Letters: Letters to the Editor

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Letters

Published: November 30, 2012

To the Editor: Regarding "My Hidden Prague" (Nov. 18), I used to live on Krizikova. I bet the street has changed quite a bit; it was kind of wild when I was there a dozen years ago. As for the renovations to the train station, I suppose it's for the best, but the thought that Hlavni Nadrazi will no longer be the decrepit, chaotic madhouse I loved makes me wonder: Should I ever visit that place again? Or should I just remember it?
THOMAS F. BROWN
New York

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To the Editor: Prague is a wonderful city. It has as much history as London, if not more, and is more affordable, with smaller crowds and better food. Don't forget to drink Pilsner Urquell and the local liqueur called Becherovka, which is intriguingly disgusting. Things to see: the clock tower in Stare Mesto; the entire castle district; a performance of Smetana's "Bartered Bride"; funky art galleries.
DOUGLAS KINNEAR
Hastings, Neb.

To the Editor: I don't see why someone would only recommend $200 to $400 rooms in Prague. A few stops from the main train station, you can easily find very nice hotels in the $50 to $100 range.
LEVENTE KOVACSBudapest

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Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

Joe Ray for The New York Times

Overlooking a roof at Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple.

THE titanium spork was a Christmas gift from my brother Gregory, a choice that seemed random at the time. I had no use for ultra-lightweight dual-use cutlery. But nine months later, almost 7,000 miles from my home in New York City and nearly catatonic with exhaustion, I was thankful for its lack of heft. Gregory; my husband, Joe; and I had been hiking for 12 hours while hoisting a 30-pound backpack over steep and slippery rock in a thick mist. After nightfall, headlamps fading, we spotted dots of light below us in the dark, and heard the eerie whoosh of a wind generator. We stumbled down to the Satgat-jae shelter, a basic cabin for hikers perched at over 4,200 feet in South Korea's Deogyusan National Park. I unpacked my spork.

It was Gregory, now living in South Korea and flush with the zeal of the newly expatriated, who had suggested we hike a portion of the Baekdu-Daegan trail. The Baekdu-Daegan is a mountain system running the entire length of the two Koreas, some 870 miles. On maps, it appears as the topographical backbone of the Korean Peninsula, but I soon realized it was also a psycho-spiritual one. The notion first occurred to me when Gregory told us that his city-dwelling Korean girlfriend said he would understand her better if he hiked the Baekdu-Daegan. And when Joe and I checked out of our ultramodern hotel in central Seoul, the receptionist clapped when I told her what we were about to do.

South Korea may be among the most wired and densely populated countries in the world, but its first religion many centuries ago — before the arrival of Christianity, Confucianism and Buddhism — was based on the worship of mountain spirits. The Korean version of feng shui, known as pungsu-jiri, holds that the nation's energy flows south along the Baekdu-Daegan ridge and outward along its branches. By the time of our trip, I had developed a theory that the mountains are to Koreans as the Wild West is to Americans: even if a New Yorker, say, has never set foot on a ranch, he likes to think he's got a little bit of cowboy in his soul. It's part of the collective unconscious.

Since the '80s, as both freedom and wealth have spread in South Korea, so has the popularity of mountaineering. As it has, the South Korean portion of the Baekdu-Daegan has become hikable along nearly all of its 457-mile ridge, with trails built and maintained by the Korea Forest Service, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Weekend warriors tackle it in chunks, and a hardy few attempt the entire length as an epic two-month trek.

In the spring, Gregory had mailed me the only English-language guidebook to the trail. The spork had been a subtle lure, but I took the guidebook as an all-out invitation and began making plans for a September trip. My brother had lived in South Korea for much of his 20s, but, always too busy or broke from my own globe-trotting, I had never visited. Now he was moving back there at the age of 37, in love with Korea, the Korean language and a Korean woman. I wanted to better understand his decision, which seemed to be either a bold gamble on personal happiness or a crazy one. And I wanted to know the place that might be his permanent home.

Gregory is younger than I am, but he became our leader, particularly after we left the capital and entered the countryside, where we saw no other foreigners and heard virtually no English, and so were dependent on his Korean skills.

The section of trail we had chosen began in a southern farming region and took us north into 90-square-mile Deogyusan National Park. Clouds clung to the hills, a reminder of the unseasonably late typhoon that had passed over the peninsula the day before. As we ascended, we were almost immediately passed by a hiking club — 15 lithe men and women in the black hiking pants favored there, made from panels of high-tech-looking fabric. Their leader broke his stride just long enough to tie a ribbon to a tree marking their passage; some branches we passed were festooned with these brightly colored strips.

