NEW YORK – What a great treat. Somehow, having visited New York City perhaps eight or ten times over the years, I’d never strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge. Until last Sunday. It wasn’t as warm as the day before, and there was a brisk wind. But what a huge treat. One of the great things about the walk is the accessibility by subway. I walked out of the City Hall subway station and it was maybe 10 metres to the start of the bridge walk going east to Brooklyn. It’s an absolutely glorious walk, maybe a couple of miles but Read more
NEW YORK – Had a chance to spend a couple days in The Bronx the other day, which was terrific. But I also managed some time in Manhattan, taking in the scene in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. There are few places more cool to hang out on a warm spring day than Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The tulips were a blaze of pink and red and the cherry trees were blossoming and the sky was blue and folks were suntanning on the grass and the jump-rope folks were out showing people how to skip. I Read more
Jim Byers photo. Wave Hill Gardens, a magical area of The Bronx. THE BRONX, NEW YORK CITY – I was torn about what parts of New York to check out for the trip I took over the last few days. It seems there are a lot of stories around focussing on trendy new areas of Brooklyn. And talking about fun things to do in Manhattan and even Queens. But when the tourism board’s representative in Toronto sent me a note and pointed out some things to do in The Bronx, I was intrigued. Really? I used to cover the Blue Read more
FINGER LAKES OF NEW YORK – We have wineries. And we have lakes. But I think it’s fair to say Ontario doesn’t have anything to quite match the total Finger Lakes package in upstate New York. Only an hour or so east of Buffalo, which means maybe three hours from downtown Toronto, you’ll find gorgeous lakes surrounded by hills covered with pretty vineyards ahttps://jimbyerstravel.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpnd thick forests. Not to mention tremendously attractive small towns and stately white homes. The town of Geneva is one of those solid if not hugely beautiful towns. Probably it’s seen better days. But the surrounding area Read more
JIM BYERS PHOTO. The Richardson Olmsted Complex near downtown Buffalo is being restored and turned, in part, into a boutique hotel and architecture centre. BUFFALO, NEW YORK – Mea Culpa. For years, as I recall, the head of media/public relations for Buffalo Tourism had been bugging me to come on down and check things out. I envisioned cool architecture and chicken wings and a nice Frank Lloyd Wright building Ihad heard about. I covered the Buffalo Bills off and on for the Star’s sports section in the early 2000’s, but I didn’t have a strong mental image of the city in Read more
JIM BYERS PHOTO Colaneri winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake looks like something out of Tuscany. Great wines, too. NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE – A wonderful B and B with a Florentine co-owner. An organic Italian gelato place run by the same woman and her husband. And a winery where they make their vino in the Italian style in a series of buildings that look like they were shipped from a sleepy hillside in Tuscany. Sure, you can go to this pretty southern Ontario town and indulge yourself in British (and faux British) hotels and plays and bars. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you also Read more
HONOLULU – Last week I talked about a golf beauty. Today it’s a golf beast. The Princeville Makai course on Kauai is a gorgeous setting; challenging but playable. Ko’olau Golf Club on Oahu is something much more treacherous. But just as beautiful. Where Princeville is located on a peninsula high above the Pacific on Kauai, Ko’olau is hard up against the jagged, ragged green mountains that spike up the centre of the island of Oahu. At one point the course had a slope rating of 163; one of the most difficult numbers of any course on the planet. It’s a tad Read more
