Take A Cycling Tour Of Brooklyn

by Kraig Becker on

With its rich history and ethnic influence, Brooklyn remains one of the most interesting and unique places to visit in all of New York City. The borough features numerous neighborhoods that exude equal parts big city sophistication and small town charm, and the local cuisine, heavily influenced by its immigrant roots, is simply heavenly. Put simply, a visit to NYC isn’t complete without a visit to Brooklyn and now travelers have a new option for exploring the city in the form of Get Up and Ride – Brooklyn’s first cycling tour company.

Cycling tours continue to grow in popularity and Brooklyn seems tailor-made for exploring on a bike. With that in mind, Get Up and Ride offers two different tours that vary in duration, distance and price. The Classic Tour, for instance, is just 10 miles in length and takes approximately 3 to 3.5 hours to complete. Riders visit such neighborhoods as Greenpoint, Brooklyn Heights and the Brooklyn Navy Yard while making stops for food and drinks in the Dekalb Market. The tour, which features excellent views of Manhattan, even wraps up with a ferry ride at the end of the day.

Stretching five hours in length and covering a distance of 15 miles, the Best of Brooklyn Tour requires a bit more of a commitment. Riders will pedal deeper into the heart of the borough itself and get an even better sense of its urban setting. The route takes them through some of the same places as the Classic Tour but adds Clinton Hill, Fort Green and extended looks at some of the other neighborhoods. The stop at the market and ferry ride remain a part of this itinerary as well. The Best of Brooklyn Tour runs $95 while The Classic is priced at just $65.

The company uses bikes that are designed to be fun, comfortable and easy to ride so even if it has been awhile since you’ve ridden you should feel right at home. Safety is of the utmost concern so tours stay on routes with dedicated bike lanes and each participant is issued a helmet at the start of the ride. Group size is limited to just 8 people, which not only helps to keep the group organized but provides for a more intimate experience.

Tours run nearly every day but you’ll want to check the calendar for availability. For more information, or to book a tour, visit the Get Up and Ride website or Facebook page.

Alighiero Boetti At NYC’s MoMA: Art Inspired By Travel And Geography

by Melanie Renzulli on




Have a look at the map above. In this globalized world, where countries are essentially brands, this map, which uses each country’s respective flag design to delineate its borders, probably doesn’t seem so unusual, save for that large red swath in Asia marked with a hammer and sickle. Created between 1971 and 1972, this “Mappa” is one of the signature works of art created by Alighiero Boetti, the Italian artist whose paintings, kilims, sculptures and mixed media pieces form an exciting exhibition at New York City‘s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

“Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan,” which runs at the MoMA through October 1, 2012, is the first major exhibition in the United States of the works of Turin-born Boetti, who made art from the early 1960s until his death in 1994. Associated with the Arte Povera (Poor Art) movement in Italy, Boetti found a lot of his inspiration by exploring travel, maps, geography, stamps and postcards.

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[Photo above courtesy MoMA]In the 1970s, Boetti traveled extensively, particularly to Afghanistan, where he collaborated with local craftswomen to create embroidered tapestries such as the “Mappa,” above. Without a doubt, Boetti’s Mappa series is his most famous, and these iconic, large-scale kilims are displayed in MoMA’s expansive, second floor space along with other tapestries that play with time, numbers, patterns and colors. Another innovative work on display here is “Tapestry of the Thousand Longest Rivers of the World,” which lists the world’s 1,000 longest rivers from largest to smallest. There is poetry in seeing the names of these rivers side-by-side and in a medium beyond the computer screen.

Boetti’s abstract look at geography inspired other works on display on MoMA’s sixth floor, which is where the majority of “Game Plan” is located. One outstanding series is “Territori Occupati (Occupied Territories),” works from the late 1960s in which Boetti collaborates with his wife Annemarie Sauzeau to create outlines of conflict zones and occupied lands ripped from newspaper headlines. Boetti and Sauzeau outlined conflict maps from daily editions of La Stampa newspaper. Then, they embroidered the zones’ shapes along with the newspaper dates, on cloth, creating “stateless” representations of conflict areas, such as the Basque region of Spain, Northern Ireland, and the West Bank, Gaza, and Sinai.