In height, South Korea's mountains are more akin to the Appalachians than the Rockies — the highest mainland peak is 6,283-foot Jirisan. They can, however, be jagged in the extreme. We planned to cover just seven miles on the first day, but the steep and constant ups and downs soon had us aching. We often had to climb using our hands, and in many places we used the chains and ropes that the forest service had helpfully attached to the rocks.

As we limped into our second morning, we decided to rethink our itinerary. Instead of sticking religiously to the trail for six days, we would weave our way on and off, stopping at villages and temples along the way. Things immediately improved. For one thing, the sun had come out. For another, we were going downhill. Soon we were following a stream, broken up by waterfalls and pools through a deciduous forest of maple, hazel and birch. We stopped to talk to a pair of Korean hikers on their way up. I would hear Gregory explain our presence so many times over the course of this trip that I began to pick up the words for sister and brother-in-law. "People look at you differently when you're traveling with family," he said to me after another encounter with fellow hikers. "You're not a suspicious bachelor."

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Q&A: Canoeing to Marshland Reservations

IN his nonfiction book "Rez Life," David Treuer offers an affecting portrait of his childhood home, Leech Lake Indian Reservation, and his people, the Ojibwe.

Before sitting down to write the book, he visited small reservations across the vast lake-pocked marshlands of Minnesota, North Dakota, Ontario and Manitoba, many of which are inaccessible by road (except ice roads). So he traveled to them by canoe or trekked them by foot — just as the Ojibwe had once done in search of game, berries and wild rice.

"We traveled the way our people traveled for centuries," Mr. Treuer said of one canoe journey, "with a few technological advances like space-age Gortex."

Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Treuer on canoeing and trekking across Ojibwe country.

Q. What's the best time of year to explore Leech Lake?

A. The thing about northern Minnesota, the land is almost impassable in the summer, so much of it is swamp or lakes or rivers. When ice comes — this is what people say back home — everybody turns into Jesus because everyone can walk on water. The cabin fever people imagine where you're holed up in your house; it's the opposite: winter is finally when you can go anywhere. You can go by snowmobile and do those kinds of winter sports. Or you can explore by going snowshoeing or skiing without a destination or purpose. I do trapping, set snares for rabbits where they might be. They like brushy, logged-over areas. The less majestic, the better.

Q. What about exploring other reservations?

A. In the winter, you can go by ice road — if you've seen the show "Ice Road Truckers," you know what I'm talking about — but better still is by canoe come June or July. Along the Berens River, which flows into Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, are quite a few First Nations, as they're called Canada. Very small communities like Poplar Hill, Pikangikum, Little Grand Rapids. We pulled ashore there once after paddling for two weeks. They had one little store, no hotels, no casinos, no public works. They don't get many visitors, especially that old way of pulling up in a canoe, so they were very glad to see us.

Q. Any suggestions for canoe areas?

A. If you have no experience, you should start in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. The lakes aren't too big, and the rivers aren't too wild, and it's well preserved. Incredibly beautiful, but a bit too crowded for our tastes. If you want to take it up a notch, the Bloodvein River in Ontario is a good 2.0 trip. It's a big river with big rapids, so you'll have to know how to land and portage your canoe before you get swept down into the rapids.

Q. Any rivers for the truly adventurous?

A. The Thlewiaza River from Nueltin Lake in Nunavut to Hudson Bay. You have to take a float plane there; it's hundreds of miles north of Minnesota. There are no trees, it's above the tree line, which ran against every instinct in my being; our tribe is a woodland tribe. Plus it's hard to build fires. The wind is constant. It sleeted and snowed when we were there in July.

Q. The Ojibwe were known for their birch bark canoes. What kind do you use?

A. Because they make phenomenal canoes and I was pre-kid then, I bought a canoe from Bell Canoe Works years ago. And I still have it.

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Journeys: A Culinary Gateway to Cape Town Opens

Pieter Bauermeister for The New York Times

Clockwise from left: Yeshi Mekonnen at Little Ethiopia Restaurant; the Bo-Kaap neighborhood; Bebe Rose at her restaurant, called Bebe's; a dish at Little Ethiopia.

