Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe » Northeast

Weekend Snapshot – Jumping off the Jaws Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard, USA

Sabina — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 04:00:04 +0000

My absolute favorite summertime destination in the U.S. is Martha’s Vineyard. Just four short hours via car and ferry from my home in Connecticut, this quintessentially quaint New England island comes to life in the three short months of summer, when you can enjoy all the outdoorsy activities there is no way you can handle in the brutal months of winter in this part of the world.

Now, as I sit in Israel, a million miles away from Victorian homes, sailboats and salty fishermen, I reflect on one of my very favorite activities on Martha’s Vineyard, something I’ve never done anywhere else. A real-life activity made famous in the Steven Spielberg film Jaws, little kids, teens and the occasional adult spend their summer days jumping off the American Legion Memorial Bridge, a/k/a the Jaws Bridge, into the cold waters of the bay below. I have made the leap a few times myself, and I have to say it was a blast.

I took this photo a few years ago, but I know people are still jumping off the Jaws bridge today. I’ll be joining them again soon.

Weekend Snapshot – Jumping off the Jaws Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard, USA is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Moving to the Other Side of the Earth – Reversing the Seasons

Sabina — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:45:27 +0000

As I prepare to move to Australia in a week, the weather where I live in New England has been so bizarrely hot for the past two months that the summer temperatures here at home and the winter across the earth where I am headed are playing a large role in my thoughts. Here’s how I feel about my abrupt move from one season into the other.

I moved to the Northeast many years ago, in search of a replica of the Midwest winters I remembered so fondly from my childhood — mounds of snow pummeling us as it fell out of the sky, school closures, the noise of the world rendered silent by the white soundproof padding on the ground, and more school closures. Now, after years of reliving the white, soaking it up, wallowing in it, I am sick of it. I have turned against our final season of the year and fight my way through each and every winter. No longer do I cherish white, but long for green. I have fallen in love with summer and I cannot get enough of the intensity of its heat. Typically, May and June are still spring where I live. You can’t really accurately say “Summer is here!” until July. This year my new favorite season has arrived oddly early in New England and the sun has now been incinerating us since May. For a while I assumed it was a fluke and waited for the temperatures to plummet once again. Nothing doing. It is 100% summertime.

I love sweating all day every day. Seriously. Yet I’m leaving the sizzle of summer behind. As my move to Australia takes place in a week and I sit here in 90 degree heat for the 50th day in a row, I’m feeling happy that I’m getting to experience such an early and sweltering summer, for it is wintertime where I am heading. What if I had plunged straight from wintertime temperatures here to yet more winter weather there? I can’t stand to think about it.

Of course, Australian winters resemble New England autumns and springs, according to the historical weather data I’ve looked up. So I’ll technically merely be gliding from summer to fall. And that is just great. I’ll be experiencing a new country in weather that will feel warm and perfect to me. As I sunscreen myself up for my last days of blinding sun before I head to the other side of the earth, I look forward to the mild temperatures Australia is living through right now. I think it will be fascinating to experience winter at the time of year I’m accustomed to soaking up summer.

Summer or Winter - sometimes there's not much of a difference

Thumbnail sunset photo by Angus Clyne

Moving to the Other Side of the Earth – Reversing the Seasons is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

New England’s Smallest Islands – The Thimble Islands

Sabina — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:30:16 +0000

Every year for many years I’ve blasted down Highway I-95 in Connecticut, frequently passing by a little sign near Exit 56 which states, quietly and simply, Thimble Islands. What are these “thimble islands” I would wonder, as the sign blurred by and the years moved on. I had heard on the street that these little land masses consist of many small rocks jutting out of the Long Island Sound and that throughout the generations many people have built homes atop them. Finally I had heard enough. As an island lover, I decided that I must see for myself these tiny islands so near where I live.

