The passenger in seat 34B has caught your eye? Now on Virgin America flights, you can catch his attention by sending him a drink, snack or meal along with a text via seat-back monitor declaring your intentions. Richard Branson, Virgin's founder, right, introduced the service last month in a video billed as his "guide to getting lucky at 35,000 feet." Try it, he said, and your chances of "deplaning with a plus one are at least 50 percent."
Los Angeles's tourism agency is hoping to entice visitors to find new ways to explore the city. Its "Car Free LA" program offers seven itineraries for tourists up for biking, walking or taking the Metro transit system. Trips include the bike route from Venice to Santa Monica and a walking tour of Hollywood, though you may have to take a taxi to the starting point.
No wonder travelers are bent out of shape.
Economy airplane seat width is usually 17 or 18 inches. The average American man's waist is about 40 inches (38 for women), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Need I even mention the sliver of space between your knees and the seat in front you?
Fliers nowadays expect to walk off planes with stiff hips and strained backs. Desperation for relief has made seats with extra legroom cash cows for airlines. Even top yoga instructors who can fold their bodies like origami say they abhor airplane seats. So how do you emerge from a plane without feeling like Quasimodo? I turned to one of the best-known yoga teachers for advice.
Cyndi Lee, the founder of the "no baloney" Om Yoga brand and familiar to veteran practitioners from her videos and New York City classes, is in her 50s and among the most flexible frequent fliers. A few weeks before spring trips that will take her to Japan, Virginia and Berlin, she shared some airplane-friendly poses that keep her feeling supple and can be done in a seat or in the aisle. Many of the poses can be performed by yoga novices; others are for seasoned yogis — or those who dare to try a tree pose at 30,000 feet.
For Beginners
"A lot of what you're doing with these stretches is just increasing the circulation," said Ms. Lee, explaining that fluids "such as water and lymph can tend to pool in lower regions" on an airplane, making fliers "feel sluggish and thick."
To improve circulation through your lower back on long flights, be sure to twist every so often. While in your seat, plant your feet on the floor and twist to the right (you can put your left hand on the outside of your right knee to deepen the twist). Always include your head and neck in the twist. Switch sides.
If you have enough room and flexibility, from your seat you can also try ankle-to-knee (with one leg) pose, which is a complicated way of saying place your ankle on top of the opposite knee. For most people, simply being in this position is a significant stretch. "That will open your hip and give you a really good stretch around your butt and your hip," Ms. Lee said. To deepen the stretch, lean forward a little and place your forearms on top of your legs. Then switch legs. To improve circulation while in that position, flex and point your raised foot, and squeeze and spread your toes. Mind the whereabouts of the drinks cart.
Now, on to your upper back. This next pose, the hug, can be done sitting or standing. And it's perfect if your travels have you feeling stressed: just wrap your arms around yourself and squeeze, aiming to touch your shoulder blades with your fingertips. From there you can stretch your neck by pressing your right ear to your right shoulder; repeat on the other side. Then release and switch arms, this time placing the arm that was on top on the bottom, as you reach across your back.
After the hug, you can go into a modified eagle pose (normally done standing). Put your hands in front of you as if you were about to play peek-a-boo, but instead of covering your face with your hands, cross your forearms and wind your wrists until your palms touch. Move your palms away from your face for a little stretch. (Instructions for some of these poses are on YogaJournal.com.)
Need a bathroom break? In the space near the lavatory, you can counteract rounded shoulders and relieve a tight upper back with a shoulder stretch. Reach behind you with both arms outstretched until your hands meet, then interlace your fingers, and squeeze your shoulder blades together. Look up and lift your chest. Depending on your level of comfort, you can lift your arms up and away from your back a bit. "You're curving your spine in the opposite direction of the seat," Ms. Lee said, "which is good."
Other yoga experts offered similar advice. Alexandria Crow, a yoga instructor and teacher trainer at YogaWorks in Santa Monica, Calif., suggests putting your palms on either side of the aisle wall near the bathroom and leaning forward, as if stretching your chest through an open doorway.
Even simply hanging forward from the waist — folding at the hips and grabbing each elbow with the opposite hand — can make you feel better, Ms. Crow said.
