Florida – Flung

The W South Beach: The Hotel Is the Holiday

Sarah Stodola — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 07:00:19 +0000

There’s an adage in travel, invoked whenever one is choosing less-than-stellar accommodations, holding that it doesn’t matter where you stay, you’re not planning to spend any time in your hotel anyway. Oftentimes this approach works, especially if the weather cooperates. But the rule doesn’t hold in Miami Beach, where very often the hotel is the holiday, or at least dictates it in important ways. Since it opened in 2009, the W Hotel in South Beach has been banking on that […]

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10 Great Works of Literature about Florida

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 23:41:36 +0000

The best books about Florida tend toward what are arguably that state’s sleaziest features–its seedy backwaters (literal and other), its wayward characters, its activities of dubious legality. In other words, you won’t find a reflection of your retired grandparents’ condo anywhere in this literature (unless your grandparents are seriously exceptional examples of such). If you’re heading to Florida, here are 10 all-time-best books about the state that will help you better appreciate the visit… [columns] [column size=”third” last=”no”] […]

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A Guide To the Old Florida Charms of Matlacha

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 15:25:45 +0000

One of the undermentioned milestones for adults in middle-class America today comes as their parents make their inevitable migration to Florida. For me, it began in my mid-thirties, when mine bought a condo in Venice, on the state’s Gulf Coast. At first, it was a couple months in the winter, but expanded quickly. Now, just a few years later, my mom heads down at the first sign of a brisk fall breeze, and doesn’t return to Kentucky until the flowers […]

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