100 Hotels Under $150

By STUART EMMRICH, N. Y. Times

Budget hotels. Sometimes they turn out to be a disaster, leaving you to lie awake at night, fighting to go to sleep as you try to shut out the noise from the busy street just beyond your window and hoping you will get to morning without having inherited a family of bedbugs.

And other times, they turn out to be diamonds in the rough, places you can’t wait to brag about to friends back home.

Over the last three years, thousands of N. Y. Times readers have posted comments about their favorite hotels on the roughly 1,500 destination guides found on the Travel Web site.

For this special issue, “Fall in Europe,” we used that database to research and then select 100 hotels that we feel represent some of the best bargains for travelers headed to one of 14 European cities in the next few months. (In some instances, we have included reader comments explaining the reasons behind their recommendations.)

All prices listed are for a double room for a weekend in either October or November, and are based on rates found on the hotels’ Web sites or on travel sites like Expedia or Hotels.com.

The $150 limit was based on the conversion rates of roughly $1.60 to the pound and $1.50 to the euro.

Amsterdam

1) Hotel Prinsenhof
Prinsengracht 810
(31-20) 623-1772
www.hotelprinsenhof.com
89 euros (private bath)

I stayed at Hotel Prinsenhof for around 65 euro/night. ... I was very happy with the accommodation. They had one of the lowest prices I could find for a 2-person private room with common bath on a summer weekend. It turned out much more comfortable than I’d expected. — ratchford22

2) Hotel Nes
Kloveniersburgwal 137-139
(31-20) 624-4773
www.hotelnes.nl
90 euros

Hotel Nes is in a charming old canal house in the center of Amsterdam. Half the rooms have a lovely canal view. — Esther Shaya

3) Sunhead of 1617
Herengracht 152
(31-20) 626-1809
www.sunhead.com
89 euros

4) Hotel Kap
Den Texstraat 5b
(31-20) 624-5908
www.kaphotel.nl
83 euros

We have stayed at the Hotel Kap twice now and have loved it both times. It’s in a beautiful, quiet residential neighborhood, close to public transport and only minutes away from the Leidseplein and Rijksmuseum. — Delia

5) Hotel Brouwer
Singel 83
(31-20) 624-6358
www.hotelbrouwer.nl
95 euros

An absolutely beautiful canal house. Each of the rooms have a view of the canal. Prices can’t be beat. — Anonymous

6) Leidse Square Hotel
Tesselschadestraat 23
(31-20) 612-6876
www.leidsesquarehotel.nl
75 euros

7) Seven Bridges Hotel
Reguliersgracht 31
(31-20) 623-1329
www.sevenbridgeshotel.nl
100 euros

The Seven Bridges is wonderful, and I have stayed there many times. Located on the corner of Reguliersgracht and Keizersgracht, it is on one of the best inner-circle canal spots in Amsterdam. No elevator. — wvanrijn

Barcelona

8) Hotel Spa Senator Barcelona
Carrer del Cardenal Reig, 11
(34-93) 260-9900
www.hotelsenatorbarcelona.com
79 euros

We stayed at Hotel Senator, which we liked very much. The hotel is in more of a neighborhood, but very near a subway stop (Collblanc), so it was pretty easy to get wherever we wanted to go. — ebf9q

9) Market Hotel
Passatge Sant Antoni Abad, 10
(34-93) 325-1205
www.markethotel.com.es
65 euros

A well-kept secret, but probably not for long is the Market Hotel in Eixample. It’s modern, inviting and simply wonderful. Paid about 80 euros/night (included a continental-style breakfast). The restaurant is great as well! — Leelee

10) Hotel Diagonal Zero
Plaça de Llevant
(34-93) 507-8000
www.hoteldiagonalzero.com
91 euros

11) Hotel Gran Derby
Loreto, 28
(34-93) 445-2544
www.derbyhotels.com
90 euros

12) Hotel Astoria
París, 203
(34-93) 209-8311
www.derbyhotels.com
48 euros

13) Hotel Banys Orientals
Calle Argenteria, 37
www.hotelbanysorientals.com
(34-93) 268-8460
99 euros

Berlin

14) Westin Grand, Berlin
Friedrichstrasse 158-164
(49-30) 20270
aktuelles.westin.de/berlin_en
96 euros

The Westin is smack in the center of former East Berlin and an easy walk to the major museums, Alexanderplatz, Brandenburg Gate. Rooms are good size, quiet and at a $150 rate, including their diverse breakfast, which otherwise goes for an outrageous 25 euros per person, this 4/5-star hotel was good value. — Artnuvo

15) Ku’Damm 101
Kurfürstendamm 101
(49-30) 520-0550
www.kudamm101.com
92 euros

16) art’otel berlin-mitte
Wallstrasse 70-73
(49-30) 240-620
U.S. reservations, (800) 791-9161
www.artotels.com
92 euros

17) Circus Hotel
Rosenthaler Platz 1
(49-30) 2000-3939
www.circus-berlin.de
78 euros

The Circus Hotel is a hip 60-room hotel in an area that seems to be up and coming. Prices start at about 70 euros and include breakfast. Wi-Fi is free and you can rent a Segway to tour the neighborhood. Across the street is their hostel version, packed with young people from around the world. — VividTurtle

18) Hotel Transit
Hagelberger Strasse 53-54
(49-30) 789-0470
www.hotel-transit.de
72 euros

I highly recommend Hotel Transit. The nearest U-Bahn is Mehringdamm, about two blocks away. The building doesn’t look like much on the outside, but there is a beautiful courtyard tucked away inside that many of the rooms look out to. The rooms (doubles/triples) are simply but elegantly decorated, and best of all, it is technically a “hostel” so it is very reasonably priced! — lmzhang

19) Hotel Gates Berlin City West
Knesebeckstrasse 8-9
(49-30) 311-060
www.hotel-gates.com
85 euros

20) Arte Luise Kuntshotel
Luisenstrasse 19
(49-30) 284-480
www.luise-berlin.com
99 euros

I stayed at the Arte Luise Kuntshotel on a recent visit and paid about 50 euros per night for a very basic single room. The hotel staff is wonderful and each guest room has been designed by a different artist (hence the name of the hotel). And the location couldn’t be better — in Mitte, steps away from many “touristy” sites, but not far by foot or train to many off-the-beaten-path locations. — Adrian

21) Holiday Inn Berlin City Center East
Prenzlauer Allee 169
(49-30) 446-610
www.hi-berlin.com
64 euros

For the past few years, I have stayed regularly at the Holiday Inn in Prenzlauer Berg, a lively area with excellent pubs, restaurants, art galleries, bookshops etc. — David Kemp

Brussels

22) Le Dixseptieme
25, rue de la Madeleine
www.ledixseptieme.be
(32-2) 517-1717
100 euros (weekend special)

Hotel Le Dixseptieme near Central Station is a charming, small, high-end business hotel. It has about 25 rooms/suites, a private courtyard and common sitting rooms. We took advantage of weekend discounts. — Tom and Laura

23) Chambres en Ville
19, rue de Londres
(32-2) 512-9290
www.chambresenville.be
90 euros

24) Stanhope Hotel
9, rue du Commerce
(32-2) 506-9111
www.stanhope.be
84 euros

25) Hotel Queen Anne
110, boulevard Emile Jacqmain
(32-2) 217-1600
www.queen-anne.be
95 euros

My husband and I stayed at the Queen Anne. Hotel was clean, modern and simple. Decent subway access one street away. All we ask is for a good bed and bathroom for the price and we got that. — swindu

Dublin

26) Azalea Lodge
67 Upper Drumcondra Road
(353-1) 837-0300
www.azalealodge.com
100 euros

We enjoyed our stay at the Azalea Lodge so much that we lodged there during our two trips to Dublin. Accommodations are comfortable and clean, it is located right on the bus line to Center Dublin and breakfasts are delicious. — Lisa

27) Baggot Court Townhouse
92 Lower Baggot Street
(353-1) 661-2819
www.baggotcourt.com
69 euros

I was visiting Dublin and didn’t want to stay in Temple Bar, as it’s a little wild for me, but after a few mishaps with lodgings on Gardner Street, I went to the area where there are Georgian houses and found a large B & B called Baggot Townhouse. It’s such a lovely place — very warm and friendly, and they do a great breakfast. — Helen Moore

28) Fitzwilliam Townhouse
41 Upper Fitzwilliam Street
(353-1) 662-5155
www.fitzwilliamtownhouse.com
89 euros

29) Paramount Hotel
Parliament Street and Essex Gate
(353-1) 417-9900
www.paramounthotel.ie
94 euros

30) O’Callaghan Stephen’s Green
Stephen’s Green
(353-1) 607-3600
www.ocallaghanhotels.com
89 euros

31) Harcourt Hotel
60 Harcourt Street
(353-1) 478-3677
www.harcourthotel.com
89 euros

