07/20/2008

Big Apple waterfalls gush with potential
NEW YORK — It was Saturday on the first weekend of the New York City Waterfalls public art project, and our reservoir of faith was running dry.

07/13/2008

New botanical gardens brighten the coast of Maine
BOOTHBAY, Maine — The coast of Maine is probably better known for lobsters and windjammers than rose gardens and flowering dogwood trees. But at one of America’s newest gardens, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, you’ll find nearly 1,300 varieties of plants, world-class sculptures and a restaurant that uses herbs grown on the grounds. The garden also has trails that offer classic Maine scenery, from evergreen trees to lobster boats.

07/06/2008

For a real rush in Manhattan rush hour, try a rickshaw
NEW YORK — Among the experiences that make one go “Eek!,” tooling around Manhattan in a rickshaw ranks high, falling somewhere between a cab ride during rush hour and walking through Times Square after the theaters let out. Some of the bike-drawn buggies come equipped with seat belts; others don’t. You decide your threshold of thrill.

06/30/2008

A Summer Series: Going with the wind
Facing high gas prices and less money to splurge, many people are choosing to stay close to home for vacation. This summer, The Journal will help you find some activities and outings nearby. Some may be old favorites, while others you’ve never tried.

06/29/2008

Saugus, Mass., where our steel industry was forged
SAUGUS, Mass. — It ran for only 22 years, but the iron works established on the banks of the Saugus River in 1646 would free a colony from dependence on British manufacturing, create a model for the American factory town, and launch the world’s most powerful steel industry.

06/22/2008

Tour Cape Cod by bike and coast by the gas stations
My fiancee, Marilyn, and I love Cape Cod. We make one or more trips every year, sometimes midweek in the summer, more often in the “off” seasons (which is about nine months a year). Mostly to indulge our passion for biking.

06/15/2008

Think you know all about Brooklyn? Well, it’s time to think again
NEW YORK — On your next New York City jaunt, you might consider bypassing the tried and true of Manhattan for the city streets less traveled. Just a hop, skip and a borough away lies Brooklyn, ripe for its own exploration.

06/08/2008

FDR was forever drawn to his Hudson River estate
“All that is in me goes back to the Hudson,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said. And he often returned, as president and private citizen, to the beautiful and bountiful Hudson River Valley. Fed by the Atlantic Ocean and fresh Adirondack streams, the Hudson flows through a rolling landscape of secret vales, voluptuous hills and dramatic cliffs and mountains. The site of critical battles in the Revolutionary War, the Hudson became the new nation’s key waterway, while its mystic grandeur inspired the Hudson River School of painting.

06/01/2008

Quabbin Reservoir draws nature lovers to ‘accidental wilderness’
BELCHERTOWN, Mass. — The sun hadn’t even started to rise over the Quabbin Reservoir before would-be anglers arrived for the recent opening day of fishing season, their boats lined up at its three launch areas.

05/25/2008

Great museums, parks and pubs, and they’re all in your backyard: Boston
They call it America’s Walking City. And indeed, it’s easy to pass your days in Boston meandering from one famous site (the Paul Revere House) to another (the Union Oyster House). But follow the locals and you’ll discover what makes Bostonians so loyal to their hometown: a mix of green parks, elegant shopping, undersung museums and cozy pubs (and we don’t mean Cheers). Here are a dozen tourist traps paired with their lesser-known equivalents that locals treasure.

05/18/2008

Yin and yang of the art world meet in the Berkshires
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is a cavernous temple of modern art, with exceptionally big and provocative works in a variety of media. The Norman Rockwell Museum in nearby Stockbridge, Mass., by contrast, serves up a whole different aesthetic, one filled with soda fountains, family dinners and sweetly nostalgic takes on small-town life.

05/11/2008

European style, American prices in NYC
NEW YORK — Sure, you could visit Europe, but it’s just so darn inconvenient. The exchange rate turns you into a pauper, portions are minuscule, people smoke a lot, good bagels are practically nonexistent. Neither Greyhound nor Amtrak stops there. What kind of a tourist attraction is that?

