10 Congested highways to make you lose your mind tonight

by Tom Johansmeyer on

We know that today and tomorrow, traffic is going to be brutal. With 42 million people traveling for the holiday – and 94 percent of them going by car – it’s inevitable that someone’s going to wind up frustrated. Throw in some nasty weather and highway construction, not to mention a handful of screaming kids, and you have a formula for misery.

Can it get any worse? The Weather Channel thinks so. Not every holiday driving experience is equally miserable: in fact, there are 10 spots where you’re extra likely to lose your mind. So, let’s take a peek at the 10 most congested roads in the country, according to The Weather Channel:


1. New York City to Washington, DC: I-95
This is going to suck. You have a lot of people in New York City and a lot in Washington, DC. There are also a lot in between … and so many of them will be getting behind the wheel. To make matters worse, The Weather Channel notes, “Bad weather is not uncommon along this corridor during Thanksgiving week.” Not enough abuse for you? The company adds, “Some experts estimate that this 225-mile trek is the slowest stretch of highway nationwide during the holiday season.”

2. Boston: Westbound Massachusetts Turnpike from Downtown Boston to I-84
At first glance, I wondered why the New York-to-DC stretch didn’t include Boston. I grew up there and spent many a Thanksgiving Eve sitting in the back seat not moving on the Mass Pike en route to I-84. It’s awful, and The Weather Channel’s comment, “it has been known to come to a virtual standstill,” is not an exaggeration.

3. Chicago: Borman Expressway I-80/I-94, the Tri-State Tollway
The Weather Channel calls this “the trifecta of traffic tie-ups,” because three roads with heavy traffic intersect. The big rigs that use these highways make it even worse. Good luck if this is your route for Thanksgiving.

4. New York City: Throgs Neck Bridge, Whitestone Bridge
Yeah, the Big Apple makes a second appearance on this list. There’s a reason why I’m staying put on the Upper West Side this year. If you’re looking to get from the city out to Long Island or up to Connecticut, don’t be fooled by this “key choke point,” as The Weather Channel describes it: built to “help relieve traffic on the adjacent Whitestone Bridge,” the Throgs Neck has now become a nightmare in its own right.

5. San Francisco: Eastbound I-80 to Sacramento and Tahoe
Are you among the masses dashing out of San Fancisco for Thanksgiving? If you’re looking to get an early feel for winter … well, you’ll quickly realize you weren’t the only person with this idea.

6. Atlanta: I-285 between I-75 and I-85 … in Both Directions
Six major interstates cut through Atlanta, and I-285 is the busiest of them, thanks to two million daily drivers. Throw in the extra traffic for the holidays, and you can expect to see this southern city from under an overpass or across the median. Build a few extra playlists if you’re driving this stretch of road.

7. Washington, DC: I-495 from Merrifield, VA to Landover, MD
Like New York, DC makes The Weather Channel’s list of congested roads twice. The Beltway, which is only 30 miles long, can take two hours on a normal day. Now, add angry, confused or simply stupid holiday travelers … and wait for hilarity to ensue.

8. Dallas: I-35
Are you among the 3.5 million people who will make I-35 a pain this holiday season? Drive with the windows down, maybe you’ll get the chance to make a new friend while you wait … and wait … and wait.

9. Detroit: Northbound Where US-23 and I-75 Merge
Near Flint, you’ll find plenty of people at this spot who are looking to go north for the winter. Blame the “cabin owners, resort seekers and deer hunters.”

10. Miami: The Palmetto Expressway (Near Miami Airport)
The Weather Channel calls this “one of the most heavily traveled roads in the Miami area,” and you can expect it to get backed up from Okeechobee Road to south of the Dolphin Expressway. If you’re either flying in or picking up someone who is, leave a bottle of Advil on the dashboard: you’ll need it.

