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Travel: T&C Travel, The Maldives

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 23 Januari 2008 0 komentar

The Maldives: Prepare for Paradise

These are four sumptuous spots in the Maldives that should not be missed

By Julie Earle-Levine

No matter how many paradises you've been to, nothing quite prepares you for the Maldives, a just-about flat archipelago of 1,190 islands that seem to float on the sapphire Indian Ocean 350 miles southwest of India. Since the tsunami in December 2004, construction has been in overdrive, with a handful of properties debuting and more on the way. Here's your guide to the best of what's new.

For the Scenester

When you see the giant white letter W on a jetty from the window of your seaplane, you know you've arrived at the W Retreat & Spa, on Fesdu Island, a seventy-eight- room resort geared to diving enthusiasts and the design-savvy set. Book one of the Ocean Oasis villas, which sit over the water and whose floors are partly glass. The water view also takes center stage at the Asian-inspired open-air restaurant, where you dine to the sound of the waves as manta rays and turtles swim by. At night, the mostly European crowd grooves to DJ-spun tunes at the underground bar. Villas from $895; 011-960-666-2222; whotels.com.

For the Sybarite

At the Four Seasons Resort at Landaa Giraavaru, the company's second resort in the Maldives, health-conscious guests can indulge in sessions with the resident yogi and in Ayurvedic treatments in one of the top-notch spa's ten pavilions. (Ayurvedic doctors have been brought in from Sri Lanka and Kerala, India.) There are 102 rooms, including thirty thatched-roof Beach Villas, each with a forty-foot lap pool and a sand-bottomed patio on which you can pass idle afternoons atop a daybed or in a traditional Maldivian swing. Al Barakat, an Arabian restaurant, serves Lebanese mezes; at the adjacent Shisha Bar, guests can be found puffing away on water pipes. Rooms from $800; 011-960-660-0888; fourseasons.com.

For the Yactsman

If staying on land and sea appeals to you, book the Rania Experience, on the private Water Garden Island, which will host up to fifteen people. You'll have your own eighty-six-foot yacht with three bedrooms and a Jacuzzi on deck. Visitors can sleep on board or on shore in the three-bedroom villa with open-air bathrooms shaded by palm trees and an entertainment room equipped with board games and DVDs. Your staff will include a chef, a butler and spa therapists. By day, you can play tennis and the ship's captain and diving instructor can take you sailing among the coral reefs, with stops for fishing and snorkeling. After dark, the stargazing is otherworldly. From $10,000 a couple a night, all inclusive; 732-773-8230; raniaexperience.com.

For the Romantic

Expect to see wealthy Europeans and a celebrity clientele when you stay at the One&Only at Reethi Rah, a castaway-style outpost of One&Only Resorts that opened just four months after the tsunami. Pampering begins on arrival, with lemongrass-scented towels and shots of custard-apple-and-lemongrass juice to revive you. The resort's 130 villas are scattered over 109 acres, enabling extreme privacy. Couples can soak in the large stone tubs designed for two or play in the tides at one of the twelve pristine beaches. There are three restaurants, but for a meal that will make you swoon, arrange a picnic at a secluded spot on the beach. Rooms from $1,050; 866-552-0001; oneandonlyresorts.com.

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Travel: T&C Travel, Lord Howe Island, Australia

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Capella Lodge, Lord Howe Island

Already a vacation paradise, Capella Lodge makes Australia's Lord Howe Island even more appealing.

By Julie Earle-Levine

A sleek new hideaway on Australia's Lord Howe Island, in the South Pacific, makes the UNESCO World Heritage-listed paradise even more appealing. The tiny island, just a two-hour flight from Sydney, is relatively undiscovered and blessed with abundant flora and fauna. Its Capella Lodge is the latest offering from James Baillie, the visionary behind some of Australia's best resorts, including Lizard Island and Bedarra Island.

The nine-suite beach house with a wraparound teak deck and floor-to-ceiling glass windows opened last year, after Baillie bought the existing property and rebuilt it from the ground up. The stylishly spare rooms have shutters that open to views of mountains and an isolated lagoon with golden sand and rolling surf.

