It's impossible to guess what lies beneath the new Herta and Paul Amir Building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (opening November 2) when viewing it from outside. Architect Preston Scott Cohen's prismatic shiplike structure, made of 430 polished cement and glass panels, hides a library, an auditorium, and almost 30,000 square feet of gallery space in its unassuming angular belly. Ramped promenades and staircases spiral around a top-lit 87-foot-high atrium, its complex geometric surfaces bouncing the Mediterranean sun three floors below ground.

A temporary exhibit of works by Anselm Kiefer plus 250 pieces from the museum's permanent collection (prints, drawings, photography, design, video, and sculpture from 1906 to the present) will inaugurate the $55 million cultural hub--as well as Tel Aviv's Art Year festival.

Photo © Amit Geron. Courtesy of Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Kid-friendly hotels are like magnets: On the one hand, we're attracted, knowing we're welcome to tote our lil' jet-setters along, but on the other hand, we're discouraged imagining all the other children running wild through the corridors. Yet with the opening of a new activity space for children at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, it's all positive.

Bright and poppy and oh, so mod, this kid zone feels like the Pritzker Prize-winner of playrooms. With a wry playfulness, Israeli designer Sarit Shani Hay has deftly incorporated local iconography: a Jerusalem lion embedded on a cushy chaise, a windmill, a padded cave, the Mahane Yehuda Market with wooden fruit for mini hagglers. There's over 1,000 square feet of space for young explorers to expend excess energy, while flat-screens and computer stations keep older ones content.

Parents can stay or leave kids to play. Although with Mamilla Avenue shopping just a block away, we recommend the latter--let their inner Eloise roam.

Photo: Courtesy of Epoque Hotels 

Starched linens, starched clientele--upscale eats can get pretty stiff and formal. But top Tel Aviv chef Meir Adoni has found a way to inject some fun back into the endeavor at his new restaurant, Mizlala (57 Nahalat Binyamin, Tel Aviv, Israel). Roughly translated, it means to stuff your face. Why, gladly.

Our favorite at this narrow, boisterous space a block off the Bauhaus- and bar-laden Rothschild Boulevard is the signature "shot and a bite." Order the Rosie O'Donnell, for example, a rosemary-infused Absolut Peppar vodka with Aperol, grapefruit, cranberry, and ginger, and it will arrive with a bite of salmon tartare dressed in yogurt and preserved lemon. Fun and flirty, Mizlala is tradition reworked with international flair, a microcosm of stylish Tel Aviv, one forkful at a time.

Photo: Courtesy of Dan Peretz