Letters to the Editor

To the Editor: Regarding "When Little Ones Take a Bite of the Apple" (June 16): New York is a city of important museums of nearly every possible size and theme, but we must take issue with Pamela Paul's suggestion — even if it was meant lightheartedly — that families with young children should skip the Metropolitan Museum of Art because it's too large and daunting. "Getting lost" is one of the great pleasures of the Met, and along the way kids will find mummies, knights, secret rooms and all sorts of big surprises to delight them: a giant Greek column, African canoes, an Egyptian temple and El Anatsui's glittering curtain of bottle caps are just some of the things that stop them in their tracks. If you want help, there are special family greeters in red aprons at the entrances and education programs for all ages and interests; over 46,000 families each year enjoy activities from toddler story time to gallery hunts and family festivals. The result is a day of discovery, with time travel, heroes and a monumental scale that no video game can match. Certainly the millions of cherished copies of E. L. Konigsburg's "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.  Frankweiler" — the story of two children who run away from home and live at the Met — are proof alone of the Met's magic for kids.
— HAROLD HOLZER, New York
The writer is senior vice president for public affairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

To the Editor: MoMath, the new National Museum of Mathematics on the north side of Madison Square, is perfect. And it's near Shake Shack and Eataly. My kids love it!
— CARIN BARBANEL, New York

To the Editor: The American Museum of Natural History is a must. It can keep your children entertained for days — possibly weeks.
— DREW KONING, San Diego

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Heads Up: In Milan, a Surge of Burger Spots

On a crisp Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, a steady stream of patrons milled about a space with red brick walls, waiting to pick up orders of towering burgers before nabbing wooden stools at the restaurant's perimeter. It was a scene that could have taken place in Brooklyn or Boise, especially given the huge American flag that hung near the doorway. But the restaurant, 202 Hamburger & Delicious, was on the Corso di Porta Ticinese, a shopping street in Milan.

It is just one of a spate of burger bars and restaurants that have popped up across this refined northern Italian city in recent years, fueled by a fascination with American comfort food and its implicit casualness — the antithesis of the lingering, multicourse traditional Italian meal. The most intriguing of these new spots use high-end ingredients that are distinctly Italian in provenance but have far-ranging results: burgers that are near facsimiles of the best across the Atlantic, some that are emphatically Italian-accented and others that touch on both cuisines.

"Milan is international compared to other Italian cities, and people are starting to move away from the classic Italian way of eating with courses like primo and secondo," said Tizzy Beck, who owns Tizzy's N.Y. Bar & Grill in the city. "They're also starting to realize that fast food doesn't have to be junk food if high-quality ingredients are used."

At the year-old 202 Hamburger & Delicious (Corso di Porta Ticinese, 6; 39-02-8366-0635; 202hamburger.com) it is not just the atmosphere but the luscious burgers that could pass for American — the result of a six-month tasting trip in New York City by its owners, Roberto Caramia and Ivan Totaro.

"We tried a different burger each day," Mr. Caramia said.

Beniamino Nespor and Eugenio Roncoroni, friends since they were teenagers, cooked in some of the world's top restaurant kitchens — Mr. Nespor at Restaurante Martín Berasategui in the Basque region of Spain, Mr. Roncoroni at Quince in San Francisco — before opening Al Mercato Ristorante & Burger Bar (Via Sant'Eufemia, 16; 39-02-8723-7167; al-mercato.it) in 2011. The two distinct concepts are at play on either side of a glassed-in kitchen. On one side, diners at Al Mercato Ristorante are treated to a more formal experience, with the option of a 10-course tasting menu. The meal is more casual at the Burger Bar, which offers patties made from Rossa Reggiana beef and other global street foods like a pork belly tostada.

"Eating a burger is fun and dirty," Mr. Nespor said. "It's not like sitting down for a traditional family meal for two and a half hours and getting uncomfortable."

Even large restaurant companies have become besotted with the burger. Gruppo Sebeto, a Neapolitan restaurant group known for its far-reaching pizza chain Rossopomodoro — which New Yorkers may know from its outpost in the Italian-food emporium Eataly — turned its sights on the hamburger with the 2011 opening of Ham Holy Burger (Via Palermo, 15; 39-02-875-510; hamholyburger.com).