BEBE ROSE, a Cameroonian who owns Bebe's restaurant in Cape Town, stood with her arms folded and peered down with one brow raised as she scanned the plates of unfinished food spread out before me.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "You don't like my food?"

I did like her food. There were stews of kidney beans and okra, meat and starches. It was true that one item, the tripe, pushed my boundaries. In a shallow bath of a hearty brown sauce of ground nuts and red oil sat part of one of the four chambers of a cow's stomach, the rumen, or omasum, or perhaps the abomasum.

I couldn't be sure. I secured it to the dish with my fork and sawed it with my knife. Its flavor was rich and beefy, though it was more than chewy, kind of resistant, as if it hadn't decided yet if it was going to be eaten.

The problem, though, was that this was the last stop on a four-hour eating binge through central Cape Town, and my own sorry single-chamber organ was maxed out.

Not from sheer gluttony, though. I had found a novel way to explore Cape Town, a city that I had visited several times over the course of 20 years. A local company called Coffeebeans Routes offered to expose visitors to the city and its subcultures through a tour called the Cape Town Cuisine Route. Unlike many other culinary excursions, the goal is not to find the finest dining (there is no shortage of that) but to use food as an entry to the city's inner life, visiting home kitchens, alley cafes and markets otherwise easy to miss.

Cape Town, wedged between the towering sandstone mesa of Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean on Africa's southern tip, is marvelously scenic. From its establishment in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company, which created a settlement as a way station for ships bringing spices from Asia, the Cape Town city bowl, the aptly named metropolitan center, has been a stew of cultures like the indigenous Khoisan, Africans from the north, Europeans from the sea, slaves and indentured servants from Southeast Asia who would become known as the Cape Malay.

In the last decade or so, they have been joined by an influx from the rest of Africa — Malawi and Mali, Congo, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe — looking for refuge and opportunity. They have sometimes had to endure searing anti-immigrant sentiment. Nonetheless, they have set up shops and market stalls, changed the look of some streets and neighborhoods and brought recipes from home.

The Coffeebeans itinerary tells the story, a mouthful at a time, said my guide, Michael Letlala, 28, who came to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape.

Our first stop was the Escape Caffe, which has an extraordinary history: it is owned and operated by Muhammed Lameen Abdul-Malik, who was born in Nigeria, and opened the cafe after winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency when Mohamed ElBaradei was the director general.

The clientele, and the baristas, looked like the South African counterparts to my regular cafe in Philadelphia. They are locals and expats, regulars and newcomers, the same set of people worldwide who know their piccolos and macchiatos, settling in at a long communal table in the middle of the cafe.

Although Cape Town already had a robust cafe scene before the arrival of Escape Caffe, few places had decent coffee. Mr. Abdul-Malik has endeavored to fix that. His coffee is great, and he has built a following of people who are prepared to pay considerably higher prices for it.

"Coffee beans are from Africa," Mr. Letlala said, as we sipped cortados from clear glasses. "And, anyway, coffee is a good palate cleanser before we begin eating. We will have a lot of food."

Having eaten very little before we started, I felt up to the task. We walked up the cobblestone street into the Bo-Kaap, the Cape Malay Quarter, with its view of bright pastel-colored homes running like a perspective painting up the incline of Signal Hill, and came to a spice shop. The Bo-Kaap, like so much of the area, is in transition. After hundreds of years of being exclusively Muslim (partly because of apartheid-era segregation laws), gentrification and rising demand, property and tax rates are changing the neighborhood, making it all rather a bit too SoHo for traditional residents.

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Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawaii

Honolulu Museum of Art

"Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast No. 1," 1939, by Georgia O'Keeffe.

EARLY in 1939, Georgia O'Keeffe, the artist most famous for depicting the arid Southwest, suddenly decided to paint America's diametrically opposite landscape — the lush tropical valleys of Hawaii. In an era when advertisers often hired fine artists to add a touch of class to their campaigns, the "least commercial artist in the U.S." (as Time Magazine described her) was persuaded by the Dole pineapple company to visit the remote Pacific archipelago and produce two canvases. The offer came at a critical time in O'Keeffe's life. She was 51, her career seemed to be stalling (critics were calling her focus on New Mexico limited, and branding her desert images "a kind of mass production"), and her marriage to Alfred Stieglitz was under serious strain.