By day, guests snorkel in the coral reef or bike on the nearly car-free island. Capella's spa features Aboriginal treatments and is the perfect place to relax after climbing Lord Howe's two volcanic peaks. Try Gower's Foot Therapy, named after one of the mountains: a foot soak and salt scrub followed by a mask of kelp and pepper berry. Take an early-morning yoga class on the beach, and in the evening enjoy the sunset while dining on fresh seafood at Capella's restaurant. From $306 a person daily. 011-61-2-9928-4355; lordhowe.com

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Lifestyle: Weekend FT The perfect pair of Jeans

Posted by Unknown Sabtu, 12 Januari 2008 0 komentar

By Julie Earle-Levine

Published: January 12 2008

Weekend FT

It was only a matter of time. Now that denim is a market unto itself – no longer merely a “separate” or a piece of “casual wear” but a multi-million-dollar market full of competing players, global marketers and dedicated websites – comes the rise of the “denim specialist”.

James Leslie, for example, owner of Trilogy in London, a store that offers 15 brands of jeans along with a glass of champagne or wine in a boudoir-like setting, with designer high heels for customers to try with jeans. “The sheer nature of going to a department store is quite intimidating and in-your-face, with huge racks of 20, 30 different styles of jeans,” says Leslie, not to mention the fact that at some stores, sales staff use “jeans language; if you are an expert, fine, but not all customers know what a ‘high-rise skinny’ is, and we explain that”.

“There are so many jean-victims who bought poor denim or look bad,” says Mauro Farinelli, a Savile Row-trained tailor and former denim specialist at Saks Fifth Avenue. “People think, ‘how hard can it be?’. I can fix the gap with a belt, or if they have the biggest arse in the world, they don’t realise that itty-bitty pocket isn’t going to help.”

Now, however, at stores from New York to Los Angeles and London, experts who can match style to body type, and advise on details such as thread count, weave and selvage (the edge of the fabric that doesn’t fray) are proliferating at almost the same rate as new jeans companies.

“People who buy their jeans from department stores or boutiques specialising in mass-market jeans may have no need for a denim specialist,” says Mark Sterne, an image specialist and denim fan. “But I think the more particular the customer is about fit and exclusivity, the more useful a specialist might be.”

Consider the following story from Farinelli. He recalls one customer, a woman in her fifties who was determined to buy a very low-rise pair of jeans, “something her teenage daughter might wear”. He recommended a more sophisticated, flattering style of jean and she reluctantly tried on several. “She ended up looking better than her teenage daughter might. She still looked sexy in a brand other women admire, but not foolish.”

“We have an older clientele who really want to understand what they are buying,” says Kiya Babzani, co-owner of Self Edge, a denim specialist store in San Francisco that sells designer Japanese denim, including a $450 copy of a 1955 Levi’s jean with original Scovill brand zippers bought from dealers in vintage stock. “Most of our clients are deeply passionate about denim and care about what they are wearing.”

“I depend on specialists to research what is available in foreign markets and to tell me about expected shrinkage,” says Sterne.

Yuji Fukushima, co-owner of another specialist jeans store, Blue in Green in Soho, carries more than 10 Japanese denim brands, mainly for men, that he says are impossible to buy in any other one store. For him, specialists provide expertise for “serious” jeans buyers. “I think because we are a very small store, personal relationships are key,” says Fukushima. “If a customer comes into our store, they try to find one pair of jeans they really want. Sometimes we spend hours dealing with this, and help them try on many, many pairs of jeans to find the perfect one.”

“Men might go with something made with a shuttle loom, natural indigo – they’ll pay more for it – or they want to know where the zipper is from, what mill it is from,” agrees Farinelli.

This a reason American Rag, one of the first designer denim stores, trains staff to be knowledgeable about the finest details of every pair of jeans they sell. “A lot of customers want to know why these jeans cost so much,” says Mike Flynn, a spokesman for the store. “I think it is very helpful to have someone who understands denim explaining why certain types of cotton make a good denim, or just understanding that if it is loomed in Japan and made in the US, why that will cost more.”

