Midwest Traveler: Holiday lights, museum light up Milwaukee

Six days a week, the Milwaukee Art Museum spreads its wings at the edge of Lake Michigan like a "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon." The phrase comes from the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem "The Windhover," a favorite of Harry and Betty Quadracci, founders of magazine printer Quad/Graphics. The couple led the fundraising for the museum's spectacular front entrance, including the "wings," a brise-soleil — French for sun-break — that rises at 10 a.m., flaps once at noon and settles down at closing.

Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the Quadracci Pavilion opened in 2001, immediately becoming the symbol of a city made famous by Schlitz, Miller, Blatz and Pabst.

It's architecture worth traveling for. Inside, the exhibition "Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums" ($14; 1-414-224-3200; mam.org) runs through Jan. 4.

Milwaukee's 101st city/county Christmas tree lighting, held Nov. 20, signaled the start of the Holiday Lights Festival (milwaukeedowntown.com). Every Thursday through Sunday night through Dec. 28, visitors can pay a dollar and hop on the Jingle Bus for a narrated tour of city landmarks and animated light displays.

Another holiday tradition, Christmas in the Ward, takes place Dec. 5-6 in Catalano Square in the Historic Third Ward, a former warehouse district turned boutique-and-bistro destination (historicthirdward.org).

On the west side of town, the Pabst Mansion ($10; 1-414-931-0808; www.pabstmansion.com) offers self-guided tours of period rooms in their Victorian Christmas finery.

Born in Prussia, Johann Gottlieb Friedrich Pabst rose from cabin boy to captain on Lake Michigan steamships, then married the daughter of a brewery owner. Originally the Empire Brewery, by the time the company took Pabst's name it really was an empire.

These days, the source of a particular bottle or can of PBR is hard to determine. It may even have come from Milwaukee, brewed by Miller — now a South African company headquartered in London.

The 22-acre former Pabst site, north of downtown, was redeveloped into a residential, office and university complex called The Brewery. The Brewhouse Inn & Suites, "where post-Victorian steampunk meets King Gambrinus swag," opened last year. Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery ($8; 1-414-630-1609; bestplacemilwaukee.com) runs beer history tours washed down with a 16-ounce Pabst or Schlitz.

The most convenient of the working brewery tours, and the only one on TripAdvisor's Top 10 list, is at Lakefront Brewery ($7; 1-414-372-8800; www.lakefrontbrewery.com). Despite its name, Lakefront is actually located on Milwaukee's scenic 3-mile RiverWalk.

Just across the Holton Street Viaduct from the brewery is Brady Street, a nine-block stretch with an authentic neighborhood feel. Founding brothers Joe, Eddie and Teddy still preside at Glorioso's, a 68-year-old Italian market. The bar Hosed on Brady gives out free shots when a call comes in to the firehouse next door. Having gone from ethnic to hippie to hipster, Brady Street will celebrate the "Seinfeld" holiday Festivus on Dec. 6.

In the restaurant category, Milwaukee boasts two Teutonic titans: Mader's (1-414-271-3377; www.madersrestaurant.com), west of the Milwaukee River on Old World Third Street, the home of Reuben Rolls (spring rolls filled with corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss); and Karl Ratzsch's (1-414-276-2720; karlratzsch.com), east of the river, where a prized entree is Duck & Goose in Combination.

Milwaukee is about 340 miles from the Twin Cities via I-94. Amtrak's Empire Builder has a daily morning departure from St. Paul's Union Depot to Milwaukee's Intermodal Station (about six hours).