There’s a new party in Salt Lake City. Utah liquor laws were normalized last year for the first time since 1935, allowing patrons simply to walk into a bar and order a drink, as if they were in any other city. Add to that a budding film scene (a spillover effect from the nearby Sundance …
THE BASICS Despite Austin’s self-professed wackiness, the city’s hotel scene is mostly a sea of cookie-cutter chain hotels. A rare exception is the funky Hotel San José, which opened about a decade ago in a restored motel.
Having already pointed out the fermented tea kombucha “living” on top of the fridge, and the kefir milk fermenting in the pantry, and the homemade sourdough crackers browning in the oven, Melinda Stone led a visitor down to the basement of the Victorian house
Kyoto, the former imperial capital of Japan, is a vibrant mash-up, an ancient city electrified by the breathtakingly new. Cruise the futuristic food halls of a department store, gaping at the perfect fruit and glistening sea creatures, before zipping up to the traditional floor, with its kimonos and tea
If you spy a dark-haired woman gliding down Mission Street, past the taquerias and bodegas, in a white, head-to-toe bee suit — picture a hazmat suit crossed with a fencing mask — chances are it’s Cameo Wood, en route to a beehive.
The city’s unofficial motto, “Keep Austin Weird,” blares from bumper stickers on BMWs and jalopies alike, on T-shirts worn by joggers along Lady Bird Lake and in the windows of independently owned shops and restaurants. It’s an exhortation for a city that clings
It was a crisp and sunny Saturday in Yountville, a wine-soaked town in the heart of the Napa Valley, and a steady trickle of day-trippers was hopping from tasting room to oak-scented tasting room, spearing Manchego cubes and sipping the latest vintages.
ON $250/DAY SLEEP Carved out of a 1920s hotel, the new Hotel Vertigo in Nob Hill (940 Sutter Street; 415-885-6800; www.hotelvertigosf.com) recently emerged from a cinematic makeover inspired
THE BASICS The Good Hotel, which opened last November, claims to be the first “hotel with a conscience.” Anthropomorphizing aside, the hotel does have many admirable qualities: low prices (rooms start at $89), eco-friendly touches and a philanthropic streak.
With its architectural mishmash of storybook English cottages and Swiss Alpine chalets, the small town of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California resembles a Disneyland version of Europe. You half expect a bereted Parisian to saunter out of one of the ridiculously cute
