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Restaurant Week / Food Travel / Events / Boston Travel / Seattle Travel / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags

The Top Five City Restaurant Weeks in March 2011

Can you smell that? It's the sweet and warm aroma of a three-course meal being brought out to you for the cost of just one course. That's right; it's Restaurant Week season again, and we've rounded up the best five in the coming March weeks. Most are already open to booking, so text your friends to see when they're free and then get on it:

· Boston, MA: March 6-11 & 13-18. Yo, Bostoneers! No need to hop a Chinatown bus for the two-hour trip to NYC for Restaurant Week anymore, as it's finally your turn for discounted menus. One season, we traveled to and hung out in Boston with friends for several days for the express purpose of chowing down during Boston Restaurant Week, and let us tell you it was worth it.

The extensive list of participating restaurants is already open for booking, and meal pricing is thus: 2-course lunches for $15.11; 3-course lunches for $20.11; and 3-course dinners for $33.11. Weird prices, but maybe it's special for 2011? Anyways, find out more information and book your tables at the official OpenTable site.

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Brooklyn Travel / Tourism / New York City / Cheap NYC / → All Tags

Is Brooklyn's Gritty Gowanus Canal to be NYC's Next Tourist Attraction?

A few days ago, The Brooklyn Paper published a most intriguing article that enlightened us to the fact that Brooklyn is attempting to get its Gowanus Canal and the surrounding neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sure, it's been around forever, and mills began operating on the Canal as early as 1645, but that doesn't change the fact that anyone who know a little bit about Brooklyn knows that, these days, it's one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country.

Still, local preservationists are all about getting the Gowanus neighborhood designated as a city historic district, which could possibly attract tourists to the area for its rusting, industrial, native Brooklyn grit. Because that's what the tourists to NYC want, right? Gritty, but pretty.

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Tragedies / Accidents / United / TWA / Vintage Travel / Airplanes / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags

50 Years Ago Today, a Mid-Air Collision Brought a United Jet Crashing into Brooklyn

Although it's never nice to talk about past air incidents when they have the possibility of freaking you out before flying, but it's important to note that today marks the 50th Anniversary of one of the most tragic airplane accidents in history. At the time, in 1960, it was the deadliest, killing 128 people in the sky and 6 on the ground. Here's what happened:

In the morning of December 16, 1960, a TWA Constellation carrying 44 was heading to land at LaGuardia Airport while a United DC-8 Jet with 84 on board was on its way to land at Idlewild Airport (now JFK). Because of lower-tech air traffic control systems of the time, and because the United jet wasn't in the spot it thought it was, the two planes collided over Staten Island. The TWA prop plane was sliced into three pieces and fell straight down onto a military field in SI, while the United Jet managed to continue as far as Brooklyn, where it eventually fell into a church and intersection in the Park Slope neighborhood, killing 6 on the ground and setting buildings on fire.

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Spring Travel / Nature Travel / Festival Travel / Lists / Spring Festivals / Japan Travel / Seoul Travel / Georgia Travel / San Francisco Travel / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags

The Top Five Places to See Cherry Blossoms...Other Than Washington DC

Cherry blossoms in Japan.

Spring is here, and a lovely sign of its arrival is the blooming of cherry blossoms all over the world. The most well-known stateside spot to see the pretty pale pink and white flowers is Washington, D.C., which will have its annual Cherry Blossom Festival soon—from March 27 to April 11. But you don't have to battle crowds at the capital to see clusters of pink-flowered trees.

Check out the The Top 5 Cities (Other Than D.C.) Where You See Cherry Blossoms, after the jump!

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Neighborhoods to Know and Go / New York City / New York Travel / Brooklyn Travel / Food Travel / Travel Tips / → All Tags

Neighborhoods to Know and Go: Brooklyn's DUMBO

It's finally spring in New York City, and do you know what that means (aside from the return of the tourists)? It means that everyone is shedding their coats and trading in their winter boots for bicycles and new running shoes. New York is an active city, and nowhere will you find more to do with better views than down in the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO.

"Dumbo" means "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass," because the small area—dominated by the buildings that print a certain religious organization's magazine—sits mainly underneath the roadways of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Being down in a warehouse-y district underneath bridges may sound sketchy, but Dumbo is populated by the rich and powerful who actually care about their area. We resided in Dumbo for a period ourselves, and found it to be one of the most pleasant urban communities we've ever set foot into. All of the chocolate and bookstores probably helped our opinion too.

You can easily reach the area by taking the F train to the York Street stop and walking downhill from there, or the A/C trains to High Street-Brooklyn Bridge. Or just walk across the Brooklyn Bridge from downtown Manhattan—your call.

Join us in DUMBO, after the jump.

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Chocolate Travel / Food Travel / Brooklyn Travel / Easter Travel / → All Tags

Where to Find the Most Decadent Easter Treats: Chocolate-Covered Peeps

Can we talk about chocolate for a second, please? It seems like every time we walk into a drug store or market, we're confronted with rows of vibrant foil-wrapped chocolate rabbits and Cadbury eggs. But there's so much more to be discovered in the world of Easter chocolates, and so while down in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn this weekend, we stopped by a few of the area's specialty stores and uncovered these mini miracles: chocolate-covered Peeps.

At $5 for a pack of four, they aren't cheap, but their name—the "Chirp-N-Dales," is too cute to resist. We got a pack of the dark chocolate-dipped bunnies, but the chicks in chocolate tuxedos were tempting too. They can be found at the flagship chocolaterie of chef Jacques Torres, who calls himself "Mr. Chocolate" and is often found guesting on talk shows or the Food Channel, discussing the ways of chocolate. He is someone who truly has fun with the rich stuff, because we usually swing by his chocolate-dipped Cheerios and espresso beans. But these Peeps had us at "hello."