“People hate shopping for jeans. They don’t really want to go in,” says Farinelli, who will open a new store, called Denim Bar in Manhattan, this year, where the ethos is nightclub, and buyers can have a glass of wine or a cocktail while shopping (he already has two in Washington DC). As he envisions the future, however: “The bartender will be explaining pocket placement, triple stitching, different cuts. A few drinks later, next thing you know, the customer is in Rock & Republic or metallics by 4 Stroke Jeans, a cool new line made in collaboration with Keith Richards’ daughter Theodora.”

And suddenly, he says, they realise: “Jeans shopping is not all that bad.”

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Pocketbook

www.blueingreensoho.com

www.denimbaronline.com

www.selfedge.com

www.trilogystores.co.uk

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Lifestyle: Weekend FT New Yorkers Do It Better

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 09 Januari 2008 0 komentar

New Yorkers do it better

Weekend FT
By Julie Earle-Levine

January 5 2008

A small mountain of shopping bags and a coat rack 20-garments deep filled the waiting area at Soho Nails in downtown Manhattan. It was not an unusual scene in this shopping Mecca where women drop in to the popular salon for a quick manicure, pedicure or bikini wax in between hitting the boutiques. But on a recent weekday, the lines were too long, the wait took several hours and the chattering ladies were largely speaking in foreign accents.

Blame the economy. British, European, Japanese and Canadian shoppers are swooping on New York to take advantage of the favourable exchange rate. But they aren't just going for clothes bargains – they are also booking in at hair salons and spas for "half price" treatments. And the spa business is booming as a result. One British woman at Soho Nails, for instance, exclaims her delight at the basic $7 manicure. "It's a steal," she says.

Alexandra Marshall, a Paris-based writer, has just spent Christmas in Los Angeles but had planned the Hollywood-style beauty regime she would undertake on holiday weeks before she arrived. "I was getting manicures and pedicures every other day," she says. "They're impossibly inconvenient and expensive in Paris" – a cry often heard in London too, where many beauty treatments are prohibitively pricey. Salons are not so prolific in the French capital, says Marshall, and there are no walk-ins – a more traditional appointment-only basis operates there. And the prices are more restrictive too with an average price of €35 for a basic manicure and then up to €8 extra to apply polish. "And they don't actually do a great job," says Marshall.

Emily Cohen, founder of Pout Cosmetics, which she has since sold, saves all her beauty treatments for when she is visiting New York for meetings on future projects. "I have my waxing done, my pedicures and manicure. I get it all done and save myself a fortune, plus the treatments are better in New York. Even the little places on the corner in New York offer really stonkingly great manicures. Fifteen bucks and you get quality."

Suki Duggan, owner of Donsuki's hair and beauty salon in Manhattan, says she has noticed many more international clients in the past eight weeks. "A lot of Americans are staying home because of the softer dollar, and their European friends are visiting. They bring in their friends and they are getting everything done here – colour, cut, styling – because it's so cheap here."

But, according to Duggan, a brisk business at her Upper East Side salon is not just as a result of visiting Europeans – it's also being driven by locals. "Many of my New York clients are not doing a weekend to Paris to shop. So they are getting more beauty treatments in New York because they still want to stay chic in a tough economy."

Other stylists and salon owners confirm business has never been better. Europeans don't blink at $600 massages because they feel as though they are only paying as little as half price, says Kim Matheson, a spa consultant. She says spas across the US have been seeing an influx of Europeans. "We are also seeing a lot of women from Asia, South and Central America getting treatments here."

Camille Meyer, of TriBeCa Medspa, agrees that travel-savvy New Yorkers are skipping weekend shopping jaunts in Europe. "No one is travelling right now, and everyone else is travelling here. We get a lot, especially from London." In recent weeks, those visits have been for Botox shots or one-off treatments such as dermal fillers. "Botox takes 14 days to really kick in, so they get it just once [in a trip]. We are also seeing a lot of Canadians and Japanese who might get skin resurfacing. They just walk around Manhattan with red skin for 24 hours but they don't care because they are on holidays."