Edinburgh

32) York House Hotel
27 York Place
(44-131) 557-6222
www.yorkhouseedinburgh.co.uk
£74

We just stayed at the York House Hotel, which is an 18th-century town house in New Town that has been converted into a bed-and-breakfast. It is not fancy, but it is clean, modern and conveniently located to everything we wanted to do. I would stay there again. — ebf9q

33) MW Townhouse
11 Spence Street
(44-131) 655-1530
www.mwtownhouse.co.uk
£79

The MW Townhouse is owned by a young, enthusiastic couple. Modern, pristine, welcoming. Faultless. — Kathleen Brooke

34) The George Hotel
19-21 George Street
(44-131) 225-1251
www.edinburghgeorgehotel.co.uk
£89

35) The Walton Guest House
79 Dundas Street
(44-131) 556-1137
www.waltonhotel.com
£85

36) Glenora Guest House
14 Rosebery Crescent
(44-131) 337-1186
www.glenorahotel.co.uk
£89

37) The Salisbury Hotel
43-45 Salisbury Road
(44-131) 667-1264
www.the-salisbury.co.uk
£85

I recommend the Salisbury. Great place for walkers. Near the University. Good food of all nations all around. — henson1b

Florence

38) Hotel Colomba
Via Cavour, 21
(39-055) 289-139
www.hotelcolomba.com
80 euros

We stayed for just one night in a quad room at Hotel Colomba. The room was spacious (huge), immaculately clean and comfortable. If you’re looking for a reasonably priced hotel close to everything, then this is the place to book. The breakfast was just great. Internet was free. — Mike Reds

39) Residenza Proconsolo
Via del Proconsolo, 18
(39-335) 657-4840
www.proconsolo.com
85 euros

We found a lovely B & B, the Residenza Proconsolo, located at the corner of the Piazza Duomo and the Via del Proconsolo. It was a perfect place to start walking everyday and was close enough to the train station and to bus stops to go further afield. — Anonymous

40) Hotel Cestelli
Borgo Santissimi
Apostoli, 25
(39-055) 214-213
www.hotelcestelli.com
80 euros (private bath)

The Cestelli is a wonderful little hotel a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi, run by a lovely young couple. A double with shared bath cost us only 75 euros. Think Renaissance meets Zen inside. — Jane P

41) Hotel Globus
Via Sant’Antonino, 24
(39-055) 211-062
www.hotelglobus.com
76 euros

42) Il Bargellino
Via Guelfa, 87
(39-055) 238-2658
www.ilbargellino.com
85 euros

43) Locanda Orchidea
Borgo degli Albizi, 11
(39-055) 248-0346
www.hotelorchideaflorence.it
50 euros

Locanda Orchidea is small, friendly, comfortable, helpful, inexpensive. The owner saved our vacation when my wife became ill by calling her doctor, who had us come into her office on her day off and treated the problem. Viva Italia! — mikeoregon

44) Pensione Perseo
Via Cerretani, 1
(39-055) 212-504
www.hotelperseo.it
99 euros

Lisbon

45) York House Lisbon
Rua das Janelas Verdes, 32
(351-21) 396-2435
www.yorkhouselisboa.com
90 euros

The York House is a small boutique hotel in a charming old building. Very near the Tagus — views of the water. Superb. — celiaf

46) Evidência Tejo
Rua dos Condes de Monsanto, 2
(351-21) 886-6182
www.booking.com
85 euros

47) Vincci Baixa
Rua do Comércio, 32 and 38
(351-21) 880-3190
www.vinccihoteles.com
88 euros (nonrefundable)

48) Albergaria Residencial Insulana
Rua da Assunção, 52
(351-21) 342-7625
www.insulana.net
50 euros

The Albergaria Insulana is very cheap, clean, close to Praça do Comércio and Bairo Alto. It was very simple, but had a ’50s understated vibe to it. We loved it! — Anonymous

49) Hotel Borges
Rua Garret, 108
(351-21) 346-1951
www.lisbonhotelborges.com
76 euros

The Hotel Borges, located in the heart of the Largo do Chiado, is in a beautiful area right next to the unforgettable Bairro Alto. Step out of the door and you have a beautifully constructed subway station by the famous local architect Álvaro Siza. — Maegen

London

50) Derby Hotel Kensington
155-157 Cromwell Road SW5
(44-207) 244-1199
www.lth-hotels.com
£84

I was visiting London for the first time, and was looking for a safe place, in a central location. I stayed at Derby Hotel in Kensington, a small hotel with homely atmosphere. If you are traveling on tight budget, check rates of this hotel out. — Shilpi

51) Base2Stay
25 Courtfield Gardens SW5
(44-207) 244-2255
www.base2stay.com
£86

I found everything I wanted, and none of the things I don’t but usually end up paying for anyway, at Base2Stay in Kensington. The rooms are air-conditioned, clean and modern. Great location for transport and restaurants as well as close to all the tourist spots. — Sydney Perlman

52) La Gaffe
107-111 Heath Street NW3
(44-207) 435-8965
www.lagaffe.co.uk
£85

La Gaffe is small but great value for money. Conveniently located near Hampstead Heath (my wife and I love taking long walks!) and not 5 minutes from the Tube. Lorenzo, the manager is the second generation managing the place and is a very pleasing, helpful person. — Kartik Varma

53) Jurys Inn Chelsea
Imperial Road, Imperial Wharf SW6
(44-207) 411-2200
www.jurysinns.com
£79

54) Meliá White House
Albany Street NW1
(44-207) 391-3000
www.melia-whitehouse.com
£86

55) Balmoral House Hotel
156 Sussex Gardens W2
(44-207) 723-7445
www.balmoralhousehotel.co.uk
£85

Over the last 13 years we have stayed at Balmoral House Hotel. Small but immaculate rooms. Around the corner from Paddington and a few blocks from Lancaster Gate Tube Station. — Bachjsb

56) Luna Simone
47-49 Belgrave Road SW1V
(44-207) 834-5897
www.lunasimonehotel.com
£85

The Luna Simone is clean, beautiful, and the hotel staff there is absolutely charming. The beds are great, and the bathrooms are very cool. I really do suggest this hotel — it’s awesome! — Lizzie

57) Ridgemount Hotel
65-67 Gower Street WC1E
(44-207) 636-1141
www.ridgemounthotel.co.uk
£78

The Ridgemount Hotel in Bloomsbury is a delightful family-owned hotel. Steps away from the British Museum and Russell Square. Rooms can be a bit small. But with a wonderful breakfast and all the tea you can hold included, the price is right. — Kevin

58) Novotel London Tower Bridge
10 Pepys Street EC3N
(44-207) 265-6000
www.novotel.com
£89

59) Hilton London Canary Wharf
South Quay Marsh Wall E14
(44-20) 3002-2300;
www.hilton.co.uk/canarywharf
£79

60) Regency Hotel
100 Queen’s Gate SW7
(44-207) 373-7878
www.regency-london.co.uk
£86

Madrid

61) Room Mate Alicia
Calle Prado, 2
(34-91) 389-6095
www.room-matehotels.com
96 euros

Room Mate has several nice design hotels at reasonable prices with free Wi-Fi, including Laura, Mario, Alicia and Oscar. — arnonk

62) Room Mate Mario
Calle Campomanes, 4
(34-91) 548-8548
www.room-matehotels.com
84 euros

We have enjoyed Room Mate Mario. It’s quaint and welcoming, near the Royal Opera House and not far from the Royal Palace and gardens. Rooms were comfortable, well-appointed and clean. We also enjoyed the fresh fruit in the room. The hotel is within walking distance of several metro stations and close to Sol. — Isidro Rivera

63) Hostal Acapulco
Calle de la Salud, 13
(34-91) 531-1945
54 euros

If you are looking for a great cheap hostal (different than a hostel), make a reservation at Hostal Acapulco. It is a great location, just steps away from Puerta del Sol yet very quiet. Most rooms face a small quiet square and get lots of morning sun. It’s small (after all it’s a hostal) but clean, nice bathrooms. Free internet. — orlie228

64) Hotel Agumar
Paseo Reina Cristina, 7
(34-91) 552-6900
www.hotelmadridagumar.com
92 euros

65) Petit Palace Londres
Calle Galdo, 2
(34-91) 531-4105
www.petitpalacehotellondres.com
79 euros

66) Hostal Alaska
Calle Espoz y Mina, 7
www.hostalalaska.com
(34-91) 521-1845
52 euros

I would greatly recommend the Hostal Alaska. We stayed here twice. The rooms were nice and clean and there were baths/showers in each room. They were also warm, which is not always so easy to find in Spain in Dec/Jan! The hostal is located on the fourth floor of the building (with no elevator), but is only one block from the Plaza del Sol. — Rob Stolzer

67) Hotel Liabeny
Calle de la Salud, 3
(34-91) 531-9000
www.liabeny.es
88 euros (nonrefundable)