"After so many years in the pizza world, we started searching for another 'food for all,' " said Franco Manna, a Gruppo Sebeto founder.

On a car-free Sunday in April, parents and their well-dressed children biked through the boutique-filled Brera neighborhood to the airy restaurant, where they customized their burgers made with Fassone beef from the Piedmont region. Toppings included Italian ingredients like the cured meat speck, smoked scamorza cheese and grilled radicchio. The concept appears to be thriving: the second Ham Holy Burger opened in May 2012 in Rome, and the third in Milan's Marghera neighborhood in November.

Before heading off to one of the raucous bars along the canals of the bustling Navigli neighborhood, young Milanese stop at Trita Tailor Made Burgers (Piazza XXIV Maggio, 6; no phone; trita.it). It's a bright counter-service spot founded in March 2012 by three friends: Riccardo Cortese, Federico Pinna and Alessandro Dalli. In addition to beef, the menu here includes Bufalo Campano, meat from buffaloes that are raised for 15 months. Through the kitchen window, cooks can be spotted cutting huge slabs of meat, running them through a grinder and shaping patties by hand.

Another group of investors plans to open Polpa, another burger spot, in the lively Porta Romana neighborhood later this summer.

A few blocks away, a hipster crowd congregates at Tizzy's, which opened in 2011 (Alzaia Naviglio Grande, 46; 39-02-5811-8227; tizzysbarandgrill.com). The flavorful patties are ground and blended by a mom-and-pop Italian butcher shop, said Ms. Beck, a New York native, but are accompanied by Americana — toppings like Cheddar cheese, desserts like banana splits and Brooklyn Brewery beer.

Already armed with an arsenal of favorite burgers in her hometown, including those at Shake Shack and at Little Owl, Ms. Beck did not have to make special burger research trips.

"I'm a New Yorker just doing what I know," she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article described one of the types of meat served at Trita Tailor Made Burgers incorrectly. The Bufalo Campano is buffalo meat, not beef, and it is the buffaloes that are raised for 15 months; the meat is not aged 15 months.

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In Transit Blog: Bike-Sharing Comes to Aspen

Never one to fall behind trends, Aspen, Colo., proclaims itself the first mountain town with a bike-share program. Its new We-cycle fleet includes 100 bikes parked at 13 stations around town.

Day passes, purchased with a credit card at one of the stations, start at $7 for a 24-hour period and include unlimited rides of 30 minutes each or less. Overage penalty fees are relatively hefty – starting at $2 for 15 minutes and escalating to $5 per quarter hour thereafter – and are designed to encourage cyclists seeking longer rides on the many bike trails outside  town to rent from a town bike shop.

While hard-core cyclists are known to switch their own rides up with snow tires come winter, the We-cycle program will be suspended once the snow flies.

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The Getaway: Finding Deals With Paid Upgrades

With all the complaints about escalating fees that travelers have to pay, another pricing trend is on the rise that some customers may actually like: paid upgrades.

Hotels, airlines and car rental agencies are more aggressively promoting the chance to upgrade your room, seat or set of wheels for a price that is often (but not always) less than you would have paid if you had reserved that business-class ticket or hotel suite in the first place.

Usually, these offers are presented at check-in, when travel companies figure it's too late to sell their premium inventory to somebody else. But sometimes the upselling begins just after you've booked.

Elite members of travel loyalty programs are not necessarily happy about this development, because it can mean fewer free upgrades for them, although some companies are figuring out ways to keep these perks in the mix for their most loyal customers. Below are more details about who is offering paid upgrades, and how to decide if they are worth the price.

A Bigger Room

I stumbled onto a hotel upgrade last year in Hong Kong, after finding out the $250-a-night room with a harbor view that I had reserved was opposite the elevator bay. A trip back to the front desk to request a quieter room led to an offer to upgrade to a suite for an extra $12 a night. It was definitely a good deal (normally a suite would have cost at least $30 extra), and it made me wonder if I had been missing out by not bargaining more often at the front desk.

It turns out most travelers don't ask for upgrades, and many clerks don't offer them, so a company called Nor1 (nor1.com) has automated the process, essentially letting computers handle the negotiation. Working with chains like Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Carlson and Fairmont, as well as independent hotels, Nor1 e-mails an "eStandby Upgrade" offer to some guests who already have reservations. The deals vary based on how full the hotel is, the type of room booked and variables like loyalty membership, but a typical upgrade invitation might offer a bigger room for an extra $10 to $30 a night.

