Urban Camping: Pitch A Tent In Central Park

by Meg Nesterov on

High Manhattan hotel prices ruining your summer travel plans? If you’d like to try urban camping — sleeping under the skyscrapers of New York City — you can try your luck for a spot at one of the city’s summer Family Camping sessions. The Urban Park Rangers lead programs in more than a dozen city parks in all five boroughs, including Manhattan’s Central Park (August 24) and Prospect Park (September 21) in Brooklyn. The campouts are all free, starting with an early evening hike, cookout with food provided (don’t expect anything fancy, but you might be surprised with s’mores) and even a tent — you need only bring sleeping bags. The catch? There’s a lot of competition to join, with only 30 tents available for each night. Each event is open to online registration for 24 hours, with the “winners” chosen by lottery and notified about two weeks in advance. Find all the details and get lucky here.

Where else can you pitch a tent without leaving the city? Here are a few other urban areas with camping options.Austin: Emma Long Park offers campsites for $10-25 per night, depending on utilities, in addition to the $5-10 park entrance fee charged to all visitors. Set beside Lake Austin, the Texas city park is less than a half-hour from downtown. Check out the our adventure guide to Austin for more ideas.

Berlin: An innovative use of “fallow” urban space, the Tentstation project is unfortunately not open this season, but you’ll find other options in and around Berlin to pitch a tent or park an RV, even with a group. In typical German efficiency, some are within a few minutes’ walk to public transportation.

Honolulu: The Hawaiian capital has over a dozen campsites, many on the beach with fishing and surfing opportunities and views to rival expensive Waikiki resorts. Camping permits are issued for 3 or 5 days, and cost $32 and $52, respectively. Interesting note: several of the campsites warn that “houseless encounters are likely,” so look out for beach bums.

Japan: One of the most notoriously pricey countries also has a strong tradition of urban camping. While not officially sanctioned, it’s tolerated and generally quite safe in public parks. It might be hard to actually pitch a tent in downtown Tokyo, but you’ll find many guides online to finding a place to sleep al fresco.

Would you want to camp in a city? Have you done any urban camping?

Morning Rush Hour In Beijing Is Pure Madness (VIDEO)

by Libby Zay on

If you think your rush hour commute is a nightmare, the scene above from a morning commute in Beijing might be the reality check you need. Not only do commuters pack onto subway trains, but the automobile traffic there is ranked the worst in the world, too. It really is no wonder record pollution has been suffocating China’s capital city.

And by the way, if you thought the traffic in New York, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. was bad, you might be surprised a U.S. city doesn’t even make it into the top ten list of worst commutes. Beijing, Mexico City and Johannesburg round out the top three.

An Octogenarian’s Himalayan Adventure (VIDEO)

by Kraig Becker on

Who says you have to give up an adventurous life just because you get a little older? Certainly not Simon Gandolfi, an 80-year-old writer who just so happens to be on a journey from Delhi to London aboard a 125 CC TVS Phoenix motorcycle. In the video below we get a chance to experience part of Simon’s adventure as he rides up the Rohtang Pass in India and into the Himalayan State of Himachal Pradesh. To call the roads he rides treacherous would be an understatement but the views along the way look absolutely spectacular.

I hope I’m still taking on adventures like this when I’m in my 80s. Simon is an inspiration, even if he does look absolutely exhausted at the end.

Find The World’s Best Festivals

by Meg Nesterov on

Do you travel for food, culture or history? You can find all that and more at a festival, and a website launched this week aims to connect travelers with some of the world’s most unique, exciting and unusual festivals. Fest300 is part practical directory, part inspirational magazine. On the homepage, you’ll find a mix of lists (how about top festivals to enjoy naked?), essays, videos and “festimonial” interviews with participants and performers. Ready to attend something? You can search for festivals by month, location or category (“wild parties” is intriguing).

Throughout Fest300, you’ll also find blog posts and tidbits from founder Chip Conley, a sort of festival “junkie” who founded the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel chain and now travels the world in search of the “collective effervescence” experienced at festivals, sharing his on-the-ground experiences. Why 300? Chip explains, “Fortune lists the 500 largest companies, and Forbes the 400 richest people in the world. We chose 300 experiences as the right number to capture the wide diversity and best festivals the world has to offer.” The site is adding more festivals each week, aiming for 270 by the end of year, with the final 30 to be crowd-sourced by the Fest300 community. Also in the works is a “matchmaking” feature to find the best festivals for you based on your interests.

Take the pledge to attend at least one festival this year at Fest300.com

Call An Ice Cream Truck On Demand Today With Uber

by Meg Nesterov on

Today is the hottest day yet in New York City’s latest heat wave, and the summer weather is no less forgiving in many other cities in the western hemisphere. To help beat the heat, car service app Uber is offering ice cream trucks on demand, today only from 11-5 p.m. in 33 cities worldwide. The stunt is to help promote the app’s expansion to new cities in the United States and in Australia, Europe and Singapore.

Demand is expected to be high and waits may be long, but if you want to try for a truck, download the Uber app and connect with your credit card info, request the ice cream app, and wait for one to show up in your area. Prices and ice cream treats vary, average is $25 for ice cream for five people. The full list of U.S. cities includes: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

New to Uber cities include Miami, Portland (OR), Houston, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Lyon, Milan, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Singapore. Incidentally, those are all cities where you can get a car and driver on demand anytime with Uber.

See all the details and get your ice cream on Uber’s blog.