Paris

68) Les Chansonniers
113, boulevard de
Ménilmontant 75011
(33-1) 43-57-00-58
59 euros

I stayed at the Hôtel les Chansonniers in Paris last year, and it offers excellent value. If you are visiting the usual sights, it is quite far out of the way; but that whole neighborhood (except for Père-Lachaise) is quite undiscovered by the tourist world, and there are many excellent-value (and excellent-quality) restaurants to be found there. — Notworthwords

69) Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc
3, rue de Jarente 75004
(33- 1) 48-87-62-11
www.hoteljeannedarc.com
70 euros

The best hotel, dollar for dollar, in Paris is the Hotel Jeanne d’Arc in the Marais district. Last time I stayed there in 2007 it was $90 a night with an en suite bath. Great location, on a lovely side street, charming and clean rooms, nice staff. It’s been the same price since I started going there 20 years ago. — Cathy

70) Hotel Ibis Paris Montmartre 18ème
5, rue Caulaincourt 75018
(33-1) 55-30-18-18
www.ibishotel.com
61 euros

I’m always a bit surprised I never read about the Ibis hotels. If you can reserve in advance, rooms are as cheap as $60 and these are nice, functional, clean hotels and usually near all kinds of transport. It’s our hotel of choice when we travel. — Dave Ferre

71) Etap Hotel Paris La Villette 19ème
57-63, Avenue Jean Jaurès 75019
(33-8) 92-68-08-91
www.etaphotel.com
58 euros

If you really wish to stay at low cost (60 euros and less) do look for the Etap Hotel. They are usually just outside city limits but there is an invaluable one on the rue Jean Jaurès in Paris 19th Arrondissement, not far from Gare du Nord and easily reached by Métro (Jaurès) in a wonderful area far from tourist traps. — Manon

72) Hôtel Tiquetonne
6, rue Tiquetonne 75002
(33-1) 42-36-94-58
55 euros

At the risk of giving up the quintessential secret for the one of the most inexpensive places in Paris, I want to recommend the Hotel Tiquetonne. (Directions: Metro: Etienne Marcel or Réaumur-Sébastopol) The hotel is simple but clean, on a quiet street, near les Halles & Rue Montorgueil. — Richard Hess

73) Hôtel Claret
44, boulevard de Bercy 75012
(33-1) 46-28-41-31
www.hotel-claret.com
94 euros

74) Mama Shelter
109, rue de Bagnolet 75020
(33-1) 43-48-48-48
www.mamashelter.com
97 euros

75) Hôtel des Arts Bastille
2, rue Godefroy Cavaignac 75011
(33-1) 43-79-72-57
www.paris-hotel-desarts.com
59 euros

76) Hôtel Du 7e Art
20, rue St.-Paul 75004
(33-1) 44-54-85-00
www.paris-hotel-7art.com
95 euros

I always stay at the Hotel du 7th Art. A wonderful small hotel in the Marais area and near the Seine on St. Paul. Pictures of Frank Sinatra and other great movies greats all over the place. A friendly and helpful staff. Very nice. — edwalterslv

77) Hôtel de la Porte Dorée
273, avenue Daumesnil 75012
(33-1) 43-07-56-97
www.hotelportedoree.com
80 euros

A friend and I found the lovely Hôtel de la Porte Dorée in a quiet corner of Paris called Porte Dorée. We enjoyed their many fine shops and huge public park in that neighborhood, and were able to get into the city very quickly by Métro. I believe our room was less than 90 euros. They have beautiful furnishings and friendly staff. — Nancy Welsh

Prague

78) Hotel Aureus Clavis
Nerudova 27
(420- 257) 534-569
www.aureusclavis.com
55 euros

I recommend the Hotel Aureus Clavis — a small, pleasant, reasonably priced hotel well-situated on one of the main streets in the Mala Strana. Very short walking distance to Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, old Jewish quarter. Helpful, friendly staff. Breakfast included. — Harperfm

79) Arcadia Residence
Hostivitova 3
(420-224) 922-040
www.arcadiaresidence.com
75 euros

The best place we’ve ever stayed in all our years of travel was the Arcadia Residence in Prague. Fantastic location, excellent apartments, amazing hosts, huge memorable breakfasts. You get the spaciousness and freedom of an apartment, the luxury of having someone else make breakfast, and the services of Pasquale, the best host ever. And it’s a bargain. It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. — Barbara Stuart

80) Hotel Monastery
Strahovske nadvori 13
(420-233) 090-200
www.hotelmonastery.cz
1,950 koruny (about $111 at 17.6 koruny to the dollar)

81) Pension Rosa
Mezi Potoky 6
(420-271) 751-263
www.rosapension.cz
53 euros

82) The House at the Big Boot
Vlasska 30/333
(420-257) 532-088
www.dumuvelkeboty.cz
2,000 koruny (shared bath; cash only)

The Big Boot is a wonderful family-run hotel in Mala Strana. It’s small and yet very modern and clean. I enjoyed chatting with the Rippl family who runs the hotel. They were very generous with local suggestions and were eager to talk about Prague’s history. — lullah75

83) K+K Hotel Central
Hybernska 10
(420-225) 022-000
www.kkhotels.com
88 euros (nonrefundable)

84) Hotel Salvator
Truhlarska 10
(420-222) 312-234
www.salvator.cz
73 euros

85) Hotel Anna
Budecska 17
(420-222) 513-111
www.hotelanna.cz
45 euros

There are lots of hotels and pensions under 90 euro in Prague. Try the Hotel Anna, in the middle of one of the most beautiful areas of Prague - Vinohrady. To save even more money, visit www.pension.cz and run a search there. — Julia

86) Claris Hotel
Slezska 26
(420-242) 446-111
www.hotel-claris.cz
39 euros (nonrefundable)

Rome

87) Le Finestre sul Vaticano
Via Angelo Emo, 130
(39-347) 7563811
www.romabandb.it
90 euro

88) Matisse B & B
Via Nazionale, 243
(39-389) 9787112
www.matissebb.com
72 euros

89) Hotel Felice
Via Tiburtina, 30
(39-06) 4453347
www.hotelfelice.com
72 euros

I loved the Hotel Felice. The management was so helpful. They gave us maps to Rome and suggested places to go and see. They were very helpful with the buses. Great location! — Carl

90) Le Real de Luxe
Via Cavour, 58
(39-06) 4823566
www.lerealdeluxe.com
85 euros

I looked long and hard to find a place acceptable to my very mixed group of friends, some wanting the cheapest place in town and some wanting the best. This turned out to be a good choice: Le Real de Luxe. They adopt a low-cost airline model of charging for various extras so as to keep the basic price down. However, the staff are very friendly and helpful, and as long you read the rules when you arrive it’s really not a problem. — John

91) Accommodation Delia Bed & Breakfast
Via Gaeta, 64
(39-06) 97277089
www.deliabb.com
70 euros

I recommend the Delia B & B. Great location! 5 mins walk from tube/train station. Rooms fantastic — modern, and cleaned every day (possibly the cleanest room I’ve ever stayed in anywhere — either hotel or b & b). Great value for money. — Kok

92) Arco del Lauro
Via dell’Arco De Tolomei, 29/27
(39-06) 97840350
www.arcodellauro.it
85 euros

93) Hotel Paba
Via Cavour, 266
(39-06) 47824902
www.hotelpaba.com
88 euros

Venice

94) Ca’delle Acque
San Marco 4991
(39-041) 241-1277
www.locandadelleacque.it
80 euros

I can suggest a budget yet inviting bed-and-breakfast called Ca’ delle Acque. Very central, just between St. Mark’s Square and Rialto Bridge. The room was clean and private (there is just one room per floor), and the service helpful. No special services like Wi-Fi or telephone, but we really didn’t miss them because we were all the time discovering the city. — Christin

95) Bed & Breakfast Venezia
Santa Elena-Calle Bainsizza, 3
(39-041) 520-0529
www.bbvenezia.com
80 euros

The B&B Venezia is a small and charming family-run hotel in the quiet Santa Elena neighborhood, a 20-minute walk from San Marco Square. The owner, Roberto, made us very comfortable, even upgrading our room when we experienced a slight problem with the shower. We also loved the roof deck overlooking a park on the lagoon. The double room with A/C was 75 euros with breakfast and included Wi-Fi (a rare amenity in Italy!). — tharned

96) Faronhof B & B
Via Seriola Veneta
Sinistra, 51, Mira
(39-041) 428-363
www.faronhof.com
45 euros

We stayed at a lovely B & B called Faronhof, situated on the mainland not far from the center of Venice. The owners were really friendly even helping us make phone calls for a stolen bag! Fully recommend. — Ian Wilson

97) Ca’ Arco Antico
San Polo 1451
(39-041) 241-1227
www.arcoanticovenice.com
60 euros

98) Hotel Gorizia “A La Valigia”
Calle dei Fabbri 4696/A
(39-041) 522-3737
www.hotelgoriziavenezia.it
97 euros (nonrefundable)

99) Hotel Bernardi
Calle de l’Oca
(39-041) 522-7257
www.hotelbernardi.com
70 euros

The staff at the Hotel Bernardi was very friendly and the rooms were neat and clean. This little hotel is over 100 years old and hidden from the main streets near Cà D’oro. If you are looking for a respite from the hubbub of the streets, this place is fabulous. — Amanda J

100) Antica Locanda Montin
Fondamenta di Borgo
(39-041) 522-7151
www.locandamontin.com
75 euros (shared bath); 100 euros (private bath)

We stayed at Locanda Montin in Dorsoduro for E80 a night — double room, pvt bath, breakfast included. Quiet and excellent location. There are plenty of choices in good locations around E80-90 but you have to do your homework online. —Michael Weiss

By STUART EMMRICH, editor of the N.Y. Times Travel section.