Locals, of course, are still spending but some are doing it a little more cautiously. "They are buying laser facelifts. Usually they buy them in a package of three but in recent weeks they would rather pay each time," says Meyer. Even wealthy clients, who previously had no problem writing a $10,000 cheque, now just want to pay for single treatments. "They are saying, 'My husband will kill me if he sees a large amount [on the statement] all at once.'" Ellen Sackoff, founding partner of Cornelia Day Resort – famous for its customised facials – says her American clients are also travelling less but are spending more. One woman who once travelled to exotic locales with her husband is staying at home and making the spa her away time.

"Customers who would buy a $5,000 handbag still feel guilt associated with it," she says. So rather than opt for a new seasonal accessories fix, she says "now they are putting money into beauty and wellness. They realise it is good for them."

Regardless, for Sackoff, out-of-towners are still the main ones driving the business. While the average spent by her weekend clients is $350, those coming from Europe are parting with anything from $800 to $1,000 dollars a go. "They feel like they are getting a great deal. People don't care about prices. We raised them recently and no one blinked."

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Reach for the spas

Soho Nails, 458 Broadway, 3rd floor; tel: +1 212-475 6368
Donsuki's Salon, www.donsukisalon.com
TriBeCa Medspa, www.tribecamedspa.com
Cornelia Day Resort, www.cornelia.com

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Lifestyle: Portfolio A Wine for All Seasons

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Portfolio

by Julie Earle Levine
Jan 7 2008

Wine director Richard Hales spends $2 million a year purchasing the bottles that make the list at New York's Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Photograph by: Robert Caplin

Job title: Wine director

On a recent Saturday morning in December, Richard Hales was at Christie's auction house in New York to bid on vintage madeiras—massive, full-bodied, and incredibly old wines with high alcohol content and prices to match. Madeiras have recently been attracting attention as investments and as stories (some are almost 200 years old), and Hales, the wine director for the Mandarin Oriental in New York, spent nearly $40,000 at the auction to buy about 15 bottles of the rare wine.

"These are wines that have been sitting in the cellars of wealthy families," Hales says. "They are very, very good, and everyone wants them."

As wine director, Hales' job is to study, find, and purchase wines for the hotel's restaurant, bar, and lounge; room service; and banquet facilities. He typically spends about $2 million a year at auction and through wine dealers to pick the wines that will be served at the hotel. (Read his top tips for building your own wine collection.)

Hales keeps about 1,000 wines on his various lists for the hotel and can recall each one according to style, flavor, alcohol content, and acidity so that he can suggest the perfect pairings, whether it be with foie gras or finger food. As a sommelier, his style is to be casual and conversational with the hotel's guests. "Not every table requires so much information, and as a good sommelier, you must read your guest," he says. Hales also always encourages his guests to give a price range for what they're looking to spend.

A typical day starts at 10 a.m. when he checks on deliveries and has meetings with staff, followed by lunch and dinner service and then an hour of updating his wine lists, studying new wines and regions. During slow periods at his restaurants, usually in April and midsummer, Hales travels to do research and tastings, typically splitting his time between the new and old wine regions.

Hales' passion for wine grew from an obsession with food and his original career path as a chef. After studying at New York's French Culinary Institute in 1997, he worked his way up the food chain at New York gastronomic centers La Grenouille and Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Vong, eventually rising to sous-chef at Vong several years later. From there, he moved on to Miami's Azul, an Asian-inflected Mediterranean restaurant located in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where he found himself in the role of wine connoisseur when the sommelier left abruptly in 2002. He became wine director for the Mandarin in New York in December 2006.

Hales compares his work as a wine director and sommelier to his previous job as a chef; both positions have required him to assemble the right ingredients to fashion something memorable.

"At this level, dining is about the experience as much as it is about eating," Hales says. "Wine is part of that experience, and it is more than just satisfying a thirst. It is a discovery."

Wine director Richard Hales shares his best advice for assembling a top-notch, highly personalized wine collection.

