Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
Booking a room at one of the luxury Hasbrouck Heights Hotels , is like staying close to all the excitement of New York City, but even closer to the thrills of the Giants Stadium, a world-class thoroughbred racing track, and big-name concert performances at the Meadowlands Sports & Entertainment Complex. Hasbrouck Heights in New Jersey offers breathtaking views of the New York City skyline, but without the New York prices. While in Hasbrouck Heights, your best attraction is the Aviation Hall of Fame & Museum.
Founded in 1972, this museum is dedicated to the preservation of the Garden State’s distinguished, 2-century aviation and space heritage. The outstanding aeronautical achievements of both men and women, have brought world-wide recognition to the state and are enshrined in the museums Hall of Fame. Visitors are offered an opportunity to view historic air and space equipment, photographs, artifacts, fine art and extensive model collection at the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum , which has just been expanded to house a library with over 4000 volumes and hundreds of aviation video tapes.
The Museum also offers an age-oriented program, each geared for its age group, which features an introductory New Jersey aviation history video followed by a guided tour through the displays and hands-on exhibits. Another program is a comprehensive 4-hour program designed for 8 to 15 years of age children that introduces basic aerodynamic theory, taught by experienced pilots and educators. Participants get to design and build their own gliders from raw materials and hold a flight competition. Afterwards all participants get a tour of the museum. In addition, the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum will host a party or a special event. Guests will walk through history while experiencing the hands-on exhibits; party costs includes a gift for the guest of honor and souvenirs for everyone else.
Regular hours are: 10am to 4pm Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is: $7 for adults and $5 for children and Seniors. If you can, plan to come to Hasbrouck Heights in September 2010, ‘Wings and Wheels Air Expo’ will happen on the 25th and the 26th.
South Street Seaport Offers the Best Shopping in Manhattan
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June 28th, 2010 >> Travel
Manhattan, located in the United States of American, is not only New York’s major commercial, financial and cultural center, but the worlds as well. In addition, it’s a shopping mecca, which attracts hundreds of thousands of international tourists each year, and it’s not just the famous shops on Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue, it’s also the shopping at the South Street Seaport , located at 12 Fulton Street. South Street Seaport, which dates back to the 1600s was re-invented to become a great place to go shopping with great views of the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge.
The mall is divided into 3 sections; one based in the original home of New York City’s fish market, another at Pier 17 that is along the water, and the third section is in the Fulton Market building near South Street, which is teeming with activities, a maritime museum, some of the best hotels Manhattan USA provides, dining and of course plenty of shopping.
This is a great place for any tourist to wander around aimlessly with their family, friends or going it solo. The South Street Seaport can get somewhat crowded, but that only makes for a great opportunity for people watching. Before you reach the 3 main sections, there are many stores and kiosks selling various items and souvenirs; stop by the smoothies stand on the 3rd floor, you won’t regret it, very satisfying.
Weekends at the Seaport, you will find many street performers that will amaze you with some very amusing entertainment, especially while you eat Al-fresco at one of the many outdoor restaurants. Also, during the summer months you can buy tickets for the speedboat and take a festive, fun and fabulous cruise around the harbor. South Street Seaport is easy to get to taking the train to Fulton Street. Plan to spend the entire day and evening, because there’s that much to see, do and shop. Visiting the Seaport is the best way to see a different and unique part of Manhattan.
New York is well known for having the best of almost everything in one of its five boroughs. So it is only natural that it also boasts having the best food in the world and this can be supported not only by the top chefs who chose to make this their home but also by the amount of satisfied customers the various restaurants have. Regardless of the specific reason you may be visiting New York, you will have to eat while you are there, so you might as well enjoy some of the best. Interestingly, one of the top choices of food for people who are visiting the city is Italian, and yes, New York knows how to cook and serve Italian food.