Jason Bryant, Nor1's founder, said the standby upgrade generally costs 25 to 40 percent less than booking the better room in the first place, since accepting the offer doesn't guarantee you'll get the upgrade (hence the word "standby" in the name). But if the hotel doesn't sell that nicer room to someone else for the regular price, your upgrade will be confirmed when you check in. Not everyone who books a room will automatically get an upgrade pitch, Mr. Bryant said.

"We don't want 20 guests stacking up for the same offer if we know only one guest is going to get it."

Elite members of a hotel's loyalty program may still be offered a free upgrade, Mr. Bryant said, but could also see a paid upgrade option for an even better room, or an offer of a discounted spa treatment or dinner instead of a room upgrade.

John Ollila, who tracks loyalty programs at LoyaltyLobby.com (and has elite status with the major hotel chains), said he usually tries his luck by asking for a better room when he checks in. But for travelers without elite benefits, he said, Nor1's eStandby upgrades can be a reasonable deal.

"Check how much the upgraded room would have cost you in the first place," Mr. Ollila said, adding that it might still be worth bargaining to see what you could get without charge.

A Better Flight

Airlines are also more aggressively selling paid upgrades, although their business model seems to be more varied than that of hotels.

For instance, Alaska Airlines offers paid upgrades within 24 hours of the flight's departure through Web check-in, airport check-in kiosks, the ticket counter and even at the departure gate. For a one-way flight of 1,250 miles or less, the cost is $50 to upgrade to first class, which increases to $200 for a flight of 3,751 miles or more (with other price points in between). The savings can be $300 to $400 for domestic flights.

Delta's "same-day standby upgrades" start at $50 for flights of up to 500 miles and increase to $350 for flights longer than 3,000 miles, but you must be traveling on an eligible fare (K or higher) to qualify for a paid upgrade. For a flight from New York to San Francisco, the price difference between an eligible economy class fare and business class is more than $1,500 one way, versus $225 for a same-day standby upgrade, if one is available the day you fly.

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In Transit Blog: Your Tips for Tackling New York With Kids

What are the best ways to negotiate America's biggest city with little (and even not-so-little) children?

We asked you to share your advice and experiences in advance of a new series on traveling with your children that begins today.

Below are some highlights. If you'd like to add to the conversation with your own tips, please leave a comment.

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Restaurants on the Upper West Side and in Park Slope in Brooklyn are a good bet for being child friendly since so many families live there. And both are adjacent to big parks in case you want to picnic. – Bulmal, New York

Enjoy Central Park. Play on the rocks, stroll around, take a horse-and-buggy tour. – Boston Transplant, Boston

Spend half a day at the Museum of Natural History, especially if the weather isn't good. I have yet to meet a child that has not found something to love there. – Evangelina Cifliganec, New York

On a recent trip I planned the morning at the Met to show the kids art from some of the cultures they'd studied in school. I expected we'd be in the museum for an hour or so and then decompress in the park. To my surprise, we ended up spending four hours there because the boys were enjoying the audio guide so much. – Jess, Washington, D.C.

We let my son stay up as late as he wanted since he was in the city that never sleeps. He loved telling everyone when he got home. – EH, Pennsylvania

Bathrooms, bathrooms, bathrooms. Know where the cleanest and most accessible are at all times. – MMom, New York

Find a balance between what the child wants to see and do and what you think s/he should see and do. I'm a quilter and my granddaughter's a budding fashionista. Visiting Mood Fabrics and the City Quilter were pre-planned destinations. – Bobbie, Berkeley, Calif.

Tackling New York City with children I think depends more on a playful attitude than any logistics. My favorite way to tackle the city is by selecting a neighborhood to get lost in for the day, and allowing the strange people or interesting architecture to inspire you and the children. Setting creative games like, "Who can see the most red things?" is free and more interesting to children than standing with other tourists at a historical landmark. For example: the East Village is great for sidewalk art, Central Park is exciting for foliage, SoHo is fantastic for looking at people. – missfitness, New York

I trained my grandsons to look up when we are on the streets (and stop walking when looking up) to notice the interesting architectural designs. The area around Grand Central is a good example. When you are short, you see only the boring parts of buildings. – GM, New York

Don't forget that sometimes for kids the journey can be part of the fun. My boys love riding the buses because they can watch the business of the city. – Sam Raider, Scarsdale, N.Y.

