We're adding brand-new pages on Miami and need your help to build them. Our stories regularly report on great finds, including the Townhouse Hotel in South Beach, whose chic white-on-white rooms start at $99; Spris Pizza, which has a Beat the Clock deal between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., with 13-inch pies priced according to the time; and the newly renovated Clevelander South Beach, where oceanview suites go for $159 through the end of 2009.
Now we want to hear from you. Share your favorite Miami restaurants and hotels by posting a comment below. Keep in mind that we're most interested in affordable places that have some style and personality—and the more details, the better.
WE'RE ON IT!
Thanks for your recommendations so far in Paris, NYC, Rome, London, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and Costa Rica. We're looking into your favorite hotels and restaurants in these cities and starting to add the best ones to our site.
Check out some of our latest reader picks: Hotel de la Porte Doree in Paris, Rushmore Hotel in London, and White Swan Inn in San Francisco.
Craft & Design museum turns 5
San Francisco is home to plenty of fantastic museums—SFMOMA and the deYoung immediately spring to mind. But next time you're in town, consider the San Francisco Museum of Craft & Design, located at 550 Sutter Street, less than two blocks from Union Square. The museum, which just celebrated its 5th-birthday, focuses on commercial art and design. Past exhibitions have featured 12 local graphic designers, a retrospective of wine labels, a collection of toys designed by artists, and the latest modern pieces from West Coast furniture designers. SFMC+D caught my eye because of its current exhibition, Michael Peterson's Evolution/Revolution. Peterson is a Pacific Northwest artist who uses wood to make beautiful, unexpected sculptures and objects. He emulates natural elements and their effect on wood; for example, he sometimes uses bleach to react with the surface of the wood, just like sun would "bleach" it over time. SFMC+D is open every day but Monday, and admission is a suggested donation of $3 for adults; kids 18 and under are free. Read the Seattle Times review of the exhibition. Check out all 26 of our hotel reviews in San Francisco, or fantastic reader photos in my Budget Travel.
Iconic Italian designs on view
Even as fewer things are made there, Italy remains a persuasive lifestyle brand—a shorthand for effortless style and timeless quality. A new exhibition in Rome, Disegno e Design, sheds light on Italy's reputation and the design process by bringing together sketches, advertising clips from the RAI archives, original patents, and products dating from the early 1900s to the present. A Moka Bialetti espresso maker, a 1940s Vespa scooter, and a Ferragamo shoe are among the best known. The exhibition will stay open through January 31, 2010 at the Ara Pacis Museum (€6.50/$9.65), which is an example of modern design in its own right. Architect Richard Meier unveiled the glass-encased home for Ara Pacis, an ancient Roman temple, in 2006. You can pick up a made-in-Italy souvenir from the museum's gift shop. I'm a fan of the clever Rome-inspired products from Tre Tigri, founded by two industrial designers in 2008. They just so happen to make iron-on graphics of Vespa scooters and Moka espresso makers (which you could apply, say, to a T-shirt or throw pillow). ELSEWHERE IN ROME... The MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, conceived by Zaha Hadid, opens to the public this Saturday, November 14, for a two-day preview. (It's slated to officially open in early 2010.) MAXXI gets a rousing review from NYT architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who guesses that Pope Urban VIII would have been equally ecstatic. Ouroussoff writes: "The completion of the museum is proof that this city is no longer allergic to the new and a rebuke to those who still see Rome as a catalog of architectural relics for scholars or tourists."
Death in Venice: Residents plan the city's funeral
Three gondolas will escort a red coffin through Venice's famed canals this Saturday, November 14, in a symbolic funeral organized to highlight the disastrously shrinking population—which dropped below 60,000 at the end of October. There won't be a single full-time resident left in Venice by 2030, according to demographic predictions cited in Newsweek. The primary cause of death isn't the much-publicized acqua alta that floods St. Mark's Square and city streets annually, but rather the flood of tourists. Of the 55,000 average daily visitors, more than half are now daytrippers who drop in as part of a guided tour or choose to stay in nearby towns like Padua or Verona, where hotels and restaurants are cheaper. Venetian business owners used to charge higher prices to tourists, but now are charging those tourist prices to locals, too, in the struggle to get by. Wealthy outsiders who've purchased second or third homes in Venice have driven up property prices, while the recession and a dwindling tax base have led to service cuts, in what has become a vicious cycle prompting many to abandon the city. Twenty-five percent of residents are over 64, compared to an Italian average of 19 percent [via italymag.co.uk]. Andrea Morelli, who has an electronic population ticker in the window of his pharmacy off the Rialto Bridge, helped organize the funeral to draw attention to the mixed blessings of tourism. Newsweek's Barbie Nadeau reports: "Maybe this funeral doesn't have to be the end," he says. "It might be the beginning; it could even spur a rebirth." In fact, the weekend after Venice's population dipped below 60,000, 11 babies were born at a local hospital. "Now we just have to create a Venice [those new natives] will want to stay in," says Morelli. "We have to give them a reason not to leave."
