Go to Gozo, Not Just for The Euphony of its Name

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Category: Travel Feature

Published on Sunday, 22 August 2010 18:07

Written by Marion DS Dreyfus

It's not much to look at on the map, a smudge about a fourth of the size of the not-over-impressive island-state of Malta, midway in the Mediterranean Sea between the Atlantic Ocean and the Middle East, between Europe's drawers and Africa's haircut.
 
But the island of Gozo is a land distant from its downwind neighbors -- with not an Islamic veil anywhere. It abounds with genial British customs, despite the dazzling strangeness of the Latinate spellings of its clearly Semitic-sounding Maltese place names and words.

Some include: Zejtun (from the Hebrew, some-think-Arabic zeyit, olive). Shemeshia (obvious to a first-grade Hebrew speaker, to the sun, shemesh). San Lawrenz. Zebbug. Xewkija. Mgarr. Victoria/Rabat, a dual name for a mixed history and schizophrenic decision point. 

The carved stone ''azure window'' sentinel at the inland sea of windswept Dweirja Bay. Neolithic cave dwellings and mystery leavings near Kercem. Prehistoric temples probably older than any standing structures anywhere on the globe. Burial mounds, cart ruts and dolmen at Ta' Cenc.
 
Three islands large in history of conquest and reconquest... an even smaller smidge in the Mediterranean called Comino, chummily parenthesized by larger Gozo on the Northwest, and big, big sis Malta to the Southeast.
 
But it's a lush, green island, thanks to the blue clay that sponges in the water and yields it back slowly.

 It's an island with as rich a tapestry of history as its big sister, Malta, a little over a half-hour by massive ferry away. It offers cathedrals ornate beyond your expectations, immaculate streets swept absolutely clean by wind and insinuating rains with not a trace of cardboard or rubbish or littering anywhere.

And it has a UNESCO world heritage site that embarrasses the student of history for not knowing these temples in near-pristine deshabille containing hints of a tribal and community worship from as long ago as 1,000 years before Stonehenge, 2,500 years before the Sphinx and the Pyramids. And you thought Israel was the bee's knees for archeology?
 
Not a whole lot is known specifically about the particulars, but here are clover-leaf form temples, side by side, that hint at fertility and fecundity issues, that show evidences of some type of rituals, ash burial 1,000 years after the first temple had been abandoned, side by side 20 meters from the second. Figurines with amplitudes of breasts, hips and legs, without heads, but with fashionable pleats on a skirt-like garment above zaftig balloony legs tell some marvelous story that still awaits the devices of the future to connect and narrate into some cohesive whole.
 
Fishing villages absent any attitude, blessedly no kiosks or peddlers pestering the hiker intent on history or romantic panoramic sweeps of majesty. No bother at all, unlike the souks of the countries just a plane hop to the south. From today's local daily Times, there is a headline blazoning that trucks are destroying Gozo, with as many as 20 per hour trundling noisily across the fair isle, imagine. A whole 20 trucks per hour destroying the peace and tranquility.
 
No Jews, apparently, live on Gozo: We asked many times. Of churches and Christian signs, there are many, but no synagogues, no ancient ruins of synagogues, no preparations for bar mitzvahs or circumcision celebrations. Perhaps I did not ask the right people. It has been a truism that almost every civilization has its [infinitesimal] percentage of Jews, clinging to the barnacled underside, quietly going about its tiptoeing life.

But no, I am informed with asperity--none here. After the endless skeins of mosques in North Africa jutting up with their now-automated muezzins from the endless march of serried, militant olive tree fields, also a piquant absence of mosques, too. The Knights of Malta, the Knights of St. John, literally held the fort here against the onrushing historic map-drench of Islam.
 
Grottoes. Ravines. Dizzying island clefts that are evidences of the tectonic plates mashing imperceptibly between the African plate and the Atlantic plate. Three millimeters per year is added to one side, and 3 subtracted or subsumed, from the other. Plants hanging onto the sides of ravishing ochre cliffs a green surprise: Here are not just rockface hangers-on, but capers we might, if we harvest carefully, eat with our breakfasts or relish with our entree.

White-caps smacking the rocky shores, eroded stone fields to clamber over and marvel at--how the whorls of nature surprise; how the wind and rain pummel the shapes into an endless ongoing fascination. Hills and verdant dales. Tiny narrow winding streets in ochre and sandstone, from the high airplane air, appearing a chunky melange of beige and ecru pudding--until one lights on the island and sees first-hand how gorgeous, how variegated, how homogeneous with differences this gem-like spit of land in the cerulean and turquoise ocean is.

San Francisco Dreamin'

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Category: Travel Feature

Published on Monday, 23 August 2010 04:32

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Mark Twain famously wrote that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Based on my recent experience, Twain was only slightly exaggerating. Of course given the recent sweltering weather in New York City, I wasn’t complaining.

