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Eighth Annual Hotel Week in Manhattan January 4-14, 2019

If you want to visit New York at a discount, then head to the city during their Eighth Annual Hotel Week in early January. The Refinery Hotel, Library Hotel, High Line Hotel, and Archer New York are just a handful of top-tier properties that will cut their rates considerably during this time. For example, Hotel Edison in Times Square will only be $100 a night, more than 50% off their usual rate. Hotel Week NYC™ was created by PR maven Nancy J. Friedman in 2010 to address the occupancy dip most hotels experience after the holiday season. It’s a perfect time to visit Manhattan without the crowds, see the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Whitney and Network, featuring Bryan Cranston, on Broadway. 
 

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A Wonderful Week at The Basin Harbor Club

To celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday, my wife’s family headed to the Basin Harbor Club last week. And what a spectacular week it was! 127 years after Ardelia Beach started taking in summer boarders at her 225-acre working farm on the shores of Lake Champlain, the club’s fourth-generation hosts, siblings Bob and Pennie Beach, are proving that a family business can prosper over time. It helps that they have one of the premier locales on the lake, 740 acres overlooking one of the narrowest parts of Champlain. We did it all—golf, tennis, sail, sea kayak, stand-up paddleboard, swim to the trampoline, and my favorite activity of all, biking. Basin Harbor Club is based in Addison Valley, one of the most fertile parts of the state, where around every bend is a dairy farm, rolled hay, a carpet of emerald green, views of the lake, and the Adirondack and Green Mountains forming a ridge of peaks on either side of you. 

 
Basin Harbor Club is perfect for multi-generation family reunions, because everyone can do what they want during the day and meet for dinner that evening. The food was surprisingly good for a property that offers all-inclusive rates. A highlight was the lobster clambake on the shores of the lake while the sun was setting. Magical! The following day, we danced to a live band playing Nat King Cole favorites as we celebrated my 16th birthday (at least that’s what it said in the daily newsletter). Not surprisingly, many families book the same cottage for the same week the following year before they leave. No doubt, we’ll be joining them. 
 
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Wild China

I had the good fortune to have lunch last week in Boston with Mei Zhang, founder of Wild China. For more than a decade, the Harvard MBA grad has brought visitors to the remote parts of China, telling me that “over 80 percent of travelers to the country see less than 20 percent of the land mass.” More than likely they get a glimpse of the Great Wall in Beijing, go on a Yangtze River cruise, and, if they have time, see the Terracotta Warriors of Ancient China in Xi’an. But what about that impressive mountain and river scenery found in the backdrop of Zhang Yimou films? To immerse yourself in that otherworldly beauty, you’re going to have to sign up for one of Wild China’s trips. Zhang is keen on taking people to her native Yunnan Province, north of Laos and Burma. Here you’ll find centuries-old Hill Tribes making bricks of tea high up in the mountains and the Tea & Horse Caravan Trail, a southern Silk Route still being used that links southwestern China with Tibet. The trade route will be featured in the May issue of National Geographic, a perfect time to take the weeklong jaunt with Wild China, according to Zhang. She also offers hiking trips on the 19th-centruy French Explorers’ Route, along the Mekong and Salween Rivers, and trekking in the heart of Shangri-La.
 

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Kudos to Bruce at Lake Temagami’s Ojibway Family Lodge

We met Bruce at our first family-style dinner at Ojibway and instantly took a liking to his many stories about the lodge and the region. He had been coming to this exact spot since 1951 when he was a 10-year-old overnight camper from outside Detroit. Now living in Virginia Beach, he spends a little over a month each summer in his cabin on an island across from Ojibway to listen to waves lapping ashore, smell the sweet pine, watch the night sky, and explore the lake via canoe or motorboat. While Tanya and Louise are the consummate hosts who run Ojibway, Bruce is the unofficial guide. He said he’d take us on his boat to see some of this immense lake that first night and we thought he was just being friendly. But then he did just that on our last day, as we went out with him to one of his favorite spots in the northern part of the lake. We brought lunch made by the kitchen, drinks, and headed off. 

Bruce couldn’t have picked a more picturesque spot, where large slabs of rock spill off an island into a small inlet that was ideal for swimming. But before we landed, Bruce stopped, turned off the motor, and said, “this is where we stop to breathe, not say a word, and relax for the next 10 minutes or so.” And that’s what we did, listened to the wind whistle through the tall trees, and meditated. Then we went and had lunch, swam in those refreshing waters, and enjoyed a lovely afternoon. I wish every property I visited had a Bruce, someone who knows the land like the back of his hand and is genuinely passionate about sharing his joy of being there. 
 
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Urban Adventures: Bike the Lakefront Path, Chicago

The finest way to savor Chicago’s stunning skyline is on two wheels. Rent bikes at Navy Pier and head south on a bike trail along the Lake Michigan shoreline. You’ll soon pass the flowing waters of Buckingham Fountain, the Shedd Aquarium, and Soldier’s Field, home to the Chicago Bears. Yet, it’s the jaw-dropping vista of the skyscrapers on the return trip that will have you reaching for the camera. You look up at a wall of spectacular buildings. If you want to continue past Navy Pier and head north, you’ll reach Oak Street Beach, the first of many beaches that are open to the public, a perfect place to lounge and get a much needed rest. 

 
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Toronto, The Culinary Capital of Canada

We’re headed to Niagara-on-the-Lake this morning to start our bike trip. Yesterday, I was fortunate to spend Victoria Day in one of my favorite cities to dine, Toronto. No need to travel the world to find varying culture when you can simply walk around Toronto’s ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Start with dim sum in Chinatown, where we dined at Rol San on Spadina (worth the wait). Or grab a traditional walnut cake in Koreatown, head to Greektown for helpings of saganaki and lamb souvlaki, order a cappuccino at one of the outdoor cafés in Little Italy, find chicken tikka masala at the Indian Bazaar in Little India, and dine on your fair share of pierogies and borscht in Little Poland, or “Ronceys,” as the locals call it. If you’re looking for more innovative multicultural fare, sample the sublime Duck Egg dish at Café Boulud, Daniel Boulud’s French restaurant at the new Four Seasons Toronto. Or venture to the Parkdale neighborhood to try the tasty smoke trout at Keriwa Café, the Native Canadian restaurant that I recently wrote about for The Washington Post. 
 
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Sea Kayaking the Bay of Fundy

On my last day in New Brunswick, I headed an hour drive southwest of Moncton to Fundy National Park. The Bay of Fundy is home to the highest recorded tides in the world, often in excess of 40 feet, so I’ve always wanted to check out the current on a sea kayak. In Alma, I met up with Fresh Air Adventures for a half-day jaunt along the rugged coast. We had to paddle against the winds on the way out to open water, looking at Nova Scotia across the bay. The big of body of water was quiet, no fishermen, no other sea kayakers, as we made our way along the shoreline. Tall spruce and firs stood tall atop the craggy rock. When we stopped at a deserted beach, we spotted deer. After a snack, we cruised with the current, practically surfing atop the waves back to town. Even with the strong current, the long sea kayaks were sturdy and I never felt like I was going to go for a dip in the frigid waters. For an encore, we stopped at Hopewell Rocks on the drive back to Moncton. The iconic image of the Bay of Fundy, the tall rocks are carved by the perennial surf and are always evolving. Often referred to as “flowerpot rocks,” many of the formations have trees sprouting out of the top, thus resembling flowerpots. We can check this one off the bucket list. 
 

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