Even though a walk around any of the famous sites in New York City show that tourist season is already in full swing, we’re offering up anyway some free ideas of things to do in a town where free is normally very hard to come by.

By Matt Stabile

1) Street Fairs

It’s guaranteed that whenever you’re in New York, there’s going to be a free street fair happening somewhere in one of the five boroughs, much to the consternation of the locals whose parking spots are taken over by vendors. There are neighborhood fairs, fairs for Bastille Day, Italian feast fairs — pretty much any excuse to get outside.

Time Out has this comprehensive list updated every week.

2) Live Music At South Street Seaport

New Yorkers avoid the outdoor mall/tourist trap that is South Street Seaport like the plague. But come summer, the pier hosts some of the best indie rock shows of the season, all for free. This year’s shows include performances from Bear in Heaven, Free Energy and YACHT, with others to be announced.

(Tip: Avoid the tourist-priced drinks at the show and buy a 32-ounce, portable Styrofoam cup from Jeremy’s Ale House nearby for a fraction of the price.)

The full list can be found at the River To River Festival’s page.

3) Shakespeare In The Park

Okay, this one’s not exactly a revelation. Shakespeare in the Park has been attracting crowds for over half a century, and a look at the number of people that line up every day is proof it’s as popular as ever. You could line up like everyone else at the theater in the morning, hoping to snag a couple of tickets as they’re given away at 1 p.m.

But, for those in the know, those days of line waiting are a distant memory. Now you can simply get in line virtually, signing up here on the day of the show. If you’re picked, you’ll get an e-mail telling you about your free pair of tickets. Not picked, just try again the next day. (more…)

Already broke your budget just staying in New York this holiday season? Try these 10 tips to enjoy the city for free.

By Matt Stabile

MUSEUMS

1) MoMA

Normally a steep $20, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art for you acronym-hating readers) is free every Friday from 4:00 – 8:00 p.m. Just head to the front desk and pick up a free ticket for admission then check out Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Monet’s Water Lilies, and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory all for nothing.

TIP: If you plan to check out the Tim Burton exhibit going on right now, head there right at 4 p.m. due to the limited number of entries.

2) The New Museum

With its irregularly stacked white box frame, The New Museum is in fact, literally new (a $64 million renovation was completed in December 2007), and is free on Thursday from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

TIP: Grab you iPod and download these free podcasts for the heavily promoted Urs Fischer exhibit. This may help explain all those tongue advertisements you’ve been seeing on the subway.

3) The Metropolitan Museum of Art

They won’t actually tell you this right out in the open, but it’s true: admission here is only recommended. They ask for $20 for adults and $10 for students, but no one’s stopping you from forking over your pocket change. Stingy? Perhaps, but remember, they’re also working with one of the largest endowments for a museum in the world (well over $2 billion dollars). Want to really help? Hit up the gift shop on your way out or at one of the many stores around the city.

TIP: Ever wonder what graffiti looks like through the ages beginning from about 10 B.C.? Head to the reconstructed Temple of Dendur for a good overview. (more…)

The easy part of about Playa Grande is falling for it immediately. The hard part? Getting there.

By Matt Stabile

I STUCK MY HEAD OUT THE OPEN DOOR OF THE BUS and looked down a steep cliff wall that descended into a wide bay. The public buses in Colombia are usually beat-up looking affairs, with rusty fenders, faded stripes painted across their bodies, and, as is customary across many parts of Latin America, manned by both a driver and an assistant who hangs bravely near the door and collects the fares as they are passed up to him after passengers get a chance to settle in.

This particular assistant didn’t seem fazed the slightest as he stood precariously near the open door, clinging to a bar above the windshield and staring lazily out the door of the bus, his foot hanging in the warm breeze, several hundred feet from the ground. We were crossing over the small row of hills that separate Santa Marta from Taganga, a sleepy fishing village on a bay that, incidentally, has become the region’s capital of scuba instruction. I was not heading there to take advantage of the diving but rather as a jumping-off point to head one beach further to Playa Grande, a secluded stretch of sand with an esteemed reputation for beauty. (more…)

Maybe secluded bays and pristine beaches aren’t the first things that pop into people’s head when they think of Colombia, but a trip to Colombia’s Caribbean coast reveals just that. And the best part? No tourists.

By Matt Stabile

AS I LOOKED OUT THE BUS WINDOW AND INTO THE NIGHT SKY, I could see flashes of lightning igniting the dark, colorless clouds lingering high above the Caribbean Sea, portensions of things to come. It was Friday night. Cumbia music was blasting from a radio hanging by a wire above the driver’s head. Behind me a teenage girl was meticulously applying makeup with the aid of a small compact mirror. Two seats in front of me, a group of young Colombian men were drinking from an open bottle and joking around with each other. I peeled my shirt away from my chest, damp from a combination of a slight drizzle and the tropical humidity that had blanketed my body the moment I stepped off the plane, and I couldn’t have been happier. I had traveled here to Colombia’s Caribbean coastline to visit its famously beautiful and remote beaches — beaches whose mythic-like images were planted enticingly in my mind by travelers during cold, rainy nights in Bogotá hostels and Medellín cafes; usually described in hushed tones, like the disclosure of the whereabouts of a lost city that few had seen.

It was only fitting that the rain began to fall the minute that I stepped off the plane. At first it was a light drizzle, but as the hours wore on, the rain progressed into what I would soon learn was an once-in-a-decade “weather phenomena” that, during the course of my stay along the coastline, would cause rivers to overflow, shantytowns to flood, city streets to become deluged and hidden beneath torrents of water flowing from the nearby mountains, and for me to seriously question what vendetta had I with the gods that was causing this storm to strike during the exact period of time that I was staying there.