When we go, we strategically schedule long train rides for midday naps. (The kids LOVE the subway so this is not seen by them as a chore at all.) Also, for all activities that require very good behavior, we follow up with going to a big park where they can just run and play without worry. – aml, Baltimore

I highly recommend a subway ride out to Coney Island. The aquarium is wonderful. – Please, Brooklyn

We took a ride to Queens on the 7 train and introduced the kids to authentic Chinese food in Flushing. The kids were amazed by the ride on the subway, the sights and sounds and the interesting foods they tasted. – Kara, Washington, D.C.

Go across some of our more thrilling bridges, like the Verrazano and the Brooklyn. It's breathtaking. And if the kids are not too young, do it at night. – SRF, East

Visit the Bronx Zoo in the colder months. Many of the attractions are indoors, anyway. – Anna, Georgia

Note: Comments have been edited for length and clarity.

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In Transit Blog: Enjoy Venice; Please Don’t Swim in the Canals

In case you were considering a dip in one of Venice's canals, don't or expect to pay fines up to 500 euro. The city of Venice recently released a list of 10 no-nos aimed at tourists in a new campaign entitled "Venezia è anche tua, rispettala!" (Venice is yours too, respect it!).

Among the prohibitions are picnicking in the area around St. Mark's Basilica, feeding the pigeons, wearing bathing suits in public or appearing bare-chested, littering and being loud after 11 p.m. In addition, the posters, which appear in seven languages around town, politely advise walking on the right down the narrow calli or lanes to avoid pedestrian collisions.

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In Transit Blog: More Google Maps for Bikes

As short-term bicycle rentals like Paris' Velib bikes expand in cities worldwide, navigating by bike has proposed a new set of challenges, including what's the least trafficked route between X and Y? Google Maps, which began providing bike directions in the United States and Canada in 2010 and in nine European countries in 2012, just expanded its bike route directions to seven additional countries in Europe, including Germany, France, Poland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

As with its driving directions, Google Maps offers turn by turn directions for cyclists seeking relatively bike-friendly routes from, say, the Louvre Museum to Montmartre.

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In Transit Blog: Walkabout – 6/17: From Pittsburgh to D.C. by Bike, and Germany to England by Train

Walkabout

A weekly capsule of travel news curated by our writers and editors.

Biking Connection After 30 years, the final segment of the Great Allegheny Passage, above, from Homestead, Pa., to Pittsburgh, opened on Saturday. It links with the C&O Canal Towpath in Cumberland, Md., which continues to Washington. (USA Today)

Chunnel Vision Eurostar, which runs trains through the Channel Tunnel, will soon have competition: the German state rail company Deutsche Bahn has been granted permission to run London-bound trains. Though the company doesn't expect to commence service until 2016, the new lines are expected to add as many as 4 million passengers on German and Dutch routes. (Bloomberg, via Skift)

Scare Tactics? A Newark-bound United Airlines flight is reportedly holding a passenger who claims he "poisoned everyone on board," Eyewitness News reports. (F.B.I. agents are meeting the plane at the airport, the Associated Press reports.) (Huffington Post)

Space-Age Material Boeing's Dreamliner is the first commercial plane with skin made of carbon-fiber composites, but the materials underneath — including highly engineered titanium and a range of cutting-edge aluminum alloys — are equally significant. (Wall Street Journal)

Happy Trails A guide to ocean-side trails along Maine's coast. (Maine Magazine) Breakfast, then walk in northern Michigan. (Traverse Magazine) Explore crowd-free national parks. (The Active Times)

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The Getaway: Cruise Mishaps: How Normal Are They?

Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

The Triumph being towed to Mobile Bay in February.

Its name is Triumph, yet this year has been anything but that for the 14-year-old ship owned by Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise company.

