The Savvy Traveler

Special Information for the week of April 25, 1998

New York By Bus

Ellen Bikales rode the M4 only halfway, from Penn Station up Madison Avenue and Broadway to the Cloisters. The return trip is just as filled with sights; coming south on Fifth Avenue on the M4 you ride along Central Park the length of Museum Mile and then down Fifth's famously showy midtown to end up at Macy's.

To ride New York City buses you need $1.50. You pay on the bus in change or using a token or Metrocard, which you can buy in a subway station (many stores also sell them). With the Metrocard or a transfer, you can change from one bus to another or from subway to bus one time for free within two hours. This works on all bus routes except a few; unfortunately the M4 is one that doesn't honor transfers. The city has plans to issue an all-day Metrocard: as many transfers as you want for a fixed price.

A good guidebook for your bus ride is Hope Cooke's Seeing New York: History Walks for Armchair and Footloose Travelers (Temple University Press, 1995), but any book covering the city's history neighborhood by neighborhood will be helpful.

New Yorkers will insist that you try their favorite routes. Another good one is the M5 which goes down Fifth through Greenwich Village to Houston Street and then back up along Riverside Park on the Hudson River. An elderly New Yorker on the M4 raved about the M15. Starting at the Staten Island Ferry dock, it cuts through Chinatown and the grungily chic East Village, and then north to the top of East or Spanish Harlem.

Lost City Interview

Nicholas Clapp's The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands is published by Houghton Mifflin.

Q & A II -- General Questions

Rudy answers listeners' travel questions. He mentions:

Tourist Board of the Netherlands 888-464-6552

Swiss Tourist Office 212-757-5944 (Has information on farm stays)

British Columbia B & B Association 604-276-8616

Other British Columbia resources:
B.C. Tourist Information Center 800-663-6000
Color Guide to Vancouver (Seven Hills Publishing)

Hostelling International 202-783-6161

Skytel paging service 800-759-8737

Other resources:
Venezuelan Embassy 202-342-2214
Bradt Guide to Venezuela by Hilary Branch (published by Bradt)
Lonely Planet Venezuela by Krzysztof Dydynski (published by Lonely Planet)