05/04/2008

Chapter may close at Edith Wharton’s mansion in the Berkshires

04/27/2008

Willimantic museum recalls the hard life of mill workers
WILLIMANTIC, Conn. — In the mill owner’s house, the table is set with fine china and crystal. There is a piano in the elegant parlor, with its floral wallpaper and lace curtains. In the master bedroom an ornate sewing machine decorated with a gold sphinx sits next to a black lacquered case filled with ivory sewing tools.

04/20/2008

Last chance to tour ‘The House That Ruth Built’
NEW YORK —Yankee Stadium, the storied ballpark that opened in 1923 and has been home to 26 World Series champions, is closing after this season. Because we wanted our son to see Monument Park and have a picture of himself in the New York Yankee dugout for posterity, we joined one of the public tours that have been offered year-round and will continue on designated dates through at least Sept. 19.

04/13/2008

New York City has many Catholic sites to visit
Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit New York City this week. Assuming he gets a briefing on the sites most important to the Catholic Church, the list might look a lot like this. And you don’t need to be the pope — or even a Catholic — to visit them.

04/06/2008

Tour the building blocks of great design in NYC
Among other things, New York City is the setting for many of the world’s outstanding buildings. Next time you’re there, bring this list — an architect’s guide to the best of the best in The Big Apple.

03/30/2008

It’s flower power time at Boston’s Gardner Museum
BOSTON — Stan Kozak may be the only person in the world who has nightmares about nasturtiums. Iridescent orange blooms, thousands of them, on snaking vines each measuring 15, 20 or even 25 feet long.

03/23/2008

Experiment a little, go off-Broadway
NEW YORK — New York theater means Broadway, right? Well, not exactly.

03/09/2008

The Plaza is restored to a T
NEW YORK Going to The Plaza hotel for afternoon tea was never just about the food. It was about palm trees, harp music, what the ladies at the next table were wearing, and the spirit of Eloise — that naughty little girl who lives at The Plaza in a classic fictional children’s book.

03/02/2008

Hit the ground running in New York, and set your own pace
NEW YORK Running in a major city can feel like being a character in a fast-paced video game. Weave around a slow walker on the narrow sidewalk. Sprint through the crosswalk before the light turns green. And if you don’t dodge that incoming taxi, it could be game over.

02/10/2008

Give your Valentine a ring, and some New York bling
NEW YORK

02/03/2008

Skating on Vermont’s Lake Morey is ‘wild’
FAIRLEE, Vt. — If you prepare meticulously for the worst, the worst actually can be fun.

01/27/2008

Tenement Museum puts perspective on tough times
NEW YORK — With the economy teetering and immigration in the news once again, this might be a good time to gain some perspective by revisiting a time when things were really tough, during the Great Depression.

01/20/2008

Now, Manhattan’s early black citizens not forgotten
NEW YORK — As we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, on the eve of Black History Month, now is an excellent time to visit a serene new memorial to thousands of enslaved and free Africans and their descendants who were buried in Manhattan more than 200 years ago.

01/13/2008

Bigger, newer, and more to explore
JERSEY CITY, N.J Kids, this is not your older brother’s Liberty Science Center.

01/06/2008

Winter camping has gone to the dogsleds in northern N.H.
ERROL, N.H. — We caught a comparatively mild, calm Saturday. The temperature might have reached as high as the teens during early afternoon. That was good. It was January in the mountains on the Maine and New Hampshire border. It could have been colder.

12/30/2007

Finding the real Harlem in a changing neighborhood
NEW YORK — Harlem is the historic capital of black American culture, but like many New York neighborhoods, it is rapidly changing.

12/16/2007

Catch some of Holden’s haunts in tour of New York
NEW YORK — Where do the ducks go in the winter?

12/09/2007

Even the elves would be impressed with Voake’s workshop
Ron Voake’s old-fashioned toy shop in the Vermont woods is a lot easier to find than Santa’s Workshop, and just as busy this time of year. He welcomes visitors, but call ahead.

12/02/2007

Shopping, pampering and tea — American Girl Place has it all
NEW YORK A trip to the American Girl mega-complex on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan has become a tradition in our family — something my daughters and, yes, even I, really look forward to as a way to kick off the holidays.

