For many New Yorkers, it’s a fall rite of passage. Rent car. Book bed-n-breakfast. Drive somewhere with trees. Indulge in pastoral pleasures like hay rides, apple-picking, hiking, canoeing, etc. Return, wondering faintly if you should ditch city life to renovate a colonial home and take up beekeeping.
But often, planning a New York City getaway is a bit more complicated than that. First, there’s the cost of getting out of the city; a weekly car rental from Manhattan can often cost more than a flight to Europe. Then there’s figuring out where to go. The Adirondacks? The Catskills? Pennsylvania? Maine? And once you finally arrive at your destination, there’s the long process of disconnecting from city life. By the time you’re no longer checking your phone every half hour, it’s time to go home.
Thankfully, there is one getaway that is relatively easy to plan: a trip to the Hudson Valley, a region of upstate New York about two to three hours from Manhattan.The main town of Hudson is accessible either by car, which is more expensive but offers greater flexibility, or by Amtrak train. If you do decide to go with a car rental, try taking the PATH train from Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey. An Enterprise Rent-a-Car is walking distance from the train station, and rates are about 50 percent cheaper than in the city.
Accommodation-wise, Hudson is overflowing with charming bed-and-breakfasts. For cheaper accommodations with more privacy, try booking a homestay in a nearby town. I recently found a lovely two-bedroom townhouse in nearby Athens for just $125 per night, which is comparable to the cost for a single room in the region.
Apart from the stunning scenery, river views and fresh air, the town of Hudson offers a number of charming cafes, galleries, antiques shops and historic sights, which can easily be explored by foot. The food options are also top-notch. Head to Olde Hudson Specialty Food to peruse the selection of regional artisanal foodstuffs, like fresh eggs, cheeses and charcuterie. A few doors down, Hudson Wine Merchants offers a wide array of wines and liquors, including locally distilled whiskeys and spirits. The staff is familiar with the selection at Olde Hudson and can provide excellent pairing suggestions. Protip: the Hudson Red with the Chilean shiraz is pure bliss.
Cap off your artisanal picnic basket with a baguette from Café Le Perche, which also has an incredible French Roast coffee. And if you have a car, don’t miss a trip to Black Horse Farms in Athens, which sells fresh seasonal produce and gourmet grocery items from nearby producers.
Looking for a different way to celebrate Halloween this year? Do you love “The Amazing Race”? Do you like dressing up in costumes? If so, then round up some friends and spend your Halloween weekend going head-to-head with other road warriors in the Rental Car Rally. Described as “Halloween on Wheels,” Rental Car Rally (RCR) sends costumed teams on an expedition between two cities with checkpoints and challenges along the way, and is held multiple times each year in different cities across the country.
Meeting at a secret starting line, teams converge for a kick-off party and receive a briefcase containing a series of checkpoints they must find over the next 24 hours. The team that successfully finds all checkpoints (verified by requiring photos at each one) in the lowest amount of miles wins the prized Golden Gas Pump, and major bragging rights. Style points, defined by “looking awesome,” also play a role in the overall winner. Checkpoints include off-the-beaten-track places like haunted hotels, Cold War missile silos, closed amusement parks and brothels.
The $179 tickets are per vehicle, not per person. Teams wanting extra perks can upgrade to a $699 “Joe Viterbo” ticket, which includes a “deluxe steel briefcase” at the starting line, and a suite and steak dinner at the finish line hotel. There’s even a $2,999 ticket, that no one has ever purchased, and includes a shot of pure human adrenaline. Teams pick their own themes, which have ranged from Gilligan’s Island to Hooters Girls to Ron Burgundy and the Channel 4 News Team. While using an actual rental car is not required, it is highly advisable (with full insurance policies) due to mischief along the way.
The rally concludes with a party in the finish line city, which is still unannounced. Organizers say they got the idea of RCR by wanting to participate in international road trip adventure Gumball 3000, but not having the money for the six-figure entry fee. Previous RCR’s include Los Angeles to Tombstone, Los Angeles to Tahoe, New York City to Montreal and San Francisco to Yuma. Two 2013 RCR’s have already been announced for this year: June 21 from Los Angeles and August 13 from New York City. You can find out more at the rally homepage.