She added that it's important during long flights to elevate your feet to keep your ankles from swelling. "I've gotten off the plane and had those gigantic ankles," she said. To prevent that, she puts her feet on the bulkhead wall, the back of the seat in front of her or the back edge of the armrest in front of her. That may be good for your ankles, though not necessarily for your relationship with fellow passengers. Some fliers (myself included) think feet belong on the ground.
For Yogis
For regular yoga practitioners, "tree pose is a no-brainer," Ms. Lee said, referring to the standing pose in which you place the sole of one foot against the inner thigh of your other leg and raise your arms to your chest or over your head. (You can use a wall by the bathroom for balance.) This pose can open up tight hips and relieve lower back pain. A small price to pay for the possible eyebrow raise from another passenger.
"I do these things and nobody even cares," Ms. Lee said. "In fact, I think some people are thinking, 'That's a good idea.' "
Another option is a variation on downward dog. Stand at your seat and put your hands on the seat back in front of you (not when your neighbor is occupying the seat). Then step back and lean forward, bending in half. (You're making a 90-degree angle, so your upper body and arms should be parallel to the floor.) If there's no room for that (and chances are there isn't unless you are rather petite), adjust by placing your forearms on the seat and do the same thing. "It's just a downward dog in a different relationship to gravity," Ms. Lee said.
You can also modify popular poses like cat and cow (done on your hands and knees) and do them while standing instead. Just bend your knees and place your hands slightly above your knees. Then alternate between rounding your spine like a dome (cat) and curving it like an arch (cow), looking down when you do cat and looking up when you do cow.
"You can do it in a very contained way and get a lot out of it," Ms. Lee said.
And don't forget to breathe deeply, which will help you become calmer. Ms. Lee, the author of "May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga and Changing My Mind," practices sama vritti, equal breathing in and out. She inhales for a count of 4, 5 or 6, then exhales for the same amount of time. She also recommends that travelers try lion pose: scrunching up your face and then, as you exhale, sticking out your tongue and looking up at the space between your eyebrows.
"Try to touch your chin with your tongue," she said, noting that this is good for waking up and reminding you to breathe.
I was about to suggest that this is also good for making people think you're nuts, but Ms. Lee seemingly read my mind.
"You can do that one in the bathroom," she said.
Joshua Hammer for The New York Times
Andrew Purvis, the author's friend, hiking to Mürren, in the Bernese Overland.
We were hiking in fog and drizzle up the barren slopes of Mount Schilthorn, a 9,748-foot-high peak overlooking the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. As I inched along a narrow trail, the mist cleared to reveal a long drop on either side into a boulder-strewn abyss. My legs wobbled; my feet slithered over the soggy ground. I reached out to grasp what seemed like a taut rope line, only to feel it sag beneath my trembling fist. Then the trail widened, I steadied myself, and continued my arduous climb toward the summit.
During the winter season, the Lauterbrunnen Valley ranks among the most popular ski destinations in the Bernese Overland, a region in the German-speaking part of Switzerland that encompasses four high-altitude valleys and three of the highest peaks in the Alps: the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, all rising to more than 13,000 feet. But I had come here with a Geneva-based friend at the height of the summer to experience the region in a different guise.
From May through October, the Bernese Overland becomes one of Western Europe's most challenging and beautiful hiking circuits. Snowy pistes morph into meadows speckled with wildflowers. Ski lodges turn into trekkers' retreats, and the swoosh of skis and snowboards gives way to the rush of water from dozens of cascades and the tinkle of cowbells. In 1779 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe hiked through the Lauterbrunnen, describing its splendors in his poem, "Spirit Song Over the Waters": "Down from the lofty rocky wall/ Streams the bright flood,/Then spreadeth gently in cloudy billows/ O'er the smooth rock." One can spend days, or even weeks, following in Goethe's footsteps through the Lauterbrunnen and adjacent valleys, hiking 120 miles of well-marked trails and crossing mountain passes that remain encrusted in snow year round. Along the way, rustic huts provide meals and hostel-like accommodation, and the opportunity to mingle with hikers from around the world.