The "Crasher Squirrel" Is Everywhere !!

The whole world's gone wild over the "crasher squirrel".

CNN reports that Melissa Brandts and her husband Jackson were hiking in Banff National Park when they set up their camera to use a wireless remote shutter for a few shots of the two of them.

"A little squirrel had been running around while we were getting the shot set up," Melissa Brandts said.

"I was joking with my husband that I hoped he was friendly because he was getting awful close and kind of scampering around our feet and stuff."

Friendly? You might say so.

It was also a bit timid and perhaps even indecisive because it soon scurried away and then, just as quickly, rushed back again.

"All of a sudden he popped back up because he heard the shutter releasing, the clicking of the camera.

The only thing we can figure is that he thought it was going to give him food or something," Brandts said.

"He popped right up and looked right into the camera, and we were laughing so hard because we were like 'get it, get it!' and we were trying to get the remote to fire.

So we got a couple of pictures -- took a couple of pictures with him there, and then he ducked down and proceeded to run away."

...thanks, Ray !

Remembering 9/11 - Never Forget

The day dawned different and stayed that way. Traffic was thin and sidewalks quiet. The stock exchange didn’t open, nor the airports, the schools, Broadway. People loaded up on bottled water, batteries, canoes. The law enforcement presence was intense: men with machine guns, gunboats circling the harbor.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=world+trade+center+video&search_type=&aq=f

Downtown, fires burned, smoke plumed. The odor stood.

It was a city humbled and scared, where the possibilities of destruction had been recalibrated. It was Sept. 12, 2001. The day after.

So much has been said and written about what happened on 9/11. The following day is forgotten, just another dulled interlude in the aftermath of an incoherent morning.

But New Yorkers were introduced that day to irreducible presumptions about their wounded city that many believed would harden and become chiseled into the event’s enduring legacy.

New York would become a fortress city, choked by apprehension and resignation, forever patrolled by soldiers and submarines. Another attack was coming. And soon.

Tourists? Well, who would ever come again? Work in one of the city’s skyscrapers? Not likely. The Fire Department, gutted by 343 deaths, could never recuperate.

If a crippled downtown Manhattan were to have any chance of regeneration, ground zero had to be rebuilt quickly, a bricks and mortar nose-thumbing to terror.

Eight years later, those presumptions are cobwebbed memories that never came to pass. Indeed, glimpses into a few aspects of the city help measure the gap between what was predicted and what actually came to be.

You could start at one downtown street corner. The wisdom of the day after was that New York would never again bunch together important institutional nerve centers, binding them together in vulnerability.

On Sept. 11, American Express had its headquarters at the southwest corner of West and Vesey Streets. It is still there. Since then, Verizon has settled its headquarters into the northeast corner. Goldman Sachs has assumed the northwest. All that’s missing is the southeast corner. That will be filled by the tallest building in America.

The Times Square Novelty Man

David Cohen pointed out what the tourists like: replica taxicabs, “I Love New York” T-shirts and thimbles — any gewgaw inscribed with New York. “See this digital picture postcard?” he said. “Nice little item.”

Mr. Cohen, 83, is the patriarch of Grand Slam, a family-run novelty and baseball clothing store on Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets, in the heart of Times Square. Eight years ago, he could not have imagined the heaving commerce, the new big buildings, and especially not the complacent scene outside his doors. People basked in the balmy weather at tables and chairs, under sheltering patio umbrellas, spread across Broadway. If they worried about anything, it was sunburn.

How about that? People, at the behest of the mayor himself, flocking to Times Square to relax!

When fear engulfed the city on Sept. 12, many wrote off Times Square. Chemical bombs were sure to explode there. A suicide bomber strapped with explosives was destined to blow himself up at lunch hour.

“It was creepy,” Mr. Cohen said. “It was, ‘Oh my God, what’s next?’ I thought this would be the next hit.”

Business was slow for months. Souvenirs didn’t seem to mean the same anymore. “Yeah, it took a dive,” Mr. Cohen said. He shortened the store’s hours.

But he did not leave. “You can’t live in fear,” he said. “Things happen and then they don’t happen.”

Now the weak economy squeezes sales, but pedestrian traffic in Times Square is far higher than it was before Sept. 11. Vastly enhanced security has been put in place, and even when incidents defy it, like the small bomb that exploded at the military recruiting station in March 2008, people shrug it off, keep coming.

“This is the best spot in New York,” Mr. Cohen said. “Listen, the Square is the place.”

The Garage Manager

The fires wouldn’t go out. The smell persisted. What company would ever open its doors in Lower Manhattan? Who would live there? Who could feel secure?

The police stopped and searched trucks. Only a few cars were allowed below 14th Street.

Still, Wilson Ortega, 34, came to work. He managed the parking garage at 56 North Moore Street in TriBeCa.

On Sept. 12, business was, as he put it, “off 100 percent.” But cars were still in there, and maybe people wanted them.

As streets reopened, car pooling into Manhattan was mandated during rush hours. Bombs preyed on peoples’ minds. Many garages throughout the city began checking trunks and jabbing mirrors on the ends of poles beneath cars. Some still do, but in large part the practices are additional relics of the times.

“Yeah, I checked,” Mr. Ortega said.

Every trunk was searched. He acknowledged that he had no training in explosives, didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he did every car for several months, then those he didn’t recognize, the nonregulars, for nearly a year. Some people were insulted, wouldn’t pop the trunk, and he turned them away. He never found a thing.

The trade center site remains a conflicted construction project. But on North Moore it is cars in, cars out, just as before.

“I never thought things would be the same again,” he said. “But, man, I was wrong. We came back strong.”

The Firefighter

The number was 343. Back in those awful days, Chief Charlie Williams, 9th Battalion, Manhattan, thumbed down the death list looking for the firefighters he could have said hello to by name: “Hi Tom, hi Joe, hi Ray.” After about 40, he stopped. It was enough.

The loss of life to the Fire Department was staggering. Many asked, who would put out the fires of tomorrow?

In addition to the deaths, there was a stampede of retirements. The wives didn’t want to join the widows. And the expansive opportunity for overtime pay afforded a tantalizing opportunity for firefighters to retire at bulgier pensions.

There were 11,339 uniformed members of the Fire Department on Sept. 10, 2001. By Jan. 28, 2003, the ranks had declined to 10,630.

Chief Williams asked himself: “Do I want to go back and do this job?” His wife would have liked him to walk away. But he wasn’t done.

Fresh recruits were rushed in. There was a long, difficult period. Even now, the experience level is not the same. But there are 11,415 uniformed personnel, more than before.

“The bell rings and the men put out the fires,” Chief Williams said. “The city is well served.”

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the firefighters were elevated to superhuman status. People flocked to the firehouses, wanting to shake hands with firefighters, snap their pictures, just say thanks. Chief Williams obliged, though he allowed how it got overbearing at times; he had to shut himself in his office to do his work.

The bravery was always real. But the mythology — well, that, too, wasn’t going to last. In the ensuing years, there were embarrassing incidents: the firefighters who had sex with a woman at one Bronx firehouse, a drunken brawl at another in Staten Island, on-duty drinking and drug use.

“The worship was definitely an inflated thing,” Chief Williams said. “You couldn’t sustain that.”

His own lungs went bad on him, traced back to the trade center, and he retired last year. He chose the date: Sept. 11.

The Flag Printer

People bought them from hardware stores and Wal-Mart and street vendors and unfurled them outside their homes and on the antennas of their cars. They billowed down the Henry Hudson and the F.D.R.

Flags.

People wore their patriotism and defiance openly. A new cohesiveness, a oneness, was going to remold the character of American citizenry.

Christopher Gravagna didn’t feel right that people had to buy their patriotism. “That was ridiculous,” he said. “Why should people capitalize on flags at that time?”

He had a printing business in Long Island City, Queens, doing work for clubs and concerts. On Sept. 12, demand for his services essentially stopped and didn’t resume for weeks. So he decided to print paper American flags with the motto “United We Stand” and give them away. He and his employees handed out more than 100,000.