A few Thimble Island cruises departing from the mainland village of Stony Creek take passengers around the islands throughout the summer months. You must be content to stay on board, as most of the Thimble Islands which are inhabited are individually owned, making it almost impossible to step ashore without an invite. Twice I have gone on a Thimble Island cruise, both times motoring out onto the Long Island Sound aboard the Volsunga IV with Captain Bob, who navigates around the hundreds of masses of rocks, all the while telling tales of history and modern-day life ashore.

This Thimble Island is apparently inhabitated by a lone seagull

The number of Thimble Islands varies from around 100 to over 300, depending on the tide and on how big a rock must be before you can declare it an island. Only 23 of these large pebbles are inhabited, holding a total of approximately 85 homes. By far the most populated is Money Island, an upper middle class community of about 30 families. On the majority of the rest of the populated islands stand just one house, allowing the home owner the very cool right to say “I own an island.”

Only seven islands have electricity, courtesy of underwater cables. Most homeowners prefer to do without, so they can experience the same peaceful life as did inhabitants in years gone by. The Thimble Islands weren’t always 100% silence and tranquility, though. This section of the Long Island Sound was a very happening resort area in the early 20th Century. Then in 1938 the New England Hurricane took its 30-foot waves and wiped the resorts right off the rocks. Not in the mood to rebuild, the rich began partying on Cape Cod instead.

Cut-n-Two West and Cut-n-Two East

The hurricane of 1938 also caused the division of an island called Cut-n-Two, when its waters and winds destroyed a little wooden footbridge that hooked together two pieces of land ever so slightly separated across a narrow slice of water. To this day the bridge has not been rebuilt and the two land masses stand just outside of each other’s grasp. Before the hurricane tore the bridge asunder, on shore dwelt a lady named Little Miss Emily, a dwarf performer with P.T. Barnum’s Circus. General Tom Thumb, a fellow dwarf, quite loved Miss Emily and courted her mightily on Cut-n-Two. Unhappily, their relationship floundered and, like the island, they parted ways.

For Sale - $375,000 Gazebo (island included)

My favorite Thimble Island is Demijohn Rock a/k/a Cedar Rock. At some point, someone wanted to build here, very badly. Alas, this speck of stone was too minute for a house. Dreams can die hard, though. Instead of a house, the would-be island home owner erected a wooden gazebo. I noticed it for sale last year on my first Thimble Island cruise, and this year I saw it again, a victim of the real estate market. $375,000 is its asking price, which really is quite reasonable for island real estate, I think.

I heard these stories from Captain Bob, who is a great teller of tales. The ever-changing tide causes him to navigate different courses on each Thimble Island cruise, sharing the stories of whichever islands he happens to pass. If I go on enough of these Thimble Island cruises, I think eventually I’ll be able to piece together a complete picture of these tiny islands in the Long Island Sound

New England’s Smallest Islands – The Thimble Islands is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Opposites Attract in Brooklyn – A Day of Barge Music and Coney Island

Sabina — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:15:43 +0000

If I a location grabs me, I shall return. Three weeks after the first foray of my life across the Brooklyn Bridge, I walked its planks once more.

Barge Music is part of what I was after. I had learned of a coffee barge, built in 1899 and now renovated and docked on the Brooklyn side of the East River, where regular musical performances are held. Inside the barge, surrounded by a beautiful wood paneled interior and sitting on cushioned seats, the audience faces a stage in front of a large window through which you can watch the Lower Manhattan skyline while listening to the music. Every once in a while they offer free concerts, and this day was one such day. Usually several performers take the stage, but now a solo pianist played. Acoustics is what Barge Music is all about. In such a small room the music sounds much different than in a large concert hall or outdoors. I would have preferred to have heard string instruments, though, which I’d read are what are typically featured at these concerts.

I exited this cultured setting and headed for the next obvious stop for people who have spent the afternoon listening to Chopin and Mozart – Coney Island. Home of the famous Nathan’s hot dog stand, the legendary 82-year-old Cyclone roller coaster, and a sideshow with advertisements so wild and raunchy I couldn’t even stand the thought of seeing it! Coney Island is about a half hour subway trip from Brooklyn Heights – the very last Brooklyn-bound stop on the D, F, N and Q lines.