My friend, Andrew Purvis, and I began our weekend trek in late July, traveling by train three hours east from Geneva to the town of Lauterbrunnen, then by narrow-gauge railway and aerial tram straight up from the valley floor to Mürren. Situated on a plateau at 5,400 feet above sea level, this former farming settlement today is a hiking and skiing center, with 450 year-round residents and dozens of hotels and B&Bs. During the summer, day-trippers by the thousands also come for staggering views of the Mönch, Jungfrau and Eiger — the latter immortalized in the 1975 Clint Eastwood thriller "The Eiger Sanction," which climaxes with a fatal climb on the avalanche-prone north face.
When we pulled into town, however, Mürren was deserted. An icy fog and heavy rain had socked in the town for two days. And the previous morning the Mürren-Schilthorn cable car had broken down near the summit of Schilthorn, forcing dozens of tourists to make a treacherous descent on foot back to the village. The weather, combined with that incident, had almost emptied the town.
After spending the night at the Hotel Jungfrau, a pleasant if nondescript lodge, we awoke to another morning of souplike weather. A funicular took us a few hundred feet higher to the start of the North Face Trail, a popular route since the earliest days of Alpine trekking. The early 19th century saw the first influx of foreign mountaineers to the Swiss Alps — most of them British soldiers — who scaled several high Alpine peaks, including the Jungfrau, with the help of local guides. The British invasion gave rise to hotels and mountain huts, and an Alpine tourism industry that today brings Switzerland billions of tourist dollars annually. The high-altitude walks during those early years could be perilous, as a plaque along the snow-dappled trail reminded us. "In Memory of Alice Charlotte, Wife of Capt. M. Arbuthnot, XIV Hussars," it read. "Killed by Lightning on the Schilthorn Alp 21 June 1865, Age 23."
Beyond the plaque, the trail diverged, one route descending around an aquamarine glacial lake, the other climbing steeply to the Schilthorn summit. We opted for the latter. The deserted trail wound above the tree line, crossing tundra, scree slopes and bare black and gray rock. The path became more precipitous, requiring us to pull ourselves up by hand in several places. After two arduous hours, we could see Schilthorn's summit peeking through the mist, marked by the cable-car terminus and a revolving restaurant, Piz Gloria.
The makers of the 1969 James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" used this restaurant, then under construction, as the mountaintop lair of the arch villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas. (It was the film crew that came up with the name for the establishment, using a word for "peak" in a Swiss dialect that, in fact, is not spoken in the region.) The slopes below the summit were the scene of one of the most spectacular chases in cinematic history, with Agent 007, played by George Lazenby, Australian used car salesman turned actor, making his escape on skis from Blofeld's gunmen, into the valley below. Piz Gloria is still exploiting its bygone cinematic glory. Through the windows of the gift shop we spied commemorative plates, coffee mugs, ski vests, T-shirts and other Bond-related kitsch.
A wave of change is coursing through the French city of Nantes, bringing cool new eateries, hotels and culture.
Nantes has broken the Madame Bovary curse that's turned so many other French provincial towns into snoozevilles. The city, recently named Europe's green capital by the European Union, is now a popular weekend destination for eco-conscious Parisians who have been lured by the fresh air and a raft of exciting new hotels, restaurants and cultural spaces. Much of the activity is centered around the old docklands along the Loire, now home to effortlessly hip restaurants like L'Uni (36 rue Fouré), an adventurous modern bistro, and Les Bouteilles (11 rue de Bel Air), easily the city's best wine bar, with plenty of Loire Valley vintages. Among the new hotels is the 28-room Sozo (doubles from about $140), built inside a 19th-century chapel with barrel-vaulted ceilings and original stained-glass windows. Best of all is Le Lieu Unique, a magnificent belle époque structure that was once an LU biscuit factory and is now a cultural center complete with a bar, a bookstore, a design shop and even a Moroccan-style hammam.
Richard B. Levine
Marchers from Delta Airlines in last year's gay pride parade in New York.
"Let's say a hotel is doing an ad campaign, but they don't have equal rights for their own employees," Mr. Tanzella said. "You have to have your house in order before you start going after the market."
Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Tanzella on how lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual travelers can figure out what places and companies are truly gay friendly.