One reason New Yorkers feel at home in San Francisco is that you don’t need a car to get around. There are plenty of buses, commuter trains, and of course, those world famous cable cars to get you around. While the cable cars along Powell Street are fun to ride, they are very crowded and there are often long lines to board at either its downtown terminal or its northern endpoint at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Fisherman’s Wharf is the town’s most famous tourist destination for a multitude of reasons. You can choose between numerous boat rides around San Francisco Bay as well as take a ferry to legendary Alcatraz Island or to various locales in Marin or Alameda counties. Expect to find many sea lions as they have made their home at the Pier 39 outdoor shopping mall for the last 20 years.

One of the newer attractions at the Wharf is the Aquarium of the Bay which is home to over 20,000 species of aquatic life that are native to Northern California. You feel as if you are swimming with the leopard sharks and bat-rays as you walk through a tunnel that is below all of the marine life.

As you would expect from a place called Fisherman’s Wharf, there is no shortage of seafood restaurants, with the best known and oldest being Alioto’s which is celebrating its 85th anniversary. You can choose just about any Italian or seafood dish imaginable here. The dungeness crab soup is quite popular.

If you want brunch, stop by Knuckles Restaurant at the Hyatt and try the dungeness crab cake which is a lighter and tastier dish than its more famous Maryland blue crab cake cousin.
      
Two miles northwest of Fisherman’s Wharf, in the Presidio section of Golden Gate National Park, is San Francisco’s newest attraction, the Walt Disney Family Museum, which opened less than a year ago. The museum contains a treasure trove of memorabilia from the personal collections of the late Walt Disney such as his various Academy Awards as well as other honors that he was bestowed.
     
The Disney Museum is a must for baby boomers as it contains Walt’s original sketches for Mickey Mouse , Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy; behind the scenes info on beloved film classics as “Snow White,” “Pinocchio,” “Peter Pan,” “Cinderella” and “Fantasia;” and Walt himself discussing his visions of Disneyland and television’s “The Mickey Mouse Club.” The Walt Disney Family Museum is not affiliated with the Disney Corporation.
      
The San Francisco Zoo located on the city’s Ocean Beach neighborhood (nestled right against the Pacific Ocean) has one of the best primate exhibits in the United States. Sadly, the SF Zoo made national headlines in December 2007 when Tatiana, a Siberian Tiger, was able to jump her enclosure and attack three teenagers who were taunting her. One was killed while two others suffered injuries that required hospitalization. Tatiana was fatally shot by San Francisco police officer. There are still tigers at the zoo but there is a very high and thick glass partition to ensure that this tragedy is never repeated.
      
The area south of Market Street(SoMA) has radically changed since my last visit here 16 years ago. What was once a rather desolate area full of warehouses and a few factories has now become a modern Mecca of sleek hotels, restaurants and boutiques.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has moved here a few years ago. You will find paintings by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Max Ernst as well as sculptures from Alexander Calder.
      
The biggest addition to the area has been AT&T Park which is home to the San Francisco Giants. Even if you are not a baseball fan you will enjoy watching a game here. The outfield is completely open (unlike Citi Field) and you can watch the boats line up behind the right field wall in the part of San Francisco Bay that has now been dubbed McCovey Cove in honor of the Giants’ former first baseman, and Hall of Famer, Willie McCovey. When the Giants win, Astoria native Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” is played over the public address system.

There is no shortage of fine hotels. The Grand Hyatt in Union Square has great long weekend deals and is located in the heart of downtown. It’s one block from the Powell Street cable car line.

I highly recommend purchasing a San Francisco City Pass booklet which saves you a lot on a variety of attractions and allows you to ride free for a week on the city’s mass transit system.
     
Getting to San Francisco is easy and inexpensive from JFK as Forest Hills’ own JetBlue has two daily flights here.
     
For more information call (415) 974-6900 or log on to:  www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com

Fisherman’s Wharf

the Aquarium of the Bay

The Walt Disney Family Museum

The San Francisco Zoo

The Grand Hyatt

Alioto’s
 
Knuckles Restaurant

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A Dash Through Manhattan's National Parks

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Travel Feature

Published on Monday, 23 August 2010 04:29

Written by Eric Lurio

Well, fellow Manhattanites, August is about halfway over, and being broke due to that pesky recession, your "staycation" is getting kind of stale. Right.

So now would be a good time to do some of that local tourist stuff you've been meaning to do but never actually have. The stuff all those tourists do in a day, but you've been putting it off for years and years -- now's a good time to get it all over with.