[photo by FontFont via Flickr]

Do Thanksgiving deals make hotels more appealing than staying at home?

by Amy Chen on

I’m going home for Thanksgiving for the first time since moving from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City. And rather than agreeing to sleep on the futon, I’m springing for a hotel room. Does choosing to stay in a hotel make me a bad person since the whole point of the holiday is to be with family?

As much as I love my family, I’m not too crazy about the idea of my 9-year-old niece and 5-year-old nephew rousing me out of bed at 6 a.m. every day. And though my sister tries her best to keep them occupied until I’ve woken up, the guilt — and their adorable pleading (“Will you play with me?”, “Are you still sleeping?”) — inevitably drives me to get up with the rest of the family.

To be honest, I didn’t plan to stay at a hotel over Thanksgiving. But as a Kimpton InTouch loyalty member, I received an e-mail blast several weeks ago for weekend deals. When I discovered that the deal wasn’t blacked out over Thanksgiving weekend, I ended up booking three nights at the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco’s Union Square for $109 per night. Is the extra sleep worth that much money? In my case, yes.
For my last night, I found a last-minute deal at Sonoma‘s Farmhouse Inn: $177 (regularly $295-$375). Unfortunately, the online deal required a minimum two-night stay. Since I had already prepaid my Sir Francis Drake hotel reservation, I decided to call up the inn to see if there were any other deals. It turns out that if I was willing to take a smaller room, I could book the $177 rate for just one night. Done. Looks like I’ll get my turkey and a little wine tasting, too.

So you see, I didn’t intend to stay at a hotel over Thanksgiving. But at these low rates, how could I resist all these Thanksgiving deals?

Though staying in a hotel will be a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the futon, maybe I will miss the chaos of staying at home (and the convenience of opening the fridge to pick at the leftover turkey).

%Poll-56023%

[Photo by Amy Chen]

Hotel booking tip: Hotwire + upgrade = deal

by Alex Robertson Textor on

There are many strategies for successfully booking hotel rooms on “opaque” booking sites. “Opaque” booking sites, for those unfamiliar with the term if not the thing itself, sell brand-name hotel rooms, among other goods, for discounted prices. The catch is that these hotels are never named in advance. The “opaque” booking sites help hotels fill their rooms at rates often far below hotel rack rates.

Some frequent travelers have developed a science out of gaming opaque booking sites. Better Bidding is one essential tool in this endeavor. It offers bidding tips and other information designed to allow users to figure out which description matches up with which anonymous hotel, thereby allowing customers to pick and choose a favored hotel.

Here’s a less crafty tip, one that can nonetheless be very helpful for finding a mid-range hotel bargain.

Twice in the past two months I’ve booked hotels in London and San Francisco on Hotwire. In both instances the hotel reservation was relatively speaking quite inexpensive: $99 for the London room and $110 for the San Francisco room.

Unfortunately, both bookings resulted in hotel rooms that were far from ideal.

In London, the Hilton London Docklands Riverside room booked through Hotwire ($99) was very cramped and not particularly well maintained. The bed was tiny and the view was of the traffic circle in front of the hotel. A £20 ($32) upgrade option gave us a recently renovated and much larger Deluxe room with a view of the foggy Thames. Our Hotwire-plus-upgrade rate ($131) turned out to be much less expensive than the lowest rack rate I found during research ($217).

In San Francisco, the room we booked through Hotwire at the Intercontinental San Francisco ($110) had two separate beds. We didn’t even take a look at it, instead inquiring about an upgrade. $30 per night later and we had a 17th floor corner king with sweeping views north and west. By our calculations, we saved almost $40 off the least expensive rack rate in the process.

(Image: Flickr / hotelkursaal&ausonia)

Photo of the day 11.13.10

by Catherine Bodry on

When I look at this photo, the first word that comes to mind is “clean.” Though photo taker jrodmanjr writes that he used a simple point-and-shoot camera, the clarity of the buildings and lights appears to come from a high-quality lens. The air seems crisp, as though it’s a winter night. Also, I appreciate seeing San Francisco bathed in varying shades of blue and white.