Q. Any resources that gay travelers can use to evaluate a company or destination?
A. You can start by checking out our Web site, which lists everything from travel agencies and tour operators to hotels, airlines, cruise lines, car rentals and restaurants and bars. Businesses who pay to be on our Web site must follow our code of ethics, which basically says they welcome LGBT travelers and will treat them with respect like any other guest.
Q. Any companies that are doing a particularly good job?
A. Some of our standout members are Delta and American Airlines, which both have their own Web sites for LGBT travelers and support a lot of organizations and charities. For hotels, Hilton, Hyatt and Kimpton, a chic, boutique-y chain, are all very engaged with gay travelers and support LGBT charities. Kimpton does specials during Pride week in June for destinations that are popular among gay travelers, and it has its own LGBT newsletters.
Q. Any recommendations for gay travelers going abroad?
A. If you're going somewhere outside of a very popular tourist destination, do research online to find out what areas are friendly, what are safe. The new State Department Web site for LGBT Americans traveling abroad is fantastic. It gives links to information on each country and other tips. It's not a bad idea, for example, for parents to bring documents showing parentage or custody of their children when they go abroad.
We often refer travelers to International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), which is based in Brussels and has a lot of information on countries: which afford protection to those who are LGBT; which do not, and even criminalize same-sex relationships.
We tell all travelers, gay and straight, that you must observe the laws and customs of wherever you're traveling. By disregarding them, that will be dangerous for you. Now, if you'd like to do something about a law you feel is unfair, that's when you contact ILGA, which promotes gay rights and equality around the world.
Q. In April as France legalized marriage and adoption for same-sex couples, demonstrations opposing the law intensified. Recently a Dutch-born man walking with his partner in Paris was beaten up. Should LGBT travelers worry?
A. No. Paris is a hugely popular destination for gay travelers and totally safe. Just stay away from marches where there have been incidents. Extremist groups take advantage of demonstrations to clash with police and lash out against the government.
Q. Have any places become more open to gay travelers?
A. In the last decade, a number of hot spots have emerged in South America like Peru and Brazil, and also Mexico City. It used to be only Rio and São Paulo in Brazil, but now Florianópolis has emerged as a gay destination.
Q. How do you find out about these places? Any resources you recommend?
A. Passport magazine, based in New York, is a member of ours. That's a great gay-specific magazine on travel. And Curve, a magazine geared toward lesbians, has some great travel features and ideas, too.
When Qantas Airlines decided to revamp the uniform for its flight attendants, it did what any self-respecting carrier would do these days: it enlisted a Paris-based designer (Martin Grant) and showcased the collection (navy shift dresses and suits with flashes of red and fuchsia) using a supermodel (Miranda Kerr) in a fashion show.
The Australia-based airline, which introduced the uniforms this month in Sydney, is the latest carrier to team up with designers or brands to update their flight attendants' attire, a trend that became popular during the 1960s, when Emilio Pucci created mod designs for Braniff International Airways. It has picked up steam over the last year.
In August, Virgin America revealed uniforms designed by Banana Republic, including a women's lambskin leather jacket and a men's zip-up cardigan. In January, American Airlines announced that the design duo KaufmanFranco was at work on an overhaul of its uniforms. In February, however, came a rare flop. Mock-ups for Turkish Airlines' new uniforms, designed by Dilek Hanif, were leaked to the news media. That collection — long dresses and Ottoman-style fez caps — was panned on Twitter, where some Turks noted that it resembled the costumes of a popular Turkish soap opera about the reign of a 16th-century sultan.
The priest faltered a bit as he climbed the stairs to the museum, housed in an attic above a church in Itapé, Paraguay, a town founded as a Franciscan mission in 1672. My guide and I had roused him from his siesta by clapping our hands repeatedly — the Paraguayan equivalent of a knock on the door. Fumbling with multiple locks and a ring of too many keys, he finally got the doors open and led us through the neatly displayed, modest treasures. I had to read the signs; his eyesight wasn't up to the task: A 1752 wooden figure of St. Bonaventure, arms outstretched. Nineteenth-century baptismal documents. Metal meal containers from the Chaco War against Bolivia in the 1930s. Then he stopped before a simple black frock hanging from a wooden beam. "First cassock of Father Severiano Nelson Vega," I read, "blessed by the Monsignor on March 19, 1958."
"Do you know him?" he asked me in Spanish, with a sudden sparkle in his eyes. Of course I did: he was standing in front of me, 55 years later.
Finding religious artifacts here was not a surprise; if Itapé is known for anything, it's the pretty riverside shrine to the Virgen del Paso. But the village is also a perfect example of the modest, eclectic (and frugal) charms to be found in its home province of Guairá (pronounced gwa-ee-RAH), a relatively small area of about 1,500 square miles in the south of Paraguay, a landlocked country that is poor and mostly ignored by the outside world — but spirited and fascinating all the same.
"Paraguayans see themselves as the ultimate underdogs," said Romy Natalia Goldberg, the half-Paraguayan, half-American author of the Other Places Travel Guide to Paraguay, a rare guidebook to the country. "They take pride in their country's and culture's survival in the face of constant conflict and isolation."
Ms. Goldberg's assessment resonated repeatedly over the seven days I traveled around the country in April. Wars and dictatorships have shrunk the country's size by a third, thinned the population and slowed progress. Even its return to democracy has been difficult — the recent presidential election was marred by reports of vote buying — but its culture has very much survived, including the Guaraní language, spoken to some extent by nearly everyone regardless of their ethnic ties to the indigenous Guaraní people.
That rich and complex cultural heritage popped up all around the region: In addition to the Franciscan history in Itapé, there's Yataity, a village famed nationally for its handmade embroidering called ao po'i; and Colonia Independencia, a municipality where German is as commonly spoken as Spanish. They all surround the regional capital of Villarrica, population 55,000, the intellectual and commercial hub of the province, where I stayed.
The morning after my museum tour in Itapé, I headed to Yataity, 10 miles by hourly bus from Villarrica. The ao po'i tradition started when, a few years after Paraguay's independence in 1811, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the country's dictatorial leader, imposed an isolationist policy, forcing Paraguay to produce its own clothing. And Yataity became the center of the industry. Today it is an idyllic little town: many craftspeople sell ao po'i from their thatched-roof houses; cars share the road with horses; a pretty church and green plaza are at the center of it all.
But this is Paraguay, and there was no real signage or tourism map to be found, so I did what I always do when a bit lost: ask people where to get something to eat. A woman directed me to a pretty brick home with a thatched roof and an old carriage wheel for a window, where Isabel Casco recently decided to establish a little general store and serve meals. There was no sign, but she was open for business. For lunch I had two chicken cutlets gently fried to order in lemony breading and served with yuca for a whopping 6,000 guaraníes ($1.50 at 3,975 guaraníes to the dollar).
Ms. Casco's daughter Alicia Narvaja eagerly interrupted studying for her college classes in Villarrica to take me around town to the homes of some of the finest artisans, including perhaps the most famous: her 87-year-old great-aunt, Digna López, who has been at it for 72 years. Ms. López showed us the loom where she makes her cloth — rare these days since most ao po'i is now embroidered by hand on factory-made fabric. Her product is thus more expensive than most sold in town , but also more celebrated; in fact it is sold at the Museo del Barro in the capital, Asunción. Ms. Narvaja's tour also included a stop at the Instituto Paraguayo de Artesania, where younger residents learn ao po'i; we found a friend of hers using a bowlike tool to clean cotton and make thread for cloth. (Blouses start at about 80,000 guaraníes.)
The next day, in order to fit in several destinations nearly inaccessible by bus, I sprang for an all-day taxi — 10 hours for 300,000 guaraníes. The driver, Julio César Galeano, picked me up at my hotel and we jolted over rust-colored dirt roads, past farms and pastoral countryside, toward Cerro Tres Kandú, at about 2,760 feet the highest peak in Paraguay, a country otherwise mostly flat. Mr. Galeano must have asked at least five locals for directions in Guaraní before we finally found it.
The well-maintained trail to the peak runs about 1.8 miles, with only a 1,450-foot rise in elevation from base to summit, but it was surprisingly challenging. There was lots of clambering up slopes while hanging on to roots, and a bit of hopping across streams on slippery rocks. (I was glad I hired a local guide to come with me, via the tourist office in Villarrica, for 50,000 guaraníes, in case I needed help, but those going in groups probably don't need one.) From the top, the view turned out to be worth the exhausting climb: green fields and red-dirt roads stretching out to the horizon.
Our next stop was Colonia Independencia, which, since receiving its big influx of Germans, Austrians and Swiss between the two World Wars, has been a largely German-speaking community. We passed several German-run countryside hotels, and stopped for lunch in German-owned El Mangal, which has lovely outdoor tables set under enormous mango trees and features a menu (in German and Spanish) heavy with schnitzel and spaetzle. Mr. Galeano and I split the huge house special for two (95,000 guaraníes): a tasty breaded pork chop, tender beef fillets with herb butter, beef kebabs, cold potato salad, hot spaetzle and French fries. (Our Paraguayan waitress wrote "Danke" on our bill.)
We drove past a German school and checked out the rye and flaxseed breads on sale in the local supermarket before stopping for some grape tart (5,000 guaraníes a slice) at the Confitería Dulce Arte, a shop where Lucía Portman, the descendant of Swiss-Germans, sells European-style baked goods and locally made sausage.
My hotel, just outside Villarrica, was also German-run. It was cheap and wonderfully quirky. Inside the restaurant and reception area, where German rock and '80s hits like "Too Shy" played, every wall is covered with functioning cuckoo clocks and photos of zeppelins — and, more surprisingly, tributes to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Rat Pack and John F. Kennedy.
The couple that owns the place, Magalie Steinfatt and Steffen Karl, arrived eight years ago to escape what they called Germany's crippling taxes and workaholic lifestyle. My room was bare-boned but pleasant, and Ms. Steinfatt was very helpful in planning my days; Mr. Karl, having found out I was American, was more interested in discussing conspiracy theories of the Kennedy assassination.
I did spend some time in Villarrica itself — and it's not without its charms. There are a couple of nice churches, a rather haphazardly organized museum inside a beautiful old schoolhouse, a central park that's home to three rather lazy capybaras (adorable rodents the size of small pigs), and a number of decent restaurants serving Paraguayan standards: steaks, lomito (beef) sandwiches and dishes made with the catfish known locally as surubí.
The town is big enough that you never know what you'll run into — I attended a tallarinada, or spaghetti fund-raiser, for a Boy Scout troop planning a trip to Chile — and small enough that strangers will be curious about what you're doing there, perhaps offering to share a cup of tereré, the traditional Paraguayan tea-like beverage served ice-cold. In other words, it's a good place to hang out if your bus doesn't come, the mountain proves too tough or the small-town priest doesn't respond to your clapping.
If You Go
American Airlines has nonstop flights from Miami to Asunción, the Paraguayan capital — but I recommend making the country part of a longer South America trip. From Asunción, I took the Guaireña bus company to Villarrica (buses leave approximately every hour during the day) for 40,000 guaraníes, about $10 at 3,975 guaraníes to the dollar. But after totaling up my taxi costs once I got there, I wish I had rented a car in Asunción and driven there instead. (Villarrica has no car rental agencies.)
I stayed at the perfectly acceptable Ybytyruzú Hotel in central Villarrica one night (hotelybytyruzu.com; single for 135,000 guaraníes) and then moved to the more interesting German-run Hotel Paraíso (hotel-paraiso.de; single for 120,000 guaraníes in the off-season).
The English-speaking staff members at the local "turista roga," or tourism information office, are very helpful; turismoguaira@gmail.com; facebook.com/turistarogavillarrica.guaira.
Djamila Grossman for The New York Times; Ed Alcock for The New York Times; Lourdes Segade for The New York Times; Joao Pedro Marnoto for The New York Times
Clockwise from top left: lobby at Plus Berlin; the Independente in Lisbon; Plus Berlin hallway; The Loft in Paris; Violeta Boutique in Barcelona; a sign at Plus Berlin. More Photos »
With the wine tasting in the lobby bar approaching, I rinsed the green-tea shampoo from my hair, grabbed a towel from the queen bed and settled into a Philippe Starck chair, espresso in hand. A flat-screen TV flickered in the next room of my suite, but I was more captivated by the view that lay just beyond the glass doors of my balcony: the orange tile roofs of Lisbon, washed in the glow of a setting sun.