Being a tourist in your own home town sounds kind of cheesy, but it's actually rather fun, and one thing millions do is drag their families or friends to see National Parks. They drive or fly for hours and hours to see a bunch of national wonders, such as Yellowstone in Wyoming, or famous tourist traps such as Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. But since you can't go to those places because you're stuck in Manhattan or Brooklyn, and you don't have a car or the money to pay for such a trip, here's an alternative.

You can visit a bunch of National Parks without ever leaving Manhattan, seven of them, in fact. And there are a few more that you can get to on the subway.

So what we're going to do is a mad dash through all of them in a day.

I first thought of this when I got slammed in the comments section for another article because there are a bunch of people out there who refused to believe that there are any National Parks east of the Mississippi River, much less New York City.

Fortunately, a ranger confirmed that there are. None of these are actually called National Parks, but under federal law, all national sites are the same, whether they're larger than the state of Rhode Island (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska -- 13,175,901 acres) or the statue of Ben Franklin in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, which is less than 20 square feet. If rangers wearing funny wide brimmed hats man it, it counts.

Since, we're mostly broke, this jaunt has to be a cheap as possible, so our investment is a one-day unlimited MetroCard, ($8.25), and an official National Park Passport ($9) to get stamps in (we have to prove we've been there, and not all these places are worth photographing). Plus one of the sites charges to get in, but we'll get to that later.

The place to start is Battery Park, at the bottom of the island. The Battery is not a national park, it's a city park, but it's here people buy tickets for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, the cost of getting TO these places is a bit high, $12, and the lines around the ticket office are usually humongous. But don't fret -- we're not going there this time. The ticket office itself is actually our first stop!

Castle Clinton National Monument, or as it used to be called, "the Old Aquarium" has been occupied since the days of the Dutch, and before the processing center at Ellis Island was built, this is where most of the immigrants to the country got off the boat. There's a small exhibit on the history of the place (it was an aquarium for most of the first half of the late century, up until the 1960s, in fact), and you can get the above mentioned passport.

Once we've seen that, and some of the street performers outside, we head east past the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to the Governor's Island Ferry. Governor's Island has been open to the public only a few years, and unless you make an advance appointment for a Wednesday or Thursday tour, you get over there except on Fridays and Weekends. However, the ferry terminal is part of the Park and you can get your passport stamped. It's a bit of a cheat, I know, but it counts.

Next we walk along the East River up to Wall Street and head west were we encounter the Federal Hall National Memorial, which is where George Washington was inaugurated and the First Congress met in 1789-90. However, this is not actually the genuine building. It was torn down in the early 19th century (preservationists are a relatively new phenomenon), and replaced with what was called a Sub Treasury, and was later used as a customs house.

There are exhibits and tours, showing where stuff would have been in the original building, and the history of the Treasury department. You can get your passport stamped in the gift shop.

Going to the end of the block we take the #4 or #5 train to City Hall, and walk a block or two north to the African Burial Ground National Monument, which in my humble opinion is the smallest National Park in the country. There's a tiny little park with a ranger standing there handing out brochures and telling you how to get to the museum, where after going through security, you get to see a short film about all the brouhaha when the cemetery was discovered around a decade or so ago. The gift shop is closed half the time, but the rangers will let you get a stamp.

Next we head south along Broadway to get on the 2 or 3 trains, where we head up all the way to 96th street, change to the One, and go further north to 125th where we head west one block to the park and the General Grant National Memorial (also known as Grant's Tomb). For most of the 20th century, our 18th President and his wife Julia laid in state in humongous marble sarcophagi as the neighborhood rotted away and the edifice was covered with graffiti and other shit. The Grant family threatened to move the General and his lady to Ohio, but the federal government stepped in. there's not much there inside anymore.

Also in Harlem is the Hamilton Grange National Memorial, where Alexander Hamilton had his digs. Unfortunately it's currently closed to the public because it was moved from another site, but sometimes the rangers will take visitors from Grants Tomb to see it. You can cheat and get a stamp for it at The Tomb.

Heading south to 116th Street, head east a block or two and get the  1 train south, changing to the express, if convenient, at 96th Street and down to Times Square, where we change to the R train, getting off at 23rd Street.

From here we head south to 20th Street, turn east and arrive at Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, which while in the right place and shape, is a replica built in the 1920s, as a precursor to the Presidential Library System. The bottom two floors are a museum, but above that, all the furniture is authentic.

Finally, we head down to Union Square to pick up 6-train, which we take down to Houston Street, where we transfer to the F-train, which we take to Essex, and two blocks west of that is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which to see you have to pay $20, more expensive than the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island, but that's because it's partly private, and because they wanted to be totally authentic, they're in violation of several building codes. You can get your stamp at the bookshop (as well as the ticket) across the street.

If you want, you can go back and see Lady Liberty, Ellis Island, and Governor's Island, the next day, but remember to go in the morning, because the ferry company doesn't do both Liberty and Ellis in the afternoon.