SS Normandie Sails into Manhattan

The 19th-century piers that once lined the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan are gone except for one. The trans-Atlantic ocean liners they serviced are also gone except for Cunard's Queen Mary 2, which now docks in Red Hook, Brooklyn, when she visits New York City. But the SS Normandie, considered by some people to be the most beautiful ocean liner ever built, has returned.

This past week, an exhibit called "DecoDence: Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the SS Normandie" opened at the South Street Seaport Museum on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan. Photographs record the splendor of the Normandie but the array of objects in this exhibit come closer than any picture could to suggesting the magnificence of this ship.

Amid cases of bibelots and fragments of the ship's luxurious appurtenances, chairs and tables are skillfully arranged in front of wall-sized photographs depicting the rooms for which they were designed. It's easy to imagine those grand rooms decorated with Aubusson carpets, Lalique chandeliers and glass panels painted on the reverse side with gold and silver (a technique called verre églomisé) casting a flattering glow over the ship's elegant passengers. Add the detail mentioned by one passenger that the ship smelled of French cigarettes and expensive perfume, and it's possible to be back there again. Almost. If only.

The keel for the SS Normandie was laid on a cold January day in 1931 at Saint-Nazaire on the Loire. Though the world was going through an economic Depression worse than any since, the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) subsidized by the French government was determined to construct the most beautiful and most technologically advanced ocean liner ever built. The ship was to be a showcase of French design and the epitome of luxury.

The Normandie's completion was delayed by several years because of the Depression, but finally, on May 29, 1935, she left Le Havre on her maiden voyage. She arrived in New York City on June 3, accompanied by tugboats, excursion vessels, yachts, ferries and fireboats. Around 30,000 people lined the seawall at Battery Park to see her come in.

The Normandie's seagoing career proved to be brief. In August 1939, she nosed into Pier 88 in midtown Manhattan for the last time. On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland and it was deemed better for the Normandie to remain in New York. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. government took over the ship, renaming her the USS Lafayette. She was stripped of all her finery, in preparation for becoming a troop ship. On Feb. 9, 1942, sparks from a welder's torch set some kapok-filled life jackets on fire. The fire raged out of control. On Feb. 10, she capsized, lying on her side at Pier 88 like a dying animal. Finally, she sank.

It's possible in the South Street Seaport Museum's exhibit to still feel the weight of that loss. The sadness is mitigated, however, because so much of what was in the Normandie was preserved. Almost all of the items in the exhibit come from the collection of New Yorker Mario Pulice, whose passion for the Normandie is only matched by his generosity in lending his collection to the museum for almost a year. The exhibit will be at the South Street Seaport Museum through January 2011, giving ample time to visit again and again.

Terese

Hudson River fall foliage

The river that Henry Hudson stumbled on 400 years ago beckons New Yorkers (and New York visitors) at this time of year to board a boat in New York harbor and go north as far as possible. The lure is the changing foliage but the rewards of the trip include traveling along the New Jersey Palisades, created around 200 million years ago, when molten magma forced itself from deep within the Earth through softer layers of sandstone, which later eroded, exposing the steep cliffs.

Then there are the river towns, the tugboats, barges and freighters, the bridges, the three 19th century lighthouses between New York City and Bear Mountain (including the famous Little Red Lighthouse beneath the massive George Washington Bridge), glimpses of estates with vast, manicured lawns, freight trains and passenger trains on both sides of the river, and on some trips, a peek at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Frequently, Hudson River fall foliage expeditions will pass a very special boat -- the 85-foot-long replica of the "Half Moon" on which Hudson and his crew of 20 crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made their way up the river as far as what is now Albany before they realized that they had not found a route to Asia, and turned back.

Hudson River fall foliage tours usually start in early October and end by mid-November. One, offered by the Circle Line, is all day with a three-hour layover at Bear Mountain State Park. Others such as Circle Line Downtown's Zephyr and Classic Harbor Line's M/V Manhattan are three to five hours long and include a sumptuous spread of food, beverages and cozy lounges from which to watch the passing scene when it gets too cold on deck.