Have any unique photos of well-known destinations? Upload them to Gadling’s Flickr pool, and we just might choose one for our Photo of the Day Feature.

Sydney’s Chinatown means cheap eats, Australian seafood, famous noodles

by Laurel Miller on

“NOOOOOOOO!”

That’s the sound of me, arriving at Chinese Noodle Restaurant (Shop 7, 8 Quay St.), in Sydney’s Chinatown/Haymarket district. Two years I’d waited, eight thousand miles I’d traveled, to feast upon my beloved #4 pork noodle combo. Instead I found the following handwritten sign:

“Dear Customers, We will be closed…for kitchen renovation. We apologize for any inconvienience” The restaurant was scheduled to re-open the day after I returned home. What the hell was I going to do?

The answer, it turned out, was drown my sorrows in roti and cendol (an addictive concoction of coconut milk, palm sugar, and rice flour jelly) at Mamak, a newish, affordable Malaysian restaurant down the street. And it was good. So good, I returned three times in as many days. As the song goes, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

%Gallery-107144%

As for my #4 obsession, allow me to explain why a plate of spicy, saucy ground pork atop dense, chewy noodles keeps me awake nights (I have issues, I know). These aren’t just any noodles. Chinese Noodle Restaurant specializes in hand-pulled wheat noodles from the northwestern Xinjiang province. Owner/chef Cin (like Cher, he goes by one name) hails from the region, and each day, he can be observed in the tiny kitchen, working his magic with ropey lengths of dough.

I don’t know about post-remodel, but in the seven years that I’ve been eating at CNR, the small, dingy dining room didn’t have much else in the way of decor, aside from some plastic grapevines–the kind you see in cheap Italian joints–festooning the walls. Because that totally makes sense in a Chinese restaurant. Anyway, it didn’t matter, because it’s all about Cin’s food. It’s not just me: one friend, a business traveler, is manic about getting her pork dumplings en route to and from the airport, and another, a chef from Port Macquarie up north, also hits the dumplings whenever he’s in town.

While CNR obviously has a cult following, there is something to be said for an open relationship. I’ve often referred to Haymarket as the “Disneyland of Chinatowns,” because of its wide, clean streets, tidy shops, and orderly throngs of locals and tourists. Sussex St. is the main thoroughfare, but the compact district has dozens of great markets, food court stalls, and restaurants to choose from. I lived in the Bay Area for many years, and while San Francisco’s Chinatown is a must-visit tourist attraction, it’s not where you’ll get the best Asian food (that would be the Richmond district), and the heaving crowds are off-putting. Oakland’s Chinatown has some fantastic Vietnamese holes-in-the-wall, but it’s seriously lacking in atmosphere. And other Chinatowns across the planet–New York, Vancouver, Honolulu, Buenos Aires–all are fascinating in their own right, but to me, Sydney trumps them all.

It’s not just the close proximity to Sydney’s CBD, and many other city attractions like the Opera House and Harbour Bridge (both a 15 minute walk away), because San Francisco can rival that. And it’s merely a bonus that Haymarket has a lot of hostels (“backpackers”), some of them excellent and geared toward a more diverse demographic than the college crowd. FYI, Haymarket really comes alive at night, so it’s nice to have digs nearby, even if you opt for one of the high-end hotels in the CBD.

Aside from how pleasant it is to just wander the streets without being trampled or skidding out on a giant phlegm glob or errant puddle of urine, it’s the seafood that makes Sydney’s Chinatown special. Australia is famed for its indigenous flora and fauna, and that applies to seafood, as well. Australians and visitors alike prize sweet, meaty, mud crabs from Queensland, blue swimmer and spanner crabs, Moreton and Balmain “bugs” (slipper lobsters), freshwater crayfish like yabbies and marron, mild Sydney Rock oysters, King George whiting from South Australia, wild and farmed barramundi, farmed abalone and Australian salmon.

