THE definitive New York City guide for airport transfers

by Grant Martin on

One of my pet peeves as a frequent traveler is making complex transfers in from airports into the city. The worst is when I just assume that the metro attaches to airport, I can just mosey down from my gate, into the subway, out and into my hostel or hotel — only to find out that you have to take minibus k22 from terminal 1 to the city’s suburban center, transfer to a rickshaw then take that 4km into the city.

When I was younger, I was shocked when I found out that America’s largest city didn’t have direct subway connections to their airports (I heard that this was because the city wanted the profits from the cab companies — anyone else hear that?). So I had to figure out how to get out from LaGuarda or Newark or JFK into Manhattan, a task not too difficult but daunting for a first time visitor. I still get mixed up at LGA between the Q45 and Q33 buses.

Luckily, we now have our good friends at Flyertalk who have put together an excellent guide on transfer in from the city’s three co-terminals. At the Flyerguide, users take a comprehensive look at options, prices and routes, all in a convenient wiki form so that it can be maintained and updated en masse.

I wish they had one of these for every city.

Greyhound in a pinch: It’s cheaper and it gets you there

by Jamie Rhein on

This past Sunday I put my mother on a Greyhound bus. She agreed to get on. I didn’t make her. This was a last minute trip. Last minute on an airplane would have cost $600 plus for round trip between Columbus, Ohio and New York City. Greyhound was $208, tax included. Planning ahead would have made this cheaper than that, but this was last minute.

After considering the price of airfare, the hassle of going through airport procedure nonsense, the chance that a flight would be delayed or canceled, and the added cost of getting from the airport into Manhattan made a plane ticket seem totally not worth it. Without a direct flight available, the trip could have taken several hours anyway.

Driving was nixed because she would be driving by herself which would require many stops and possibly a hotel stay somewhere. At the time we found out she needed to go, it was late afternoon. Plus, there is paying for parking in New York City and the cost of gas. So, Greyhound, in its convenience and thrift, won out.

Here are the pros and cons of the decision to hop on Greyhound in retrospect.

Pros:

  1. Putting her on the bus was easy. She had bought her ticket the day before thinking that she needed to go on Saturday, but it seemed like she didn’t need to go after all after she paid for the ticket. Since the ticket is good for a year, she held onto it.
  2. Once we found out she did need to go, she was packed and at the bus station two hours later ready to take the 7:00 p.m. bus. Although, her ticket was for the day before, she didn’t need to change her ticket or pay an extra fee. She didn’t need to pay for baggage either. She had a carry-on size, a purse and another small bag. All went on the bus with her. If she had checked her bag there would have been no charge.
  3. There was no stress. I got her to the bus station at 6:20 PM in a quick 15 minute drive from where she lives. There was parking right out front, and since it was Sunday, the meter is free.
  4. There was not a TSA experience to deal with or a long trek to a gate. She could keep her shoes on. She had a full water bottle and regular sized tooth paste. She didn’t have a snow globe, but no one would have stopped her if she had.
  5. The bus goes right to Port Authority Bus Station near Times Square so there’s not an extra cost or hassle getting into Manhattan. From Port Authority there are plenty of ways to get to where you need to go. She took a cab.

Cons:

  1. Sleeping on the bus was not easy or restful. My mom said it made five stops and each time, they had to get off.
  2. Although she doesn’t need a car in Manhattan, if she goes to upstate New York like she is planning to, she’ll need a car once she’s there. Plus, there’s the bus trip back.

Solutions to the Cons

  1. She’s planning on taking the bus back during the day since not being able to sleep at night is something she doesn’t care to repeat.
  2. I may drive her car to New York the beginning of next week and use her bus ticket to come back if that’s possible. If not, I’ll get my own one-way bus ticket. I was planning on going to New York later this summer, but I could go now. That way, she has her car and I can take the things she was planning to take if she drove. Otherwise, she’s driving to New York again later on.
  3. She rents a car after she takes a bus to Kingston, takes the Greyhound back here, and then she and I can drive to New York in August when I was planning to go any way. Hmmmm. Now, that’s an idea.

