America's Favorite Restaurants

This summer, artist Olafur Eliasson is creating four waterfalls in New York City's East River. The 90- to 120-foot waterfalls will run from late June through mid-October on most days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The locations are underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side; between Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn Heights; on Governor's Island (near the Statue of Liberty); and in Lower Manhattan at Pier 35 north of the Manhattan Bridge. Circle Line Downtown has already begun to sell tickets for yacht rides to see the waterfalls, with tickets for 30-minute rides starting at $10. (circlelinedowntown.com) [nycwaterfalls.org]

You might have a new museum to add to your list of must-sees: The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced plans to add a second location in downtown New York. The building, located in the Meatpacking District, will offer six floors and about 50,000 square feet of gallery space. Award-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano, based in Paris, is the designer—the New York Times said "the museum’s monumental exterior forms are conceived as a barrier against the area’s increasingly amusement-park atmosphere," a departure from his other works, including the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The new location will surely be a sight—the Whitney plans to raise $680 million for the project, with construction beginning in 2009 and a planned opening in 2012. The Whitney's collection consists of 20th and 21st century American art, including works by Jasper Johns, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Andy Warhol, to name a few.

In Florence’s crowded historic center, it can feel like there are as many Americans as locals—and tourism board and province officials want it to stay that way. They were in New York recently to introduce the Fiorino Effect, a series of wide-ranging discounts they hope will keep Americans visiting despite the weak dollar. The promotion kicks off May 15—timed to the start of Il Genio Fiorentino, a 10-day festival—and runs through December 31. It provides a 10 percent discount at participating hotels and restaurants in Florence and neighboring small towns like Reggello and Barberino Val D’Elsa. Among the more affordable options, Giovanni da Verrazano, a 10-room hotel overlooking the main piazza of Greve, Chianti, made the cut for our Secret Hotels of Tuscany feature. And we’ve previously recommended the family-run Albergo Serena, an 18th-century building with patterned stone-tile floors, well-worn furnishings, and a convenient location by Florence’s Santa Maria Novella train station. Americans will also get free admission to the Palazzo Medici, a 20 percent discount on exhibits at the Palazzo Strozzi, and a 15 percent discount on performances at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Be sure to mention the Fiorino Effect when booking your hotel room and download the voucher before you go. It has an image of the fiorino (florin), a gold coin introduced in the 1200s by Florentine bankers and that enjoyed a heyday as the preferred currency for trade. The promoters are quick to compare it to the role played by the dollar—for now, anyway. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL What $100 Buys in Florence

Here are few amusing excerpts from a new anthology, How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel and Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids. For the record, I am fairly certain that one of our wedding vows included a promise to never fly across the country (any country) with the hypothetical fruit of our union during peak travel times. My husband, Steve, does not remember it this way, but I have a clear recollection of swearing that we would never become two of those poor souls we had so often pitied during our seven years of child-free travel. From the safety of the airport bar we would watch the traveling families barrel past: harried, hurried, and weighed down.… "No way," I remember saying. "We will resist. We will blaze new paths and forge new traditions. We will restrict our travel to balmy months like May and September and we will only fly on Tuesday afternoons. We will not bring everything we own to entertain a five-month-old baby on a ninety-minute flight. We will not distract the busy steward (who is, after all, just there for our safety) with instructions on how to microwave the child's soy milk for exactly 33 seconds at 75 percent power because he only will drink it hot but not too hot.…" Thus spoke the prechild me. Steve and I now have one son, Patrick, and he has spent every major holiday since his birth in 2002 lovingly surrounded by extended family despite the fact that we live at least eight hundred miles from our nearest relatives. How did this happen, you wonder? We schlepped him to them. What about my vow, you ask? "Just tell them," I would hiss at my husband as he picked up the phone to discuss another upcoming holiday with his family. "Just say it. Say we'll see them the following week. Say we'll come the month before. Be strong. Offer a tempting selection of alternate dates. Just..." "Dad!" my husband would say. "So, um, we were thinking about maybe not flying in for Thanksg— Oh. Oh, sure. Of course. Right! Of course! Great! We're looking forward to it! See you then!" Five seconds into the call and his father would clear his throat or something, at which moment my husband would fold like an origami crane. Every. Single. Time. And then there we would be again, buying airline tickets with a seasonal markup best calculated by NASA and realizing that there is a very good reason why people travel by the millions on those busy dates: ancestral guilt. —From Julia Litton's story, "Consider Atlanta." *** Over the span of a four-hour car trip, my husband can sing the so-called "ABCB Spider" song exactly four hundred and eighty-eight times. Figuring it takes twenty-three seconds to sing one round of the Spider, approximately one and a half seconds for a two-year-old to say, "ABCB Spider again?," and four seconds for my husband to sigh, roll his eyes, and resume singing, that works out to four hundred and eighty-eight times over the span of two hundred and forty minutes. I should know. I did the math. I also took the trip.…. To be fair, though, we didn't sing the "ABCB Spider" song the entire way. We also sang the more traditionally known ABC song, both to the original tune and to the snazzy, jazzed-up version made popular by LeapFrog. We sang "I'm a Little Teapot." We sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." We sang "Old MacDonald's Farm," complete with a full complement of entities on said farm that neither God nor nature ever intended. "Had a farm E-I-E-I-O again?" the songmistress trills from the backseat, interrupting the train of thought steaming through my mind, full speed ahead toward the academic conference at which I'm going to present on a panel tomorrow. My husband sighs and rolls his eyes, catching mine. "Old MacDonald had a farm," we obediently sing out. "E-I-E-I-O!" I wonder what's going to land on Old MacDonald's farm this time—we've already exhausted all the normal farm animals, zoo animals, and every single animal featured on Baby Noah, including the wombat. (For the record, the wombat makes a ticka-ticka sound, here, there, and everywhere.)…" —From Elrena Evans's story, "Traveling Songs". **** Traveling with a child is like having the common cold. Everyone offers advice. "Bring a stroller" and "Whatever you do, don't use the stroller." "Don't go in December, too hot." "Only go in December; otherwise it is far too cold for children!" Everyone has a tip, even if they have not been to the place you will be traveling, even if they don't have kids themselves. Laos, like most Southeast Asian countries still holds a strong association of war for many Americans. It is not exactly a typical holiday to take with a two-year old in tow. But…we were looking forward to it… We were particularly looking forward to … Luang Prabang, of which our trusty copy of the Lonely Planet said, "the city's mix of gleaming temple roofs, crumbling French provincial architecture and multiethnic inhabitants tends to enthrall even the most jaded travelers."… Luang Prabang is indeed an enchanted place. We were also getting into the traveling groove and started to feel the benefits of traveling together as a family. For one we were up before all the tourists who stayed up late drinking cheap cocktails and falling in and out of love at the hostels. We saw pristine waterfalls at dawn and could imagine ourselves prehistoric and pure without the constant company of camera flashes. Luc was an instant celebrity wherever we went. Everyone from old women to teenage boys came up to pinch his pink cheeks, rub his curly blond hair and offer him sweets and fruit. Through Luc, we were able to connect with people who would otherwise never have given us the time of day….We were part of the universal equation of family, something that transcends the vast gaps of language and culture…" —From Willow King's story, "Laos with Lucien." EXCERPTS COURTESY OF How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel and Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids (Seal Press; $16) EARLIER ON THE BLOG Hostels that are friendly to families. Ban kids from planes? More than 60 readers weigh in.