Titanic Trail in Manhattan

In the run-up to April 15, 2012 — the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking — museum

exhibits, lectures, concerts and even entire museums are memorializing the collision between the opulent ocean liner and an iceberg that killed more than 1, 500 people. But Manhattan tells

the Titanic story with more than just ephemera.

The Titanic was headed for Manhattan when she went down at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912 off the coast of Newfoundland. The Carpathia brought the survivors to Manhattan. Many of the people on board were New Yorkers or were bound for New York City to make it their new home. Manhattan, therefore, has more authentic sites connected with the Titanic than anywhere else except for Belfast, where she was built. Unlike a museum visit, the Titanic Trail in Manhattan takes travelers to fascinating places in the city — a shrine for America’s first native-born saint, the South Street Seaport, an old-fashioned hotel where the bellmen wear 1930s regalia, lower Broadway with its famous statue of a charging bull and the gorgeous Hudson River Park with its gardens, fountains and five-mile promenade along the river.

The 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking will come and go. In Manhattan, the Titanic is part of the city's fabric — Pier 54 at 13th Street, where the words "Cunard White Star Line" are still visible in faded paint on the rusted ironwork, 9 Broadway, where the White Star office was located at that time, the American Seamen's Friend Society Sailors' Home and Institute, now The Jane, a hotel at 113 Jane St., where the surviving crew members of the Titanic were housed, and more. Long after the centennial, in Manhattan the Titanic and its story will live on.

Philadelphia Flowers

Philadelphia's famed flower show, which has been presented with few interruptions since 1829, closes today (March 11) but other flowers are still blooming in Philadelphia. A captivating exhibit called "Van Gogh Up Close" continues at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through May 6.

Van Gogh loved flowers and painted them over and over -- in vases and in fields and gardens where he marveled at their colors as they played

against an abundance of greens that evoked every nuance of his palette. Van Gogh's passion is

readily felt in his flurries of brush strokes, stipples and thickly applied paint. As he experimented and grew more sure of himself, his paintings become luminous with deftly applied layers of color that feed off each other -- orange and yellow and lavender and blue violet. Van Gogh's love of nature is a balm in our technologically saturated times. People are flocking to see his paintings. They look at them in reverential silence.

Timed tickets are required to see "Van Gogh Up Close." For more information, go to http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/743.html

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