I've tried several of these excursions and recommend them all.

Terese

New York City by Sail

At last. The rain stopped. The sun was warm, but not too warm. A perfect day, a perfect night.

In the late afternoon of July 4, the 160-foot-long Clipper City left Pier 17 in New York City's South Street Seaport and headed for the Hudson River, where she took her place among the flotilla of ships of all sizes waiting to watch the Macy's fireworks. Two bartenders plied the 149 passengers with drinks. A barbecue dinner was served. As day deepened to night, the full moon rose over the spar. The lights outlining the cables and towers of the George Washington Bridge glimmered in the distance.

Shortly before 9:30 p.m., the fireworks began, sending a canopy of plumes and stars over the silhouetted boats and turning the river red and green and gold and lavender. Thirty minutes later, the show was over. Quickly, most of the boats departed, leaving the river to the Clipper City. The wind was up. She hoisted her mainsail, took a few spins and turns between Battery Park City and Jersey City and headed back up the East River, whose bridges beckoned with necklaces of lights.

The holiday is over, but Clipper City gives New York harbor tours every day and evening, sailing from the South Street Seaport. Another historic sailing ship in the Seaport, the 1885 schooner Pioneer, which belongs to the South Street Seaport Museum, goes out every day but Monday. On the Hudson River, the Shearwater and the Ventura sail from North Cove Marina in Battery Park City, and the Imagine and the Adirondack sail from Chelsea Piers.

Terese

Antarctic New Year

This afternoon, when I got to New York's JFK airport, I shared a van into Manhattan with other recent arrivals. We chatted to pass the time. "Where are you coming from?" we asked each other. Indianapolis. Brussels. Miami.

I said, "Antarctica."

"How did you get there?" someone asked me.

"I flew to Miami," I explained. Then I flew to Buenos Aires, where I stayed overnight. Then I flew to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. Then I boarded the MS Fram and spent two days crossing the Drake Passage. Then, I was in Antarctica.

"And how long did you stay there?" my van mates wanted to know. Five days, I told them.

"All that travel for FIVE days?!!!"

"Yes," I said. The journey was long, strenuous, risky, costly and sometimes uncomfortable — and I wish I could do it again.

Antarctica is like no place else on Earth. Surrounded by Manhattan's skyscrapers and traffic, I could hardly believe that this city and that frozen continent are on the same planet.

Though more tourists are going there than ever before, the numbers are still limited. Around 35,000 people visited Antarctica this year; several thousand of those were on large cruise ships that couldn't land. The population of our planet is now around 6.7 billion. Few people have ever seen Antarctica, or ever will. Even fewer have ever landed there as I did.

The intricacy of the life chain on this continent largely unmarred by civilization provokes awe and wonder as does its history. Antarctica was once part of a larger continent called Gondwana that included what we now know as Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South America, Madagascar and the Indian sub-continent. Fossils have been found in Antarctica that are identical to those found in South Africa and elsewhere in Gondwana, which began to break up around 167 million years ago.

Between 251 and 200 million years ago, Antarctica was warm and covered with forests where dinosaurs lived. Later, came a variety of reptiles and amphibians. Around 34 million years ago, the continent that we think of as locked in ice and snow began to get colder.

What the visitor sees there now is one of the harshest environments on Earth, beset by winds of enormous force that suddenly surge from the glaciers. Within an hour (or less) the winds can drive ice into previously tranquil bays and lock even a large ship helplessly in place until the winds change again or the ice melts.

The creatures that manage to live in this environment include millions of penguins and other birds who may spend years of their lives at sea without ever touching land. Seals bask on the ice floes. During the austral summer, migrating whales bring their young to feast in Antarctic waters, dense with tiny krill.

Ours is the briefest of moments in the Earth's life, which is ever-changing and intricately balanced beyond our imagination or comprehension. Antarctica gives us a glimpse of this majestic process.

As one man said to me on the ship, "This trip has been too short and too long." I asked him why. He said, "I would have liked to see more but what I've seen, I'll be thinking about for many years."

