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Top 5 Travels of 2010, Biking Shark Valley, The Everglades, Florida

Another great day ride, this one an hour outside of Miami. Drive west on the Tamiami Trail (Highway 41) and you’ll reach the Shark Valley Visitor Center at the northern tip of Everglades National Park. Rent bikes from the rangers and get ready for one of the most exhilarating 15-mile loops of your life. More than likely, it will take you an hour to bike that first mile. That’s because you’ll want to stop every 20 yards or so to get another photograph of an alligator sleeping in the tall grass, large turtles sunbathing on rocks, and the extraordinary amount of birdlife that call the canal next to the bike trail home. Anhingas dry their wings on the branches of the gumbo limbo tree, wood storks, white whooping cranes, and the long-legged great blue heron stand tall in the shallow water, while pink roseate spoonbills fly over the royal palms. This ride is ideal for any budding wildlife photographer.

(Photo credit: Lisa Leavitt)
 

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Three New Restaurants to Try in Toronto

With its mix of intriguing ethnic choices, like the Cree food I sampled at Keriwa Café on my last visit, Toronto has always been one of my favorite food destinations. Having dim sum is always high on my list of priorities, but this time I didn’t head to Spadina Avenue. I checked out the latest offering from chef Susur Lee, Luckee, at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel. Called one of the “Ten Chefs of the Millennium” by Food & Wine magazine, Lee became a media sensation on the Food Network’s Top Chef Masters and other hit show, Chopped. When he’s not in the kitchen, he’s out on the floor greeting clientele and agreeing to take selfies with fans. 
 
His dim sum was the most memorable I’ve had in a long time. The ubiquitous har gow (shrimp dumplings) arrived orange thanks to a hint of butternut squash, on a bed of wild mushrooms. If my brother Jim was with me, we would have ordered 6 plates of these. Even his vegetable dumpling, something I rarely order, was a tasty mix of spinach, celery root, mushrooms, and jicama in a light as air dumpling. Lee excels at other dishes besides dim sum, like the sautéed scallops sweetened with soya glaze, and “Luckee Duck,” an apt name for the person who orders this version of the Peking Duck served with a schmear of foie gras. Susur, I’ll be back again for my selfie! 
 
When a friend from Toronto recommended I visit the new America Restaurant on the 31st floor of the Trump Hotel in the Financial District, I was skeptical, thinking the place would be some Texan steakhouse offshoot. As soon as I stepped foot into the restaurant, I realized I was wrong. The vibe with subdued lighting is more New York supper club, circa 1940s, especially with the Ella tunes in the background. I sat on the comfortable banquette and dug into a foie gras pancake, a buckwheat pancake topped with a healthy dollop of the meat, chunks of peaches, peanut marzipan, and hot Canadian maple syrup. For entrees, the scallop jambalaya was served in a hot skillet, coupled with grilled octopus and Andouille sausage. It goes well with the Blue Mountain pinot noir from BC. Run by Oliver & Bonacini, the same people who brought you the award-winning Canoe, America is here to stay in Canada. 
 
SIGNS, another new venture in town, seemed like a gimmick when I first heard about it. All the servers are deaf and you order the food via sign language. As a travel writer, I’m used to ordering my food though sign language since I spend a good part of my life in places where they don’t speak English. But the thought of putting deaf people on display made me uncomfortable. My worries were quickly allayed when I met my server, a young woman who helped me learn signs quickly like “thank you” and “what do you recommend?” A tip sheet is handed to you when you sit down at a table, sort of a Berlitz guide to sign language, where you can learn how to sign “I’m a vegetarian” or “we’re in a hurry.” My favorite was “Fantastic!” where you thrust your hands high in the air. “How was your entrée?” my server signed me, pointing to my lamb shank. “Fantastic!” 
 
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Scull Hosmer Pond, Vermont

Sandwiched between the hills of Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom, Hosmer Pond is the idyllic setting for the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s sculling school. Now in its 35th year, Craftsbury is the first rowing camp in America. If you ever wanted to learn the sport of sculling or already scull and want to perfect your stroke, Craftsbury is arguably the best place in the States to do just that. The 5-day course goes over all aspects of rowing, and depending on expertise, splits groups up on the lake with instructors. Balancing the boat is always the hardest part for beginners, many of whom will spend the better part of the first day swimming. Oar handles have to be together at all times or the boat quickly tips to the left or right. Legs are thrust up against a board to scoot back as you propel the oars forward. Indeed, many of the coaches have immense quad muscles proving that legs are more important than arms in the stroke. 5-day programs including room, board, and training start at $1037.
 

