New York Mag: Escape for Less

New York magazine’s travel issue is finally out. Here are some of my contributions to the bargain hunter’s winter-travel handbook.” The photos are from my personal collection.



Bogotá, Colombia
Steamed snook and other delicacies, for a fraction of Paris prices.
The scary, cartel-dominated years of the eighties and nineties are clearly over for Bogotá, which has recently rolled out a much-admired public-transportation system, a network of hilltop parks and museums, and now a world-class restaurant scene that’s considerably cheaper than other dining capitals. The most evolved cooking is happening in La Macarena, where Cartagena transplant Leonor Espinosa invents dishes like the fish-egg tartare ($14) at Bar de Leo (571-334-3085), and steamed snook gift-wrapped in a plantain leaf ($21) at Leo Cocina y Cava (571-286-0050). Chefs in the northern part of the city are hyphenating like crazy; at the Franco-Colombian Criterion, the European-trained Rausch brothers prepare a nightly five-course surf-and-turf tasting menu ($50). Spend the night at 104 Art Suites (from $150; 104artsuites.com), which has twenty rooms, each featuring the work of a different Colombian artist.

Extras
• 5 p.m. hot-chocolate santafereño at La Puerta Falsa $2.50
• Pre-Columbian artifacts exhibit at the Museo del Oro $3.50
• Bicycle for cruising the Sunday Ciclovia from Bogotá Bike Tours $14

Valparaíso, Chile
An underrated cultural epicenter with favorable currency rates.
Like a Latin American version of San Francisco, artsy, freewheeling Valparaíso teeters on 45 precipitous slopes overlooking the Pacific. Always a good bargain given Chile’s out-of-the-way location and weak currency, the city expects its creative juices to be overflowing in January, when it hosts an international triennial called the Universal Forum of Cultures (fundacioforum.org). Pay 50 cents to ride an antique funicular up to Cerro Alegre, where the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes (56-32-225-2332) will soon open to the public. From your cliff-top perch, compare historic paintings of Valparaíso to the real thing out the windows. On top of another hill, Cerro Cárcel, is the ex-Cárcel (parqueculturalexcarcel.blogspot.com), a onetime penitentiary that’s now an informal cultural center. Replenish with a chorillana (fries, eggs, grilled onions, and sautéed steak piled high) at rowdy café Casino Social J Cruz (56-32-221-1225), then head out to the disco pub El Huevo (www.elhuevo.cl). Stay at the meticulously designed Cirilo Armstrong Hotel (from $73; ciriloarmstrong.com), whose owners will organize tours to their artist friends’ ateliers.

Extras
• Tour of poet Pablo Neruda’s nautical-themed house, La Sebastiana$4.50
• Pisco sour and live bolero at the city’s oldest bar, El Cinzano $3.50
• Metro ride to neighboring seaside resort Viña del Mar $3.50

Glasgow, Scotland
Chockablock with galleries, starving artists, and the pubs they drink in.
The Glasgow School of Art used to be a feeder school for the big-league art galleries in London. Now its graduates are sticking around to take advantage of Glasgow’s cheap rents, prodigious pubs, and burgeoning art market. If you can, time your trip to hit the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art in April 2010, when hundreds of young artists will be jockeying for their big art biennial moment (glasgowinternational.org). Duck away to the still-grungy West End (reminiscent of a pre-condo Dumbo) to visit former New Yorker Kendall Koppe’s Washington Garcia (washingtongarciagallery.com) below a series of disused railway arches. In the same art ghetto sits SWG3 (swg3.tv), a crumbling warehouse commandeered by a rotating group of artists, musicians, designers, and dancers, who often throw circus-themed parties. The finer points of screen-printing and woodcutting are debated in Merchant City at the vegan eatery (and microbrewery, concert venue, and record shop) Mono (monocafebar.com). If you overdo it on heather ale, the Brunswick Hotel (from $80; brunswickhotel.co.uk) and its compact minimalist rooms are a five-minute walk away.

Extras
• A dozen local oysters at just-opened Crabshakk $22.40
• The Malt of the Month at the Ben Nevis whiskey bar $2
• Indie show at the music venue of the moment, Captain’s Rest $10