Photos From New York City’s New TRYP Hotel

by Grant Martin on

Every time a new brand takes root in the United States our ears perk up. New York City‘s TRYP hotel is one of those instances. Though it’s a Wyndham brand, TRYP’s influences are distinctly Spanish and unique with Mediterranean tones and styles detailing many of the hotel’s appointments. The product is a clean, warm atmosphere that seems to work well for social travelers and groups of people – slightly less pretentious than a straight cut business hotel and much more professional than a run-of-the-mill airport hotel.

On assignment at the New York Times Travel Show earlier this month we stopped in to grab a few photos of the property and get an idea of what the rest of North America has in store; the TRYP Quebec opened in late March and a handful of other properties are also planned for the region. Check out the photo gallery below and read more about the TRYP hotels in the profile by McLean Robbins earlier this month.

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The Art Newspaper reveals most popular exhibitions and museums of 2011

by Sean McLachlan on


The folks over at the Art Newspaper have just released some interesting stats about the art world of 2011. Collecting a huge amount of data from hundreds of museums and galleries, they’ve discovered some important trends.

First off, the big shows are getting bigger. The top ten most popular art shows back in 1996, the first year they gathered figures, averaged 3,000 visitors a day. Last year’s top ten shows averaged almost 7,000 visitors a day.

For total attendance in 2011, the Louvre in Paris was way ahead with 8,880,000 visitors. Number two was the Met in New York City with slightly over 6,000,000 visitors. Paris and London dominated the top ten. Three Parisian museums made the top ten: the Louvre (#1), Centre Pompidou (#8), and Musée D’Orsay (#10), with a combined total of 15.2 million visitors. London boasts the British Museum (#3), National Gallery (#4), and Tate Modern (#5), with a combined total of 16 million.

For top exhibitions, last year had several blockbusters, with “The Magical World of Escher” coming out on top with 573,691 visitors. It was free at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil. The most popular paid exhibition was “Kukai’s World: The Art of Esoteric Buddhism” at the Tokyo National Museum with 550,399 tickets sold.

There’s a lot more data in the report giving lots of insight into the booming world of major art exhibitions. It should be interesting to see what trends this year’s figures show.

Photo of the Louvre courtesy Ivo Jansch.

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.

Andaz Wall Street wants to help you with your taxes

by Melanie Renzulli on

Someone on Wall Street wants to help you. No, really. The Andaz Wall Street has announced that it wants to help its guests with their taxes – free of charge.

From April 8 through the 15, Andaz guests, many of whom are time-pressed business travelers, will be able to take advantage of the services of Mr. Marc Albaum, who will live at the New York City hotel as its Accountant in Residence. The certified public accountant with more than 20 years of experience will set up shop for one week in the Buttonwood Suite, the Andaz Wall Street’s premier guest room, which features separate areas for working and living quarters, two 42″ LCD televisions and nine-foot windows with views of the East River. Andaz Wall Street guests can reserve a free, one-hour consultation with Albaum by sending an email to accountant@andaz.com at least 72 hours prior to the desired appointment time.

While Albaum can’t prepare guests’ tax forms in full – appointments are only an hour, after all – his goal is “to ensure that his clients do not overlook credits and deductions, and receive the maximum refund they are entitled to.” Ideally, Andaz guests who meet with Albaum will aspire to book the Buttonwood Suite on future visits to Wall Street hotel. Let’s hope their refunds are equal to or greater than $3,045, the average current rate for a stay in the Buttonwood Suite.

Photo Flickr/Dave Dugdale

Cockpit Chronicles: Captain on the MD-80? Why?

by Kent Wien on

Captain on the MD-80? Are you crazy?

I received a comment from a reader recently to that effect. What was I thinking, bidding to an airplane that my company was rapidly retiring and choosing to go back on reserve, ready to fly at a moment’s notice to places like Kansas City and Tulsa instead of Rome and Paris? And what about the commute to Germany?

“Why would you do this?” He asked.

I suppose I should explain my thinking, or perhaps justify this because I have to admit there are times when I’ve wondered if it’s the right move.

I didn’t do it for the money, especially since going from flying a full schedule as a 757/767 co-pilot to an MD-80 captain that flies less often while on reserve doesn’t mean there will be much, if any, extra money. To understand how pilots “upgrade” to captain, read “How do pilots move up to captain?”

Captain Kent

I did it because I needed the change in scenery, the challenge of doing a new job well, and in this unstable industry, it certainly doesn’t hurt to get some more captain experience just in case things go south. Furthermore, the MD-80 is the only type rating that I don’t have of the airplanes we currently fly.

A year or two ago, I would peek into the simulator of an MD-80 and just shake my head. I was happy that I wasn’t flying that dinosaur, I told myself. But a funny thing happens when a few hundred pilots retire suddenly and you find yourself able to fly it as a captain. It quickly becomes a rather sexy jet.

It hasn’t been until the beginning of my 20th year flying as a co-pilot that I’ve even had the seniority to hold a captain position, and even that is only at the New York base and only on the MD-80. At the rate we’re going, I could hold the 737 as a captain in a few years perhaps, and if I wanted to be based in Boston, it would likely take longer than that. So New York on the MD-80 was my only choice if I wanted a left seat.
I recently had the opportunity to ask our vice-president of flight operations, a self-described optimist, if the MD-80 was going to be retired so soon that I may lose my left seat award after finishing training. He acknowledged that this was a definite possibility, but added that if it did happen, he thought I’d be a captain again within a couple of months, since the A319 and A321s were going to be coming to the airline rapidly.


Captain Wayne on my last co-pilot trip presented me with a set of four-striped epaulets.

Germany Commute

I’ve had a lot of people ask me how the commute was going. The traveling has been easier than I thought it would be. Granted, I’m flying multiple trips in a row so I can be over there for one to two weeks at a time, which has made the commute less frequent and more affordable. I have a great place to stay in New York City and it’s rapidly feeling like a second home.

I had promised a full review of the efforts involved in making the commute, and I hope to put out a post on that in the future, but I’d like to wait a bit to be able to describe just how it works while being very junior again on the MD-80. Our reserve lines have one block of four days off a month, a block of three days off and two groups of two days off. Obviously I won’t be able to go to Germany on the two, 2-day blocks of days off.

For the readers here, this will likely give me some new topics to discuss. After nearly five years of writing for Gadling about international flying as a co-pilot, it will be fun to see the different perspective that flying as a junior domestic captain will bring to my posts. In the meantime, for the next month, I’ll be studying what all these switches do, an appropriate fate after ‘complaining’ about the 32 dimmer switches on the 757, an airplane I will miss dearly.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 a junior domestic captain based in New York. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.