Despite initial reservations about the project, her many letters back home show that her experience of the then little-known Territory of Hawaii was a revelation. O'Keeffe ended up spending nine weeks on different islands, of which by far the most productive and vivid period was on Maui, where she was given complete freedom to explore and paint. Back on Oahu, where she had first arrived, she had been incensed that Dole officials refused to let her stay on a working pineapple plantation because it was unseemly for a woman. When they delivered to her hotel a pineapple already peeled and sliced, she tossed it out in disgust. But on Maui she was able to seek out an unfiltered view of nature, and went directly to the most remote, wild and verdant corner of the island: the port of Hana.

She reported back to Stieglitz about Hana's dark rain forests, exuberant flora, black sand beaches and lava washed into "sharp and fantastic shapes." Staying on the Kaeleku sugar plantation, the notoriously prickly artist was given Patricia Jennings, the 12-year-old daughter of the plantation manager, as her private guide, and the two became unlikely friends; for 10 days the pair visited sea caves, ruins and beaches, and later, with Patricia's father, made excursions to the dramatic Iao Valley and Haleakala Crater.

I FIRST stumbled across this exotic biographical interlude in the New York Public Library, where I found a 1990 catalog for an exhibition of O'Keeffe's Hawaii paintings at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The images of emerald chasms, gleaming waterfalls and brilliantly tinged bird of paradise flowers were the very essence of the tropics. Then, just this past spring, Koa Books released "Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawaii," co-authored by Ms. Jennings (now an octogenarian grandmother) and filled with memories of her time with the artist.

When I returned to Maui recently, I wondered if Ms. Jennings might agree to be a virtual tour guide and help me follow in O'Keeffe's footsteps. She lives far from Hana, on the Big Island of Hawaii, and rarely travels, though her memories of her time with the artist are still vivid. "You never saw a single tourist in the old days," she said over the telephone, as I jotted down their itinerary. "Even at the most beautiful spots, we were always the only ones there."

Today, of course, Hana is one of the most famous destinations in Hawaii, but paradoxically few people spend the night there. Most travelers base themselves in the big beach resorts on the other side of the island, so they rush the 68-mile drive (as much as they can rush considering there are more than 50 bridges, most of them one-lane, and some 600 hairpin bends), and then, pressed for time, are forced to return soon after. But it's quite possible to stay overnight in the eccentric township of Hana and explore every bit of the coastline that so bewitched O'Keeffe.

The Hana Highway is now paved; whether that makes it less hair-raising than it was back in 1939 when O'Keeffe was being driven along it I can't say. What I do know is that it was hard to take in the spectacular views on the three-hour drive, as I joined a parade of cars slowly zigzagging along cliff edges, past cascading waterfalls and vegetation tumbling from above.

TONY PERROTTET, a contributing writer for Smithsonian Magazine, is the author, most recently, of "The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe."

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Next Stop: Valladolid, Mexico, a City of Yucatán Cool

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

In the showroom of their leather-goods store Hacienda Montaecristo, Francesca Bonato, seated center, and Jacopo Janniello Ravagnan, with beard.

SOMEWHERE between the grilled watermelon with panela cheese and my second taco de cochinita — a Yucatecan taco stuffed with pork, black beans and pickled onions — I put down my fork. I couldn't eat another bite.

"Maybe you didn't notice how heavy the food is here?" said my friend Guillaume Guevara. We were sitting in the Taberna de los Frailes in Valladolid, a colonial city of Spanish arcades and 16th-century spires on the Yucatán Peninsula. Guillaume was right: the food was filling. The two days I spent there in March were punctuated with rich, sleep-inducing meals: deep-fried tortillas, cream-based soups and enough beans, pork and nopal cactus to keep me teetering on the edge of a constant food coma.

A few days earlier, we had celebrated Guillaume's wedding in the eco-chic beach resort town of Tulum, an hour's drive to the southeast; several of us in the wedding party had come to Valladolid to recover from 72 hours of tireless partying. The city, often overlooked by travelers making a beeline to the Yucatán's flashier hot spots, provided just the right antidote to the fashion-conscious whirlwind in Tulum. Here we found artists and artisans peddling their wares in mom-and-pop shops, friendly residents and a refreshingly unpretentious night life.

Of course, cool, undiscovered places rarely stay cool and undiscovered, and one might expect Valladolid to become the next Tulum or even Cancún, which isn't that far away. But its distance from the beach means that Valladolid promises to remain a sophisticated refuge.