The reason why it is still good my mom didn’t take the plane.

Her return bus ticket is for June 4. She can’t come back June 4 so she would have needed to change her ticket. The bus ticket change costs $15. The plane ticket change would have been at least $100, and probably more as Grant has pointed out.

Fare Alert! Fall travel from NYC and LA to Honolulu for cheap!

by Grant Martin on

United and Continental published a round of super cheap fares mostly originating from Newark and into Honolulu last night for travel starting this fall into early next year.

I’m pulling up prices under 300$ total for multiple itineraries on Travelocity. Most weekends and holidays are blocked out, but if you’re going to Hawaii you’re going to want to take a couple of extra days off anyway, aren’t you?

To find the fare, go to Travelocity.com and plug in EWR or LAX and HNL or LIH for your departure and arrival airports. Then select “flexible dates” and select May – December.

The search engine will return a variety of prices and availabilities therein; you can try the lowest fare to find dates that might work, or if availability is too tight try something more expensive.

It helps to consider the flex search as more of a general than a precise tool. If you find ballpark dates that might work for you, scoot over to Kayak or Mobissimo to do another search and do your booking — that way you don’t have to deal with going back and forth between cheapest fares and dates, making yourself all frustrated and cursing my name.

Availability for the cheapest fares from Los Angeles are harder to come by, but are there. Try tinkering around with the lowest few fares in the Travelocity search to find dates that work for you or if necessary, turn off the flex search option and just do +/- 3 day searches to work around your schedule; the first few searches I tried failed, but I ended up eventually finding midweek travel in September for 344$ total.

No telling how long this secret sale will work, so book soon and ask questions later.

Aloha!

Happy birthday, Brooklyn Bridge

by Jeremy Kressmann on

As a New Yorker, I sometimes tend to get a bit jaded about the incredible sights all around me. Times Square might be cool to visitors, but to me it’s nothing but gaudy neon and schlocky souvenirs. United Nations? Pretty neat, but quite a headache when you’re trying to get to work on the East Side and some diplomat’s motorcade makes you take the “long walk” to the office.

But then today, I noticed that it was the 125th anniversary of the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge and I had to take pause. The Brooklyn Bridge is probably my favorite New York landmark – not only for the breathtaking views you get when you walk across it, but also for its historic importance to the city and to American innovation in general. First opened on May 24th, 1883, the 6,000 foot long bridge was considered one of the greatest American engineering marvels of its time. It is perhaps a fitting tribute that the bridge is still fully operational today, transporting pedestrians and vehicles much as it did when it first opened 125 years ago.

If you happen to be in New York this evening, take a stroll down to the old bridge and check out the festivities, which include fireworks, a new lighting scheme and even a U.S. Navy flyover. And if you can’t make it, make sure to stroll across it the next time you’re in town. It’s definitely worth the trip.

Travel and racism: What’s love got to do with it?

by Jamie Rhein on

I posted a story about an on-line test developed by the University of Chicago to help people learn about their tendencies to think a wallet or a cell phone may be a gun depending on the color of the person’s skin. Two commenters wondered what the study has to do with travel. I think most things have to do with travel, but I majored in sociology as an undergraduate, so I see connections in EVERYTHING. Name two subjects and I’ll find the connecting dots somewhere.

Since my post, Iva wrote a post about gun related deaths in Chicago during one weekend, and the people she knows who wants to see bad neighborhoods. This is not that different, I don’t think, than people who drive through Appalachia looking to see if people have teeth.

When I learned about the study about racism and guns, I flashed to ideas about safety and travel. Perhaps, I was thinking, people’s ideas about safety have something to do with where they choose to go on vacation, and perhaps, if they travel at all. There are plenty of reasons why people choose vacation spots, but there are reasons why people don’t pick certain destinations as well. I don’t think racism is it, but a sense of security and the predictable is.