As I walked out the subway exit, I encountered what appeared to be a ghost town. I hadn’t known what to expect, although the colorful yet worn buildings didn’t surprise me. The near-empty streets did, though. But it was still springtime. The crowds just weren’t swarming yet. The few people who were at Coney Island on this day were gathered around Nathan’s hot dog stand, where each 4th of July a major hot dog eating contest takes place. I hadn’t eaten yet, so I headed to an outdoor table to eat not 100 but one chili dog. Along with cheese fries sprinkled with bacon bits, the meal was actually pretty good.

Coney Island, I discovered, is both a neighborhood in Brooklyn as well as an amusement park. Nothing separates the park from the residential areas. How many neighborhoods do you know with their own roller coaster and Ferris wheel? This was just so cool. I walked around the amusement park to find that almost none of the rides were open yet and a lot of game booth attendants were hanging around inside their booths, waiting for players who never arrived. I had the entire park almost to myself.

The Coney Island boardwalk called, though. According to the signs I saw, this runs along Brighton Beach. With more game booths and shops lining one side of the boardwalk and the beautiful beach lying on the other, this was a great stroll. I walked out onto the pier, where some serious fishing was occurring. I had to dodge fishing poles all along the way as well as one extremely intoxicated older man who was trying to talk a younger and larger man into a fistfight. Yet another man wished to sell me some of the big fish which he had caught and were now lying at his feet. It was a tough decision, but I eventually elected not to carry dead fish in my hands back into Manhattan and onto the train for the ride back to Connecticut.

The sun was beginning to set, so I climbed aboard the subway. With a portion of its track above ground, I watched as Brooklyn sped past the windows. The ride back to Grand Central Terminal took 45 minutes. New York City is never-ending.

Opposites Attract in Brooklyn – A Day of Barge Music and Coney Island is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Across the Brooklyn Bridge

Sabina — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:10:31 +0000

Recently I headed where thousands go every day but I’d never thought to venture in all my travels to New York – across the bridge from Manhattan into Brooklyn.

I travel frequently into the city, often for a taste of the world’s best cold drink, the bubble tea of Chinatown. Also, of course, I delve into areas previously unexplored by me, my last such foray being to the world famous (yet rarely touched by my feet), Central Park.

On the day I decided I must at last check out the Brooklyn Bridge, the sun shone bright and the air held just the right amount of breeze to make for a perfect walk from Grand Central Terminal down toward this landmark. Crossing the bridge is actually a fairly popular activity for some visitors to New York, I’d read. About 2,000 people a day traverse the over 6,000-foot bridge. As I started my walk, it became apparent that what I had read was probably wrong. There must be 2,000 people at any given time on that brige.

The world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge is still a mammoth structure even by today’s standards. I was slowed by the mass of people – and by the desire to stop and take a photo every couple of minutes – so it took a good half hour to cross. Its presence in the lower Manhattan skyline is an impressive sight, but when walking right on its wooden planks, alongside its collosal structural weave of steel cables and ropes and gazing up at its stone towers, its attraction for so many people becomes evident.

People who have journeyed to the Brooklyn Bridge to fill their memory cards with photos of steel, stone and skyline were not the only traffic on this bridge, though. Others clearly on their way to their routine lives on one side or the other were crossing along with us, some on bicycles with their riders ringing bells to warn us out of they way, some jogging, others walking with purposeful strides past us, not stopping to soak up the sights they see every day.

My own purposeful but slow stride was set to take me to DUMBO, a veritable wonderland of shops, galleries and restaurants, so I have read. Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, long for DUMBO, lies beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and the close-by Manhattan Bridge, just several blocks away. Once I hit this area, I found old railroad tracks embedded in cobblestone streets lined with the upscale shops, restaurants, etc. which I had come to see. This 19th Century meets 21st Century was the primary appeal of this much-ballyhooed area, though, in my eyes, so I moved on to the waterfront.