Perhaps the most whimsical of Boetti’s experiments with travel- and geography-related themes is his “Viaggi Postale,” a project that had the artist send 25 friends and colleagues in the art world on personalized travel itineraries through the mail. According to MoMA:

Because the addressee did not live at the destination or because, in some cases, the address was fabricated, most of the envelopes were returned to Boetti on each leg of their journeys. He photocopied the front and back of the returned envelopes as a record, then put each one inside a larger envelope and sent it off to the next destination; once more, many were returned, to be photocopied and sent out again until the itineraries were complete.

Imaginary journeys, maps and approximately 100 other works constituting “Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan” will be on display at MoMA through October 1. Admission is $25 but Fridays from 4-8 p.m. are free.

US News & World Report Ranks Best Vacations

by McLean Robbins on

It’s time for summer vacation, and we’re pretty sure we could use a long week at the beach. Thanks to U.S. News & World Report, we now know the most statistically sound places to maximize our oh-so-precious vacation time, sorted by region.

The new rankings identify the top vacation spots based on a methodology that combines expert and consumer opinions. They reflect how strongly a destination is recommended by travel experts and U.S. News Travel website users.

According to the survey, Bali, Kauai and the Seychelles take the top awards for “Best Beaches” while Barcelona, Paris and Berlin rank on top for Best European Vacations. Within the U.S., Yellowstone, New York City and Washington, D.C., are the most coveted destinations.

In total, more than 200 destinations were considered in the current rankings, and this marks the first time the publication has ranked the “Best” list on a global scale.

[Flickr image of Kauai by Chuck 55]

Empire State Building Lights Up With Olympic Flag Colors

by McLean Robbins on

Here’s to the Olympics! New York’s famed Empire State Building is honoring nations competing in London by shining its world-famous tower lights in different colors each night to match the country’s flags. Each of the tower’s four sides will be illuminated in different colors throughout the night for each night through August 12.

This marks the second time ESB has split the tower’s sides with four separate countries’ lights in its history. The building has been lit with colored lights since 1976.

The lighting starts this Thursday with the North and South side representing the USA and the East and West sides representing Great Britain. For a full schedule, you can visit the Empire State Building’s website.

Moscow On The Hudson: The Pains Of Getting A Russian Visa

by David Farley on
Standing in front of the bus door at Sheretmetyevo airport in Moscow, I steepled my hands at a young woman and begged her to pay my bus fare. I had no rubles and was dangerously close to missing my connecting flight to Minsk. There was supposed to be a free Aeroflot shuttle but it never materialized. This city bus was my only chance of getting to the next terminal. Based on what cab drivers wanted to take me there – $50 – the terminal was in Siberia, or so it seemed.

It was my first time in Russia and it was not a good start. But it was hard enough just getting here. After an intriguing piece about the troubles of getting a Russian visa at the embassy in Washington, D.C., was recently published in the Washington Post travel section, it made me consider my own pursuit to get one. My experience wasn’t as bad as writer Ayako Doi’s. But for me, having gone through various visa applications a dozen or so times, this was by far the worst.

It was an ominous sign that seconds after hitting “purchase” on the Aeroflot website for a JFK-Moscow-Minsk flight, a big red warning appeared on my laptop screen informing me my credit card had been declined. When I called the bank, they said they just automatically decline relatively large purchases made to Russian companies.

When I called Aeroflot to rebook, Dmitri, the amiable representative on the other end of the line, informed me that I’d needed a transit visa. I was going to have to apply for and buy a $131 visa just to change planes in Moscow on my way to Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

I have to confess, this was partly my fault. When I did searches for how one flies from New York to Minsk, I could have flown Czech Airlines through Prague, Finnair through Helsinki, and Lufthansa through Frankfurt. (There were no options to go through Milan, by the way.) The cheapest option was to fly through Moscow. I wasn’t paying for the flight – a magazine that was sending me to Minsk to write a feature article, was. I figured they’d appreciate that I was going for the more affordable option. But really, flying Aeroflot, an airline my aviation-savvy friends warned me not to take, had benefits for me, too: it was part of Skyteam, which I’d accrued so many miles on I’d occasionally get special perks like upgrades and such.