He saw them everywhere.

“It helped feed this feeling that we have to be one, we have to be together on this,” Mr. Gravagna said. “We’re a strong country. We’re strong New Yorkers.”

The flags — cloth and paper — are mostly gone. Some come out, as they always did, on Memorial Day, on the Fourth of July, and on Sept. 11, but that is it.

That special mood? “It’s definitely diminished a lot,” Mr. Gravagna said. “Did I expect it? No. But as a New Yorker, I understand it. I guess part of it has to do with capitalism. In America, we have issues. And time passes. It just passes.”

No one, perhaps, displayed as many flags as Mr. Gravagna himself. He taped them to the windows of his Queens apartment and in his Nissan Sentra. They festooned his offices.

After a while, they came down. The last one he possessed he had framed. He hung it on his office wall. Four years ago, someone stole it.

The Skyscraper Dentist

“The windows here open,” Dr. Charles Weiss said.

He unlatched one. The view south was dazzling, as only a 1,000-foot-high view can be. There was the Empire State Building and, way off, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, as well as a spot where two duplicate towers once stood.

On Sept. 12, it seemed no one would choose to work in a skyscraper again. Especially those with the emblematic names, the ones everyone knew about, high-rise terrorist bounty.

Workers stuffed parachutes under their desks, were given particle masks, acquainted themselves with Geiger counters.

On Sept. 11, Dr. Weiss, a dentist, repaired teeth on the 69th floor of the Chrysler Building, at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. He still does.

Capitulation was not his style. He recalled a book, “The Last Angry Man,” in which a pugnacious Brooklyn doctor refuses to yield to the bums he calls “galoots.” Dr. Weiss thought, as an assertion of faith, “I’m not going to let the galoots get me.”

On Sept. 12, the Chrysler Building was essentially closed, but he got in. He called patients to reschedule them. Some wanted some time before readdressing their cavities. He didn’t see anyone until the following Monday.

As far as he knows, they all came back. The patients. The people who worked for him. His colleagues who minded the other dental chairs on the floor.

There are always some squeamish patients who fear heights. Dr. Weiss, now 82, dispatches a nurse down to the lobby to ride the elevator up with them. That happened before Sept. 11, too.

Waiting patients now flipped through magazines as the drills sang.

“There’s a tremendous drive of human beings to make the most of life,” Dr. Weiss said. “We’re not hermits. We rise up and move on.”

Dr. Weiss drank in the view some more, watched the ant cars crawling across the ever-clogged city. “I never get tired of that view,” he said. “Never.”

September 11 Digital Archive - 911digitalarchive.org
National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum - www.national911memorial.org
Project 2,996 - project2996.wordpress.com

from New York Times, 9/11/09

Gay Robots

Of all the gay robots, which is your most favorite?

New Beatles - digitally remastered studio-produced albums

You still can't buy "Can't Buy Me Love" from iTunes. But the Beatles' music is taking a step toward catching up with technology.

After four years of audio engineers working from Abbey Road Studios in London with the original Beatles recording tapes, on Sept. 9, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are debuting the digitally remastered Beatles' studio-produced albums. All told, 29 CDs, in one of two box sets will go on sale. They "have the integrity of the original master tape, they're just phonically superior" to previously released recordings, says Kevin Howlett, a radio producer who consulted on the project. Diehard Beatles fans have been complaining about the lackluster quality of Beatles CDs since they were released 22 years ago, with one reviewer calling the audio "tinny and desperately malnourished."

Apple Corps Ltd., which was created by the Beatles in 1968, and EMI Music control the Beatles catalog. They are betting that they can benefit from the hype surrounding the release the same day of The Beatles: Rock Band, a video game that lets players simulate recording and performing with the band. So far, the move is paying off: Pre-order sales for all the new Beatles CD box sets are among the top 15 pre-order music best-sellers in Amazon.com's history. The retailer has sold out during pre- order sales and says it will restock.

To attract musical purists as well as more casual fans, they are releasing two versions: a limited-edition "mono" box set of recordings as they were originally configured by the band and producer George Martin; and a "stereo" box set of the same songs mixed later by Mr. Martin to satisfy the growing demand for the new "stereo" medium in which vocals and instrumentation could be separated and fed into different speakers. The CDs in the stereo box set will also be sold individually.

Apple Corps has been notable in not selling Beatles songs online as downloads. EMI declined to discuss Beatles downloads; Apple Corps didn't respond to requests seeking comment. Many young music fans who primarily buy music online
haven't been buying the Beatles. CD sales have declined 54.7% in the last five years. Year-to-date CD album sales in late August 2004 were 387.4 million units. During the same time frame this year, year-to-date CD album sales were 175.4 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a company that tracks music sales.

Bill Gagnon, EMI Music North America's senior vice president and general manager for catalog marketing, isn't concerned. "We don't feel it's going to impact the sales of this particular project," he says.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr declined to comment, an EMI spokeswoman said.

After first marketing to the core Beatles constituency—men 40 or older—the label plans to push the box set as a holiday gift for people who are becoming fans thanks to the video game Rock Band, Mr. Gagnon says. In lieu of selling the albums online, EMI will "employ an online street team" which will promote the Beatles CDs on music Web sites and social media networks, he says.

The remastered Beatles CDs will come with the albums' original cover art and liner notes, as well as additional photographs and writings. Each CD includes a short documentary video. The documentaries, each about five minutes or less, use photographs, video and audio snippets from tape that rolled as the musicians recorded. From "The Beatles" (better known as the "White Album"), Ringo Starr complains, "I've got blisters on my fingers." During the making of "Abbey Road," John Lennon says, "Stop it, you disgusting middle-aged squares."

Seasoned followers, however, will find a lot of retread in the liner notes. In an essay already printed in an older CD's liner notes, artist Peter Blake recounts how the record label tried to get permission to use the likenesses of people such as Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan on the Sgt. Pepper's cover collage. Mae West initially turned down the Beatles, responding in a letter, "What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?" The band persuaded her to reconsider, according to Mr. Blake.

Record labels often repackage existing albums and market them as collectors' items; it's an inexpensive way to market to an established fan base. But the rerelease of the Beatles catalog was more complex.

Audio engineers digitized the master tapes of more than a dozen albums. To retain the artistic purity, they rid the recordings of any unintentional mechanical noise, such as hiss, clicks, sibilance. But they maintained the musicians' ancillary sounds—coughs, breaths, side-chatter.

Fourteen-year-old Kevin Kaspar of Carmel, Ind., says when he was 12, his sister, then 17, lent him the Beatles's 2006 "Love" CD containing songs that had been remixed for a Cirque du Soleil show. He plans to buy the video game and new CDs next week. "I've been babysitting and saved my money to buy both," he says.

Wall Street Journal, 9/4/09

Traffic Congestion -- iPhones Overload AT&T

iPhone owners use them like minicomputers, which they are, and use them a lot. Not only do iPhone owners download applications, stream music and videos and browse the Web at higher rates than the average smartphone user, but the average iPhone owner can also use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user.

The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand. Another result is outraged customers.

Cellphone owners using other carriers may gloat now, but the problems of AT&T and the iPhone portend their future. Other networks could be stressed as well as more sophisticated phones encouraging such intense use become popular, analysts say.

Taylor Sbicca, a 27-year-old systems administrator in San Francisco, checks his iPhone 10 to 15 times a day. But he is not making calls. He checks the scores of last night’s baseball game and updates his Twitter stream. He checks the local weather report to see if he needs a coat before heading out to dinner — then he picks a restaurant on Yelp and maps the quickest way to get there.

Or at least, he tries to.

“It’s so slow, it feels like I’m on a dial-up modem,” he said. Shazam, an application that identifies songs being played on the radio or TV, takes so long to load that the tune may be over by the time the app is ready to hear it. On numerous occasions, Mr. Sbicca says, he missed invitations to meet friends because his text messages had been delayed.

And picking up a cell signal in his apartment? “You hit the dial button and the phone just sits there, saying it’s connecting for 30 seconds,” he said.

More than 20 million other smartphone users are on the AT&T network, but other phones do not drain the network the way the nine million iPhones users do. Indeed, that is why the howls of protest are more numerous in the dense urban areas with higher concentrations of iPhone owners.

“It’s almost worthless to try and get on 3G during peak times in those cities,” Mr. Munster said, referring to the 3G network. “When too many users get in the area, the call drops.” The problems seem particularly pronounced in New York and San Francisco, where Mr. Munster estimates AT&T’s network shoulders as much as 20 percent of all the iPhone users in the United States.

Owners of the iPhone 3GS, the newest model, “have probably increased their usage by about 100 percent,” said Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless analyst. “It’s faster so they are using it more on a daily basis.”