There’s a reason why Disneyland and Disney World get a crowd. Part of it has something to do with feeling safe, I would guess. The Magic Kingdom has a far-reaching comfort zone. When our daughter was five-years -old, we lost her in Disneyland for a few minutes because my husband thought she was holding my hand, and I thought she was holding his. We were busy arguing about something, thus distracted. Our daughter had stopped to look at something and we had kept going. We freaked a bit, running pell mell, retracing our steps, but I didn’t think something bad would have happened. Disneyland is about as controlled an environment as one can get.

New York City, also a popular tourist destination, isn’t controlled, and perhaps, because of this, people may feel more on edge, particularly on a first time visit.

The first time I went to New York City without adults, I was with a high school friend. We went for a day walking a tidy path from Times Square to Grand Central Station, down 5th Avenue to Rockefeller Center and back to Times Square. There wasn’t any risk of getting lost. Never mind that as a 4th grader, I had ridden my bike all over State College, Pennsylvania when I lived there. On my next trip to New York, also in high school, I did strike out on a subway for more of the unknown. Years later, I feel perfectly safe in the city, even when walking to my brother’s apartment at night by myself.

People have ideas of danger that are on a subconscious level. When a friend and I traveled across the United States by bus (yes, it can be done) after we got out of the Peace Corps, we spent a few nights hanging out at bus stations in the middle of the night the further west we got. For some reason buses don’t seem to leave any earlier than 1 a.m. or arrive any later than 5 a.m. once you get past St. Louis. At least that’s what we found when we were traveling.

While we were waing for a city bus in Denver to take us to the bus station, after we went to a movie blocks away from the theater we asked a woman about the safety around the bus station that time of night. She gave us a police whistle she had around her neck. In Salt Lake City, one couple, who knew that we were heading to the bus station late at night, decided they would take us there when we stopped to ask them for directions. As far as I could tell, we were as safe at the bus stations as we would have been at Disneyland, but there are impressions people have of bus stations at night.

I’ve lived several years outside of the United States and have talked to many, many, many people who think that cities in the United States are not safe because of all the guns. At times it has seemed like people think that as soon as you step off the airplane at JFK or La Guardia, you’d better duck and cover. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but people, mostly taxi drivers in Singapore, have said that they worry.) Whenever people mention a thought of the United States not being safe, I tell them that it is safe. Really.

My thought is that people who travel extensively may see the world as a much safer place just because their exposure to diversity is that much higher. The unknown becomes less threatening because the unknown is smaller. This is my hunch based on conversations I’ve had with people who don’t travel much. I’m not saying that those who travel are better people, but their experiences may give them a broader knowledge of humanity.

To mr, the study by the University of Chicago is not a definitive account on racist attitudes, but one that is looking for an explanation about an aspect of human behavior. Just like it is surprising to think of Robert Quest, the CNN reporter getting caught in Central Park with a small bag of meth in his pocket, we have notions of who we think might be more likely to be holding a gun. As I said in my post, I never think anyone is holding a gun. I actually don’t know anyone who has a gun besides two people–one of them a hunter. There may be others who think everyone is holding a gun.

I do think that which type of person travels, and where people go, has something to do with safety. Whether people think an object that is pulled out of a pocket late at night is a gun, a wallet or a cell phone probably has more to do with where someone is and the circumstances. Where someone is may have something to do with where the person feels safe. That’s my opinion, anyway. I can’t help it. I majored in Sociology.

Oh, and what does love got to do with it? The line from the song, “What’s Love Got To Do with It?” played in my head for some reason when I was thinking of a title for the post. It stuck. It’s a line from the Tina Turner song. The next line line from the song is “What’s love but a second hand emotion?” I don’t think this has anything to do with travel, but it’s catchy.