The latest news is that Carnival is seeking to dismiss lawsuits from the Triumph passengers whose ordeal this winter transfixed the nation. In case you've blocked out the vile details: in February a fire in the engine room shut down the Triumph's power, propulsion, sewage and air-conditioning systems, leaving 4,200 passengers adrift for days in the Gulf of Mexico with little to eat and raw sewage seeping through the ship's walls and carpets. Even in the home stretch — when the crippled ship was being tugged to port — a towline snapped, prolonging the rescue. 

Savvy travelers have to ask: Is this normal? How many fires, power failures and other unwelcome incidents are there in the life of the average cruise ship? 

Before offering some answers, let's recount what has happened to the Triumph over the last few months.

Triumph floated around the Gulf of Mexico for five days while news of the rank conditions leaked out through Facebook, Twitter and CNN, which had a helicopter whirring around the Triumph for nonstop coverage. The notion of travelers spending their vacations trapped amid raw sewage so captured the collective American imagination that "Saturday Night Live" opened a show with a skit set onboard the Triumph in which a perky cruise director informed passengers that "the Superstar Karaoke Bar is now officially a toilet."

Amazingly, the Triumph's travails didn't end after it finally reached port in Mobile, Ala. Early last month while undergoing repairs, the ship became unmoored in strong winds, crashed into another boat and wound up with a 20-foot-long gash in its side. Could the Triumph be more unlucky?  Yes. A few weeks later explosions from fuel barges on the Mobile River forced workers on the nearby Triumph to evacuate. That incident was seemingly beyond Carnival's control. And accidents happen on other passenger ships. But it's worth looking closely at the Triumph because it belongs to a company that spent more last year than any other cruise line on lobbying Congress, according to the secretary of the United States Senate.

Is what happened to the Triumph normal? Obtaining answers is not easy. 

"No one is systemically collecting data of collisions, fires, evacuations, groundings, sinkings," said Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer in Miami who has attended more than half a dozen Congressional hearings about cruise ship crime and passenger safety. The reason for the lack of data is that cruise lines, while based in the United States, typically incorporate and register their ships overseas. Industry experts say the only place cruise lines are obligated to report anything is to the state under whose laws the ship operates. "The whole industry is essentially outsourced abroad," said Mr. Walker.  Or, as Senator Charles E. Schumer said in a statement after the Triumph debacle: "Cruise ships, in large part operating outside the bounds of United States enforcement, have become the wild west of the travel industry."

Vance Gulliksen, a spokesman for Carnival, said that given that the company carries 4.5 million passengers annually, the incidents on the Triumph "are quite rare."

"Carnival's ships are extremely safe and we meet or exceed all regulatory standards in every respect," he said in an e-mail. "Nonetheless, Carnival has taken the recent events extremely seriously and we want to do everything we can to prevent it from happening again." To that end, Carnival said it has begun investing $300 million in enhancements across its fleet, including improved emergency power capabilities, and increased fire prevention and suppression systems.

Yet for the industry overall, there remains no comprehensive public database of events at sea like fires, power failures and evacuations. Neither the International Maritime Organization nor the United States Coast Guard track everything. But there is one unlikely man who does.

"It's a Canadian professor of sociology," Mr. Walker said, "who testifies in front of the senate."

Ross A. Klein, an American with dual citizenship and a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, was a longtime cruise enthusiast, spending more than 300 days at sea between 1992 and 2002. During that time, he saw that there were differences between what the cruise industry was saying about environmental and labor issues, and what he was observing.

Today, Mr. Klein is an authority on the cruise industry, having testified at hearings before the House of Representatives and the Senate about onboard crimes, disappearances and industry oversights. His Web site, CruiseJunkie.com, is a record of fires, sunken ships, collisions and other events at sea over the last few decades that have been culled from news reports and sources like crew members and passengers.  There are some limits: Mr. Klein receives fewer reports about incidents in Asia, Africa and South America, therefore most of the information is about cruises in North America and Europe. And he is unlikely to learn about problems that are not reported by English speakers or English language news organizations. "I'm sure there are a lot more incidents going on that we don't know about," he said.

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In Transit Blog: Teamwork for a Channel

DoubleTree by Hilton has teamed up with Google to create a YouTube channel called DTour, which allows travelers to post their photos and videos from other social-networking sites like Facebook, GooglePlus and Instagram. The site's map displays locations of DoubleTree hotels, with the ability to book rooms and allows users to link photos, videos and written recommendations to those destinations.

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