Some of the best restaurants New York City are those that serve Italian food and many of them are family owned and operated and also have been in the same family for decades. This is just part of the overall culture of the city and it is extremely common to see family owned and operated for various numbers of years on many of the restaurants. And while in some cities and towns across the nation this might be an extremely rare and impressive aspect, in New York it’s as common as seeing take out available in the window.
So, what are the best Italian food restaurants in the city? Well, that’s an extremely subjective conclusion to reach and everyone has their own taste, including critics. However, it is popular to determine the most popular ones, and here are few of those.
Babbo is recognized as the new Italian in the West Village and is extremely popular with locals. Esca on 43rd Street serves some of the best southern Italian food in the city. The crab and grilled octopus are some of the menu favorites and it is known for its fresh fish. Felidia Ristorante is known for more than the great atmosphere and quality of its food. It is run by the woman who taught Julia Child. And a short survey of New York’s Italian food wouldn’t be complete without a stop in Little Italy. Da Nico Ristorante is a favorite with locals and tourists alike. The grilled lobster is one of their specialties and they now have an outdoor garden for seating.
What makes a great beach great? It seems like an easy enough question, but then the variables start to come into play. The width and accessibility certainly do matter, because it’s never been a very good idea to climb down a very rocky slope to a small section of sand, only to discover that the waves are large and fast enough to climb the rocks much faster than people can. There are also factors that make it more comfortable and welcoming to human beings, things like softness of the sand, texture, warmth of the water, and the amount of sun.
There are at least a dozen things that come readily to mind on this track, and Dr. Beach has 50 that he works with. It’s all right that he is way ahead of the game over everyone else, because he is a doctor, after all. He actually is, and his name is Stephen P Leatherman and he works at Florida International University. His main focus of study happens to be the effects of natural disasters on the amount of erosion happening on beaches all around the world, and he’s been doing it long enough that he’s become something of an expert.
Some might say, The Expert, and being an expert on beaches makes him probably the coolest and the luckiest guy in the world. The list varies year to year, and last year, Hanalei Beach made it to the very top of his list, helping to attract people, certainly, to the wonderful hotels Hanalei has to offer.
It’s rather fascinating how the whole thing got started. Someone from a magazine saw his credentials and called him one day and asked him for his opinion of the best 10 beaches in the world. Leatherman named 10 off the top of his head, then went on a trip that took him unwittingly into the Tiananman Square moment of history. He’d forgotten about the list, and when he returned, it was published, and he was hounded with questions about why other beaches didn’t make the list. So he decided to put together a list of 50 criteria that would determine what makes a great beach, and every since, he’s been Dr. Beach. Busy, lucky man.
Sure you can find great jazz and blues in New Orleans. I didn’t realize you had to ask. And it’s also true that you can find great Cajun, Creole and other traditional southern food in this great city. And in addition, there are numerous other great cultural attractions and establishments that contribute to the atmosphere and society of New Orleans though they may not be part of the above mentioned symbolic staples of the city. So, where to you go when you visit New Orleans, in addition to the great live music clubs? That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked. Experiencing some of the city’s live music is a must for the guests in some of the luxury hotels New Orleans , though will make your trip that much more incredible if you visit some of the other top cultural establishments while you are there.
The New Orleans Museum of Art is one of the great cultural establishments of the city. It has an ongoing mission of inspiring love for art and creating an awareness and appreciation for it in younger generations. Education and a public dialogue are also strong elements in its purpose and this is evident in the great exhibits it presents as well as its permanent collection and extra events. Included among its features is a beautiful sculpture garden, which welcomes the public to enjoy a stroll through.
The New Orleans Opera is another great establishment that promotes excellence in the field and inspires a great sense of appreciation in the community and audience while also providing high quality production entertainment. In addition to its strong mission of providing the best operatic productions it can, the company has a major purpose of creating performances that might the highest caliber of artistic expression. The 2020 season will include a production of Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess and Mozart’s The Magic Flute among others. These are just a few of the great cultural establishments and entertainment options available in New Orleans and the city is full of additional others.