Companies that hire them: Luxury-hotel groups and restaurants. Typically, a wine director oversees multiple outlets in a hotel or restaurant group, with one or more sommeliers on staff.

How to find out about openings: Word of mouth, since it is a small world. There are also job listings on the Court of Master Sommeliers' website. This is the American chapter of an international group whose mission is to improve standards in the beverage industry.

How much you can earn: Between $60,000 and $250,000 a year, depending on the size of the company and the scope of the position. At the lower end, the job would most likely be at a single restaurant, while at the top, a national operation.

Useful skills: No specific background is necessary but communication and organizational skills, a fine-tuned palate, and a knowledge of wine history, vintages, and current wine trends is crucial. Wine directors must also travel and taste wine regularly.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: The Court of Master Sommeliers says it's likely that each five-star hotel and upscale restaurant in the U.S. has its own wine director, putting the number in the low thousands, but there are no official data.

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Weekend FT: How Hillary Wears The Trousers

Posted by Unknown Senin, 31 Desember 2007 0 komentar

How Hillary wears the trousers

Weekend FT

By Julie Earle-Levine

December 29 2007 02:00

Ah, the travails of being the leader of the pack. As Hillary Clinton heads into the Democratic presidential primary as the frontrunner, the mud is being slung fast and furious, and her clothes are getting a splattering. But is it because she is the biggest target around, or is it because - as she e-mailed in a note to supporters in response to some observations about a low-cut black jumpers she wore - she's female?

"Frankly, focusing on women's bodies instead of their ideas is insulting," she wrote, and not long after she could be found on ABC's The View commiserating with Barbara Walters about the fact that female candidates were unfairly analysed over their clothes. Truth is, however, she's going to have to get used to it. So says Edith Mayo, curator emeritus at the National Museum of American History and designer of the current Smithsonian First Ladies exhibition, which aims to place these women in the context of their husbands' administrations. As Mayo can attest, American First Ladies' wardrobes have always been an obsession. One can only presume that's even more true for first female presidential candidates.

And so Clinton is being scrutinised for her fashion sense - or lack of it. She wears unflattering trouser suits, floral-print blazers and uninspiring heels, her critics say; she looks "boring" and "cold". "People have realised that fashion is not Hillary's main interest," says Valerie Steele, director and curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. "She just doesn't care."

Yet for world leaders, having an impact on fashion is inevitable. Is Clinton overreacting in dulling-down her appearance? Should she be harnessing the power of dress to project her political identity?

Mayo predicts that if elected, President Clinton will do more or less what Margaret Thatcher did: "wear some sort of power suit rather than strive for fashion elegance - except perhaps at state dinners or balls." Similarly, Michael Pick, author of Be Dazzled!: Norman Hartnell: Sixty Years of Glamour and Fashion, a new book on the British designer who helped to shape the image of various royals, believes that Clinton "could work with a few designers to transform her image, much in the way Thatcher did".

After all, as Mayo says, Americans want their First Ladies to look current, but not necessarily to be fashion leaders or take risks with their wardrobes. "I think they want them to be wearing clothes that are not dowdy and are currently fashionable," says Mayo, "but unless you are Jackie Kennedy, or a former movie star like Nancy Reagan, voters don't usually want women in high fashion."

"In Italy and France women leading the country need to be wearing fashionable - even sexy - clothes," agrees Steele, but in the US, "Women are not supposed to flaunt their sexuality."

There are, of course, tricks to getting noticed in a positive way. As Pick points out, in the 1950s Hartnell created a more youthful image for Queen Elizabeth II by using stronger colours and patterns, while for the Queen Mother the idea was to make her look larger and of greater stature, so a draped and waist-tied pastel dress might be offset by a feathered hat and triple row of pearls.

Clinton's trouser suits, although they have drawn considerable attention, may not actually be the modern-day answer. According to Steele, the idea of a woman wearing trousers has connotations of her stepping outside her appropriate, ordained place in the universe - even though women have been wearing them since the 1920s, and wearing them to work since the 1970s.