As an aside, if you visit the Sydney Fish Market in nearby Pyrmont, browsing the stalls can be likened to a jewelry store (if, like me, you prefer crustaceans to carats). Rows of brilliant, gem-colored catch glitter under the lights: sapphire-hued crabs, tiny, emerald-striped pipis (mollusks), ruby Coral Trout dotted with neon blue, psychedelically-splotched parrot fish. Over 100 species and 50 tons of seafood are auctioned and sold every day at the world’s second largest seafood market (next to Tokyo’s Tsukiji). There’s also a cooking school and tours of the auction floor and sashimi pavilion–something I highly recommend.

Back in Chinatown, Golden Century (393-399 Sussex St.) is the place for excellent, Hong Kong-style seafood, like salt-and-pepper squid and braised abalone. You select your dinner from the many tanks lining the front windows. Be prepared for your waiter to bring still-wriggling sea creatures to the table for your approval before dispatching them to the kitchen (I hope PETA isn’t reading this). This is the place to indulge in some first-rate Australian seafood, if you can spare the cash. Golden Century is also open until 4am, and a popular late night chef’s hang, should you have a drunken craving for congee and some local color in the wee hours.

Speaking of local color, the infamous B.B.Q. King (18 Goulburn St.) is a post-shift tradition for many of Sydney’s chefs and cooks. It’s also the ultimate drunken, post-clubbing/bar-trawling restaurant (open until 1am-ish, which might mean 3am), where plates of fried rice and roasted and barbecued duck and pork are cheap and plentiful. It’s located next to a porn shop, and the irony of the hanging carcasses and sides of meat in the restaurant windows never fails to amuse me. It’s an utter pit, the waiters are beyond surly, and the food is mediocre. Yet, I adore it. It’s one of those places that should only be patronized whilst ripped to the gills, but it’s a great little slice of late-night Sydney.

For cheap, no-frills, snacking, there’s Mother Chu’s Taiwanese Gourmet (86/88 Dixon St.). This family-owned restaurant is at the lower end of the Dixon St. pedestrian mall. It’s all about the outrageously delicious, made-to-order scallion pancakes, which are about a buck fifty a pop. I’ve never had luck with the entrees, but it’s popular with noodle soup and congee-loving locals. The staff are wonderful; you can watch women rolling out dough and stuffing dumplings. They’re not above giving you a bit of sass, either, so take some time to chat with them.

For higher end yum cha (dim sum, but the term technically refers to the full experience of drinking tea while dining on it), I loved the Regal. In June, it merged with Marigold (883/689 George St.), which I’ve consistently heard is very good.

You’ll find an array of more spendy, touristy restaurants along the mall (as well as annoying hawkers trying to lure you with menus). Save your dollars and instead head to Dixon House Food Court (corner of Dixon and Little Hay Streets.) or the Sussex Centre Food Court (401 Sussex St.). You’ll find the usual suspects in both: greasy steam-table Chinese noodle and rice dishes, but also tasty street food items, hot pot, Korean, and Malaysian food. In Dixon, try the pressed-to-order sugar cane juice, and bubble tea/Asian dessert stall.

Thai Kee Supermarket (399 Sussex St.) is great for any Asian ingredient you might desire (think canned and dried goods for souvenirs), as well as snacks like delightfully squishy rice and mung-bean sweets. Paddy’s Market is of historic importance, in that it’s been a Haymarket landmark for 150 years. Unfortunately, its current incarnation is a jam-packed, cacophonous multi-story mall/produce/household goods/souvenir market. If you feel the urge to purchase a fake Akubra hat or tacky t-shirt, this is the spot.

Whatever your budget, Haymarket is a vibrant distillation of the many Asian immigrant cultures that have made Australia their home, and for that alone, it’s worth a visit. I’ll see you at the noodle joint.