Since this was a clear day, from the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park on the banks of the East River I was able to see the Statue of Liberty to the left, lower Manhattan staight across the river, and the Empire State Building standing above the rest of the city stretched out on its own island to the right. The park itself, although filled with children playing, was large enough to absorb their noise.

I finally had my fill of the water and the skyline and headed up the hill to see what neighborhoods I could see. I’d always thought of Brooklyn as a city with brownstone-lined streets, somewhat dirty, somewhat dangerous. Now I walked the neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, indeed filled with brownstones, as far as my eyes could see, down every street I ventured. Dirty and dangerous? Each and every one of these streets was strikingly peaceful, calm and quiet. Perhaps a movie or a book I’d read when I was a kid had given me the negative impression. Surely not all of Brooklyn is so nice, but these streets were charming.

By now it was way past lunchtime, so I headed to Henry Street, where I could get a Mediterranean food fix. Heights Falafel, on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, I’d read, was good and cheap, so I stopped in. This was a tidy, clean little place with two really sweet people behind the counter. My falafel sandwich was the best I’ve ever had in the U.S. and, at $3.50, impressively inexpensive.

I’d been walking several hours by now and decided to head back. One more stop, though, at the Fulton Ferry Landing, where water taxis speed around and people mill about, gazing at the views across the river. I discovered that an old barge docks at the landing, where several times a week you can buy tickets for about $35 to come aboard and listen to live chamber music inside. This was too unique to miss. I vowed to hear this music, and sealed a promise to myself to return to Brooklyn.

Across the Brooklyn Bridge is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

If It’s Frigid It Must Be Newport

Sabina — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:15:50 +0000

A sharp imagination is useful when you’re waiting for summer to hit after seven months of winter. During the springtime days that so slowly crawl into hot-ish weather, I some years wind up traveling to Newport, Rhode Island in an attempt to help push the season into being. One of the most happening towns on the East Coast, Newport bursts to life in a serious manner when the season officially arrives on Memorial Day weekend. Like people, though, this little New England town has trouble waiting for summer and opens its closed-for-winter doors to the world when it feels the air slightly warming. After traveling along the highway past thawing trees just beginning to bloom green, arriving at this spot on the sea does help me pretend that summer is, at last, born.

One of Newport’s biggest draws is its 19th Century mansions, misused as mere summer cottages by the stupefyingly wealthy in the Roaring 20′s and earlier. These buildings, large enough to house a village, are now put to far better use as open houses through which tourists walk and gawk. At the Breakers, the grandest of the Newport mansions and also its most popular, an approximately two-hour line awaited me the one time I decided to embark on an exploration of its 65,000 square feet, I was with someone in a wheelchair, and a woman immediately pulled us out of line and led us through a tiny side entrance into the mega house. We didn’t need the special treatment, but I did not fight my way back out into the crowd. Instead, we took a rare ride in an elevator that was installed when the home’s original owner, Cornelius Vanderbilt, suffered a stroke. We then joined up with a group of people who’d endured the lengthy outside wait and took a tour through the mansion’s 70 rooms, loaded up with jaw dropping wealth.

I’m far happier, as are many people, walking around the backs of the mansions on a pathway at the edge of a cliff running alongside the Atlantic Ocean. Approximately two-thirds of this 3.5-mile Cliff Walk are pure and simple sidewalk. Travel far enough, though, and you’ll stop strolling and start balancing, very carefully, on rocks and boulders jutting out of the sand and leading you on a precarious and challenging path to the end. Or you can be boring and turn back.

My boyfriend and I love traveling to Newport together most every year, wanting to get a head start on the summer. Scores of shops, bed and breakfasts and restaurants are stationed around Newport’s harbor, which, like every good harbor, fills with sailboats when summer hits. It is difficult to believe that my favorite season is so close by when the air still hangs about, frigid. Enough boats stand anchored in this harbor in the pre-summer weeks, though, to make it somewhat possible to pretend that the season is blasting away.

Inexplicably, during all of our trips to Newport, my boyfriend and I have taken almost no photos. Here is one shot, though, which he took last spring, of a lone boat that caught both our eyes. Often, even in the midst of loud and gaudy glamour, it is the simple things that stand out the most.

