48 Hours Travel Around New York City: A Weekend Vacation, New Manhattan Hot Spots Friday

The roof space of the Peninsula Hotel reopened with a Chinese theme this May as the Salon de Ning.

THOUGH New Yorkers were recently brought up short by the financial crisis, with no one quite knowing just how bad it would be, one thing this city has going for it is its resiliency. Yes, there are worries about 401(k)s and mortgage payments — and perhaps a second thought about spending time in clubs with $300 bottle service — but there are still plenty of reasons not to stay at home watching CNBC, from new restaurants featuring ever-more inventive menus to hipster hangouts colonizing yet another part of Brooklyn. Historians might look back at 2008 as the year that Wall Street tanked; trend-seeking visitors may remember it as the year they had their first sip of a black maamba.

A Weekend Vacation in New York City: New Manhattan Hot Spots Friday

4 p.m.
1) LOWER EAST SIDE ART

In the last few years, the Lower East Side has emerged as among hottest gallery scenes in the city, but for visitors the best sites can be tricky to find. Now, a colorful map by the area’s Business Improvement District and GalleryBar — hot off the presses on Sept. 24 — plots 54 galleries and art institutions, Web sites included. They range from the (relatively) established Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center to brand-new, like gallery nine5, open this year. The map is available in hotels and at lowereastsideny. If it’s the art of shopping that you’re interested in, there are plenty of shops nearby that should satisfy that craving, among them the superhip Upper Echelon Shoes (100 Forsyth Street; 212-925-8330), which sells casual designer shoes. (P. Diddy wore them to the BET Awards last year.)

8 p.m.
2) THREE STARS, PART 1

So far, the Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, has awarded three stars to only five restaurants that opened in 2008. Among them was Scarpetta (355 West 14th Street; 212-691-0555; scarpettanyc), the new Italian spot that shows off Scott Conant’s refined mastery of the tomato (Mr. Bruni particularly praised the spaghetti al pomodoro). Linger over dinner either in the buzzing back dining room or the friendly bar area and then walk around the neighborhood whose hotness was only slightly tempered by its obligatory appearance in “Sex and the City.”

11 p.m.
3) SHANGHAI 1930

The roof space of the Peninsula Hotel got an overhaul this year, and after adding Chinese daybeds on the patios and Chinese contemporary art on the walls, reopened this May as the Salon de Ning (700 Fifth Avenue; 212-956-2888; salondening). Sure, naming a high-end bar after a completely fictional 1930s Shanghai socialite and art collector is verging on absurd. But especially if you land one of the few lucky tables overlooking the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden and order a gin and elderberry-liqueur flavored Ninglet, though, you’ll forget the gimmick and appreciate the place for what it is: not a nostalgic throwback to 1930s China but a depiction of upscale New York 2008.

Saturday

11 a.m.
4) BRUNCH BEYOND MIMOSAS

The chef Máximo Tejada introduced freestyle Latino cuisine in Rayuela (165 Allen Street; 212-253-8840; rayuelanyc) in 2007 on the Lower East Side; now he has followed up two blocks north with Macondo (157 East Houston Street; 212-473-9900; macondonyc), where he brings pan-Latin dishes inspired by street food into a setting that bursts with downtown energy. Among the choices: Spanish churros with chocolate, a Peruvian quinoa and octopus salad, the Dominican farmer’s breakfast of mangu, fried cheese, fried eggs and fried salami. Having a cocktail is a good idea even if you don’t normally drink before noon: the drinks come small but cheap ($7.50), perfect for brunch and with combinations creatively tropical, like guava and rye or tamarind and tequila.

3 p.m.
5) CONTROVERSIAL REBIRTH

Last month, the museum formerly known as the American Craft Museum (a k a that other museum near the Museum of Modern Art) reopened with a new, grander name — the Museum of Arts and Design — into 54,000 square feet of space at 2 Columbus Circle (212-299-7777; madmuseum). The redesign of the exterior, with its terra-cotta tiles and ribbons of glass, was pilloried by many architecture critics. Judge for yourself and then check out exhibitions like “Second Lives,” works from contemporary artists who turn common objects like telephone books and eyeglasses into art.