The good thing about rain, particularly the kind that falls in the warm, humid months of November and December here, is that it’s still far better to be caught in than, say, a snowstorm in the icy, frigid streets back in New York where, had I been at that exact moment, I would certainly not be wandering around in a pair of swimming trunks and sandals, stopping into various shops, and lounging on the beach with a concoction of freshly squeezed coconut and orange juice served in a plastic mug shaped like a coconut shell.

“When do you think it ends?” I asked a bored barista the next morning, shortly after I had ordered my third straight cup of coffee. (more…)

Enjoying the high life in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, without breaking the bank takes a little discipline and a lot of imagination.

By Matt Stabile

There’s no doubt about it: I had traveled to Gothenburg in first class; once I got there it was back to reality. I’d just arrived from Stockholm on the X2000, Sweden’s high-speed train that reaches speeds of up to 125mph (200km/h) and ferries travelers between the two cities in a mere three hours. The downside is that the ticket costs about as much a discount airline ticket; the upside is that you’ll feel like you’re flying first-class. A few hours before, after helping myself to a glass of fresh juice and some fresh fruit from the á la carte kiosk, I settled into my plush, la-z-boy-sized chair, rolled it back to a comfy 45-degree angle, and watched out the window as the lush, green Swedish countryside quickly passed me by as I zoomed south to Gothenburg.

It’s these moments of travel that I look forward to the most: those rare moments during your trip, usually on your way from someplace to somewhere else, when you’ve got nothing better to do than to just sit back, relax, and replay the events of the last few days in you head. This usually happens after a hectic spurt of activity — in my case a couple of days running around Stockholm seeing the sights by day and heading out afterward to enjoy the nightlife, followed by an overnight ferry to Tallinn, Estonia, then back again. (more…)

Sweden’s long summer days and cool nights out makes it one of the best places to visit in Europe come the longest day of the year.

By Matt Stabile

This was classic Stockholm. It was just past midnight and from our view in one of Stockholm’s highest rooftop bars we’d just watched the sun finally dip below the horizon, ending the luminescent sunset that had slowly been unfolding over the past hour or so. It was just a few days before the Midsummer holiday (or better known outside of the Scandinavian world as the longest day of the year) and though I had arrived just that morning, the extended daylight hours made it feel like I’d been there for days. “I can’t believe how many people are still out,” I said to my friend from Stockholm as I looked around the crowded bar. “It’s a Wednesday night.”

“Would you stay home on night like this?” she asked, gesturing to the floor-to-ceiling windows framing the sunset over the city skyline.

Point taken.

I had arrived in Stockholm with grand hopes for the Midsummer holiday. Back in the dark days of February when I booked my trip I was envisioning a Stockholm packed for the holiday, full of people out on the streets, partying under a warm, midnight sun — a sort-of Scandinavian Mardi Gras. I was nearly right about the midnight sun (it gets dark shortly before midnight and becomes light around 3:00 a.m. — an unwelcome sight for late-night revelers), but I was not so right about the warmth (June can still be quite chilly) nor was I right about the raucous street parties (the city actually empties out come Midsummer). But, as other expectations go, it was already clear to me that Stockholm was living up to the hype it’s been receiving as Scandinavia’s emerging capital of culture, with its thriving music and arts scene, a bustling nightlife, and a fondness for innovative design known the world over. (more…)

Though Chile is known for its laid-back attitude, it doesn’t take long for one to discover its vibrant culture.

By Matt Stabile

Let’s just say I was already feeling a little light-headed before I found myself thousands of feet in the air, looking out over the Andes Mountains. Buenos Aires is not exactly known as a sleeper-friendly city, and the last five days for me there were no exception. So by the time I got to the Airport for my 5:45 flight to Santiago, Chile — after only heading to bed a few hours before — my head already felt like I had been aloft for several hours.

I was initially going to spend my entire trip in Argentina, but after finding out that my friend’s brother was living and teaching English in Santiago, I decided that I might as well try to see as much as I could in the time I had in South America. There are plenty of daily flights between the two capitals but no discount airlines operating in either of those countries, so I booked a ticket through the large Chilean airliner LAN for US$250.

On a bus ride back from San Antonio de Areco to Buenos Aires I met a trio of girls from Colorado who’d been backpacking around the continent for the last three months. The girl sitting next to me began showing me pictures on her camera and we came across some incredible shots of the Andes from her flight to Argentina. I told her I was flying out the next day and she recommended getting a window seat to get the best view. So the next day on my early-morning flight when the stewardesses disappeared behind the first-class curtain before takeoff, I sneaked into an empty window seat in the bulkhead aisle and promptly leaned my head against the window and shut my eyes, avoiding any impression of impropriety. (more…)

Young travelers are flocking to Buenos Aires to experience its non-stop nightlife and vibrant culture, at a fraction of the cost of other cities

By Matt Stabile

Let’s face it, in the last year or so, travelers have been talking more and more about Argentina: the best place for nightlife, the best place to visit with a weak American dollar, the best place to see before it’s overrun with tourists. Not one for putting things off too long — and with winter just around the corner — I booked a flight to Buenos Aires to find out first-hand what all the talk was about.

Back in August, while exploring various sites, I came across an unbeatable deal — US$550 — on a flight to Buenos Aires from New York on American Airlines. (After taxes and various other fees that his particular web site tacked on, the fare came out closer to US$800, so instead I booked directly hrough American’s web site and nabbed a ticket for US$750.)

I landed in Buenos Aires on a Friday morning after an overnight flight nonstop out of JFK. I grabbed my suitcase, waded through the crowd of drivers gathered near the airport exit, and hopped into one of the yellow cabs waiting patiently on the street. About half the price of a car service, my ride in a slightly beat-up taxi cost about 75 pesos or US$25 (the exchange rate has been hovering around 3-to-1 for the last few years). (more…)