, the din of construction cranes could be heard in the distance. But there’s still a view of the Capitol, which was under construction when Lincoln lived there.

The Hampton’s designer-dog-in-a-purse crowd is nowhere to be found and no one would confuse the neighborhood with Hyannisport or Martha’s Vineyard, but walking around the grounds of the place, it’s not hard to conjure a vision of big Abe in his stovepipe hat riding up the hill on horseback after a long day at the White House.

The Lost World: New York City’s Little Guyana

by David Farley on
In April 2011, in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens, two rival Sikh factions, long at odds with each other, decided it was time to come to blows. As one faction prayed in a temple, the other entered. What happened next is straight out of a B-list movie you might see while traveling on a bus in Asia: members of each group reacted to the forthcoming fight by reaching for their swords — I’m not making this up — and a bloody sword fight ensued. A sword fight, in 2011 New York City.

And so, I decided I had to go. Last week a group of friends and I boarded the A train for the 40-minute subway ride to Richmond Hill. Our destination: Little Guyana. Indo-Caribbeans (Caribbeans of Indian descent), many from Guyana (and a few from Trinidad), have been settling here in droves since the 1980s. So many that while the country of Guyana has a population of 750,000, the Guyanese population in New York is said to be close to 200,000.


Guyana, a diminutive country in northeastern South America, is a mystery to many people. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even used the country as the setting for “The Lost World.”
It wasn’t exactly a “lost world” when we got off the subway and began strolling down Liberty Ave., the main thoroughfare of Little Guyana. There were no sword-carrying men ambling down the sidewalk. Just cars cruising by and blasting soca music, which is something like calypso on crack. Roti and doubles shops competed for attention with real estate offices. Realty is a big deal in Richmond Hill. So are doubles (pictured).

We poured into a doubles shop — Sandy’s Roti Shop — where a corner kiosk sold everything from belts and flowers to cosmetics and neckties, and another guy offered soca CDs. Meanwhile, the scent of subcontinental spices pervaded the air. Described to me as something like a chickpea-filled taco, doubles consist of a soft, thin, spongy bread with channa (chickpeas and Indian spices) inside. It’s a mushy eating affair but so good I had to get seconds.

This isn’t the first time my friends and I have gone deep into Queens to have an outer-borough eating extravaganza. Two months ago we took the Long Island Rail Road out to Murray Hill, Queens, also known as Korean Town. We spent the evening at restaurants where we were the only non-Koreans. Locals were asking us — and not in a condescending way — what we were doing there and how we found the place. I found spending the evening absorbed in a totally different culture — accessed so easily by a short train ride away — to be the best antidote when travel is not a possibility.

About an hour after munching on some doubles and strolling the main drag again — more real estate offices, doubles shops and clothes stores selling saris — we entered The Nest, a narrow restaurant serving up traditional Guyanese fare. A procession of dishes soon began landing on our table, many of which were fusion dishing reflecting the diversity of Guyanese society: corn meal-encrusted shrimp, chicken and potato curry and even a version of chow mein. Finally, a basket of fried fish nuggets was passed around. When we asked the waitress what it was, she replied, “shark.”

Later in the night we filed into Maracas, a popular Little Guyana club where we danced to soca music and drank bottles of Red Stripe and Carib beer and tried our hardest not to get into a sword fight. Our group, mostly journalists and editors, all agreed that we hadn’t been to a dance club of this proportion in a long time. Well, at least not since many of us had gone to similar clubs when traveling. The experience was all the more reason to appreciate the ability to “travel” around the world in New York City.

Marblehead, Massachusetts: America’s best preserved historic town?

by Dave Seminara on

Tourism boards across the country have long struggled to find innovative ways to market destinations large and small, inviting and mundane. We have “historic districts” that have been turned into vast parking lots; towns that play up tenuous connections to living and deceased celebrities; states that promote Amish tourism even though the Amish simply want to be left alone; hokey festivals; and any number of other contrived gimmicks to try to get you to come visit.