More Peepin', after the jump!

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Travel Snapshot / New York City / Tourists / Brooklyn Travel / Bridges / → All Tags

It's 70 Degrees in New York City and the Tourists Have Reemerged

It's 70 degrees in New York City today, and before the flurries come again this weekend and next week, we hopped out with our WiFi card to work under the sun in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Sitting nearby the water taxi dock and the River Cafe, noshing on some chocolate-covered Peeps from the Jacques Torres chocolaterie down the street, we watched as busloads of international tourists emerged from their winter hibernation and explored Brooklyn—well, the yuppie neighborhood known as "DUMBO," or "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass."

It's like the birds returning from their migrations in the spring, when the tourists show up in their sunglasses. It's even more telling when said busloads are Italian, and they're looking up into the sun and sighing happily.

Next time you're in New York, you should make your own pilgrimage down to the Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood (if you haven't already), and savor the city in the spring and summer, especially now that they're readying to open a new section of the park. Perhaps you'll even catch one of the free outdoor films they show in the park, and then you'll really thank us.

Related Stories:
· Dining in Downtown Brooklyn: It's Always 1977 at Junior's [Jaunted]
· Travel Snapshots [Jaunted]

[Photo: Jaunted]

Halloween Travel / Brooklyn / Brooklyn Travel / Haunted Houses / → All Tags

Get Spooked At A Sensory Haunted House In Brooklyn

When we talk about Halloween in NYC, we have to say that the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade is so 20th century. A Brooklyn haunted house showcasing professional scarers is what you'll really want to check out this season.

The Gravesend Inn Haunted Hotel is a yearly production by the New York City College of Technology as a departmental project in "entertainment technology"—the kind of training that would prepare you to work on a Cirque de Soleil show in Vegas or be a Disney Imagineer. The hotel is designed to "sense" and respond to visitors; for more on that, check out an engineer's inside take on what makes it run. Last year's production imagined a hotel buried over a sailors' graveyard haunted by vengeful pirate ghosts; will it be zombies (or zombie Michael Jacksons this year?

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Recession Travel / Travel News / San Francisco Travel / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags

Most Frugal US Cities List Calls Out Brooklyn, San Francisco

Financial site Mint.com has just released their 2009 list of "The Most Frugal Cities In America," charting the drop in discretionary spending for major American cities over the last 12 months. The data has all kinds of obscure and interesting information, from who spends the most on books to where residents are likely to drop cash on sporting goods.

We picked the weirdest data point from that last category and discovered that San Francisco ranks fourth on sporting goods, beating out a bunch of places where people buy boats, hunting gear, and camping equipment. Apparently whoever's selling cross-trainers to yuppies is making a killing.

The national drop in spending was an eye-popping 13%, which should provide our nation's totally hosed airlines a little bit of miserable company. Brooklyn led the way with a 28% decrease in total discretionary spending, a dip that future historians will undoubtedly refer to as "The Great Trust Fund Bust of 2009."

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Events / Brooklyn Travel / Michael Jackson / London Travel / Atlanta Travel / → All Tags

This Weekend In The World: Michael Jackson's Birthday And More

· Brooklyn
He might be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten; tomorrow is Michael Jackson's 51st birthday, and Spike Lee is calling all five boroughs of New York City to come to Brooklyn's Prospect Park to celebrate. Happening between 12pm and 5pm in the Nethermead Meadow, MJ's birthday party will be a fest of DJs spinning his music and more. Expect lots of single gloves, glittery socks with loafers, and much chanting of "ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa."

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Shopping Travel / San Francisco Travel / Brooklyn Travel / Los Angeles Travel / Barcelona Travel / → All Tags

Jaunted's Guide To Shopping Like A Local In Four World-Class Cities

Globetrotters who consider shopping a touristy gimmick are probably thinking more about Duty-Free boutiques at the airport, or landmark-shaped tchotchkes that fanny pack-wearing travelers just love to hoard. Then there's a clique of plastic-toting trippers who carve out quality time for retail indulgence. These hard-core consumers come back with heavier suitcases and cool keepsakes from their time away. That means no "I Went to [Blank], and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" shirts.

Jaunted's favorite shopping 'hoods are those that the locals frequent as much as savvy out-of-towners—places that have everything from the chicest clothes by local designers to uncommon home wares. We're less interested in the obscene glitz of Rodeo Drive than we are with destinations that have something unique to offer, like our suggestions below.

Jaunted's Favorite Local Shopping, Around the World, after the jump.

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Literary Travel / Elizabeth Gilbert / Brooklyn Travel / → All Tags

Will Julia Roberts Come Back to Brooklyn To Film The Sequel To 'Eat, Pray, Love?'

Certain Brooklynites we know have been rather put out by the filming of "Eat, Pray, Love," the adaptation of author Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling travel memoir starring Julia Roberts as a woman who takes three different trips in a year to get over a destructive divorce.

Well, buckle down everyone as we can expect more movie trailers in, say, 2011: Gilbert's second memoir Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage hits stores in early 2010, and a movie version can't be far behind.

For the four of you who haven't read it yet, Eat, Pray, Love ends with Gilbert finding love in her final destination of Bali, with a Brazilian-born Australian played by Javier Bardem in the movie. Committed sees Gilbert and her lover contemplate getting hitched after he gets detained by the Department of Homeland Security after a trip to France, and then take off across southeast Asia while pondering the question of popping the question. Further spoiler alert: They totally got married at the end.

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