Roaming Tales

One of the great pleasures of travelling is spending time in a city’s parks and gardens and the fact that it is winter should be no impediment. It might not be the time of year to sunbathe, enjoy spring and summer flowers, and go boating, but there is a quiet enjoyment in walking through a winter landscape.

I find I notice the bones of the park more - the outlines of the trees with the mesh of branches and birds’ nests interlaced against the sky and the layout of paths and rock formations. The colours are different, mostly muted pastels and neutrals of bark and stone but also the shocking emerald green of moss against a dark, moist trunk, and the deep scarlet of winter berries.

On my recent trip to New York I made a special effort to visit some of the city’s parks and gardens despite the season, and I wasn’t disappointed. I have already spent time in Hyde Park since my return to London and I am pondering a trip to Kew Gardens in a coming weekend.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

There are botanic gardens in every borough of New York but Brooklyn Botanic Garden is one of the most popular, with 52 acres next door to the Brooklyn Museum and Prospect Park. I’m told the garden is most spectacular in spring when the cherry blossoms are in bloom. Meanwhile, I imagine the rose garden and a Shakespearean garden with plants from the bard’s plays and poetry are probably best enjoyed in summer.

But the grounds are lovely in winter, if less showy, and particularly the Japanese Garden. There is a huge pond, fringed with trees and plants and a wooden pagoda on the water’s edge. The pond, encircled by a stone path and crossed with a small arched bridge, has a veneer of thin ice and a large wooden structure, bright orange-red in the shape of a Japanese character, emerges from the centre. This is a torii and indicates the presence of a shrine nearby; the shrine itself is up the hill secluded within a pine grove.

The Botanic Garden also has some outstanding conservatories with displays including bonsais, orchids, desert flora, and rainforest. This is also a great place to catch your breath and have a coffee especially if it’s a cold day.

My visit to the Botanic Garden, on my last day in New York, coincided with a walking tour on how to best enjoy the gardens in winter and how to beat the winter blues. I stumbled across the group about 10 minutes into the tour and decided to join in. It was led by Lynne Spevack, a volunteer at the garden and a qualified psychologist, so her tour mixed in highlights of the park and an explanation about what was special or unique in winter, with advice on beating the winter blues. (Tips included getting a daily quota of daylight, keeping a regular exercise routine, the use of special lamps, getting away for a holiday if possible).

Unbeknownst to me, a reporter for the New York Times was also on the tour and he has written a travel piece, which appeared last weekend. I came across this entirely by accident but I was tickled about it because I am in the photograph - the one standing on the far right in the floppy wide-brimmed hat! The next tour is February 3 and it is free with the $8 admission to the garden.

Wildlife in the city

I also visited both Prospect Park in Brooklyn and returned to Central Park in Manhattan. On Christmas day my friend and I went for a walk through Prospect Park and were surprised by how many people were out and about. The road around the park was quite busy with joggers, cyclists, inline skaters and skateboarders. Wollman Ice Rink was open and filled with skaters whirling around on the ice to the tune of Silent Night. Japanese wedding parties were having their photos taken in the Oriental Pavilion. Old men were standing by the shore feeding the ducks and Canadian geese, flapping their enormous wings on the icy water. The only thing we needed to complete the picture was a blanket of snow to create the perfect image of a White Christmas.

The following week I met a friend in Manhattan and we took a walk through Central Park. This time of year is one of the peak tourist times and I don’t think that Central Park is ever truly quiet, except maybe up in the far northern end. Certainly when we went it was full of people. Skating was a feature once again - ice skating on one of the two rinks in Central Park, and elsewhere a group of rollerskaters dancing with music blaring from two enormous speakers. There were horse and carriage rides through the park but we preferred to ride a painted wooden horse on the old-fashioned carousel.

What I didn’t expect to see was wildlife - this was hardly a safari. But New York is nothing if not surprising and in both parks I saw a wild hawk. I was amazed enough in Prospect Park but to see another one a few days later in Central Park really impressed me. It was eating and we could see white feathers - or fur, I’m not sure which - flying off the tree as it pulled apart its victim. In London the city authorities keep tame hawks to keep the pigeon population down, but these were wild. I’m told that both parks are large enough to provide habitat for birds of prey and that there are probably plenty of rodents for them to hunt.

Ghostly encounters

It’s not quite a park or a garden but another place for a winter stroll is Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. This is the resting place for scores of prominent Brooklynites, from Frank Morgan who played the wizard in Wizard of Oz to Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, first black woman doctor in New York State. We didn’t have a map but stumbled across the grave for Henry Bergh, the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He had a huge pyramid, with an equally big casting of a horse, chickens, dog and cat on the ground beneath. Mostly the graveyard was filled with Victorian-era gravestones, particularly angels but also some rather impressive mausoleums and tombs that looked to be bigger than my London flat. Winter is perfect for a graveyard stroll - on the day of our visit it was overcast with a soft mist, and it would be even better in the snow. My only tip is to keep an eye on the time because some exits close earlier than others and it can be a long hike from one end of the cemetery to the other.

3 Comments »

Tibet has always seemed a magical, mystical place to me. I saw the Dalai Lama speak in Sydney when I was about sixteen, I have seen films like Kundun and read books like Seven Years in Tibet. But I have never been to Tibet, or indeed anywhere in the Himalayas.

It seems that plenty of others have. Tibet has been hammered by high-impact tourism for several years now and in 2007 for the first time, the annual number of visitors has exceeded the total population of Tibet. Even in the best of times it would be hard for Tibetan culture to survive, let alone thrive under these circumstances. Sadly, Tibetans don’t live in the best of times.