West Virginia is Wild and Wonderful. Pennsylvania promises that You’ve Got a Friend There. New Mexico is The Land of Enchantment. In Kansas, There’s no Place Like Home. Louisiana is a Sportsman’s Paradise. Virginia is for Lovers (and pathological drivers, in my estimation).

Massachusetts likes to call itself The Spirit of America. That might sound a bit grandiose but there is a town on Boston’s North Shore that I think is the best-preserved historic town in America. The American landscape gets more homogenous by the day, but Marblehead, perched on a dramatic finger of land on the Atlantic Ocean just thirty minutes north of Boston, was founded in 1629 and has improbably managed to retain many of its historic homes, cemeteries and churches.

Tourists descend on Colonial Williamsburg like packs of hungry hyenas on the trail of a fresh carcass, but somehow, Marblehead’s atmospheric streets remain largely tourist free. The town is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy and remains one of the east coast’s premier yachting centers, with three yacht clubs and a host of regattas. It isn’t close to a highway or train station and that’s probably why it has managed to avoid the strip mall scourge that’s plagued so many old towns around the country.

On the edge of Marblehead you’ll find a Starbucks, a CVS and some other chain stores, and there are big box retailers ten miles away, but Marblehead’s historic core is filled with independent shops and restaurants with nary a national chain in sight. Everything is pretty much Wicked Local. But the town’s biggest draws are the colorful 18th and 19th century homes, many with nameplates showing the name and occupation of their original inhabitants, and its spectacular natural setting on the Atlantic Ocean.

Marblehead is an undeniably upscale place with its fair share of millionaires but unlike other cutesy historic enclaves, it also has its share of lower income residents and budget friendly dining and drinking options. I have family members who live in Marblehead, so I’ve been visiting this town for more than twenty years and I never get tired of it. Aside from the beauty and the charm, it’s a real community where people know each other well and wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else.

Here’s what to do in Marblehead.The Muffin Shop – In a town filled with history, you might wonder why I’m sending you to a muffin shop. Well, for the muffins, obviously, but this place is more than just a damn good place to add to your waistline with homemade muffins or lobster rolls made fresh each morning. It’s the heart and soul of the town and if you want to meet locals, you’ll find them lingering here in groups over breakfast every morning. But come early because they never seem to bake enough to keep up with demand.

Old Town – Get lost on the backstreets of Marblehead’s Old Town. There is no single neighborhood in the country that gives one a better flavor of what life was like in Colonial America.

Shops along Washington Street – There are a host of interesting, if pricey, shops here including the new Atlantis & Cloudveil outdoor specialty shop.

Crocker Park – A great place to sit and watch the boats go by.

The Driftwood – One reviewer on Yelp called this hole-in-the-wall eatery “Swamp Yankee territory,” and I couldn’t agree more. Another great spot to meet locals.

Devereux Beach – This great little beach is dramatically situated at the foot of a little body of land referred to as Marblehead’s Neck.

Hit the Neck – Take a drive or bike ride out to the very end of the Neck and enjoy the unbelievable view from the benches in Chandler Hovey Park next to the Marblehead Lighthouse. On the way back to town check out the Old Corinthian Yacht Club. Just try to look like you belong and you probably won’t be asked to leave.

Old Burial Hill Cemetery – One of the most atmospheric old cemeteries in New England and it offers a spectacular view to boot.

Fort Sewall – This was an armed fort used to defend against British invaders in the War of 1812. If you have kids, they’ll enjoy sitting on top of the cannons and looking out onto the Atlantic.

Dark and Stormy on the Waterfront – Have a tall 16-ounce dark & stormy, rum and ginger beer, cocktail at Maddi’s Sail Loft and visit the Barnacle for an early, harbor-side dinner.

Getting there – You can take Express Bus 441 or 442 from Haymarket downtown right to Marblehead’s Old Town but it takes a good hour. If you drive, follow route 1A, which isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds. Signs on this twisting road can be elusive.

Images by Dave Seminara, Rick Harris and Garden State Hiker on Flickr.