The Breakers and the Cliff Walk photos by pshutterbug

If It’s Frigid It Must Be Newport is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Springtime in the City – New York’s Central Park

Sabina — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:00:18 +0000

The East Coast was pummeled with a perfect spring Saturday this weekend, prompting me to head in to New York for a while. A walking tour focusing on Central Park’s 19th Century history was the lone item on my agenda. So, of course, I took a train that pulled in to the city with barely enough minutes left for me to rush by foot the approximately 30 blocks to the starting point. 19th Century New York had long drifted away by the time I halted inside the East 65th Street entrance. So I began to soak up the atmosphere of Central Park in the here and now. The sights within the park as well as the surprisingly awesome views of Manhattan projecting itself above the trees ended up occupying the entirety of my day.

I’ve touched Central Park before. Many times I have seen horses lined up on the south entrance with people climbing up to embark on the classic horse-drawn carriage ride through the park. Once, I rode in the back seat of a car through the few streets that allow traffic. My boyfriend and I have dined just inside the park’s west side at the famous Tavern on the Green (which neither of us thought was very good). I’ve spent hours wandering around inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stretches for several blocks along its Fifth Avenue boundary. But I’ve never walked around inside the park itself.

Saturday I was in. So I stayed. Just several steps within the park the cacophony of the city ceased, leaving me with a bit of an out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere feel.

Long ago I’d read that Central Park is approximately as big as the principality of Monaco. 843 acres is small if you are a self-governed land. But if you are a park, you are vast. This Monaco-esque area of New York holds two zoos, 26,000 trees, 9,000 benches, almost 50 ball fields and playgrounds, and 55 sculptures. As I strolled, a man behind me spoke to his small daughter – “Sculptures or rocks? Which do you climb better?” A few steps later and I saw why he asked. Dozens of children were crawling all over a group of large animal sculptures while parents looked on. This is apparently a popular activity in Central Park. The rocks of which the man spoke jut out of the park’s surfaces in many large formations, giving park-goers rather comfortable spots on which to sit or lie. Many people choose to recline on the grass. I chose a large slab, shared by a man napping with his bicycle.

Another sort of sculpture exists in the park, which I have seen as I’ve touched its periphery in years past. Here and there performance artists painted in silver or bronze stand atop small pedestals, frozen in place just long enough to convince you they are metal. Then – motion. I walked up behind one silver person-shaped object from behind, not thinking for an instant that it was anything other than a statue wearing a tutu. But the “it” was a ballerina, I discovered, when she began moving gracefully from one pose to another.

One sight I have previously twice traveled to Central Park to see is Strawberry Fields, a small wooded area dedicated to the late John Lennon. When I first visited this spot just inside the West 72nd Street entrance, I came immediately upon the colorful Imagine mosaic built into the walkway. Some years later I returned to visit this and was disappointed to find it under renovation with all of its color washed out and surrounded by objects preventing people from getting close. Saturday I found Imagine again, this time greeting me in grey and black. Am I misremembering that many years earlier this mosaic was multicolored?

Colors blossomed up from elsewhere, though, proving, as if I had any doubt, that this was a perfect day to discover Central Park. Trees blooming with purple and pink lent the park a gorgeous post-Easter feel, their blossoms so thick it seemed they were trying to hide the city which stood just behind them. In part, they succeeded.

Within Central Park are possibly the grandest views of Manhattan that I have ever seen. The view was so sweeping it seemed as if it could stretch as far south as the Brooklyn Bridge. Walking around its serene and silent lake and its grassy, wooded hills while gazing up at the massive buildings just blocks away on streets throbbing with traffic makes the park feel like a secret, perhaps somewhat unreal, spot on earth.

Springtime in the City – New York’s Central Park is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Outdoor Love – Let The Solo Bicycle Trips Begin

Sabina — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:29:27 +0000

Spring fever has begun to travel across my mind.