"Clinton's critics will say she is wearing the trousers - that she is too powerful," says Steele. "I've [even] heard women complain that she is too ambitious. [But] don't you think anyone running for president should be?"

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New York Times Travel: Brisbane, Australia

Posted by Unknown Senin, 26 November 2007 0 komentar

Next Stop | Brisbane

Julie Earle-Levine
November 4, 2007

Once Just a Stopover, an Australian City Grows Up

ONCE just a stopover for tourists en route to either the Great Barrier Reef or the beaches on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, the eastern Australian city of Brisbane has emerged as an alluring destination in its own right.

The New York Times

Returning recently to the city where I grew up and left 15 years ago for fast-paced Sydney, I found Brisbane to be almost unrecognizable. No longer a large country town, the capital of Queensland is now Australia's fastest growing city, and a plethora of new cafes, bars and shops, not to mention a beautiful new modern art gallery, add up to the kind of place that you could easily spend several days exploring.

Once known as BrisVegas (thanks to a casino and glitzy night life in the 1980s), the city is bisected by the Brisbane River, which winds its way to Moreton Bay, past former wool stores that have morphed into luxury apartments, and historic Queenslander houses built on stilts to catch the breeze. A former power plant sitting on the water's edge is now a performance center. Catamaran ferries ply the river, taking locals to work and to weekend farmer's markets.

The city's newest attractions are the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the just-renovated Queensland Art Gallery, which sit next to each other on the last bend of the river on Stanley Place in South Bank Parklands. GoMA is Australia's largest modern-art gallery, with works by Australian and international artists including the Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor and the German artist Katharina Grosse. Enormous windows frame spectacular city views, and the gallery, which adjoins a brand-new State Library, has its own cinema complex and children's art center. The Queensland Gallery's new additions include a sweeping glass entry and the Historical Asian Gallery.

The museums (www.qag.qld.gov.au) can be reached by strolling down the River Walk, a floating walkway that links the New Farm area to the central business district and runs past South Bank Parklands, an expansive beach and swimming lagoon right on the river overlooking the city.

The museum scene in Brisbane doesn't ignore history. For perspective on Brisbane's role as Pacific headquarters for the allied forces in World War II, visit the MacArthur Museum Brisbane, at 201 Edward Street, dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur, who made Brisbane his base for two years. In those years, millions of Americans passed through the quiet Australian backwater that many thought would change after the war. Instead, central Brisbane almost closed down as a dwindling population moved to the suburbs.

Now, areas like Fortitude Valley, a formerly gritty area known as “sin city,” have transformed themselves. The Emporium Hotel just opened on the site of a former bus depot with its own upscale shops and restaurants. Guests can take a dip in the 50-foot saltwater rooftop pool with views of the city and Story Bridge, and recline on loungers, separated by billowing bronze-colored silk drapes. Don't be surprised to see brilliantly hued rainbow lorikeets in frangipani trees outside the hotel, or hear a kookaburra laughing its head off.

Just a few blocks away is trendy James Street, a former industrial zone, now home to designer stores like Sass & Bide, at 46 James Street, where you'll find jeans and pretty dresses by the internationally renowned designers Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton, who grew up in Brisbane. The nearby, T. C. Beirne building on the Brunswick Street Mall features Queensland designers including Gail Sorronda, whose monochromatic dresses are favored by Gwyneth Paltrow.

At Salvage, 12 Byres Street, Newstead (www.salvage.com.au), you can shop for everything from chandeliers to gorgeous French glass jewelry boxes and pearl necklaces.

Back at the Emporium complex, check out Depot, an open-air cafe that caters to a fashionable crowd. An extensive, mostly Australian wine list offers wine by the glass at the mosaic-tiled bar. At Cru Wine Bar & Cellar, guests sit near the street in a chic open-air restaurant. An antique crystal chandelier hangs over a solid onyx bar that serves up Pacific oysters.

The outdoors is also close at hand at Watt Modern Dining in the arts-theater complex known as the Brisbane Powerhouse, which once generated electricity for the city's now defunct tram system. Order the chili, salt and pepper squid or fresh whiting and big, fat chips (fries) and dine overlooking the river, its golden cliffs and mansions.

