Getting the flavor of...New York’s not-just-for-tourists hotels

New York’s not-just-for-tourists hotels

In New York, “the hotel-as-hangout is back,” said Heidi Mitchell in the Financial Times. Reviving a trend last seen in “the go-go 1980s,” a clutch of new and refurbished Manhattan hotels have unveiled chic roof terraces or “clubby bars” that are drawing crowds of locals into venues traditionally considered fit only for out-of-towners. There’s some history here. The year-old Chatwal, in Midtown, is today “the ad hoc canteen for fashion and publishing executives,” but it wasn’t that long ago that John Barrymore and Douglas Fairbanks knew the edifice as the Lambs Club, their elegantly appointed playhouse. To bring in local tastemakers, top chefs are recruited—Daniel Boulud at the Surrey, Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Mark. The tactic is working. Care to glimpse native New Yorkers indulging in a Sazerac at 4 p.m.? “See you at the Mark. Or the Ace. Or the Chatwal. Or the Crosby.” You don’t even have to book a room.

Texas’s playground by the sea

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Like all great boardwalks, the one in Kemah has a timeless appeal, said Suzette Parmley in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Located 20 miles from Houston, family-friendly Kemah caters to the crowds with roller coasters and old-timey ice-cream shops. I began the day with a grilled mahimahi lunch at Aquarium Restaurant, where “the room’s centerpiece was a 50,000-gallon fish tank filled with everything from tropical fish to sharks.” Afterward, I visited the 19,000-gallon tank at Stingray Reef, where stingrays “come right up to your hand to be fed and petted like water puppies.” Next, I braved Kemah’s biggest draw, the Boardwalk Bullet, a wooden roller coaster that twists for more than 3,500 feet. “I screamed at the top of my lungs” as it dropped from its 96-foot-high peak. “To calm my nerves,” I took the slow ride up the Boardwalk Tower “to enjoy panoramic views of Galveston Bay.”