[Photos Courtesy Spencer Harrison and Rental Car Rally]
For lovers of food, snark and real or armchair travel, a sad day is nearly upon us: the final episode of the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations.” On Monday, November 5, “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations – The Final Tour” will air at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
As befitting the finale of a show that had its beginnings in New York, the ever-“quotable Bourdain” will take viewers to Brooklyn, for an in-depth look at the borough’s culinary and other subcultures.
I won’t think twice about spending thousands of dollars to travel across the globe, but ask me to pay $20 to park my car and I’ll reach for a barf bag. It’s one thing to splash out on a nice hotel room, a fancy rental car, meal or a nice souvenir, but quite another to fork over a bunch of my money just to park your car. Even the best parking spot doesn’t taste good, look nice in your house or give you a sound night’s sleep.
But I’ve found that if you’re willing to walk a bit, sometimes quite a bit, you can get a free parking space almost anywhere. Take Chicago, for example. In August, while in the process of relocating back to the Second City, we scored a room at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, just off of Michigan Avenue on East Wacker Drive for just $55 per night on Priceline.
I knew the parking would be expensive and was pretty sure I wasn’t going to pay for it, but I almost burst out laughing when the valet told me their policy: $52 a night, valet only. No chance was I going to going to pay something very close to my room rate just to park our car, so I dropped my family and baggage off and drove due west for a mile across the Chicago River. In River West, a neighborhood filled with condos, I found a free, yes free, parking spot on Fulton St., between Union and Des Plaines.
It was a very pleasant 15-minute walk along the river back to the hotel and I safely left the car there for 2.5 days, saving over $100. I’m not going to pretend that it’s easy to score free parking in Chicago – depending on the day and time you’re looking, it can be quite difficult or relatively easy. And sometimes you feel like you need to consult a lawyer just to interpret all the signs. But the point is that if you aren’t hostage to the extortionate rates that hotels in big cities charge.
Now there are all kinds of apps out there to help you find parking, but I’m old school. I like to just look around. And I don’t just boycott paid parking lots in hotels, either. If I’m going on an extended trip, I look for hotels near the airport that offer shuttles plus free parking, which can save you a bundle. For example, before a three-month trip to Europe this summer departing from Dulles, I found a hotel in Herndon that would let us park there for free for the duration of our trip. Sometimes the cost of the room is cheaper than what you’d pay to park.
And over the last 15 years, I’ve attended dozens of sporting events and concerts at major stadiums and arenas across the country and I almost never pay to park in the designated lots. Some venues are harder than others, but I have never paid to park at the United Center in Chicago, for example. I always park in the residential area only a few minutes from the arena and not only is it free, it’s also easier to exit after the event is over. Most people just follow the flow of traffic right into the paid parking lots but don’t follow the crowd. Go your own way and park for free.
I said a tentative goodbye to Marina, not knowing whether she wanted to lose me or not. I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with the chaos and uncertainty of a new place, so I was pleased when Marina said we should share a taxi into town. But before we could leave the station, two soldiers at the exit tried to shake me down.
Marina managed to shake them off and we hopped into a taxi that, although nameless, looked like a vintage ’57 Chevy. We headed out of the station at an absurdly cautious speed and began rolling through deserted vacant fields when an argument broke out between the driver and Marina. I had no idea what was going on, but Marina said it was just a disagreement over what route we’d take.
I couldn’t help but fear that perhaps they were planning to rob me and were having a spat over who would get what. I had expected an ancient Silk Road city like Bukhara to have a small city plan, with an old center right near the train station. Yet either I had thought wrong or I was being taken to a field to be slaughtered.After about 15 minutes of driving through a barren wasteland, we pulled up in front of a dismal, Soviet era housing project that arose almost out of nowhere amidst a backdrop of vacant lots. Malnourished looking children were playing with sticks in front of one of the buildings and a few mangy looking stray dogs were picking through an overflowing trash bin.