If you happen to be visiting Tuscaloosa, and start to wonder about why you’re hearing so much about Druid City, don’t go looking too hard to find it. Tuscaloosa is a gorgeous town, offering all the charm that the South can muster, with a rather sparkly cosmopolitan sheen, along with a top university that brings in new waves of culture all the time. Druid City isn’t far, because it’s actually right here, just another name for the same place.
Often when people hear the name, they might remember that the Druids are the mystic sect from Ireland who wore lots of white and spent a suspicious amount of time outdoors talking to trees. Some might think they’re gone from the world, but they’re still here, although it might not be easy to find them here. You can find the oak trees though, and the name is evidence that there were descendants of Druids living here at one time. Now what’s around is an echo of the culture that comes down through generations in music, and some of the best of the local sounds can be heard at the Druid City Arts Festival .
This is a one-day event in the spring where bands like Kate Taylor, Blaine Duncan and the Lookers, and Kadesh and the Perfect Strangers play on multiple stages from 2pm-9pm, and it’s free to the public. You can purchase an after hours wristband for only five bucks, if you’d like the party to go on into the deeper part of the night. There are plenty of people willing to join you, too, as it’s part of the campus’ favorite things to do. This is just another great reason to visit, because even apart from the great hotels, Tuscaloosa offers lovely entertainments that can make the time here memorable and lots of fun.
Frankfurts Natural History Museum is the Best in All of Germany
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May 26th, 2010 >> Travel
Frankfurt am Main, is host to the Natural History Museum in Senckenberg , which has earned a national reputation for being one of Germany’s best museums. Every year, over 400,000 people visit the museum, which has a comprehensive collection of dinosaur bones and exhibitions on the history of the Earth and its evolution. In 2003, the Natural History Museums building, built in 1907, was lavishly renovated and modernized. The Museum has one of the most important natural history collections in all of Europe, with a majority of the thousands of unique exhibits display an array of extremely rare objects.
Visitors are treated to sensational exhibits like the anaconda that is devouring a wild boar, or the most renowned and reverent skeleton cast of ‘Lucy’, who lived more than 3 million years ago in whats known as Ethiopia in today’s world. The best attraction at the Museum include the ‘Dinos’, which strike awe and wonderment in all who cast their eyes upon the skeletons of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, raptors, beaked dragons and so much more. Messel pit fossils are expertly displayed by the Senckenberg Research Institute , which oversee the efforts of the UNESCO world natural heritage site, which also helps supports organisations that contribute to the Museums collections. Currently, the special exhibition ‘Under Our Feet’, explores the creatures that move underground, like worms, snails, fungi, insects and small mammals; all of which form a fantastic, complicated network of intricate relationships as they go about their daily life. Visitors are treated to 3-dimensional models of soil organisms in 10 to 1000 times magnification, plus they get to view specimens and films that illustrate the beauty and diversity of the life happening underneath their very feet.
If you’re planning a visit to the museum, many of the hotels in Frankfurt guest service may offer discount tickets to the Natural History Museum, located at Senckenderganlage 25. Check for guided tours and special lectures from people in the field of biology, geology and palaeontology. The Museum has impressively succeeded in vividly capturing the fascination or both young and old visitors with its history of planet Earth.
In cultures and countercultures, there are images that sometimes float freely back and forth, gaining traction in each geography, and sometimes for very simple reasons. In the case of certain kinds of music, it can get a little bit more complex, because there are elements that speak to deep sentiments that are not always visible on a surface, and some take many years to penetrate any kind of surface. In Amsterdam, there are a hundred things to consider at any given moment, when the culture starts to work its way in, and it can be challenging to negotiate one’s way around the cultures that exist here.