Terese

A Handle on Montreal

I recently returned from a long weekend in Montreal, where I had a great time. I've visited Montreal before and wouldn't have said that. I would have said it was OK, but not that it was wonderful and that I looked forward to going back.

What's the difference?

I finally figured out how to visit a large city! (Finally! After 14 years of travel writing....)

This time, I had a starting point and no obligation to be anywhere else in particular thereafter. I went to see the Magic of Lanterns show at the Montreal Botanical Garden. This annual event, during which a thousand silk lanterns handmade in Shanghai are positioned around the Chinese gardens, among the pagodas and reflecting pools, had enchanted me on a brief visit last year and I wanted to see it again. (This year's show will be up until Oct. 31.)

The next day, I decided to visit Montreal's Chinatown, which is small but very interesting. I had a long talk with Johnny K.F. Chin, who makes Dragon Beard candy at his open-air stall on De LaGauchetiere West (this candy used to be made for Chinese emperors, he said, and Mr. Chin learned the technique in his native Hong Kong) and then wandered into My Cup of Tea, a chic, little shop that sells loose leaf and bagged tea from China. After sampling several kinds of tea and buying some to take home, I walked back to my hotel, the Opus at Sherbrooke and St. Lawrence Streets (if you know Montreal, you know that this is about as centrally located as you can get) and had dinner in its terrific restaurant, Koko, which serves pan-Asian food.

The chef at Koko came out to say hello, and I mentioned to him my interest in tea. He told me about a tea shop that he liked near the hotel in the Latin Quarter — so the next day, I walked down to Camellia Sinensis at 35 Emery St., and it was, indeed, fabulous. Camellia Sinensis has a tranquil tea room and an adjacent shop that sells around 180 kinds of loose leaf tea from all over the world as well as beautiful tea ware, including pottery handmade in Quebec Province.

From there, I walked down to Old Montreal to visit some boutiques in the Bonsecours Market and another tea shop, Ming Tao Xuan, at 451, St-Sulpice in the shadow of Notre Dame Basilica. By then, a light rain was falling, and I welcomed a pot of Eight Treasures Tea accompanied by some delicious cookies. This shop also sells loose leaf tea and tea ware, including a fascinating range of Yixing teapots, selected by the proprietor, Lee Kwok Kgung, on one of his many trips to China.

I was leaving Montreal late the next afternoon, but I still had a few hours to look around. At breakfast the next morning, I talked to my waitress, Anne, about bagels and she recommended the Fairmount Bagel shop, which she said she preferred to the more famous St-Viateur bagels. (I discovered that in Montreal, food is taken very seriously and everyone you meet will recommend a favorite restaurant or two.) So I hopped in a cab and within 10 minutes was on rue Laurier, where I looked in several boutiques and talked at length with lovely Louise Royer, owner of Royer Objets et Trouvailles, where she sells artwork, crafts and gifts handmade in Quebec Province (another interest of mine). Then it was around the corner to St-Urbain Street, once the heart of the Jewish Quarter, and up one block to Fairmount Bagel, where a line snaked out the door and the bagels were warm and delicious.

I ate one immediately and kept one for the plane. Alas, it was time to go. I hadn't had time to visit the museums that I had hoped to see or to explore some of Montreal's many other interesting neighborhoods, but I had learned that in a big city, you can't see it all -- not in one trip, and maybe not ever -- so the thing to do is to keep talking to people and to let the trip unroll like a ball of twine, leading you from one thing to another. Of course, you'll miss a lot! but you can't see everything, and that's a good reason to come back.

Terese

New Orleans Evacuates

My last entry in this blog was almost five months ago, when I wrote about exotic, mysterious, heart-broken New Orleans. Today, I am watching video of people fleeing again as hurricane Gustav approaches. I see photos of adults with sacks carrying whatever they could stuff into them, waiting for buses, and frightened children clutching their little backpacks. I listen to a woman who owns a car but doesn't know where to go. She has a vague idea of going to Baton Rouge, but the TV commentator interviewing her tells her all the hotels there are full.