Mr. Sharma compares the problem to water flowing through a pipe. “It can only funnel so much at a given time,” he said. “It comes down to peak capacity loads, or spikes in data usage. That’s why you see these problems at conferences or in large cities with high concentration of iPhone users.”

When thousands of iPhone owners descended on Austin, Tex., in March during South by Southwest, an annual technology and music conference, attendees were unable to send text messages, check their e-mail or make calls until AT&T installed temporary cell sites to amplify the service.

AT&T’s right to be the exclusive carrier for iPhone in the United States has been a golden ticket for the wireless company. The average iPhone owner pays AT&T $2,000 during his two-year contract — roughly twice the amount of the average mobile phone customer.

But at the same time the iPhone has become an Achilles’ heel for the company.

“It’s been a challenging year for us,” said John Donovan, the chief technology officer of AT&T. “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones,” he said. “There’s just no parallel for the demand.”

AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network. The company intends to erect an additional 2,100 cell towers to fill out patchy coverage, upgrade existing cell sites by adding fiber optic connectivity to deliver data faster and add other technology to provide stronger cell signals.

As fast as AT&T wants to go, many cities require lengthy filing processes to erect new cell towers. Even after towers are installed, it can take several months for software upgrades to begin operating at faster speeds.

The company has also delayed bandwidth-heavy features like multimedia messaging, or text messages containing pictures, audio or video. It is also postponing “tethering,” which allows the iPhone to share its Internet connection with a computer, a standard feature on many rival smartphones. AT&T says it has no intention of capping how much data iPhone owners use.

The upgrades are expected to be completed by next year and the company has said it is already seeing improvements.

But AT&T faces another cost — to its reputation. AT&T’s deal with Apple is said to expire as early as next year, at which point other carriers in the United States would be able to sell the popular Apple phones. Indeed, a recent survey by Pricegrabber.com found that 34 percent of respondents pinpointed AT&T as the primary reason for not buying an iPhone.

“It’s a P.R. nightmare,” said Craig Moffett, a senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

AT&T might be in the spotlight now, analysts say, but other carriers will face similar problems as they sell more smartphones, laptop cards and eventually tablets that encourage high data usage.

Globally, mobile data traffic is expected to double every year through 2013, according to Cisco Systems, which makes network gear. “Whether an iPhone, a Storm or a Gphone, the world is changing.” Mr. Munster said. “We’re just starting to scratch the surface of these issues that AT&T is facing.”

In preparation for the next wave of smartphones and data demands, all the carriers are rushing to introduce the next-generation of wireless networks, called 4G.

Analysts expect that in a year or so, AT&T’s network will have improved significantly — but it may not be soon enough for some iPhone owners paying for the higher-priced data plans, like Mr. Sbicca, who says he plans to switch carriers as soon as the iPhone becomes available on other networks.

“What good is having all those applications if you don’t have the speed to run them?” he said. “It’s not exactly rocket science here. It’s pretty standard stuff to be able to make a phone call.”

NYT 9/3/09

Teddy Kennedy's Highs and Lows

In a memoir being published this month, Senator Edward M. Kennedy called his behavior after the 1969 car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne “inexcusable” and said the events might have shortened the life of his ailing father, Joseph P. Kennedy.

In that book, “True Compass,” Mr. Kennedy said he was dazed, afraid and panicked in the minutes and hours after he drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island with Ms. Kopechne as his passenger.

The senator, who left the scene and did not report the accident to the police until after her body was found the next day, admitted in the memoir that he had “made terrible decisions” at Chappaquiddick. He also said that he had hardly known Ms. Kopechne, a young woman who had been an aide to his late brother Robert, and that he had had no romantic relationship with her.

The account by Mr. Kennedy, who died on Aug. 25 at age 77, adds little to what is known about the accident and its aftermath but recounts how they weighed on him and his family. The book does not shy from the accident, or from some other less savory aspects of the senator’s life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan.

But it also offers rich detail on his relationships with his father, siblings and children that round out a portrait of a man who lived the most public of lives and yet remained something of a mystery. Among other things, it says that in 1984 he decided against seeking the presidency after hearing the emotional objections of his children, who, it says, feared for his life.

A copy of the 532-page memoir, scheduled for sale Sept. 14, was obtained by The New York Times.

In it, Mr. Kennedy also said he had always accepted the finding of a presidential commission that a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Robert F. Kennedy grieved so deeply over the killing of the president that family members feared for his emotional health, Mr. Kennedy wrote, saying that it “veered close to being a tragedy within a tragedy.”

Mr. Kennedy’s book provides new details about life in America’s famous political family and covers the remarkable career that was celebrated in memorials last week before his burial near John and Robert Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery. It provides his personal account of being stricken by the brain cancer that took his life and his decision to battle the disease as aggressively as he could. And it deals openly and regretfully with “self-destructive drinking,” especially after Robert’s death.

Mr. Kennedy said that his father had encouraged intensive competition among his children, especially his sons, which fed his recurrent feelings of inadequacy after the death of his three brothers, all of them older.

“Competition, of course, is the route to achievement in America,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “As I think back to my three brothers, and about what they had accomplished before I was even out of my childhood, it sometimes has occurred to me that my entire life has been a constant state of catching up.”

Mr. Kennedy said that as close as his family was, there were “boundaries” that each member respected. “For example, I had no idea of how serious Jack’s health problems were while he was alive,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “It would never have occurred to us to discuss such private things with each other.”

The book, published by Twelve, a division of the Hachette Book Group, was originally scheduled to be published in 2010 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the election of President Kennedy but was moved up because of the senator’s illness. Much of the book, written with a collaborator, Ron Powers, was based on notes taken by Mr. Kennedy over 50 years as well as hours of recordings for an oral history project at the University of Virginia.

The memoir also suggested that President Kennedy had grown uneasy about Vietnam and was increasingly convinced that the conflict could not be resolved militarily. It said the president’s “antenna” was up, and surmised that he was “on his way to finding that way out,” though “he just never got the chance.”

Mr. Kennedy wrote of a secret meeting in the spring of 1967 between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy, whose increasingly outspoken criticism of the war in Southeast Asia was becoming a political threat to Johnson. According to the book, Robert Kennedy proposed that Johnson give him authority to personally negotiate a peace treaty in Vietnam. This implicitly would have kept Robert from running for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, a prospect that worried Johnson.

“If the president had accepted his offer,” the book said, “Bobby certainly would have been too immersed in the peace process to become involved in a presidential primary.”

But Johnson could not take the offer at face value, concerned that Kennedy had ulterior motives, the senator wrote.

In raw and often intimate terms, Mr. Kennedy wrote of the despair he experienced after Robert’s assassination in 1968. It was at first impossible for him to return to the Senate. And even when he managed to, he could not focus on his work. He spent days on the ocean, taking long sails from the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass.

He described drinking to excess during that period and driving Joan Kennedy “deeper into her anguish.” He drove himself and his staff hard. “I tried to stay ahead of the darkness.” The shooting of his brothers traumatized him in ways both existential and mundane, Mr. Kennedy noted. He would flinch at loud, sudden noises like the explosion of firecrackers, or hit the deck whenever a car backfired.

Mr. Kennedy also said he had written a letter to the Los Angeles district attorney asking that he not seek the death penalty for Robert Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. (The judge, Herbert V. Walker, disregarded the letter, Mr. Kennedy said, though Mr. Sirhan’s life would be spared by the California Supreme Court.)

The book opens with an account of Mr. Kennedy’s falling ill and then, in May of last year, receiving a diagnosis of a lethal brain tumor. Doctors said he had just a few months to live, Mr. Kennedy wrote, but he refused to believe the grim prognosis, because he had been raised not to give up. His son Teddy Jr. had survived a supposedly fatal cancer in his leg, and his daughter, Kara, had beaten lung cancer, against long odds.

“And I believe that approaching adversity with a positive attitude at least gives you a chance for success,” he said. “Approaching it with a defeatist attitude predestines the outcome: defeat. And a defeatist’s attitude is just not in my DNA.”

Mr. Kennedy expressed regret over the 1991 episode in Palm Beach, when he went drinking with his son Patrick and his nephew William K. Smith, who would be charged with rape that allegedly occurred that night. (Mr. Smith was later acquitted.)

Those events hobbled him later that year when Clarence Thomas was nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court. Mr. Kennedy strongly opposed the nomination, but, he wrote, he could not speak out as forcefully as he would have liked. He understood, he wrote, a “hard truth: with all the background noise about Palm Beach and my bachelor lifestyle, I would have been the wrong person” to raise questions about Mr. Thomas’s alleged sexual harassment of Anita F. Hill.

But even as Mr. Kennedy offered apologies for the darker moments of his life, he raged against the portrait of him in some tabloids, magazines and books. He described some of those accounts as “totally false, bizarre and evil theories.”

