When I told friends of my plan to take a day trip to Newark, most of them had one question: "Why?" To be honest, I could understand this reaction - most of what I had heard about the city could be summed up by the phrase "dirty and crime-ridden." Nevertheless, I was resolute to go, because I had also heard that the city was reviving itself, and because locals had praised two attractions there. One was the Newark Museum, known for the largest collection of Tibetan artwork anywhere outside Tibet. The other was the Portuguese Ironbound district, said to be home to the best Portuguese food anywhere in this country. These places made me curious, and I figured that they added up to one-day trip.

From my hometown near Washington, Newark was an easy, if uneventful, three-hour trip by Amtrak. The train is the best way to get there, since Newark's Union Station (like most big-city train stations) is very close to everything downtown. The first thing I saw after arriving was a downtown like that of other cities of the same size. Downtown Newark is compact, walkable, and dominated by skyscrapers and older art-deco structures, with lots of diverse people going about in that utter frenzy that people like me, who love big cities, find so exhilarating. One sees closed businesses, but also real signs of revival, the most conspicuous of which is the fancy modern New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which is a short walk from the train station. I looked east from here and saw the Manhattan skyline across the river, a quick reminder of the city that overshadows Newark in so many ways.

Newark's city museum is one of the places most affected by this lack of attention. It is certainly much less visited than New York's famous Metropolitan, to which it is quite similar. Both are "museums of everything," surveys of a great variety of world cultures. The Newark Museum need not be seen as a poor substitute, however; it is perfectly capable of standing on its own. The variety here is astonishing. There are substantial collections of Native American ceramics, African clothes, sculptures, antiques, and modern paintings. The place even rates high on the "something for everyone" scale, offering several exhibits that might appeal to people not otherwise interested in art museums - a coin collection, a planetarium, a zoo with small animals, and a Victorian-era house, complete with replicas of artifacts from that era that visitors can handle. My favorite of these was the stereopticon, an early three-dimensional picture viewer that was a sort of precursor to the View-Masters of more recent times. The stars of the zoo are two cotton-top tamarins, endangered monkeys from Panama with brilliant white pompadours, who delight in jumping to the front of their enclosure to startle human onlookers.

As advertised, the big hit show of the whole museum is the Tibetan collection, and the core of that show is the Tibetan Buddhist altar. An incredible extravaganza of painting and design (it took a lot of effort just to assemble the proper honorifics to go with it), the shrine was actually built by the curators and a hired artist in the 1980's, and then dedicated by the Dalai Lama himself in 1990. Luckily, the museum has a cushioned bench directly across the hall from the altar, allowing a viewer to sit down and take the time to study all the fine details.

After several hours in the museum, I made my way back through downtown to the Ironbound district, which sprawls to the south of Union Station. A few minutes of strolling down Ferry Street, the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, and I quickly forgot I was in the United States! The Ironbound is one of those precious few places in the country where one can walk for blocks and not hear a word of English. Legions of folks were going in and out of fish markets, bakeries, and gift shops littered with Portuguese merchandise. The largest selection seemed to be several blocks up Ferry Street at Portugalia Sales. While teenage employees in aprons flirted and joked in Portuguese, I examined all manner of plaques, shot glasses, vases, miniature ships (complete with rigging), and tiny die-cast black roosters, the symbol of Lisbon. To be sure, there was a lot of junk, but there were also treasures lying in wait for a patient eye. I liked many of the beautiful creches, but there was no way I was going to get any of them home on the train. I settled on something more modest - a potholder printed with a black-rooster logo and a blue stripe pattern.

My souvenir in hand, I decided to try some Portuguese cuisine. I soon discovered that being a vegetarian was going to make that a challenge. I walked between several of the Spanish colonial brick buildings that housed some of the neighborhood's famous restaurants, but found nothing to satisfy my requirement. By this time, I was tired, and I wanted to sit down somewhere and have a soda. I settled on a place on Ferry Street called the Roque and Robalo. The dapper and very dour waiter brought me my soda, as well as a basket of delicious sourdough bread and a large glass salad bowl. This was plenty to eat, and when he came back, I explained to the waiter that I was a vegetarian, that I just wanted to relax in the restaurant and have a drink, and that I was willing to pay a few dollars for the food he had brought. A short time later, he came back with a totally unsolicited plate covered with a huge pile of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. There was no way I could eat even half of it, but the generosity of it stunned me. A lot of places will make you a tepid vegetable plate on request, but few go to the trouble of making you a good one. The potatoes were especially good - they were boiled to a near-perfect texture. Even without the plate, the bread would have been worth the visit all by itself. When he noticed how much I liked it, the waiter brought me another whole loaf to take home.

What were my impressions as I rode home on the train? Even after visiting Newark, I do not expect it to give Orlando and New York serious competition as a tourist town. That said, the resilient little city, like most others its size, does have its share of things that make it worth visiting. Newark is an underrated place that rewards a traveler willing to take a chance.

More Information
Tony Porco lives in a Washington, D.C. suburb with his wife and son. His writings have appeared in Connecting: Solo Travel News and the newsletter of the National Aquarium in Washington. His poetry can be read in several literary magazines.

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