Having been to New Orleans and taken it to my heart, I am with these people. I await the storm with dread. I wonder what I would do if I were down there now, with little money, young children or elderly relatives, perhaps, about to leave behind what little I have. I see video of people on a bus. They don't know where it will take them or what they will do when they get there.

Travel. A luxury? In one sense it is, of course. On a physical level, we can survive without it. But on another level, we can't.

New Orleans is no longer an abstraction to me.

As I write this, I'm thinking about the nurse I met there, who sank her life savings into rebuilding her house after Katrina. I'm thinking about the artists I met who seethed with passion and anger after Katrina, and threw it into their work. I'm thinking about the restaurateur whose restaurants never fully recovered after Katrina, but who, five months ago was hopeful, because New Orleans was his home. I'm thinking about the beautiful houses on the Esplanade that last time, were spared. I'm thinking about the Ninth Ward, which wasn't. I'm remembering the jazz musicians marching through the streets and in the clubs, the beignets and coffee, the lacy, wrought iron balconies.

There's nothing to do now but wait.

Terese

Some New Orleans people:

New Orleans Now

I just returned from my first visit to New Orleans — a beautiful and complex city — and yes, still there despite the destruction caused by hurricane Katrina.

You could easily visit New Orleans today and not see that anything was amiss. The revelry continues in the French Quarter day and night. The music clubs are open and there are more restaurants in the city now than there were before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. The food is exceptional. At Bacco's in the French Quarter I had some crawfish ravioli that I yearn for right now. The food at the Royal Sonesta hotel redefined what hotel food can be. In fact, I can't remember a bad meal anywhere during the few days of my visit.

Plus there is music everywhere, literally from birth to death when jazz bands accompany the deceased to their final resting place. And art in museums and galleries. And horse-drawn carriage rides along the Esplanade where tall houses with wrought-iron balconies are elegant and mysterious. And small, charming houses in the Marigny, where many artists live. And mansions in the Garden District, shaded by live oak trees. And steamships on the Mississippi River.

Yes. It's there. Still there — but this is a city with a broken heart. When Katrina struck, thousands of people lost their homes and everything they owned. Around 1,400 people were killed immediately; others died in the aftermath of heart attacks, stress-related illnesses, hunger, dehydration, suicide and violence. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and many have still not returned.

Those areas of New Orleans that are below sea level have not recovered, almost two-and-a-half years later.

"Lakeview is the neighborhood furthest along," said James O'Byrne, features editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "When people visit, we take them there first and they think that's the worst they're going to see. Then we take them to the Upper 9th Ward, the Lower 9th, Gentilly, St. Bernard Parish."

Mr. O'Byrne, who had nine years left on his mortgage, lost his home. "If you didn't have the assets to absorb that blow, there was no way to get back," he said.

In the 17th Street Canal neighborhood, I met a registered nurse named Kathy Singleton whose story was typical. Because of Katrina, she and her husband lost their jobs. They fled to Baton Rouge, where they lived in one room for four months with their two teenage daughters and five pets. The hurricane left eight feet of water in their house, which was underinsured and the insurance companies are still refusing to pay more than a token amount for the damage. "They say the damage was caused by wind and rain, not by flooding," Ms. Singleton said. The family has used their entire retirement savings to rebuild.

Some money has been available from the federal government under a program called "The Road Home," but the aid has been slow to arrive, modest, and it has been taxed. Many homeowners had to fight for grants, which were at first denied or set too low, with the award decision only reversed after a lengthy and costly appeal.

Much of the rebuilding in the devastated areas has been the work of volunteers and organizations like Habitat for Humanity. In fact, there's a new word in New Orleans: voluntourism — referring to people who visit the city to help as well as to sightsee.

Whatever your reasons for going to New Orleans, it's a city worth your time. And even if you don't want to pick up a hammer and paintbrush, you can feel good knowing that spending your money as a tourist will help the city come back.

Terese