Of his indulgences, Mr. Kennedy wrote: “I have enjoyed the company of women. I have enjoyed a stiff drink or two or three, and I’ve relished the smooth taste of a good wine. At times, I’ve enjoyed these pleasures too much. I’ve heard the tales about my exploits as a hell-raiser — some accurate, some with a wisp of truth to them and some so outrageous that I can’t imagine how anyone could really believe them.”

Mr. Kennedy wrote about his views of various presidents, sometimes affectionately, sometimes harshly. Some of his most critical words are directed against Jimmy Carter.

He said that while they had found common cause on a few issues, their relationship had broken down over health care. He accused Mr. Carter of timidity that had doomed any chance of meaningful health insurance reform and said the president had been virtually impossible to talk to. “Clearly President Carter was a difficult man to convince — of anything,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “One reason for this was that he did not really listen.”

While Mr. Kennedy had little patience for the president’s piety and punctiliousness, he found the disengagement of Mr. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, at times oddly charming, though at other times frustrating. The senator said it had been difficult to get Reagan to focus on policy matters. He described a meeting with him that he and other senators had sought to press for shoe and textile import limits.

The senators were told that they would have just 30 minutes with the president. Reagan began the meeting, the book said, commenting on Mr. Kennedy’s shoes — asking if they were Bostonians — and then talking for 20 minutes about shoes and his experience selling shoes for his father. “Several of us began conspicuously to glance at our watches.” But to no avail. “And it was over!” Mr. Kennedy said. “No one got a word in about shoe or textile quota legislation.”

Mr. Kennedy also complained that White House meetings had been barely tolerable, in part because no liquor was ever served during Mr. Carter’s term. “He wanted no luxuries nor any sign of worldly living,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.

Mr. Kennedy said he had been disappointed by President Bill Clinton’s inability to enact comprehensive health care legislation, but he did not blame Mr. Clinton or his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who helped write the administration’s proposal.

He also said he called Mr. Clinton immediately after the president appeared on television to confess his affair with Monica Lewinsky, reassuring him that he would stand by him during that difficult period.

In the midst of recounting that anecdote, Mr. Kennedy took a break to offer his views on the scrutinizing of the private lives of public officials, something with which he clearly was quite familiar. Mr. Kennedy said he had no quarrel with such inquiries.

“But do I think it tells the whole story of character? No I truly do not,” he wrote. Men and women, he said, are more complicated than that. “Some people make mistakes and try to learn from them and do better. Our sins don’t define the whole picture of who we are.”

from NYT 9/3/09

Ad Wars: Mac vs. PC

Sean Siler of Microsoft would never be mistaken for a movie star. A former Navy officer who wears glasses and is a tad on the heavy side, Mr. Siler oversees the Windows division’s adoption of new Internet connectivity software.

But there were audible gasps last summer when Mr. Siler, 39, auditioned for Microsoft’s new ad campaign for Windows, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the Miami agency best known for its cheeky work for Mini Cooper and Burger King.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ ” recalls Rob Reilly, one of the agency’s executive creative directors. “It couldn’t have been more perfect.”

Everybody agreed that Mr. Siler looked exactly like PC, the character played by the comedian John Hodgman in Apple’s popular “Get a Mac” ads that lampoon Windows-based computers and those who love them. Two weeks later, Mr. Siler reported to a nearby television studio. The agency dressed him in PC’s dorky uniform — white shirt, baggy khakis, brown sport coat and matching brown tie — and handed him a script with the lines: “I’m a PC. And I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

Mr. Siler joined a parade of environmentalists, budget-conscious laptop shoppers, mixed martial arts fighters, mash-up DJs and remarkably tech-savvy preschoolers who appear in Microsoft’s new campaign, which is intended to show that real Windows users aren’t all clueless drones.

For Mr. Siler, the experience was almost like being a geeky incarnation of Brad Pitt. His e-mail address was on the screen, and he received 4,000 messages from viewers — some from grateful parents whose children had wanted expensive Macs over PCs and now had second thoughts.

Crispin put up a video on YouTube in which Mr. Siler discussed his role in the campaign; it was viewed more than 702,000 times. At work, he was constantly interrupted by his fellow Microsoft employees. “For a couple of weeks,” Mr. Siler recalls, “I had people coming by my office and saying: ‘Hey, you are the PC guy, aren’t you? That’s so cool!’ ”

His mother wasn’t so sure. “You look so horrible,” she told him. “You don’t look anything like that man. Why did they make you look so bad?”

Somebody better explain to Mr. Siler’s mother that this isn’t a beauty contest; it’s an ad war, one destined to go down in history with the cola wars of the 1980s and ’90s and the Hertz-Avis feud of the 1960s. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Apple spent $264 million on television ads last year, 71 percent more than Microsoft. In the first six months of 2009, however, Microsoft responded with $163 million worth of commercials, more than twice Apple’s spending.

Surprisingly, Microsoft, which has never been known for running cool ads, has landed some punches. Shortly after the Microsoft campaign started, Apple unleashed commercials that mocked its competitor as spending money on advertising when it should have been fixing Vista, its much-maligned operating system.

“It got Apple’s attention, didn’t it?” says Robert X. Cringely, host of PBS’s NerdTV.

FOR years, Microsoft was the stodgy market leader. It sold 90 percent of the world’s operating system software, and generally left the advertising to Dell, H.P. and other hardware makers who licensed Windows. The only time Microsoft hawked its most recognizable brand on television was when the latest version of the software hit the shelves. Then the company flooded the airwaves with commercials full of loud music and swirling imagery saying that the new version of Windows is out — and that it’s awesome!

Apple is the classic smaller insurgent. Its share for desktops and laptops in the United States is just over 8 percent. Every time Apple grabs another point of market share from Microsoft’s partners, its stock price climbs. And one way that Apple has tried to gain share is by running clever ads that ridicule everything Microsoft stands for.

There’s no better example than “Get a Mac,” unveiled three years ago by Apple’s longtime ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day. No technology company would choose Mr. Hodgman’s character, PC, to personify its brand. He reeks of the past. He boasts of using his desktop to make spreadsheets and ridicules his more youthful friend, Mac, played by the actor Justin Long, for using his desktop for “juvenile” pursuits like blogging and movie making — even through it’s clear that PC would like to be in on the fun. He just can’t get his Windows computer to do his bidding.

Like a classic sitcom character — think Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” — PC is always dreaming up ill-advised schemes intended to show his superiority. He’s thwarted by viruses, system crashes and other problems more associated with Windows-based computers than Apple’s products — and, recently, he has become a hapless apologist for Vista. Mr. Long’s character smugly watches his friend’s pratfalls, glancing at the audience with raised eyebrows as if to say, “If only this poor guy would buy a Mac. . . .”

PC will never learn. Not as long as he keeps driving sales for Apple. Since 2006, the year that he first appeared in all his pasty-faced glory, Apple’s share of the computer desktop market in the United States has more than doubled, according to IDC, the technology industry research firm. Its stock price, meanwhile, has risen 142 percent since May 2006, while Microsoft’s has barely budged. Yes, the astonishing success of newer Apple products like the iPod and the iPhone has helped. But the PC character should also take a bow. (Representatives of Apple and TBWA/Chiat/Day declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Apple’s ads put Microsoft in a bind. One of Madison Avenue’s rules is that a market leader never acknowledges a smaller competitor in its advertising. What’s more, if Microsoft responded with ads that backfired, it would look just like Mr. Hodgman’s character. Maybe it was better to grin and bear it.

Then, last year, Microsoft hired Crispin Porter and struck back with uncharacteristic wit. There was Mr. Siler’s star turn. The agency also handed bunches of cash to shoppers and asked them to choose between a PC and a Mac. Lauren, a 20-something in one of the “Laptop Hunter” spots, is giddy about the money she has left over when she selects a $699 H.P. with a 17-inch screen, rather than a $1,000 Mac with a 13-inch screen. “I guess I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” she sighs. This time, the joke was on Apple. In a recession, it’s pretty hip to save $300.

Microsoft’s effort to inspire PC pride seemed to resonate after its debut last September. According to IDC, Mac shipments in the United States plummeted 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 versus the previous quarter, as the economy went into a tailspin, while those of PCs manufactured by Dell and H.P. fell only 13 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Microsoft was quick to declare victory — maybe too quick. In the second quarter this year, Mac sales in the United States rebounded 34 percent, IDC said, while Dell and H.P. had more modest gains. Even more humbling for Microsoft was the company’s announcement in late July that its year-over-year operating income for the quarter declined 29 percent.

As a result, some analysts have argued that the Microsoft campaign has failed. But they, too, may be too hasty. We are only weeks away from the Oct. 22 release of Windows 7, which may undo much of the company’s self-inflicted damage from Vista. PC users, many of whom skipped buying Vista machines, could be holding off until then to buy. And the introduction of Windows 7 will be accompanied by yet another Crispin Porter ad blitz.

“You are not so embarrassed to take your PC out of the bag on a plane anymore,” said Mr. Reilly at the ad agency. “It’s actually kind of cool that you do. I know this is working.”