As I sit locked inside – safe, warm and dry from the cold rain that’s beat against my house for three days, my mind travels back to just last week, a week packed with days that begged me to go outside. Bicycle riding in the woods is where the outdoors asked me to travel. How to do the bicycle riding? Along paths sparsely populated, paths that know a summer crush of people will fill them in a few months.

The weather opened these trails for their first test run of the year, when temperatures shot up to the low 50′s (approximately 10 to 12 degrees to non-Americans) after a winter of impossible cold. Trees overhanging the asphalt pathways were still stark – no hint of a leaf or a bud, only brown. Large patches of snow topped with ice lay in shady areas, surprising spots of slipperiness on days that held the scents of spring. I swerved and traveled onward.

Most other visitors to the trails walked and jogged, but a few others besides myself knew how to do the bicycle thing. We hit the paths on bikes, all of us wearing thin layers to keep the slight cold out as the wind whizzed past. Breathing deep the air just starting to warm as our hemisphere rotates closer to the sun, I thought about bike travels past and future, on the mainland and on the islands near my home, feeling grateful the following months mean more.

A Bicycle Trip on Martha's Vineyard

My first local love is Martha’s Vineyard, with over fifty miles of thickly wooded bicycle paths winding their way from town to town and roads safe for traveling on two wheels from one favorite spot to the next.

Blocks on Block Island

Block Island, just off the coast of Rhode Island, is another summer bicycle love, with near-empty roads that show off the landscape against the ocean.

A Little Pond at a Big Beach

Here at home, the paths at the beach, the trails in the woods and the country roads of certain small towns provide a second home for me when the weather is warm and dry.

This week is full of hope for more trips across the trails.

Thumbnail Vintage Bicycle photo by Daisy’s Little Cottage

Outdoor Love – Let The Solo Bicycle Trips Begin is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

The Pains of Travel – When Shoes Aren’t Made For Walking

Sabina — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:11:56 +0000

If there is anywhere you can travel in the United States and look absolutely as bodacious or hellacious as you wish, it is New York City.

I personally like to land somewhere in between a ragamuffin and royalty, which leads me to dress simply yet stylishly. Looking fashionable in New York in the winter means boots on the feet, so this is what I wore on my last day trip to the city with my boyfriend. We like to walk rather than take the subways or cabs, so for New York purposes I own a couple pairs of stylish yet perfectly comfortable boots. Very unfortunately, on this day I chose a different pair that, although previously worn when walking the city streets, now lashed out at me. After an hour, the soles turned to steel, the leather hardened into concrete and what had been boots morphed into foot severing devices. I wanted to rip them off my feet and throw them to the ground. So I did.

On the floor of a shoe store is where I actually hurled them, an emergency pit stop that saved the day. “Come on, pick them up,” my boyfriend said, as I walked away, leaving them alone on the floor to die. “Later you’ll be glad you have them.” So I threw the things in a bag as I walked out of the store wearing my newfound best friends – $30 cushiony pillows of joy known as sandals. With these and a pair of newly-bought thick socks to shield my feet from the cold, I felt like I was walking on sponges. The relief was intense.

My New Best Friends

If you’re planning on doing a lot of walking when you travel, here’s some advice to help you avoid sinking so deep into a pit of pain that you have to unexpectedly spend money just to put one foot in front of the other.

1. Think. Before you walk out the door for even a half day of walking, ask yourself are these comfortable shoes for traveling more than one mile? (that’s approximately two kilometers to everyone but us Americans). If the answer is yes, ask yourself again. Really? Am I positive? Have they caused me even a little pain before? Minor discomfort while strolling the mall can turn into fiery jabs that feel like death knells when roaming around all day.

2. Bring relief supplies. Namely, Band-Aids and a pair of socks. Seriously. Band-Aids might cushion any blisters or cuts well enough to get you through the remainder of your day. If you’re wearing sandals, bring a pair of socks in case the sandals begin to hate you. If you’re wearing shoes with a pair of thin socks, thicker socks could help lessen the blows of the shoes if they begin to attack your feet. If the socks you started out with are thick, a thinner pair might help, as they won’t shove your feet quite as tightly into the offending shoes.