7 p.m.
6) THREE STARS, PART 2

How often do you get a chance to eat in a three-star restaurant without 1) making reservations and 2) spending an arm and a leg? Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose other restaurants can cost you multiple metaphorical limbs, brought in the celebrated Japanese restaurateurs Yoshi, Masa and Taka Matsushita as partners to open Matsugen (241 Church Street; 212-925-0202; jean-georges), where walk-ins have a 32-seat communal table reserved just for them. Among the highlights: freshly made soba noodles of three different thicknesses and various sauces (most under $20) and appetizers like house-made “firm tofu” ($10), which has a custard-like consistency.

10 p.m.
7) OVER TO BROOKLYN

One of the best trends in recent years has been the bars dedicated to reviving the high art of the cocktail, helping New Yorkers erase a decade-long hangover from awful flavored martinis. This year the trend jumped East River, bringing the Clover Club (210 Smith Street, Cobble Hill; 718-855-7939; cloverclubny) to Brooklyn. The dark wood, leather banquettes and pressed-tin ceiling evoke old school with a light touch. Best of all, drinks with names like the black maamba are all $10 or $11, a pleasant surprise for anyone used to paying that much in Manhattan for a generic gin and tonic.

Midnight
IT TOLLS FOR HIPSTERS

It wouldn’t be 21st-century New York if some new Brooklyn neighborhood weren’t getting buzz as the next hipster landing pad. Bell House (149 Seventh Street, Gowanus; 718-643-6510; thebellhouseny), opened in September, helping introduce the Gowanus area — with its requisite dark streets and industrial spaces — as the latest candidate. Its first month featured an almost undefinably eclectic lineup, from burlesque to hip-hop to the moody New Zealand guitar band the Veils, to play in a cavernous hall fitting about 400. If the show of the night is not to your liking, retreat to the much smaller-scale, warmly lighted and comfy-slick bar to analyze how the scene is shaping up.

Sunday

Noon
9) BURGER BRUNCH

You don’t really need five napkins to clean yourself off after the house specialty burger at 5 Napkin Burger (630 Ninth Avenue; 212-757-2277; fivenapkinburger), bursting as it is with juice and rosemary aioli and caramelized onions; do your part for the environment and lick your fingers instead. The June opening of this Hell’s Kitchen (a k a Clinton) spot, and its subsequent crowds, show that the New York appetite for upscale hamburgers did not level off in 2008.

3 p.m.
10) POST-BURGER REVIVAL

Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s not old. Critics raved about the revivals of the musical “South Pacific” and the play “Boeing-Boeing,” and both won Tony Awards — “South Pacific” for best musical revival and “Boeing-Boeing” for best revival of a play and best performance by a leading actor in a play. “South Pacific,” a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic (at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center; tickets at Telecharge, 212-239-6200; telecharge), opened on April 3 and was called “rapturous” by the New York Times critic Ben Brantley. “Boeing-Boeing” (Longacre Theater, also Telecharge) opened on May 4 and quickly outlasted its original 1965 Broadway run (a mere 23 performances). Mr. Brantley called it “deliciously, deliriously innocent,” pretty good for a comedy about an American in Paris juggling love affairs with three flight attendants.

THE BASICS

New York is served by three major airports: John F. Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International. A taxi ride from J.F.K. into Midtown will cost a flat fee of $45, plus tolls and tip; around $35 (including tolls and tip) from La Guardia; and about $50 (including tolls and tip) from Newark. There is also train service from both J.F.K. and Newark airports: the AirTrain JFK ($5 each way), which links to either the Long Island Rail Road or the New York subway system in Jamaica, and the AirTrain Newark ($15), which takes passengers as far as Penn Station. There are also bus and shuttle services.

For those with money to burn (i.e., those who have been keeping their savings under the pillow rather than in the stock market), the Plaza Hotel (Fifth Avenue at Central Park South; 888-850-0900; fairmont/theplaza) reopened this year after a renovation that turned most of the iconic building into apartments but left 282 hotel rooms that start at $755.

Down Madison Avenue in Murray Hill, Morgans Hotel (237 Madison Avenue; 212-686-0300; morganshotel) also reopened after renovations, which include a lobby installation by the French design collective Trafik. Rooms start at $299.

One company betting on New York’s future is the Wyndham Hotel Group (wyndhamworldwide), which has five hotels under construction in Manhattan, three scheduled to open later this year: one in Chelsea, one on Maiden Lane in the financial district and one in Midtown.