I double-checked on the Russian embassy’s website, which said I did not need a transit visa. So I counter-checked on the website of the New York-based Russian consulate’s website. It said I did need a transit visa. I rang the embassy but it was impossible to get a human. I called the consulate and got the same result. The ghost of Kafka, I thought, is residing in Russia – or at least at their embassies abroad. I could have chanced it and gone without one. But fearing I’d show up at the passport control at the airport in Moscow and be turned back because my passport lacked a transit visa, I decided the safe thing to do would be to point myself to the Russian consulate on New York’s Upper East Side.

When I turned up at the consulate E. 91st St., it looked a teamsters meeting – or something one might really see in Russia. Thick-necked guys in flat caps and drab clothing scattered around the steps to the consulate door while pickled rotund men and ancient babushka-clad women, their bodies as stout as a beer can, mingled in line. The front door was postered in signs, all of which were written in Cyrillic. Everyone but me, it appeared, was a native Russian speaker. Well, everyone but me and the woman who got out of a black town car and walked up to the front of the door. When I started talking to her a little later on, I learned she was supermodel and famed tantrum thrower Naomi Campbell’s assistant. I scanned her from head to toe and then head again looking for cellphone-shaped bruises. There weren’t any – at least none that were visible.

But before I could ask about Ms. Campbell’s upcoming trip to Russia, there was rumbling behind the door of the consulate. The crowd of 75 or so people went silent for a second. As the door swung open, what had been a line became a mob of people. Everyone rushed the door. Holding pieces of paper above their heads and screaming in Russian, the cacophonous crowd was rollicking, demanding the man at the door let them in. He randomly pulled people out of the crowd – those yelling the loudest, it seemed – and I, the non-Russian, stood back on the sidewalk, watching it from afar and thinking I was never going to get in there.

It was really Moscow on the Hudson. Embassies and consulates do have a way of becoming microcosms of the countries they represent. The Americans, I’ve been told, like to sit visa applicants down and have a little chat with them about why they want to visit America. A lot of people leave the embassy with a bad taste in their mouths, I’ve been told. Both the Vietnamese and Belorussian consulates in New York are very Spartan. In the latter, there was just a skinny old man hen-pecking on an old typewriter. Of course, there are services you can pay for that will ease the headache. But that’s not always an easy solution. At first to get my visa for Myanmar, I paid $95 to CIBT. Only to find out – after they submitted my passport to the embassy in Washington, D.C. – that residing in New York was “out of [their] jurisdiction.” They refused to refund me the money. Even after I complained and complained.

One of the purposes of a country installing a visa requirement is to evaluate who is coming into their country. Another is totally political (see the fight between the USA and Brazil). And yet another is to make money. I’m not sure what Russia’s motivations for insisting Americans and citizens of other countries attain a visa (or even a transit visa) but it would probably inspire a lot more travel (and money spending) if they could somehow make it less disorganized.

A couple hours after the doors of the Russian consulate in New York finally opened, and after pushing and shoving and some elbowing, I got inside. It took approximately 97 seconds for me to hand over my application and passport.

I did barely make my flight to Minsk. On the way back I sucked it up and paid $20 for a cab to the next terminal. I had so much time that I was able to relax for a couple hours. I ate a salad at a restaurant – my first vegetables in a week and a half – and paid for it with my debit card. By the time I got back home to New York, my bank account had been cleaned out by some savvy Russian hacker.

A week after returning from the trip, I submitted my expenses to the magazine. My editor emailed the next day to say that, after doing some research, I didn’t, after all, need a transit visa.

Well, at least next time I have to go to Russia, which I hope won’t be when I have a lot of money in my bank to siphon out (likely I won’t; I’m a travel writer), I’ll now know what to expect.

What’s your worst visa-applying experience?