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Don’t Miss the Women Modernists Show at Norton Museum of Art

On our last day in Florida, we made the wise move to drive the convertible to the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach. As luck would have it, a new exhibition had just opened, “Women Modernists in New York,” showcasing the works of four friends from the 1920s and 30s, Marguerite Zorach, Helen Torr, Florine Stettheimer, and the best known of the quartet, Georgia O’Keeffe. I’ve never been a big fan of Zorach’s work, a little too primitive and naïve for me. But the exhibition became intriguing in the next gallery focusing on the works of Helen Torr. Torr was Arthur Dove’s wife, and while the art world was reaping accolades on her adoring husband, they were ridiculing the work of Torr (and, for that matter, most work by women artists at the time). Her charcoals of still lifes are wonderful, but most striking were Torr’s two self-portraits where you can see in those sorrowful eyes the world beating down on her. The next room was a delight, a sampling of works by Florence Stettheimer. On one wall she painted herself and her two sisters wearing garb straight out of a Charleston dance, reclining as if they were sitting on chaise lounge chairs. It’s no wonder one of her works recently sold at auction for $4.5 million. Her joie de vivre and sheer ebullience radiates throughout the room. Thankfully her sister dismissed her request to destroy all her works of art upon her death. 
 
O’Keeffe, of course, is the star of the show. One glance at her vibrant palette in “Red Maple at Lake George” (1926) and I was immediately transported back to my boyhood stomping grounds. But the Norton Museum scored a real coup by getting the National Gallery of Art to part with their series of six Jack-in-the-Pulpit canvases, where O’Keeffe reduces the hyper-sensualized flower down to its abstract parts. I could have stared at this wall for hours, but had to catch a flight back to Boston. If you’re in South Florida at any point until May 15th, do yourself a favor and see this show. If you want to read a manuscript of the story I originally wrote for Art & Antiques Magazine on O’Keeffe’s years in Lake George with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, please email me at Steve@ActiveTravels.com. 
 
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A Well Deserved Best Chef in the Southwest Nod to Steve McHugh

In May 2014, my sister and I walked into a new restaurant in San Antonio called Cured and were blown away by dish after dish. Everything presented that meal was masterful from the selection of innovative charcuterie to the symphony of favors found in that ridiculously good pig’s head dish. “Crawfish Love Letter” was a tribute to the decade Cured’s chef Steve McHugh spent in New Orleans as chef de cuisine to John Besh. Even the mundane burger, a patty made with bacon and topped with smoked onion and homemade American cheese was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. All delivered in a classic 1904 space in the burgeoning Pearl District (see my story on this emerging foodie neighborhood in The Washington Post). So I was delighted to read last week that McHugh is getting the acclaim he deserves, chosen as one of the semi-finalists by the James Beard Foundation as one of the Best Chefs in the Southwest. He’s the only nominee from San Antonio, which I find hard to believe, because it’s one of my favorite places to dine in America. Do yourself a favor this spring and book a room in the new Hotel Emma, housed in a former 19th-century brewery, and simply walk to dinner every night in the Pearl District to one of the 15 restaurants. You’ll thank me. 

 
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Top 5 Travels of 2010, Biking Along the Canals in Hertfordshire, England

Instead of rushing straight from London to Heathrow Airport this summer, my family and I wisely chose to spend one day in the countryside at a hotel in Hertfordshire, less than an hour’s drive from the city. Called The Grove, the resort was once the country estate of the Earls of Clarendon. Today, it’s best known for its golf course, which Tiger Woods called one of the finest in the country. It’s also a family favorite. Walk inside a walled-in garden and you’ll find a heated outdoor pool, beach volleyball, and the oh-so civilized sports of croquet and lawn tennis. Yet, nothing quite compared to renting bikes and finding a path along a serpentine canal that formed the perimeter of the property. Shaded by thick trees and rolling under centuries-old bridges, you were immediately transported to another time. Narrowboats were slowly navigating through the locks past the local anglers and lounging swans, adding to the allure. Afterwards, we headed back to Grove for our last fish and chips before the trans-Atlantic flight home.
 

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Watching the Spring Migration of Birds

It’s hard to focus on writing this morning, grabbing my binoculars every five minutes to view the red-tailed hawks flying by my window. They love to rest on the branches of the tall oak trees outside my third floor office. I love this time of year, when my feathered friends start to return north and their cacophony of voices wake me up at sunrise. It’s too early to spot my beloved warblers as they cruise the Atlantic Flyway to their summer retreats. I’ll be heading to Mount Auburn Cemetery, a favorite haunt of Boston birders in mid-April, to spot those beauties. Last spring, I pointed out a website, Westport Osprey, that was tracking the flight of ospreys as they were making their way north. So far in 2011, Hudson left his winter home of Venezuela and is already back in his nest on the Westport River in southeastern Massachusetts. As of March 15, Sanford was still hanging out in the Bahamas ordering another rum punch at the swim-up bar. Stay tuned to Westport Osprey to track his flight.  And make a plan to visit Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary, run by Mass Audubon, to find the nesting Westport osprey, bald eagles, piping plovers and other shore birds.
 

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