There is a budding cosmopolitan spirit these days, as some expatriate tastemakers restore old haciendas and start businesses. Ariane Dutzi, for instance, a former correspondent from Germany who now runs her own line of locally handmade bags, Dutzi Design, just opened her first boutique in Valladolid (Calle 42 No. 217; dutzidesign.com). Tulum had become "overrun" with tourists, she said, but in Valladolid, she has found "something more authentic."

Authentic: it's a word that is frequently used when describing Valladolid. Culturally speaking, it's a layered authenticity. The city is deeply Mayan, from the cuisine — sweet and spicy, heavy on the beans and slow-roasted pork — to the guttural consonants of the Mayan language heard on its streets. Many women wear the traditional Mayan huipil — white cotton blouses or dresses adorned with bright, flowered embroidery and sold in places like the Mercado de Artesanias, a block from the city's beautiful, newly refurbished Parque Principal, or central square.

It is also distinctly Spanish: Founded by invading Spaniards in 1543, its colonnades, pastel stucco and paving-stone streets give Valladolid an Iberian feel. The central cathedral, a fortress of ascetic Franciscan architecture, is standing room only on Sunday evenings. As in Spain, shops are often shuttered each afternoon for siesta.

"This is a nice place because you can have everything without all the noise," said Alejandra Rivero Flores, who works at her family's business, Tequileria Poncho Villa, a little liquor store that I stumbled upon on bustling Calle 41 (No. 216), drawn in by the life-size, colorfully dressed skeleton doll propped out front. Inside, surrounded by countless varieties of tequilas, Ms. Flores ticked off Valladolid's attributes: great shopping and food, a close-knit community for raising children and an urbanity that has developed in tandem with the city's recent efforts to restore its buildings and byways.

You can also find the natural splendor of the Yucatán, which not only surrounds the city, but also permeates it. The flat, porous limestone shelf of the peninsula is penetrated by thousands of sinkholes, or cenotes, filled with fresh water. I found one of them, the Cenote Zaci, about three blocks east of the central square. Though it's not exactly remote, the stone steps leading down to the sinkhole, which lies within a cavelike formation surrounded by jungle foliage, delivered me to another world. Lizards and birds were perched in the nooks and crannies of the limestone walls that rose up around the sinkhole; the cool, blue water, about 280 feet deep, was perfect for diving. (Less confident divers like me can do cannonballs off the cenote's 23-foot-high walls.) A thatched roof cafe beside the cave mouth is a great place to unwind with a cerveza and a taco.

I was often reminded that the Yucatán jungles lay just beyond Valladolid's spired horizons. From my room at the Mesón del Marqués at sunrise, I could hear birds hidden in the laurel trees of the central square screech and whistle — at once beautiful and primordial in a way that reminded me that Mayans once practiced human sacrifice atop the pyramids of nearby Chichen Itza.

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Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

Joe Ray for The New York Times

Overlooking a roof at Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple.

THE titanium spork was a Christmas gift from my brother Gregory, a choice that seemed random at the time. I had no use for ultra-lightweight dual-use cutlery. But nine months later, almost 7,000 miles from my home in New York City and nearly catatonic with exhaustion, I was thankful for its lack of heft. Gregory; my husband, Joe; and I had been hiking for 12 hours while hoisting a 30-pound backpack over steep and slippery rock in a thick mist. After nightfall, headlamps fading, we spotted dots of light below us in the dark, and heard the eerie whoosh of a wind generator. We stumbled down to the Satgat-jae shelter, a basic cabin for hikers perched at over 4,200 feet in South Korea's Deogyusan National Park. I unpacked my spork.

It was Gregory, now living in South Korea and flush with the zeal of the newly expatriated, who had suggested we hike a portion of the Baekdu-Daegan trail. The Baekdu-Daegan is a mountain system running the entire length of the two Koreas, some 870 miles. On maps, it appears as the topographical backbone of the Korean Peninsula, but I soon realized it was also a psycho-spiritual one. The notion first occurred to me when Gregory told us that his city-dwelling Korean girlfriend said he would understand her better if he hiked the Baekdu-Daegan. And when Joe and I checked out of our ultramodern hotel in central Seoul, the receptionist clapped when I told her what we were about to do.