3. Carry backup shoes. Chances are if you’re on a day-long walking excursion you’ll be carrying a small backpack or a large bag anyway. So throw in a pair of comfortable walking shoes like lightweight sandals or sneakers. If you’re concerned about appearances, rest assured you’ll look better wearing these than you will hobbling.

As for my scythe-like boots, am I glad I didn’t leave them lying on the floor where I threw them? No.

Five-inch heels thumbnail photo by
Northhampton Museum

The Pains of Travel – When Shoes Aren’t Made For Walking is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe

Bubble Tea in Chinatown, NYC

Sabina — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:30:37 +0000

Stumbling unexpectedly upon something, somewhere that catches your eye, your mind and your heart forever is a pretty rare event. Re-visting these attention-grabbing somethings even just one time can be quite exciting. And multiple times? Oh, the glee.

When I travel down to New York, one something that long ago grabbed and has forever held my attention is the bubble tea of Chinatown. Here it is – your choice of tea blended with milk and served over ice in a tall glass with a fat straw sticking out so you can suck dark-colored marble-sized gooey, chewy balls of tapioca off the bottom. Sound repugnant? It’s fabulous. This tea is part of the reason New York City is on my map.

My boyfriend cringes and shudders and makes horrible faces each time I speak lovingly of this tea in our life at home. Traveling with me to my favorite little tea shop on earth in Chinatown, sitting at the same table and watching me slurp up tapioca ball after tapioca ball out of a glass filled with thick purple, green or black fluid is a testament to the depth of his feelings for me. He sits politely, sipping a nice, normal cup of hot tea, minus tapioca, while I chug-a-lug myself into a cross-eyed state. He loves me.

Pretty Bubble Tea

I discovered these delectable giant chewy glasses of tea many years ago while roaming the streets. The Green Tea Cafe announced itself on the front of a shop on Mott Street and, being an avid drinker of green tea, I entered. Before me stood very small tables with incredibly small stools filled with people drinking colorful drinks with dark circles at the bottoms of their glasses. “What is that?” I asked my waiter, a question that sealed my fate.

I was into this huge time beginning with my first glass of the bizarre substance. To add to my happiness while drinking, I ordered an appetizer. And, as I sat at a table near the back of the restaurant, struggling to manage the tapioca shooting its way up my straw for the first time, my waiter, an exuberant and friendly guy, patiently taught me how to use chopsticks for the very first time, sticking with me till I got it just right. First impressions carry a lot of weight, and this little extra touch welded The Green Tea Cafe fondly into my long-term memory.

As a bubble tea ~~aficionado~~ fanatic, in the early days I would travel alone to Chinatown, first driving in my car to the train station, then taking a train in to New York, then taking a subway downtown, then walking the remaining distance to the cafe – a journey of about three hours – just to get a fix of this stuff. Having utilized multiple modes of transportation to reach my destination, I felt strongly that drinking just one glass of the tea would be a waste. Plus, all that travel made me really thirsty. So on each trip I managed to suck down three teas, one glass of bliss after the other. What a charge.

As deeply as I wished for this tea to be more readily available and as many times as I searched unsuccessfully for it back home in Connecticut, once I noticed that these bubble tea shops were springing up in other parts of New York, my feelings were mixed. While I was glad I didn’t have to travel all the way down to Chinatown to enter bubble tea paradise, its presence in other areas diminished the special aura of the tea. Several years have passed since I’ve seen those other cafes. Hopefully, they have vanished.

Yet there is still at least one more bubble tea restaurant, standing just a few doors down from my favorite tea cafe. I partook of their bubbles once, only to feel guilt. My original bubble tea experience will always be the special one, and it is the Green Tea Cafe which I will hold forever in my thoughts. If I do ever locate another bubble tea shop, I may just pass it by. I surely don’t want to ever again experience the guilt of drinking someone else’s bubbles.

All Gone

Bubble Tea in Chinatown, NYC is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe