OK, NOW FOR TALK ABOUT SUMMER VACATIONS…..
Karen and I traveled 100 miles from NYC to Connecticut for a weekend of meandering little towns. We were put off by the cost of going anywhere you’ve heard of during July 4th weekend. Prices are just through the roof and you don’t get anything. $2,000 a night for a small hotel room without a view on the Jersey shore in Asbury Park is ridiculous. Essex is old money WASPY; Mystic is a tourist trap and a zoo during the summer; and Chester is artsy and good for foodies. Each of these towns you could see in an hour. Amtrak takes advantage and charges a ton of money to ride along the northeast corridor. It is a bit over 2 hours from NYC by train and because the trains come and go from Boston they are often late. The Old Saybrook station is closest to these towns or you could ride further to Mystic. We stayed in a bed and breakfast The Copper Beech Inn strategically located in the town of Ivoryton. It was nothing great but if you get the master suite it’s a very nice room at a decent price that is a fraction of what you would pay on the beaten track. You couldn’t walk anywhere from there but it was a short drive to many places. “Cooked” had decent things you could buy to supplement the meager breakfast offered by the inn. For cream cheese and bagels there was a Dunkin Donuts nearby. Ivoryton has a great summer theater Playhouse that was highly professional and we saw a musical called 1776 which is about the 3 weeks of the convention in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was drafted. It’s a good show that brings the framers of that Declaration to life as real people and not just as historical figures. Mystic is another 30 miles further north from Essex and it has a museum and a village. We didn’t see the museum, the village was a tourist trap and the main street is OK to walk around and see the unusual bridge that lies at the end of the street. Old Saybrook is the closest thing to a large town in that area which has no chain stores and where it is hard to get convenience items. It was the only place that had a gym that sold day passes (Coastal Fitness). Its main street is about 6 blocks long. A top tourist attraction in the region is the Essex Steam Train and Riverboat combo ride which is about 2.5 hours. Pay the extra $15 for the first class ticket for the train. It’s a nice chill way to spend a few hours. At night go to the Old Grizwold (the “Griz”) in Essex for some music and local cheer. It’s a 300 year old tavern and it gets loud; you can see all the décor and history around you. You must have a car here; Enterprise is a 15 minute walk from the train station and they will pick you up at the train station. I had to walk back because we returned the car on a Sunday. There is a hotel in Old Saybrook by the sea called Saybrook Point Resort and Marina. It’s a Marriott-like property and a zoo.
TRAVEL NOTES BOULDER AND DENVER COLORADO
I haven’t been to Denver since I was a teenager when our family rented a camper van for a month to enjoy Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. The only thing I remember about Denver was that we went shopping for tons of food. The first mountain road curve outside of Denver all the cabinets opened up and the food flew out all over the van. We were utterly clueless! Denver’s airport is sprawling and involves lots of walking amid confusing signage, even just to get to the people mover between terminals. Allow more time here to get to a flight. It is a 4 hour flight from New York; closer to 3 heading back. Boulder is 45 minutes from the airport. It is a pleasant small upscale city with mountains in the distance. At night you can hear crickets and see stars. The St. Julien’s hotel is the best in town, but it is a mile from campus. Walking distance options include the Limelight and the Moxy. The Limelight has a good gym and offers guest passes to the student Rec center which is awesome. In Denver, the Four Seasons is probably best in class just a block from Larimer Square. That is a nice tourist block and the Union Station area is also nice. It is also close to the Convention Center. The square mile of city center and the capitol is nice; beyond it the city deteriorates real fast. A 2 hour e-bike tour was more than enough. Cherry Creek near downtown has nice bike paths.
MIAMI BEACH RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
One reason I enjoy visiting Miami is that the city keeps changing. Nothing looks like it did when I grew up there. If you stand in the ocean and look at the coastline, everything is different from the beach and boardwalk to the buildings lining the skyline. The Eden Roc is a nice iconic hotel along the beachfront next to the Fontainebleau that hits all my buttons along with a great vibe for young people. It shares facilities with the Nobu Hotel. Aside from nicer rooms and a few amenities, it’s not worth 2x the price to stay in a Nobu room. Earlier this year I was at the Fontainebleau; the Eden Roc is much better and its pool and gym don’t all close down at 6:30pm and getting around the property is much less of a voyage. The hotel was only 50% full but it felt crowded because they sell day passes to the pool. Miami Beach is now a 12 month a year city with lots of Europeans and Russians visiting in summer. You’d think 41st street would be empty but it was very busy with traffic on a Friday afternoon in August. It’s super hot during the summer and you burn your feet if you walk on the beach. The ocean is full of seaweed and although they have a truck come each morning to get rid of it, by afternoon it’s filled up again. I’m told it smells horrible but I’m not the person you’d give a job to in a perfume factory. Social media could claim it has medicinal properties that will make you look younger and then all of a sudden everyone would hit the beach. Lincoln Road doesn’t have much going on beyond $10 cups of gelato and lots of Italian style places to eat. A new 800 room Grand Hyatt convention center hotel is under construction right next door to the center connected by a walkway; when I was a teenager and my father was mayor, he was announcing such a project but it never happened. 45 years later it’s now happening. Prices are cheap here in the summer, but if you want nice blue-green ocean and no traffic, it’s better in the Bahamas.