South Korea may be among the most wired and densely populated countries in the world, but its first religion many centuries ago — before the arrival of Christianity, Confucianism and Buddhism — was based on the worship of mountain spirits. The Korean version of feng shui, known as pungsu-jiri, holds that the nation's energy flows south along the Baekdu-Daegan ridge and outward along its branches. By the time of our trip, I had developed a theory that the mountains are to Koreans as the Wild West is to Americans: even if a New Yorker, say, has never set foot on a ranch, he likes to think he's got a little bit of cowboy in his soul. It's part of the collective unconscious.

Since the '80s, as both freedom and wealth have spread in South Korea, so has the popularity of mountaineering. As it has, the South Korean portion of the Baekdu-Daegan has become hikable along nearly all of its 457-mile ridge, with trails built and maintained by the Korea Forest Service, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Weekend warriors tackle it in chunks, and a hardy few attempt the entire length as an epic two-month trek.

In the spring, Gregory had mailed me the only English-language guidebook to the trail. The spork had been a subtle lure, but I took the guidebook as an all-out invitation and began making plans for a September trip. My brother had lived in South Korea for much of his 20s, but, always too busy or broke from my own globe-trotting, I had never visited. Now he was moving back there at the age of 37, in love with Korea, the Korean language and a Korean woman. I wanted to better understand his decision, which seemed to be either a bold gamble on personal happiness or a crazy one. And I wanted to know the place that might be his permanent home.

Gregory is younger than I am, but he became our leader, particularly after we left the capital and entered the countryside, where we saw no other foreigners and heard virtually no English, and so were dependent on his Korean skills.

The section of trail we had chosen began in a southern farming region and took us north into 90-square-mile Deogyusan National Park. Clouds clung to the hills, a reminder of the unseasonably late typhoon that had passed over the peninsula the day before. As we ascended, we were almost immediately passed by a hiking club — 15 lithe men and women in the black hiking pants favored there, made from panels of high-tech-looking fabric. Their leader broke his stride just long enough to tie a ribbon to a tree marking their passage; some branches we passed were festooned with these brightly colored strips.

In height, South Korea's mountains are more akin to the Appalachians than the Rockies — the highest mainland peak is 6,283-foot Jirisan. They can, however, be jagged in the extreme. We planned to cover just seven miles on the first day, but the steep and constant ups and downs soon had us aching. We often had to climb using our hands, and in many places we used the chains and ropes that the forest service had helpfully attached to the rocks.

As we limped into our second morning, we decided to rethink our itinerary. Instead of sticking religiously to the trail for six days, we would weave our way on and off, stopping at villages and temples along the way. Things immediately improved. For one thing, the sun had come out. For another, we were going downhill. Soon we were following a stream, broken up by waterfalls and pools through a deciduous forest of maple, hazel and birch. We stopped to talk to a pair of Korean hikers on their way up. I would hear Gregory explain our presence so many times over the course of this trip that I began to pick up the words for sister and brother-in-law. "People look at you differently when you're traveling with family," he said to me after another encounter with fellow hikers. "You're not a suspicious bachelor."

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The Getaway: Test-Flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

United Airlines

A United Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

"HAVE you seen the toilet?" said the man next to me. "You have to see the toilet."

Airplane bathrooms are hardly conversation starters, and if they are, it's generally not a conversation one wants to continue. But I had just boarded the Dreamliner — Boeing's new 787 that is outshining its ancestors with roomier overhead bins, larger windows, power for smartphones, a quieter cabin, more humid air and, as it turns out, a toilet that's a crowd pleaser.

A vision in white, it has plastic tabs on the sides of the lid and the seat so you barely have to touch them, a sensor instead of a flush button and, according to some users, a more subdued whoosh when flushed. "It's very refined," said my seatmate, Joe Nevin, a former executive at Apple turned Aspen ski pro. "It doesn't sound like it's going to take your clothes off."

Mr. Nevin was among some 200 hard-core frequent fliers on board United Airlines Flight 1807, the first North American charter of the Dreamliner. And over the course of a few days in November, they — and I — would flit from San Francisco to Houston to Chicago, all the while racking up miles and exploring the plane from nose to tail.

They were bankers, lawyers, programmers, film distributors, entrepreneurs and all-around aviation buffs or, as they lovingly call themselves, geeks. Most were men. All of them had signed up for a MegaDo, a retreat organized by and for travel fanatics who scour Web sites like Milepoint, particularly frequent fliers for whom it is a hobby to accrue miles and learn every last detail about their preferred airline.

The first MegaDo was in 2009. This one, Star Alliance MegaDo 4, had a European leg that wasn't on a Dreamliner and a domestic leg, and sold out in two minutes. Tickets for the United States portion were $999 to $1,999 and included meals and behind-the-scenes talks and tours with airline and hotel executives. All the proceeds go to charity. Those who did manage to score a Star Alliance MegaDo 4 ticket would ultimately fly on a Dreamliner, party in an airplane hangar, learn how to de-ice a plane, visit United's headquarters, barely sleep and consume copious amounts of alcohol.

The average traveler has probably never heard of MegaDos, but they have become so significant within the travel industry that, as one of the founders, Tommy Danielsen, put it: "United gives us this plane a week and a half after they introduce it."

But even occasional fliers will find themselves on Dreamliners in the coming years as more airlines integrate them into their fleets. United, the first domestic carrier to receive the Dreamliner, has two so far and at least another 48 on the way. International carriers including Japan Airlines and Air India have been flying the planes for months.

For a taste of the future, I plunked down a credit card and tagged along for the 41,000-foot high.

IT wasn't looking good. The night before we were scheduled to fly to Houston from San Francisco, Mr. Danielsen said the Dreamliner "broke down." He didn't elaborate.

"We have a 767 scheduled to be here just in case the thing goes down the crapper," he told the crowd during a reception at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

But the next morning at Gate 82 in San Francisco International Airport, MegaDoers were streaming onto the Dreamliner. No one looked the least bit concerned. Rather, they were pausing in the aisles for photographs as if they had never been inside a plane before.

I let their giddiness wash away my trepidation. At first, the Dreamliner's interior didn't appear to be all that different from those of other planes. But when taking in the view from my economy seat, the plane felt airier and, dare I say, almost soothing thanks to a cool indigo glow emanating from the ceiling.

LED lighting sets the mood for various phases of flight: ice bluish-purple for boarding; a dimmer version of that for cruising; deep purple for relaxing; copper during meals; dark, bat-cave blue for sleeping; and a warm blend to help wake passengers for landing. On long flights, the lighting can be used to simulate a full day to help combat jet lag.

The Dreamliner also feels more spacious, thanks to windows that are 30 percent larger than those on other similarly sized airplanes. That means even passengers not seated at a window are able to see outside. Instead of shades, there are window tints that passengers control with a dimmer button, which, for Gilles Goudreault, president of a Canadian multimedia company, are one of the Dreamliner's best features. "You feel like it's a tomb with the shade down," he said. The new tints satisfy more people, preventing sunlight from blasting passengers who are sleeping but still enabling the person by the window to enjoy the view.

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Little Luxuries for Travelers

Looking for a travel-related gift for someone on your list this holiday season? Here are seven ideas to get you started.
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

1. CLARE VIVIER FLAT CLUTCH STRIPED

These leather pouches (11.5 inches by 8 inches) are in vogue thanks to bold, colorful stripes. Use one for makeup, electronics or travel documents inside a larger bag, or on its own as a clutch.

$184 at clarevivier.com.

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In Transit Blog: Delta and JetBlue Waive Change Fees After Sandy-Hit Schools Shorten Breaks

About a month ago, around the time that Hurricane Sandy made landfall, JetBlue and Delta Air Lines offered to waive change fees for travelers who needed to change their flights. More than a month later, the carriers, prodded by Senator Charles E. Schumer, offered a second wave of amnesty to a very small niche: passengers whose children attend schools affected by the hurricane.

In Sandy's wake, dozens of public schools across New York City and Long Island were forced to close for several days because they were used as evacuation centers, had no electricity or transportation, or were in a region that had sustained significant damage. Most of the students have returned to class, but many districts are making up for lost time by shortening  midwinter breaks in February.

Because families with school calendars plan ahead, several New Yorkers had already planned vacations. So they appealed to Senator Schumer for help. Yesterday, he wrote to airlines and cruise lines, urging them to issue refunds or credits to families affect by Sandy.

Today Jet Blue and Delta Air Lines responded to the senator's request, announcing that they will waive change fees for those who were scheduled to travel Feb. 15 to Feb. 24, the school holiday.

The senator is not done with his campaign, however.

"Now that JetBlue and Delta have done the right thing, we'll be persuading and pressuring the other airlines and cruise lines to follow their example," Mr. Schumer said in a statement released by his press secretary. "The floodgates have started to open."

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