Los Angeles Times "Travel" writer finds Milwaukee "hip".

High (no - she wasn't wasted) atop her Harley Heritage Softail Classic, LA Times writer Susan Carpenter espouses all that's good about Milwaukee, Wisconsin, including the new Harley Museum, in a recent LA Times travel section article.

Here's an excerpt:

...one of Milwaukee's four high-end, high-rise hotels (Hotel Metro). The vibe was distinctly Zen, with its minimalist décor. I booked a spa suite because I figured I'd want a whirlpool bath at the end of a long day's ride from Illinois and because I wanted to take that bath with yummy-smelling products.

After whirlpooling in bath salts in the dimmed light of my bathroom, I headed down to the bar and was surprised to see it teeming with stylish twentysomethings drinking stylish drinks. Old Milwaukee? Try grapefruit cosmopolitan, which was the happy-hour special I sipped while listening to Fergie on the sound system.

I found dinner just a few doors down at Cubanitas, another place jammed with chic young 'uns who prefer fried plantains to cheese curds and stiff mojitos to Schlitz.

About then, I started to wonder where I really was. Blame it on the mojito, but I didn't feel as though I was in Milwaukee. Where were all the overweight women in appliqued sweaters with bad perms? They certainly weren't downtown.

EYE-OPENING
The last time I was in Milwaukee was in the '80s, when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison...The city I was experiencing hardly resembled the Milwaukee of my youth. If I hadn't known I was in Milwaukee, I would have guessed it was Seattle. Milwaukee seemed just as hip, progressive and clean as Seattle -- only it's about 2,000 miles east and at the edge of fresh water (Lake Michigan) instead of the Pacific. On the sunny days I was here, it had just as many people jogging and bicycling through its parks.

Nice.