【推荐1】Would you like to stay at a beach home in Australia, a home on Egypt’s Red Sea, or a castle in France, all without spending a dollar? People swap (交换) their homes for a few days, a few weeks or longer. You move into someone else’s home, and they move into yours.

Many travelers say it’s a fantastic way to travel. In the movie The Holiday, Kate Winslet is very happy to find a wonderful Southern California home through a home exchange website.

At HomeExchange.com, paying $60 a year allows members to list their homes and swap them with other members for free. The website lists some 15,000 homes around the world and includes pictures and detailed (详细的) descriptions, dates the owners are available (有空的) for an exchange, and the places members would like to travel.

“It’s a great way to travel — basically you stay at my house, I stay at yours, so there are no hotel bills — you save a lot of money on vacation,” said Ed Kushins.

That’s why Susana Parks is a big fan of home exchanges. She and her husband live in a beautiful Rodeo Drive home just a few blocks from Beverly Hills. And the couple is willing to let home exchangers, who they’ve never met, move in and have free use of their kitchen, library, swimming pool, even their new car.

“If we swap our home, we’re in their home too. So there is trust between us that we treat their home like our home and they treat our home like theirs.”

【推荐2】New York is full of life in spring — whether you want to see ballet or flowers. The New York City Ballet season opens on Tuesday at the Lincoln Center. Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s flowers are in full bloom (怒放) at this time of year. But they are just a small part; New York has much more for you to see.

Art on tap

The Whitney Museum of American Art has settled into its new home. The building as well as its setting is exciting. Take the outdoor stairs rather than the lifts to enjoy views of the city. However, the art won’t be for everyone.

Their 2017 Biennial (exhibition) of contemporary American Art has just opened (until June 11). You can also see the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern at Brooklyn Museum (until July 23). From June 12, the Museum of Modern Art will mark the 150th anniversary of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth with an overview (综述) of his work.

Hey, big spenders

Treat yourself to The Lowell hotel on 28 East 63rd Street. It’s between Park and Madison Avenues and is only minutes from Central Park. The hotel will provide you with the best service. The staff are wonderful. At breakfast, waiters present their own home-made jam for guests to enjoy.

No wonder some of the guests have been staying for three years. The rooms come with fireplaces, which is rare in Manhattan. Rooms cost $830 (￡662) per night. They have just opened the Majorelle restaurant, inspired by the gardens in Marrakesh.

Downtown

If you’re traveling in a group, try the Q&A Hotel, a great place from which to explore Wall Street, One World Observatory, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island. Among them, Governors Island re-opens in May with a new experience. The apartments in the 66-storey building are large and come with kitchens. Cost: $239 (￡191) a night.

【推荐1】Modern agriculture and its ability to feed billions of people may be one of humanity’s greatest achievements. However, it comes with hidden costs. For example, have you ever considered how much water is needed to provide you with a steak or a salad? It may surprise you.

In a recent study published in the journal Nutrients, scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), took a close look at the diets of 9,341 adult Australians – specifically, their “water-scarcity (缺少) footprints”.

The water-scarcity footprint is a widely recognized measurement of water consumption（消耗）. First, it counts the liters of water you used. Then, it looks at the place where the water was used. Using a liter of water in the desert is not the same as using a liter of water in a tropical (热带的) rainforest. The more scarce water is in your area, the larger your water-scarcity footprint.

The scientists found that the average Australian’s diet had a water-scarcity footprint of 362 liters per day. Snacks and beverages – cookies, cakes, sodas and alcohol – accounted for 25 percent of the water-scarcity footprint. The research also included a glass of wine (41 liters), a single serving of potato chips (23 liters), and a small bar of milk chocolate (21 liters). Not surprisingly, cutting out snacks would be the NO.1 priority if you wanted to lower your own water-scarcity footprint.

Climate change is causing droughts and extreme weather. In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, nearly ran out of water due to a drought. Its freshwater reservoir(水库) stayed at just above 13.5 percent of full capacity. By 2030, a world of about 8.6 billion people will need 35 percent more water, and 50 percent more food, according to the United States National Intelligence Council.

So, we need to watch what we eat, not just for our personal health but for the health of our societies.

【推荐2】The summer holidays are in full swing--and protests against overtourism have begun in a number of popular European cities. Barcelona, in particular, is at the centre of these mounting concerns about the rapid growth of tourism in cities, especially during peak holiday periods. In fact, there were 30 million overnight visitors in 2017, compared to a resident population of 1, 625, 137 in Barcelona.

While many tourists want to “live like a local” during their visits, the residents of many tourism-dependent destinations are seeing the unique sense of place that characterized their home towns vanish beneath a wave of souvenir shops, crowds, tour buses and noisy bars. Overtourism is harming the landscape, damaging beaches, and pricing residents out of the housing market. It is a hugely complex issue that is often oversimplified.

It can have an impact in multiple ways. City residents bear the cost of tourism growth. As cities transform to offer service to tourists, the global travel supply chain advances. This goes with increasing property speculation (房产投机) and rising costs of living for local communities. Airbnb, for example, has been accused of reducing housing affordability and displacing residents.

In addition, overcrowding and the establishment of typical tourism-focused businesses, such as chubs, bars and souvenir shops, overpower local businesses-and noisy and unmanageable tourist behaviour is common. This weakens the uniqueness of destinations and leads to crowd and waste management pressures, while tourism does bring jobs, investment and economic benefits to destinations.

Dealing with overtourism must now be a priority. Managing the flow of tourists seems an improbable and unwelcome task. But some cities have taken extreme measures to limit the effects of overtourism, including the introduction of new or revised taxation arrangements, fines linked to new local laws, and “demarketing”, whereby destinations focus or attracting fewer, high spending and low impact tourists, rather than large groups.

Overtourism is a shared responsibility. City administrators and destination managers must acknowledge that there are definite limits to growth. Putting the wellbeing of local residents above the needs of the global tourism supply chain is vital. Primary consideration must be given to ensuring that the level of visitation fits within a destinations capacity. We need to urgently rethink the way cities are evolving to uphold the rights of their residents.