THOUGH New Yorkers were recently brought up short by the financial crisis, with no one quite knowing just how bad it would be, one thing this city has going for it is its resiliency. Yes, there are worries about 401(k)s and mortgage payments — and perhaps a second thought about spending time in clubs with $300 bottle service — but there are still plenty of reasons not to stay at home watching CNBC, from new restaurants featuring ever-more inventive menus to hipster hangouts colonizing yet another part of Brooklyn. Historians might look back at 2008 as the year that Wall Street tanked; trend-seeking visitors may remember it as the year they had their first sip of a black maamba. Editing by Alice Clinton

Iflove Proudly Presents

• Second Homes and Vacation Destinations: When Going Home Means Going on Vacation (0)
• Maixiu Forest Farm - natural landscape area of primeval forest (0)
• Longyang Valley - transliteration of precipitous cliff and deep valley (0)
• Lijiaxia Reservoir China - Unique landforms and rich scenes (0)
• Kanbula National Forest Park - Rare landforms and religious temples (0)
• Guoluo Fairy Lake - historical sign of magic marriage (0)

Second Homes and Vacation Destinations: When Going Home Means Going on Vacation. WHEN Derek Saathoff visits his native Louisville, Ky., each month, he likes to make a long weekend of it. Continental Flight 2925 out of Newark on Thursday afternoon gets him to Louisville just before 4:30, in plenty of time for a run in a park before dinner at Mojito’s Tapas and drinks at the Pink Door, a noodle and tea lounge with a bar.

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
FAMILIAR WATERS Joanna Roche and John Stringer vacation at Goose Pond in Lee, Mass, where they swam growing up.
Until recently, Mr. Saathoff would have bunked with his parents or one of his siblings. But since May, he’s had a place of his own, a one-bedroom condo on the third floor of a converted Victorian house, just three blocks from his old high school.

“When I was growing up, I wanted to leave and move to New York as quickly as possible,” said Mr. Saathoff, 25, an agent at Wilhelmina Models, whose primary residence is a studio apartment in the East Village. “And now I find myself torn between the city and Louisville. I’ve got the easier life in Kentucky, and the metropolitan life here.”

“Considering the prices, I didn’t find buying something in the Hamptons or upstate New York feasible or even necessarily desirable,” he continued. “They’re not the places I’d go to rejuvenate or to recharge my batteries.”

Leaving home is a classic rite of passage; for many people it’s the great, long-deferred escape. When they visit their former homes, it’s under duress and then only for holidays and familial state occasions.

Others return after college or after a few years in the big city having decided that yes, the native sod really is a great place to raise children.

Then there are those who split the difference: they live elsewhere, but own a vacation property in their hometown or environs.

“You grow up and you move away because of your job and you find it’s a nice place to come back to,” said Tricia Dieringer, a hosiery company owner who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan but also has a house at a Rehoboth Beach, Del., golf resort a few minutes from Lewes, her hometown. “I come across Delaware Memorial Bridge and there’s this peaceful feeling of coming home.”

For some, the pull of home is largely emotional, a chance to relive select precious pieces of their childhoods, to revisit select landmarks — Ms. Dieringer is partial to the Lewes Beach Dairy Queen where she worked as a teenager — and to give their own children a sense of continuity.

That’s the case as well for Susan Helier, a legal assistant and single mother in Salt Lake City who grew up in East Hampton, N.Y., and who, 10 years ago, built a three-bedroom vacation home there.

“There’s a lot of history here that I share with my daughter,” she said of her Long Island hometown. “I take her to Georgica Pond, where we used to go sailing and crabbing. As a little kid I used to go to the nature trail, so I take her there as well.”

The trip down memory lane also includes stops at the tip of Montauk (as a teenager, Ms. Helier dated the son of the lighthouse keeper) and the Hampton Classic (Ms. Helier was a habitué when it was a low-key horse show.)

Similarly, Joanna Roche says she loved growing up in Lenox, Mass.

“Everyone knew me,” said Ms. Roche, the vice president of sales for Cypress, a supplier of linens to hotels and spas. “It was very safe. But growing up in such a small town, I wanted to move away.”

After several years of living in California and Hawaii, she headed back to Lenox and married her long time boyfriend John Stringer. The couple subsequently bought a weekend getaway on Goose Pond, one town over in Lee, Mass.

“My husband’s family had a house there the entire time he was growing up, and this is basically a tradition we want to pass along to our children,” said Ms. Roche.

