Wall Street Journal Does Brooklyn, With Hotel Le Bleu As Ground Zero

Say you were a tourist in for a weekend and you wanted to see the New Brooklyn everybody's been talking about. You've heard that Smith Street has great restaurants, Carroll Gardens is trendy and Gowanus has a lot of artists, but you don't know where to start.

You could start HERE. The Wall Street Journal has published a three day weekend guide (by Candace Jackson) as part of their free Saturday content.

Begin by checking into Hotel Le Bleu (yes, it's officially, sort of, open -- and it'll cost you at least $300/night), then wander over to Fifth Avenue and visit shopping spots like Brooklyn Mercantile and Cog & Pearl. For lunch, grab a lobster roll and fresh oysters at Brooklyn Fish Camp.

Get the idea?

And so it goes, a full three-day itinerary of walking tours, restaurants, drinking holes, museums and performance spaces. Of course there are things that I would have added (like Sahadi's, BAM and -- for the well-rounded --Bargemusic), and -- cheap me, I'd stay in a bed & breakfast and save a hundred bucks a night -- but it's a good jumping off place for the first-time visitor -- or even the Brooklyn native who really doesn't get out enough.

UPDATE: By an amazing coincidence, the New York Times has supplied the "Weekend in New York" Atlantic Avenue segment missing from the Wall Street Journal article above. Clip both and save. Here.

And Maybe a Side Trip to Manhattan? - WSJ
An Exotic Oasis in Brooklyn -- NYT

Map courtesy WSJ