EVERY Wednesday, Lee Clow, the creative director of TBWA/Chiat/Day, travels from Los Angeles to Cupertino, Calif., for his weekly meeting with Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive. They started doing this years ago and have created ads that are as stylish and cool as anything on television. Usually, the subtext of these ads is that Microsoft is the Evil Empire.

Mr. Jobs started working with Mr. Clow, a laid-back former surfer dude, in the early 1980s when Mr. Clow helped to create Apple’s path-breaking “1984” television commercial introducing the Macintosh. The ad’s unsubtle message was that buyers of the new machine would be striking against I.B.M., portrayed as Apple’s Orwellian foe.

Mr. Jobs struggled to persuade Apple’s board to run the ad, which was directed by Ridley Scott. Mr. Clow was similarly adamant when his boss, the late Jay Chiat, tried to shelve it. The ad ran only once, during the 1984 Super Bowl, but it has never been forgotten.

Apple forced out Mr. Jobs the next year and hired a new ad agency, BBDO. But when Mr. Jobs returned triumphantly to the company in 1997, he reunited with TBWA/Chiat/Day. Mr. Clow brought him the idea for “Think Different,” a campaign that identified Apple with figures like Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Jobs used it to introduce the iMac and to re-establish Apple as an iconoclast.

TBWA/Chiat/Day went on to create the 2002 “Switchers” campaign, in which the director Errol Morris filmed real computer users describing why they ditched their PCs for a Mac. Who can forget Ellen Feiss, the slow-talking teenager who made the hearts of young geeks flutter when she explained how her PC ate her homework? “It was, like, beep beep beep beep beep beep beep,” Ms. Feiss says. “And then, like, half of my paper was gone.”

Then came the iPod ads from TWBA/Chiat/Day that not only helped drive sales of Apple’s breakout product, but also made stars of little-known indie rock acts like Feist. Such is the power of Apple’s marketing wizardry.

Many of Apple’s new customers were plugging their iPods into PCs. Mr. Clow proposed “Get a Mac” to get them thinking about springing for an Apple machine. Mr. Jobs was intrigued. But he wanted the ads to be perfect.

“The discussion within Apple was: ‘Is this the right tone? How young a guy should Mac be? How dorky do we make PC look?’ ” recalls Ken Segall, a former TBWA/Chiat/Day creative director who worked early on as a consultant for Apple on the campaign. “It went many rounds before Steve was comfortable with the idea. Then he loved it.”

IN spring 2007, a year after Apple introduced the “Get a Mac” ads, Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft C.E.O., barged into the office of Mich Mathews, head of the company’s central marketing group. The two had talked about a campaign that would repair the damage from the Apple ads.

Ms. Mathews recalls Mr. Ballmer enthusiastically asking her, “When are we going to move?”

Advertising has never seemed to be part of Microsoft’s DNA. The chairman, Bill Gates, “never really seemed to get marketing,” says Rob Enderle, a longtime technology industry analyst. And for many years, Mr. Enderle says, Mr. Ballmer “just didn’t think it was worth spending the money on it.”

The company’s Windows campaigns seemed to reflect executives’ lack of interest. Perhaps the best example was the push for Microsoft Vista in 2007, created by McCann Erickson with the slogan “The Wow Starts Now.” It showed people gaping in childlike wonder at the newest version of Windows. But Vista, to put it mildly, didn’t live up to the ads.

“The operating system was visually beautiful,” said Jeff Musser, a former McCann Erickson creative director who worked on the campaign. “But it was a bad product. I didn’t really hear anybody saying, ‘Wow.’ ”

There were also cultural issues at Microsoft when it came to advertising. On Madison Avenue, they say that the more hands that touch an advertisement, the worse it becomes. Microsoft felt differently. “They thought the more people saw it and gave an opinion, the better it would be,” Mr. Musser said. “That’s how you develop software. It’s not how you develop great creative.”

So Ms. Mathews tried to change things. She set up a nine-member task force to figure out a marketing strategy and keep meddlers at arm’s length.

In February 2008, Microsoft picked Crispin Porter. At the agency, Mr. Reilly was initially apprehensive. He didn’t even own a PC; he had an ultraslim MacBook Air. (He has since bought himself two PCs — a Sony Vaio and a Lenovo ThinkPad.)

The adman also wondered whether Microsoft was ready for a Crispin campaign. Mr. Reilly himself oversees the agency’s irreverent work for Burger King, aimed at young men hungering for menu items like the Triple Whopper.

He wanted to come up with a campaign that would redefine Windows, and he counseled against ads that attacked Apple. Then he changed his tune. Last summer in Apple ads, Mr. Hodgman’s PC character morphed into a personification of Microsoft itself. PC was haunted by problems with Vista. He took up yoga to calm his nerves, only to discover that his teacher was on edge because Vista wreaked havoc on her billing system. PC tried to find peace by creating a line of herbal teas with names like “Crashy-Time Camomile” and “Raspberry Restart.”

“As the tone of their campaign became more and more negative, we were like, ‘We gotta do something,’ ” Mr. Reilly said. “That’s where the whole notion of ‘I’m a PC’ and putting a face on our users came about. We have a billion users. That’s who our cast is, whereas Apple is just two fictitious characters.”

Microsoft recruited influential Windows fans like the “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria. “I feel bad about the little PC guy,” she said this month. “He is always getting beaten up.” It also brought in some who would appeal to niche audiences, like the Pittsburgh mash-up D.J. Gregg Gillis, who is better known as Girl Talk.

When Mr. Ballmer finally saw the ads in September, he congratulated Ms. Mathews and gave her a high-five. Then, Ms. Mathews says, he started shouting, “I’m a PC!”

THE new Windows campaign got off to an inauspicious start. Puzzling ads featuring Mr. Gates kidding around with the comedian Jerry Seinfeld left a lot of people scratching their heads. The ads quickly disappeared.

As the “I’m a PC” ads with Mr. Siler replaced them two weeks later, Apple’s “Get a Mac” spots disappeared. Microsoft doesn’t think that was a coincidence. When PC and Mac reappeared, it was in the advertising that criticized Microsoft as spending on ads rather than on Vista.

Microsoft thought that it had scored a point. “You’ve got to look at that and say, ‘You are not advertising to consumers; you’re advertising to the Microsoft marketing department,’ ” Ms. Mathews says. “I just admit that did bring a smile to my face.”

Emboldened, Microsoft continued its barrages. In February, it unveiled its “Rookies” ads, arguing that PCs are so easy to use that even Kylie, an adorable 4 1/2-year old, could upload a picture of her goldfish, Dorothy, onto her PC and e-mail it to her relatives. You want to make fun of Kylie, Apple? Microsoft and Crispin dare you to try it.

The next month, Microsoft deployed its “Laptop Hunters” ads. They clearly moved the needle in Microsoft’s favor. Ted Marzilli, a managing director of BrandIndex, a company that tracks consumer perceptions, said that at the beginning of the year, adults thought Apple offered more value than Microsoft. In May, however, Microsoft closed the gap in the firm’s surveys. “Apple took a hit,” Mr. Marzilli said. “Since then, they have been neck and neck.”

In June, Microsoft felt that it had more reason to gloat. The chief operating officer, B. Kevin Turner, says he got a call from an Apple lawyer who asked him to change the ads because Apple was lowering its prices by $100. “I did cartwheels down the hallway,” Mr. Turner subsequently boasted in speech at a New Orleans conference.

Then Apple announced its second-quarter rebound. And for some analysts, it seemed like game over. “The reality is that Apple’s business has been impacted by the overall economy, not by Microsoft’s campaign,” said Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. “Those ‘What can I get for 1,000 bucks’ ads? That was a clever campaign. But it never really caught on. If you compare it to ‘Get a Mac,’ it didn’t even register.”

And yet Apple keeps responding. On Friday, it released its Snow Leopard operating system a month ahead of schedule, accompanied by a new round of “Get a Mac” ads. One involves a red-headed woman who is clearly intended to resemble Microsoft’s Lauren. PC introduces her to his suave friend, a top-of-the-line model played by Patrick Warburton, who was David Puddy on “Seinfeld.” She declines to buy a Windows machine when they can’t promise that she won’t have virus woes.

Microsoft, however, has found it enjoys mixing it up with Apple on the airwaves. In July, Mr. Ballmer told analysts that Crispin’s work had been “quite effective.” He promised that Microsoft would continue investing heavily in Windows marketing. “We didn’t do that three, four, five, six years ago,” he added.

For Mr. Siler, this is a welcome change. “I’ve never seen more pride at Microsoft,” he says. “You walk through the campus, and you see people’s laptops that have ‘I’m a PC’ stickers on them. I walk in the company store, and there are these huge banners that say, ‘I’m a PC’ and shirts and ties and mugs. I think I made a difference. My God, that’s so cool!”

NYT 8/30/09