Where she swam and boated as a child so will her two boys. The same stretch of the Appalachian Trail she hiked, “they’ll be able to do,” Ms. Roche said. “I think it’s very grounding for children to have those roots.”

And, apparently, very grounding for adults as well. Such is the case with Vanessa Jones, a real estate broker who has an apartment in Harlem and owns a vacation property a mere five blocks from her childhood home in the View Park section of Los Angeles.

“My brother’s godmother lives next door,” Ms. Jones said. “It’s a very tight-knit community, a little Mayberry. I like that small-town feeling.”

Ms. Jones decided to hang on to the two-bedroom Los Angeles bungalow, originally her primary residence, as a weekend getaway when she moved to New York seven years ago.

“It was the dead of winter and I wanted to be able to get away during the cold months,” she said. “My apartment in New York isn’t that big. I enjoy going back to L.A. where I can have people over.

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Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times
Derek Saathoff in front of his Louisville apartment.

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Dee Marvin for The New York Times
‘PEACEFUL FEELING’ Tricia Dieringer enjoys the emotional ties of vacationing near her Delaware hometown.
“I’ve redone the house with hardwood floors, and re-landscaped. There’s a hammock and a waterfall in the back.”

Depending on her work schedule, Ms. Jones gets back home about once a month. Her mother keeps an eye on the property, and visiting family members can bunk there.

“It works out well,” she said. “I love my mother. I talk to her every day, but I can’t stay in the same hotel room or house with her. We’re very different people. With the house, I get to have my private time.”

Ms. Jones said that she could have bought something a bit closer to New York, and that she was considering buying property in the Hamptons or on Candlewood Lake in Connecticut.

“I don’t want to always fly 3,000 miles for vacation,” she said. “But then I’d have to invite all the people I love dearly to that place when they’re all in California. It works well for me to go to them.”

For Carol Zellway, a middle-school teacher in Montclair, N.J., it wasn’t that she particularly intended to buy a weekend getaway in East Hampton, her hometown. In fact, there were many handier places for her to spread her beach towel.

“I did consider the Jersey shore for a little bit because it was closer and more convenient,” she said. “I spent some time on Long Beach Island. I tried to like it.”

But all the time she tried to cozy up to the colloquially known L.B.I., Ms. Zellway found herself returning to East Hampton, even after her mother sold the family home in 1994. Finally, in 1999 she and her husband (the two have since divorced) bought a three-bedroom saltbox with a pool and skylights in the town’s Springs hamlet.

“I wanted to be back there,” said Ms. Zellway, who retained the property when the marital assets were divided. “My best friends from elementary school live in East Hampton. I still feel like a local. And being a teacher, I have summer off and can spend all of it out there.”

For some, the decision to buy in their hometown is born as much of practicality as sentimentality.

“They’re tuned in to the market and they’re also planning on returning some day and that vacation residence will become their primary residence,” said Hunter Carson Frick, a project manager for Halstead Property Development Marketing in New York. That’s exactly the plan of Ms. Dieringer and her husband in Delaware.

“We’re also finding that people who are buying in their 20s are turning to their hometowns to buy not only vacation properties but investment properties that they can rent out to build equity,” Mr. Frick said. “That way, when they’re in their 30s and continue to live in New York, they can use the money they’ve earned as a down payment on a co-op.”
A no-brainer investment — that’s how Ms. Helier characterizes her one-acre property in the Northwest Woods section of East Hampton, a retreat she visits for two or three weeks every fall and, if it hasn’t been rented out, for a month each summer. “It’s a market I know and understand,” she said.

“But,” she added, “it also had the pull of family for me. I still call the Hamptons home, though I haven’t lived there since 1976. When my mother sold the house I grew up in and retired to Florida, I felt I needed a place to come back to. I wanted to have a base there.”

Of course, watching a house increase in value isn’t the only dividend for those who buy vacation property in their hometowns. Knowing the territory often proves as useful as knowing the market.

“I know shortcuts to avoid traffic, that’s for sure,” Ms. Zellway said. “Sometimes, I’m on those back roads and there’s no one else there.”

In the Berkshires, Ms. Roche has figured out where to go to escape the tourists who flock there every summer.

“We know which restaurants won’t be crowded,” she said, mentioning the Roadside Cafe and Store in Monterey, Mass., and the Dream Away Lodge in Beckett, Mass.

For her and the others who return home, the occasional crowds, the airfare, the time spent commuting are all small prices to pay.