11/25/2007

You get the scents of being outdoors at Yankee Candle
DEERFIELD, Mass. — Jeffrey Michaud was standing in the middle of the Black Forest when he heard the wind start to blow. It felt like nighttime, and the sound of a train whistle was closing in. Wide-eyed and eager, the 10-year-old couldn’t contain his surprise at what came next.

11/18/2007

Working your way around Manhattan, bite by bite
You may not believe it Thursday afternoon, after all the turkey and fixin’s, but by 1 o’clock Friday you’ll be hungry again — just in time for the annual Post-Thanksgiving Multi-Ethnic Eating Tour in the Big Apple (see “If you go,” below). Here’s what the tour is like on an ordinary day. _ Ed.

11/11/2007

A book lover’s dream
NEW YORK Question: If a bibliophile were to book a vacation and not care to stray but a few feet after arrival, where would he go?

11/04/2007

Hop on over to Peter Rabbit’s stomping grounds
SANDWICH, Mass. — The spirit of Peter Cottontail resides in a Cape Cod cottage filled with enchanting aromas of fresh jams and jellies cooking in the same old-fashioned kitchen that children’s book author Thornton W. Burgess enjoyed as a young man.

10/28/2007

Boston’s Southie: From neglected district to new hot spot
Have you seen Southie recently? Probably not. The South Boston waterfront has long been a neglected industrial district, pocked with abandoned warehouses and vacant lots. While a few factories were converted into artists’ lofts over the last two decades, it remained a seedy place. Most of us have had no reason to leave the Southeast Expressway at that point.

10/21/2007

Hammond couldn’t have invented a better view
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — As eye-popping as the towers, turrets, and arches of this medieval castle plunked on a wooded lot in a residential neighborhood might be, nothing about the architecture of Hammond Castle can compete with the drop-dead-gorgeous ocean view.

10/14/2007

Down on the farm, without the frills
CANDIA, N.H.— Charmingfare Farm is the antidote to every overpriced, overstaged theme park you’ve ever schlepped around with your children. And the short country ride off Route 93 to get to this 180-acre farm and zoo is an enjoyable jaunt at this season into the very heart of fall foliage country.

10/07/2007

Air Museum near Hartford takes off on ‘Open Cockpit Day’
Next Sunday might be the ideal time to discover one of our region’s best-kept secrets, the New England Air Museum near Hartford. It’s a leafy drive, and the foliage should be at or near peak by then. And next Sunday is “Open Cockpit Day” at the museum, when kids of all ages can climb into approximately 10 aircraft from the World War II era or later and play pilot. — Ed.

09/28/2007

Tips on taking photos of New England scenes in the fall
NEW YORK (AP) — Photographer Ferenc Mate lives in Tuscany, but his latest book, A New England Autumn: A Sentimental Journey (Albatross Books/W.W. Norton, $39.95), portrays the colors and landscapes of the woods, coast, farmhouses and even the doorsteps and porches of New England in the fall.

09/30/2007

The Lincoln legacy left a footprint in Manchester, Vt.

09/23/2007

Zipping along in N.H.
LINCOLN, N.H. — Am I really going to do this? That’s what I wondered as I stood on a wooden platform while harnessed to a cable 50 feet up a pine tree.

09/16/2007

Explore NYC on the run
NEW YORK — The poor guy was just trying to sit on the base of a statue and read.

09/09/2007

Finish up a summer to remember, in nearby Conn.
HARTFORD, Conn. — Looking for some offbeat ways to spend a day in New England as the final weeks of summer give way to the golden days of autumn?

09/02/2007

Concord, Mass., still shines with literary lights
In the 19th century, Concord, Mass., was a peaceful country village and home to best-selling writers. In the 21st, it’s a bustling, upscale Boston suburb — and still home to best-selling writers.

08/26/2007

Go rugged or tranquil on the Maine coast
GEORGETOWN, Maine — Smell the wild roses, fly a kite, scramble on the rocks, and wade into the surf. All this and more makes for a long, perfect summer day along the winding roads and rugged shores of mid-coast Maine. A series of peninsulas here juts into the ocean, and every byway offers its own treasures.

08/05/2007

Take a hike, or a bike, or a surfboard, on the Cape
Provincetown’s bicycle paths carry riders past some of Cape Cod’s most sensational scenery.