TRAVEL NOTES – CANADA
We spent 2 weeks in Canada; one of them in the Rockies. But as long as we came all this way, it was an extra hour flying to Vancouver and we wanted to see that and Victoria. The kids wouldn’t have enjoyed this part of the trip although my daughter would have liked the thrift shopping and vibe of Vancouver had she just come there with a friend; the kids joined us for the Rockies figuring that one week with the “Unc’s” would be sufficient.
Vancouver – I was last here about 20 years ago on a stopover from Hong Kong. I was more impressed this time around; I guess I didn’t give the place enough of a chance last time and it improved with new neighborhoods and a lot of investment. The airport makes a nice impression even if lots of passport kiosks didn’t work. Uber works here. Taxis don’t use GPS. It’s cheap to get around here versus NYC. 40 minutes to city center with local roads; there is still no highway to the airport. There is an airport train but I didn’t try it.
Fairmont has 5 hotels in this city; aside from Rosewood and Park Hyatt (under construction), they pretty much control the luxury market. The Fairmont Pacific Rim is excellent and a bit more shishi right near the harbor waterfront. The Fairmont Vancouver is in city center and is more old-fashioned looking. Both have excellent food. The Pacific Rim is an excellent city hotel. I really enjoyed two swims a day to get over a back that went bad at the airport. Sightseeing included a tour of the Capilano suspension bridge and a tree-top walk. There are some trendy neighborhoods with lots of ethnic restaurants such as Yale Town and West End. Shaughnessy is a posh neighborhood. Granville Island has a nice food court and artsy shops reached by ferry or taxi depending on your location. More skid row areas of town show a prevalent fentanyl addiction problem. Water Street Café just across from the big steam clock was not a bad place for dinner in the gas town district near the railroad station. We were blessed with sunshine and temperatures in the 70’s for our late July visit. It cools down at night into the 50’s. We saw the Flyover movie at Canada Place near the cruise ship terminal; you could skip it. We spent 4 nights here and 2 full days in Vancouver.
One day we took a helicopter for a day trip to Victoria, which I had always wanted to visit. You can also take a sea plane but it is more likely to be cancelled due to weather. The trip is 30 minutes each way. Both terminals are right within the harbor area and offer good snacks to take “for-laters.” There is nothing to see on the approach to Victoria, but the Vancouver approach is cool (sit on the right). 6 hours in Victoria is enough to go to the Bouchard Gardens (some of the nicest botanical gardens anywhere) about half an hour from city center. We skipped some site with treetop walks due to highway traffic (it doesn’t take much here to jam things up) and instead saw a little castle called Hatley which was no big deal. Downtown Victoria is pleasant with a nice pedestrian street, a museum of British Columbia with a garden featuring totem poles, fisherman’s wharf with houseboats and a nearby fish market if you want good fish to eat. The Fairmont Empress hotel is a good place for a pit stop and the parliament building (it’s the capitol of the province of British Columbia) is between the hotel and the museum. If you end up at Fisherman’s Wharf, you can walk to the Helijet terminal in 15 minutes.
The airport offers good healthy food options, better than the airport lounges. West Jet was on strike that day making us glad we flew Air Canada one hour to Calgary. The plane had WiFi and a really large bathroom on this Airbus 220. They only offered chicken on board so bringing snacks on board can be useful.
CANADIAN ROCKIES — BANFF
From the airport, it’s a 90 minute drive, mostly through flat terrain on wide highways. Banff is a small town that has a public bus going from the hotel to main street but it runs infrequently, especially in the evening. The bus will also take you to important tourist sites but it’s probably standing room only and runs only every few hours, so a taxi is best for such trips; there is no Uber. Town is a few blocks long with downscale eating and shopping and the only reason I went there was to the laundromat in the Cascade Mall to pay $20 instead of $150 at the hotel to get my laundry done for pickup at the end of the day. The town’s central area is a zoo and it is not necessary to go there. The Fairmont in Banff is a 4 star hotel charging 5 star prices and we were not terribly impressed but the history tour there is worth taking because you learn about the history of Canada and the hotel which are intertwined. For instance, I learned that the reason my shower was tiny and the closet was huge is that 100 years ago guests preferred large closets to bathrooms. Getting a suite here helps a lot; you get a text number that leads to a VIP staff in this 750 room colossus. Food in this hotel was fairly good but not great. We stayed 3 nights and it was plenty. Lots of people visiting this area go to Canmore about 10 miles away where it is cheaper and less of a zoo. There is a local Chabad offering kosher food there on weekends and they deliver to all hotels in the region. We had a much better dinner at the Juniper Hotel and Spa on the other side of town. It’s a $13 taxi ride but well worth it. They have a lovely terrace overlooking the whole area.
We booked almost all our sightseeing via Tours by Locals. We did a day tour of the local area with Patrick, who turned out to be Jewish. He was a very cool dude from the local area. It’s fun to have local guides and hear their stories and how they relate to the local area. This is a very different kind of place than New York City. There are also lots of expatriates in their 20’s working here from places such as Australia and the UK. We visited the national park and saw nature sites, visited Canmore and Banff, and an Olympic training facility. Following the tour, we walked along the river where you could view the hotel from across it and went into town. The next day we walked to gardens overlooking the town and the two pedestrian bridges with pretty photo ops. Then to Johnson’s Canyon where we spent about 2.5 hours on the two main trails. They are very well maintained with mostly paved paths and bridges with lovely views of glacial water, waterfalls and canyon rocks and mountains. There are lots of lines at the falls and it’s not worth standing in them. For the upper falls, go an extra 150 meters to the overlook and you’ll get a better view than the people standing on line. There is cell service to call for a taxi for 100 canadian dollars (right now 70 USD) to return to the hotel. Another hike we could take but didn’t was Tunnel Mountain which is a harder dirt trail pretty much straight up and down – the canyon was the more scenic and easier hike. We went mid-day and didn’t think the crowds were so bad; certain areas we walked with nobody around us. As New Yorkers, we have a higher tolerance for what other people consider crowds.
On Day 3 in Banff, we did a history tour of the hotel and that afternoon transferred to Lake Louise about 45 minutes away. We used taxis and car transfers to get around; we did not rent a car. I think it was best even if it cost us an extra couple hundred dollars over the span of a 10 day stay in the Rockies. By the time you garage the car and have to keep it there anyway because most of the national parks don’t allow you to drive your cars there, the rental is as much as hiring someone else to take you around. In these hotels, we didn’t have hardly any reason to use a car.
The Rocky Mountaineer is a sightseeing trip via train that covers this area. We didn’t take it because we were told that it’s pretty much geared toward senior citizens, some with grandchildren and that it’s boring. You have to leave the train at night and stay in 3-star hotels and then get up early to get back on the train. Not for me.
LAKE LOUISE
You could day trip here from Banff but it is much better to stay here. In fact, I would choose this over Banff if you had to choose one. The Fairmont here is not as historical and charming but it is a better hotel with much better food. The view from our suite over the lake was stunning. Hotels here are expensive because of supply and demand but at least the US dollar right now has a great exchange rate ($1.40 CAD equals $1 USD). We took many walks around the lake. Best photos are about 2 hours before sunset. We took a morning walk to the Fairview point above the lake. You can be unlucky here with smoke if there are forest fires anywhere within hundreds of miles. The US state of Washington was sending wildfire smoke to Canada and we were the victims of it. The hotel is a zoo during the day with day-trippers wanting to use bathrooms and look around the property. Some of the facilities such as pool and gym were better at Banff but whatever is here is perfectly adequate and some things here exceed facilities at Banff. The problem with Fairmont is that some hotels are better than others even if they are all called Fairmont. The company should distinguish between their properties that are truly 5 stars and those that are really 4 star level. They have this glacier water thing where you go from hot to cold plunges again and again. Glacier water is about 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 4 degrees Celsius. They charge a lot of money for this; to my mind, this should be reserved for POW’s (prisoners of war). But locals love it. This property differs from Banff in that there is no village nearby. If you’re not on hotel property, you have nowhere to go except on a hike or a bike ride. We took an e-bike tour to the Great Divide which was the continental divide right on the border between Alberta and British Columbia, two Canadian provinces. We took a shuttle bus to Lake Moraine; the Rock Pile area is good for photos overlooking the pretty lake. We spent 2 hours here. We visited nearby Bow Lake about 20 minutes away and took a 3 hour hike to see a vista overlooking some creeks and a distant waterfall. It was a nice walk. The kids went rock climbing near Lake Louise and had a great time. There is a popular walk here to a tea house but it is a long hard walk and the place is a zoo once you get there; you might not get in even if you go real early in the morning. We decided to skip it. We spent 4 nights here. All in all, it’s a lovely place to visit.
JASPER
We took a 7 hour tour that started in Lake Louise and ended in Jasper. You could do the ride in about 3 hours if you just went point to point but we thought we would make a nice day out of it and loaded our luggage into a car and the guide drove us and made a great tour along the Ice Fields Parkway which links the two destinations with stunning glacier and lake views. We saw some very pretty views and had a picnic. The Saskathewan Crossing is a rest area at the halfway point. Decent bathrooms are in the restaurant. At the Columbia Ice Fields, we spent an hour walking to see a very impressive glacier. If you want, you can walk on it but that’s a longer activity. That glacier is melting at a scary rate. Another 90 minutes gets you to Jasper. As you approach the town, you can see the destruction from wildfires several years ago.
Fairmont’s property here is the Jasper Park Lodge. We had a nice cabin on the lake but the grass outside was full of goose poop. So I enjoyed the nature from my window. Here the mood is much more chill with no outsiders coming on property. It’s not as beautiful here but it is nice and more relaxing. It’s a good place to end your vacation. The hotel has 600 rooms but they are spread among cabins all over the place so it doesn’t feel crowded. We did a 6 hour tour to see wildlife such as moose, elk, eagle, grisly bear and marmot. A marmot is pretty close to a rat. I think that rats need a rebrand and then they would have tour buses filled with people coming to stare at them. You can see wildlife almost anywhere here, even close to town or on the hotel property. We ate some berries that bears like to eat and didn’t die. Some guides say bears eat 25,000 of these berries a day during the summer; others say 250,000. All the people in town seem to have seen Bear #222 (they have collared tags on them with radio devices tracking their location) no matter where they live. I think this is an inside joke they play on tourists. The bears have park rangers escorting them when there are tourists around the bears. Medicine Lake was cool because it is this huge lake that drains itself like a bathtub at the end of summer and comes back in the spring. We took a 35 minute cruise to see Sprit Island, a sacred space to the local tribes with 27 trees on it, that people like to take photos of. Don’t be put off by the lack of sun; it creates glare during the day over the areas you want to photograph. We had lunch at the Maligne Lake Lodge near the lake. We saw lots of stupid people exiting their cars to look at wild animals during our day tour.
We never made it to the planetarium which is supposed to be good since Jasper is a night sky area but we didn’t see hardly any stars during our visit. We took the Sky Tram to see the mountain overlooking Jasper. There are trails you could walk on but we didn’t see the point. The sun came out when we got to the mountain even though it was cloudy when we started the cable car ascent. And we walked through Jasper village. There was a good café in town that we liked with great juices, sandwiches and bakery from the local bakery that everyone else was standing in line to get into. It’s called the Lostlands Café. Dinner at Fiddle River for good fish. Our hotel food was not as good as the stuff we had in town. We saw a hokey show in town called “From Jasper With Love.” You could totally skip it. We stayed in Jasper 3 nights and it was enough.
An important rule of travel here is to ignore the weather forecast, which more often than not was wrong. Otherwise you’ll always be scared that something will happen and it usually doesn’t.
We took a 5 hour ride back to Calgary plus some stops making it 6. We took a quick visit to Alabaster Falls along the way. For the first 3 hours, you have to take the Ice Fields Parkway back to Lake Louise and then continue through Banff till you get to Calgary. The roads are good but it takes time especially on 2 lane roads behind camper vans for the first 3 hours. It’s a lovely ride to enjoy. One thing we saw was overpasses meant to protect wildlife so they could cross without getting hit by cars. The unintended consequence was that wolves learned to trap deer there and would attack them as they used the crossings.
Some observations we made about Canadians: They love to yap with people. Elizabeth was tired of this after a week and wished they would all shut up and just bring her the coffee. They are polite. They are clean with toilets (I hardly ever saw dirty bathrooms even in porta potties). But they are crazy about following rules and woe is you if you are stuck in their version of a TSA line with someone going through your baggage.
CALGARY
The Fairmont is the only game in town here and it’s not particularly good. But it has history and it’s right in the center of town, which feels like it’s Sunday afternoon even in the middle of the business day. We spent one night there and everyone agreed they didn’t want to spend a second night. You see lots of vagrants all over the place and almost all the good shopping has moved to suburban malls where most people now live. I took a 2 hour walking tour around town. Winter temperatures reach 30 below zero so there is an extensive network of indoor bridges between buildings to get you around town. There is a nice public library. There is a city tram line but the stations feel icky even though there are police on duty patrolling the streets and stations. There is an indoor garden “the Devonian Gardens” on the top floor of a shopping mall in the city and this is an escape for people from the cold just like such gardens in Singapore are escapes from the heat and humidity. The annual Stampede Rodeo is the big event every July where this otherwise dark and depressing town comes to life. We didn’t see any nice residential areas in the center of the city. On departure, the airport had only one line for everyone going on flights to the USA with no priority lane. It was really run poorly. There was food in the departure areas. It is a 4 hour flight to New York on American Airlines. Strangely enough, lots of Orthodox Jews were flying on our flight. Who thought so many people would be flying on a Thursday afternoon from Calgary in August? This year, Canada is a hot destination because the US dollar is strong against it and people are shying away from much higher airfares to Europe due to the Iran war and long lines at passport control due to Europe’s new entry system.
All in all, we had a nice trip. The kids had complained last summer when we went to Como, Milan and Istanbul that they were over-programmed so this trip had less touring and more chill time. But now this time they complained they were more bored. There’s no pleasing all the people all the time. My take on this is that the Rockies are nice and it’s a nice place to take a relaxing trip at a slower pace. We paid less in airfare but more for hotels so it came out about the same as a trip to Europe. But it’s pretty downscale across the board and you don’t need to dress up for dinner unless you like doing that. if you want resort elegance, go to Europe.
WHAT’S NEW IN DC
In honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, I made an overnight trip to DC to see what’s new and to check in with some friends. I tried out Amtrak’s new Next Generation trains with their first class service. In New York City, the Metropolitan Lounge is lovely with beautiful décor, a buffet to rival any American Express lounge and seating on a terrace overlooking the terminal floor. The new trains offer single aisle seating and nice menus with meal service. The trip still takes about 3 hours. It’s a smooth ride with good internet service and the cabin stewards offer very courteous service. I noticed people leaving tips as they stepped off the trains. Finally, the USA offers something competitive in the world of trains. I paid $275 each way booking a month or two in advance. Someone who stepped up and bought a ticket paid over $700. Every time I go to DC, I book both an airline and a train ticket each way so that if the planes don’t fly on time, I have a backup. I needed that on the way back because all the flights that day except for the 6am flights were cancelled due to thunderstorms. I’ve always preferred planes to trains but if you think about it, you probably sit about 2 hours on the plane as opposed to 3 on the train. And then you don’t have to go to and through the airports. You do wind up spending more time getting door to door when you go with the plane but at least you tend to keep moving. The new trains and a really nice lounge experience in NYC make the choice easier. (The lounge in DC has not yet been upgraded.)
I stayed at the Park Hyatt. There are several hotels all around Dupont Circle and near George Washington University: The Fairmont, Ritz Carlton, Park Hyatt, Westin, Marriott among others. The best of the bunch is the Ritz Carlton; they have the best gym and pool in the area. The Park Hyatt has a good price point because people overlook it and because it is not one of the better Park Hyatts out there. I visited several attractions: The Anderson House is the headquarters of a fraternal organization founded by officers of the American Revolutionary War and it was a gilded age mansion till it was donated almost 100 years ago to be a museum. It’s worth seeing. The National Archives has a new digital exhibition that was worth seeing. The electronics didn’t work and there was nobody around to help but no matter. Get a timed ticket online so you can go to the Rotunda and see the original founding documents but you don’t need it in order to see the digital exhibition. I see why people are complaining about the Smithsonian; you look around and everywhere in the exhibitions there is mention of slavery and Indians. You just feel that they are bending over backward to recognize these things and that they should stop throwing it in everyone’s face at every turn when they come to the nation’s capitol to celebrate their country. The souvenir shops are filled with Trump crap. Can’t wait to see that stuff disappear in 2 years. No question that when he leaves office, they will remove every last vestige of his name from the city. (He might spend more time working to hope people will want to remember him than trying to impose his name everywhere which they will then go and remove.) The Eisenhower Memorial is across from the Air and Space Museum. The reflecting pool near the Lincoln and Washington memorials is still under repair. Uber works well in this city and is cheap; taxis are also in abundance again after being gone during the pandemic. The city’s metro now has tap-in with credit cards so you don’t have to buy a metro card. There are plenty of tourists around and aside from seeing more gates and barriers than I’ve seen before, things still look pretty much like they always have.
By the time you get to my next posting, I expect to have travel notes including an October trip to Portugal. It’s the first of the bucket list trips Karen and I are making as empty-nesters.