“It’s just such a nice lifestyle,” Mr. Saathoff said of his old — and new — Kentucky home, for which he paid just under $100,000. “My friends find it strange that I feel so deeply connected to it. They’re from similar places like Arkansas or Ohio or Michigan and couldn’t wait to leave and don’t ever want to go back.

“But I get very emotional when it’s time to leave Louisville and return to New York. It’s hard for me to go back and put on my game face.” 

Second Homes and Vacation Destinations: When Going Home Means Going on Vacation. WHEN Derek Saathoff visits his native Louisville, Ky., each month, he likes to make a long weekend of it. Continental Flight 2925 out of Newark on Thursday afternoon gets him to Louisville just before 4:30, in plenty of time for a run in a park before dinner at Mojito’s Tapas and drinks at the Pink Door, a noodle and tea lounge with a bar. Editing by Bruce Clemens

Iflove Proudly Presents

• Maixiu Forest Farm - natural landscape area of primeval forest (0)
• Longyang Valley - transliteration of precipitous cliff and deep valley (0)
• Lijiaxia Reservoir China - Unique landforms and rich scenes (0)
• Kanbula National Forest Park - Rare landforms and religious temples (0)
• Guoluo Fairy Lake - historical sign of magic marriage (0)
• 48 Hours Travel Around New York City: A Weekend Vacation, New Manhattan Hot Spots Friday (0)

Guoluo Fairy Lake - historical sign of the marriage between the third daughter of Nianbaoyuze Mountain God and the ancestor of the Guoluo people

There are two beautiful lakes in the grassland at the northwestern foot of Guoluo Mountain. One of the lakes is named as Fairy Lake, whose area is more than 10km2 and which is wide from south to north and narrow from east to west. The lake is surrounded by mountains at the eastern, southern and western sides.

The surface of the lake ripples and the green grass on the lake beach looks like a carpet. There is an over 100 meters long brook at the north of the lake that connects it with the Bitch Lake. There stands a huge stone at the southeast of Fairy Lake, on which there is a deep cutting leading to the lake.

It is said this is the historical sign of the marriage between the third daughter of Nianbaoyuze Mountain God and the ancestor of the Guoluo people. There is still a sacrificial altar on the beach under the stone. At present, there is still endless stream of pilgrims coming here to show their respects.

Iflove Proudly Presents

• Maixiu Forest Farm - natural landscape area of primeval forest (0)
• Longyang Valley - transliteration of precipitous cliff and deep valley (0)
• Kanbula National Forest Park - Rare landforms and religious temples (0)
• Lijiaxia Reservoir China - Unique landforms and rich scenes (0)
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Longyang Valley - transliteration of precipitous cliff and deep valley

Longyang is the transliteration of “precipitous cliff and deep valley” in Tibetan language.

The valley is 40km long and the two sides are 150m high. Longtou Hydropower Station, which is called the first dam of the Yellow River, is located here, which controls a drainage area of 130,000km2.

Longtou Hydropower Station is the biggest reservoir in Asia. Unique mountains, plateau meadow, dangerous valley, green and quiet lake and the grand dam enhance each other’s beauty and make Longyang Valley an important sight of the tourist area of Qinghai Lake.

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• Lijiaxia Reservoir China - Unique landforms and rich scenes (0)
• Maixiu Forest Farm - natural landscape area of primeval forest (0)
• Kanbula National Forest Park - Rare landforms and religious temples (0)
• Guoluo Fairy Lake - historical sign of magic marriage (0)
• Second Homes and Vacation Destinations: When Going Home Means Going on Vacation (0)
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• Shouxihu Lake and Lemon Lake in Yangzhou China (0)
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 Lijiaxia Reservoir China - Unique landforms and rich scenes

Unique landforms and rich scenes mainly featured by spectacular peak, square hill, cave and precipitous cliff make Lijiaxia the most superb attraction of the Yellow River in the territory of Qinghai. Rising sharply from the ground, the mountains look like column, tower, castle and wall.

Lijiaxia Hydropower Station, a key hydropower project of the state, is constructed here, with the magnificent dam standing in the huge area of water.

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• Longyang Valley - transliteration of precipitous cliff and deep valley (0)
• Maixiu Forest Farm - natural landscape area of primeval forest (0)
• Kanbula National Forest Park - Rare landforms and religious temples (0)
• Guoluo Fairy Lake - historical sign of magic marriage (0)
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