There are circles and concentric circles, and they each have ways of affecting each other that are not necessarily visible to outsiders, or even to travelers who have been here for awhile and think they know their way around. It’s certainly the case with smartlap music. Smartlap, or smartlappen , translates roughly as “tearjerk” or “tearjerker,” and there are many places where it can be heard. It’s a kind of folk music of Holland, and has a wide appeal, and like country music, there are places where it’s more welcome than others.
Frans Bauer, one of the country’s great folk artists, has won many awards of distinction, as well as others of not so great distinction, such as the most irritating song contest, for his ” Heb je even voor mij .” It’s not pure smartlap music, but it’s getting into the arena of what the music sounds like. Most of the city’s great hotels won’t have it playing in the elevators, but it’s actually well worth looking for.
Country, bluegrass, and other folk music styles make their way into counter cultures, usually through some kind of ironic back door, where the young people begin by making fun of it, until they realize that the cultures share many of the same sentiments. This is where it gets complex, because in sentiment, the real nostalgia of the songs start to live and come to life, and suddenly everyone is listening to the same thing, and feeling the same emotion, and the power of the music becomes inscribed in time despite time.
San Francisco’s reputation as a city on the forefront of culture is one that’s still very much in good standing. Thanks to the radical creativity of the local artists who can recognize what it has to offer, there are still plenty of places where ideas push against each other. Sometimes these give way to some splendid new experiments, and sometimes they lock, pushing against each other in new and exciting ways.
The best work probably does a little bit of both, provoking and conceding, only to provoke again. That’s how a good conversation flows, and art is always a conversation. There are many visitors to the city who come looking for a chance to explore an unusual place with the most unusual weather patterns, and then there are those who come for the food, or those who want to see what the west coast hotels are like. All of these usually have an eye for art as well.
Anyone who happens to be looking a little carefully will come across the work of John Leanos at some point. This young artist, whose work has been moving gracefully and confidently out of the emerging category lately, is working in a variety of challenging forms, and in this case the form and function are both remarkably interconnected.
He’s got a teaching history that’s as impressive as his artwork, and he’s now on the faculty at UC Santa Cruz , where he teaches Social Documentation. He also teaches a variety of other classes, most reflecting his own art practices, with subjects that range from new media theory, critical theory, and public art in the realm of social practice. The work is uniquely situated at many crossroads of culture, and is also very specifically located in San Francisco, in many instances. It’s also very large in scope, encompassing critical artistic questions that take on national and international concerns, reflecting an artistic mind that is very much ahead of its time, and well-suited to a place that’s ahead of its time.
Visiting Honolulu is an eye-opening experience. For those visitors who like to learn about the places they see, Hawaii has an amazing history to explore, and an equally fascinating present. It’s difficult to even get a small taste of the complexities of Hawaii, but it’s worth looking into, because it leads to some very interesting doors. There are many places right outside your hotel , for example, that can teach about traditional healing here, as well as offering some interesting history lessons at the same time.
There are many different naturopaths who can help to treat all sorts of illnesses. The idea is the same as that for a general family doctor, where these are ones who can serve as a catch-all for any kind of care, and make referrals for procedures that need specific expertise. The focus here is holistic, looking at mind and body, and finding the spiritual connection between these realms that are often considered separate. A good naturopath can be very beneficial to restoring balance, and do it in a way that uses the natural balance in nature, including elements and herbs.
There are also holistic practitioners in Hawaii, and these focus again on the mind, body, and spirit. The focus here is on the whole, where the individual is regarded as an entire being, with many different sides and aspects. It is the responsibility of the holistic doctor or healer to lead the patient into a state of balance. This can be achieved through diet and nutrition more than anything else, although there are kinds of healing associated with this too.
There are also plenty of doctors who are trained in western medicine, as well as locals who are trained in healing in the traditional ways. In all of these, there will be some who practice according to Chinese practices, or Polynesian philosophies, Japanese medicine, and a number of other influences. It’s possible, then, to read the histories of settlement among people here in the practices of medicine.