Since 1950 when the Chinese seized control of Tibet, there has been a steady exodus of Tibetans and an equally inexorable influx of Han Chinese into this tiny Himalayan kingdom. The population of Tibet is only 2.8 million, while the population of China is close to one billion, so outnumbering the Tibetans is not a difficult task. The rule is oppressive, according to both Tibetans themselves and outside observers, and many Tibetans feel compelled to make the terrible, risky journey across the Himalayas to live in exile in Dharamsala in northern India.

Yet China has been promoting Tibet as a tourist destination. There are new air and rail links bringing in more tourists than ever before. Most of the tourist industry in Tibet is run by Chinese and the Tibetans see little benefit. The earthly paradise of Shangri-La is no longer a myth but a marketing ploy (a few years ago the Chinese authorities renamed an existing Tibetan city as Shangri-La and it’s now full of resorts and shopping malls).

As far as I can see, there’s no real way to visit Tibet as a tourist and be part of the solution, not the problem. It would make me far too sad and I don’t want to be complicit in the Chinese occupation. I would rather go to Nepal or Bhutan for the Himalayan experience, and Dharamsala for the Tibetan cultural experience. My friend Vanessa Walker has spent time in Dharamsala and wrote a rather wonderful book called Mantras and Misdemeanours, which has inspired me to make the trip one day.

If I ever do go to Tibet, I hope it will be in happier times, or to make a genuine difference to people’s lives, whether by reporting on the situation as a journalist, or with immediate, practical assistance.

Speaking of the Himalayas and making a difference to people’s lives, Antonia at Perceptive Travel has posted about the death of Sir Edmund Hillary, reminding us that he should be remembered as much for the work he did to help the people of Nepal as for the fact that he climbed Mount Everest.

No Comments »

In Washington DC we stayed in Hotel Rouge, a luxury boutique hotel about 10 minutes’ walk north of the White House. I found the hotel online via searching on Google and the New York Times, checked out the reviews from other travellers on Trip Advisor, and then booked via the hotel website. It’s a good example of how much of my travelling life is now organised online - I didn’t even realise until we had already checked in that the place was also written up in my edition of Lonely Planet USA.

What I was looking for in a hotel was a combination of amenity, personality, price and location. I didn’t want a faceless chain hotel decked out in boring beige and I didn’t fancy slumming it in a hostel when it was meant to be a romantic break for two, yet I also didn’t want to spend a fortune. Fortunately, a few things worked in my favour. Firstly, of course, the US dollar is at an historic lowpoint and I came armed with British pounds. Secondly, winter in Washington DC, even the week before Christmas, is low season. Thirdly, booking direct through the hotel’s website gave me access to web specials. The room was $98 per night plus tax, which is only about £50 or £25 per person - excellent value for a nice hotel in the centre of a capital city.

The hotel had all the amenities you might expect. Our room was huge, with a king-size bed, two arm chairs, a desk with a TV, a closet and a large en suite bathroom. Downstairs there was a bar, a gym, and I believe there are car parking facilities for guests. There is broadband internet - with a wireless service throughout the hotel and the added option of an ADSL cable on the desk. My experience was that the internet was reliable and fast and also, importantly, it was free. One of my pet peeves is when a hotel markets its wireless broadband and it turns out to be something that you have to pay for. It always makes me feel like I’ve been hoodwinked, especially if it was a deciding factor in choosing the hotel. To me, it’s like charging to use the hotel pool.

It also had buckets of personality. Far from being bland and beige, the hotel décor is a deep red, as per the “rouge” moniker. One quirky extra is the cold pizza and - continuing the red theme - Bloody Marys served free in the lobby every day. However, since this is served between 11am and midday and we were generally out and about sightseeing by this time, we never had the chance to partake. I enjoyed the atmosphere in the small, red-decorated bar, and sampled a couple of drinks from the cocktail list. I found the serving staff, at both the reception and in the bar, to be friendly and knowledgeable.

The location was excellent. Apart from anything else, it turned out to be directly opposite the Australian Embassy, so I guess it would have been convenient had either of us needed consular assistance! As well as being walking distance to the northern side of the White House and a slightly longer walk down to the Mall and the memorials, it was a 10 minute walk in the other direction to Dupont Circle and Massachusetts Ave, which has a number of good cafés and shops. From here, you can use the Metro service to get to anywhere you want to go - to Union Station for inter-city Amtrak services, down to Chinatown for food, to the Smithsonian Institute, or up to the National Zoo.

As for price, well I must admit the bill came to more than I had anticipated. Our bill included three nights’ accommodation, one day’s breakfast for two people, one night’s dinner and drinks for two people, and telephone calls to New York, plus tax and tips. The total bill was $513.48, or £266.70. This translates to £88.90 per night, or £44.45 per person. The main reason was that they really stung us on the telephone calls. I made quite a few calls but they were all very short and the minimum charge for a call to New York was about $8 - double that if the call lasted more than a couple of minutes. I was aware that hotels generally charge a premium for telephone calls, however I thought that it would still be cheaper than using my UK mobile telephone (cell phone). In actual fact, I think the mobile would have been cheaper, which just goes to show how much of a rip-off this was. The other reason was the bar bill - two light meals (we both had a salad), two alcoholic drinks and one soft drink, plus a 20% tip came to about $70. The drinks were nice but the food was quite ordinary and we could have eaten better and more cheaply downtown.

I would definitely recommend Hotel Rouge as a place to stay in Washington DC. It’s fun and funky, it’s extremely comfortable and well located, there’s a gym and free internet, and you might even get a free Bloody Mary if you sleep late. My advice would be to book online, go elsewhere for food and avoid the telephone.

This hotel was reviewed anonymously and paid for in full.

No Comments »