I didn’t need to enter Marina’s building for everything to suddenly make perfect sense. I had judged her harshly for prostituting herself in the Middle East but I hadn’t considered the fact that she had grown up in grinding poverty and had no other way to improve her lot in life. Who was I to judge her and the decisions she made? I was also pretty certain that her argument with the taxi driver was over who would get dropped off first. She probably didn’t want me to see where she lived.
Marina got out of the car, and I asked if we could meet up so she could show me around town.
“That probably isn’t a good idea,” she said, much to my chagrin. “But here’s my address, send me a letter, OK?”
And with that she leaned into the cab and gave me a quick, surprising kiss before retreating into her apartment building. I planned to write, but I lost the scrap of paper and couldn’t. As we made our way towards the B & B I had picked in the old town, we passed an inconspicuous looking restaurant called “Italian Pizzeria.”
“Stop the car, STOP please!” I called out.
I paid my fare, grabbed my bag and walked in as images of hulking slices of gooey New York style slices danced in my addled brain. The “Italian Pizzeria” had a ’70s décor complete with swiveling chairs, drawn flowery curtains and a room temperature of about 90. I was the only diner.
“Hello!” called out my young waiter in English.
“You speak English?” I asked, pleasantly surprised.
“Of course!” he replied.
“What kind of pizza is best here?” I asked.
“It’s likeabobolihorsemeatpizza,” he said, so fast that I couldn’t understand him.
“Can you repeat that, please?” I asked.
“You know Boboli?” he asked.
“Boboli pizza crust?” I asked, feeling very much like I’d entered the Uzbek Twilight Zone.
“Yes,” he said.
“Wait, how do you know Boboli?” I asked.
“I was an exchange student in North Carolina,” he said.
“I see, well, what did you say was on this Boboli-like pizza?” I asked.
“Horse meat,” he said, smiling broadly.
I’d been warned that horsemeat was considered a staple in Central Asia, yet after a grueling 75-hour death ride with very little food, a Bobolihorsemeatpizza was not precisely what I had in mind.
“I’ll take the Boboli horse meat pizza without the horse meat, OK?”
“You are American?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I admitted.
“I think Americans don’t like horse meat,” he said, smiling.
“I think you’re right,” I conceded.
“But how do they know, you never have eat it I think,” he said.
I was in no mood for a discussion on the merits of horsemeat, I just wanted a goddamn pizza and eventually I got one, for 600 som, or less than $1. I paid for the pizza with a U.S. dollar and wondered if any pizzerias in the U.S. would accept Uzbek som.
Feeling much better with some food in my belly, I set off towards the old town, looking for a place called Sasha’s B & B. It turned out to be an ornately decorated old place with two levels looking onto a serene courtyard. (see photo of the author at Sasha’s below) I had decided sometime shortly after I’d discovered the turd on the toilet back on the Exile Express that I would splurge on accommodation when and if I reached Bukhara.
I hadn’t defined what “splurge” meant, but since I was spending only about $3-$10 per night on accommodation, I envisioned forking out something more than that. I was shown a room that looked fit for Genghis Khan himself. It was ornately decked out with fabulous Bukhara rugs, a big bed with a hand-caved headboard that would have sold for $8,000 in a SoHo furniture shop and a fancy TV set.
“How much?” I asked, fully expecting the woman to say something like “4 billion som.”
“Twenty dollars” she said.
It was a bargain, but in three months on the road, I’d never spent more than $15 per night, so I hesitated. The woman saw me vacillating and added, “If that’s too much we have basic rooms across the street for $10.”
I didn’t want a basic room; I wanted the kind of room a sultan who travels with a harem would occupy if he were in town. Yet, for some odd reason I couldn’t permit myself this little luxury. It seemed extravagant, gluttonous, and unnecessary.
“I’ll take the more basic room for ten,” I said.
In speaking those words, I felt like a reluctant groom at a shotgun wedding grudgingly saying, “I do.” And as I headed off to my “basic” room I felt like I’d changed. I’d become a man of simple taste.