Hotel Rooms in Manhattan for $79 a Night!
The Jane Hotel, not far from Chelsea Market and the high in the sky High Line Park, is offering $79 rates in January and February for their 50 square-foot rooms. Bring a friend and grab the bunk bed room for $99, further reducing the price for two. The rooms are built like luxury train cabins, featuring a single bed with built-in drawers, flat screen TV, free Wi-Fi, DVD player, iPod dock, and luggage rack. The only problem is the shared bathrooms. If it’s anything like the Pod Hotel on the East Side, the bathroom doors open and close all night, so bring ear plugs. If you really need a private bathroom, opt for Captain’s Cabins at $225 a night. But c’mon, it’s hard to top 79 bucks a night in Manhattan!
At least one Sunday every summer, we park our car at the large parking lot near the Artesani Playground Wading Pool (1255 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton) and bike along the Charles River into Cambridge. Near Mount Auburn Hospital, Memorial Drive is closed to cars for a good mile or so on Sundays, before you hit the sidewalk and pedal along the water. The river is full of activity, with scullers and crew teams sharing the water with sailboats and motor boats making their way out to Boston Harbor. On the Cambridge side, we pass Harvard and MIT while peering across the Charles at the Prudential Center, Citgo sign, and the distinctive gold dome of the Old State House. At the Museum of Science, we head across the street to 
When visiting another country and booking a room, I always seek out local travel writers or outfitters who know every decent hotel in their country and have a basis for comparison. I’m not going to spend thousands of dollars, only to leave the important decision of where to stay to some stranger commenting on TripAdvisor. More than likely, it’s his first time in this country and it’s all bliss. But I know Africa too well and realize there are hotels that cater primarily to large tour companies from Asia and Europe, delivering the Disneyesque version of being on safari. So I asked Jane and Felix Pinto, owners of the Nairobi-based 
Thanks to a new high speed gondola, Quicksilver, that will take guests from the base of the Silverlode Lift at Park City to the Flatiron Lift area at the former Canyons, 
If Vienna, Paris, and the Florida Keys are on your wish list, and you fly in and out of Boston’s Logan Airport, you’re in luck. Beginning in February, American Airlines will launch a direct flight from Boston to Key West. Austria Airlines will begin Boston’s first-ever direct flight to Vienna beginning March 29. And bargain European airline Level, which we flew last April to Barcelona, will add flights between Boston and Paris in May, with fares beginning at $140. Love those direct flights! 
The kids are stand-up paddle boarding near the middle of the lake. Lisa is sea kayaking with her siblings and their spouses closer to the shoreline. Steady wind blowing through my hair, I’m at the tiller of an 18-foot sailboat accompanied by my mother-in-law, Fran. I grew up sailing on the large lake to the south, Lake George, where there’s far more boat traffic and large passenger steamboats like The Mohican, which I always seemed to be on a direct line to hit. But here on the southern tier of mighty Lake Champlain, there is little traffic on this July weekday and I don’t feel a worry in the world. Vermont’s