“It used to be unheard of in Brisbane for anything to be open past 10:30 p.m., but not anymore,” said Paolo Biscaro, an owner of Beccofino at 10 Vernon Terrace, in the Teneriffe district. “The city has grown up,” said Mr. Biscaro, who moved to the city from Melbourne three years ago. On a recent Friday night, his restaurant was packed with young couples, champagne glasses in hand, waiting to be seated. Diners sat on orange chairs and devoured thin crust pizzas with generous servings of thinly sliced prosciutto, mozzarella and oregano.

Another dining concept — communal dining — is making an appearance in Brisbane, at places like Cirque Cafe, which offers intriguing interpretations of ethnic fare, like Moroccan lamb burgers with mint yogurt or pearl barley salad with roasted pumpkin and feta, dill, spinach and pepitas. Communal dining wasn't immediately embraced by locals, according to Vaughan Kelly, co-owner of Cirque Cafe in New Farm, and another Melbournite who came north. “Some would see it and turn on their heels. Now there is a line to get in.”

At night, Fortitude Valley heats up. While bands in Sydney and Melbourne complain of fewer venues, Brisbane roars ahead. At Bowery Bar on Ann Street, for instance, staff in preppy white linen shirts and thin black ties serve cocktails to an over-25 crowd listening to live jazz.

Live bands also play at the Breakfast Creek Hotel, famous for its steaks. Years ago, this was where I shared farewell drinks with friends, before my departure to Sydney. It was seedier then, with the smell of stale beer wafting up from the floor. Now, after a $4 million makeover, a completely new bar called Substation No. 41 has opened, attracting a stylish crowd, the kind of new Brisbane denizens who look as if they are here to stay.

VISITOR INFORMATION

GETTING THERE

Flights from New York to Brisbane often require two stops. From Los Angeles, nonstop flights are available on Qantas Airlines (www.qantas.com) five days a week; daily service will begin on March 30, 2008. Round-trip fares for travel in November start at $1,325.

Public transport is excellent. CityCat ferries (www.brisbane.qld.gov.au) run from the University of Queensland in the southwest to Brett's Wharf in the northeast from 5:50 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Daily tickets, which cover unlimited ferries, trains and buses, start at 4.60 Australian dollars, or about $4 at 1.14 Australian dollars to the U.S. dollar.

WHERE TO STAY

The Emporium Hotel (61-73-253-6999; 1000 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, www.emporiumhotel.com.au) has doubles from 295 Australian dollars.

The recently opened Saville South Bank hotel (61-73-305-2500, 161 Grey Street, South Bank; www.savillehotelgroup.com) is a short walk to the Queensland Performing Arts Complex, the State Art Gallery and museums. Studio apartments with kitchenettes from 398 Australian dollars.

WINING AND DINING

Open-air venues include Depot, (61-73-666-0188; 31/1000 Ann Street; www.thedepot.com.au), which offers a variety of Australian wines, from 7.50 Australian dollars a glass. At Cru Wine Bar & Cellar (61-73-252-2400, 22 James Street, Fortitude Valley; www.crubar.com), dinner for two is 80 dollars.

At Belle Epoque (61-73-852-1500; 1000 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley; www.labelleepoque.com.au) the atmosphere is eerily like New York's Balthazar — even down to the floor tiles, banquets and mirrors. Sample a delicious “flat white,” Australia's version of a latte, for 3 Australian dollars.

The Lark, a new cocktail bar in a colonial-style Queensland cottage in Paddington, has cocktails like the Songbird, a delicious mix of citron vodka, honey, grapes and prosecco for 12 dollars (61-73-369-1299, 1/267 Given Terrace, www.thelark.com.au).

At Cirque Cafe in New Farm (61-73-254-0479; 618 Brunswick Street), lunch for two is 40 Australian dollars. At Beccofino (61-73-666-0207, 10 Vernon Terrace, Teneriffe), dinner for two is 80 Australian dollars.

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