Was this really a hostel?
It was hard to believe that these expansive private quarters and this late 19th-century town house that was formerly the Swiss ambassador's residence really belonged to a genus whose name evokes backpacks, bunk beds, shared showers and the amenities of a local jail.
The business card on the vintage writing desk dispelled my doubts. "Hostel," it read, just underneath the name of the two-year-old establishment, the Independente. "Hostel & Suites," to be precise.
The two seemingly mismatched words are a testament to the astonishing evolution in European hostels. From London to Lisbon, from Iceland to Istanbul, hostels are undergoing a classy rebirth.
A rooftop Jacuzzi at Bunk in Istanbul; a cinema room at Design Hostel Goli & Bosi in Split, Croatia; a sleek basement nightclub in One80° Berlin: Whether they bill themselves as "design hostels" or "boutique hostels" or "hostel and suites," these new accommodations are striving to raise the standard of an institution that was once the lodging equivalent of a Greyhound bus.
"We need to redefine hostels," said Carl Michel, the executive chairman of Generator Hostels based in Britain, whose mission statement declares its intention to "dispel the hostel myth with boutique hotels that are stylish and contemporary, central, safe and affordable."
Once a family business with two traditional hostels in London and Berlin, Generator was bought in 2007 by a European private equity firm, Patron Capital, and now exemplifies the haute hostel boom. With an iPhone app and a brand-name chief designer in Anwar Mekhayech (whose résumé includes clients like Soho House), the group has opened splashy hostels in Copenhagen, Dublin, Venice and Hamburg over the last few years. Barcelona and a second Berlin site will make their debut this year, and more locations are in the works.
"The idea is to roll out about 12 to 15 hostels by 2015," said Mr. Michel, a former commercial director for British Airways.
Other hostel enterprises are building at a similar clip.
"We are in the watershed period at the moment," said Kash Bhattacharya, the author of a guide to high-end hosteling called "Luxury Hostels: Europe," which will be downloadable as an e-book from his site, budgettraveller.org, next month.
The catalyst has been Europe's slumping economy, which, Mr. Bhattacharya explained, "has led to falling commercial property prices and plenty of vacant building spaces in key city-center locations."
Simultaneously, he said, the recession has created new types of travelers.
"The rise of mature backpackers means that hostels are no longer the preserve of 20-something backpackers," he said. "Hostel owners are now realizing that they can upgrade their facilities to cater to a wider audience."
Four years ago, my colleague Jennifer Conlin reported on these "mature backpackers" and the upgraded hostels that had trickled into Europe. The trickle is now a flood. During a whirlwind week, I slept in and sized up haute hostels in Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona and Berlin: palatial suites and shared cramped rooms; immaculate bathrooms and group showers; convivial communal dinners and lonely solo meals; elegant welcome gifts and unwelcome odors.
The goal was to travel incognito and put each haute hostel (indeed the whole concept) to the test. Could these new crash pads provide classy, comfortable, affordable alternatives to hotels? Were "design hostels" worthy of their grandiose labels?
On a January afternoon, I ambled past the Asian grocers and halal butchers of the Belleville neighborhood in Paris when a gigantic work of urban art on the side of a building flashed into view.
Seth Sherwood, based in Paris, is a frequent contributor to the Travel section.
Heidi Schumann for The New York Times
Clockwise from top left: a Daisy Italiano at Comstock Saloon; an Alligator Alley at Trick Dog; a Smuggler's Rum Barrel at Smuggler's Cove; a Polar Bear at Trick Dog; a pisco punch at Comstock Saloon; and a banana daiquiri at Smuggler's Cove.
As any boozehound worth his salt-rimmed glass will tell you, the City by the Bay is New York's only real rival for American cocktail supremacy. Yet the last time I was in San Francisco was in 2006, which was also, coincidentally, the year I began covering the cocktail beat. And in the accelerated world of mixological invention, seven years might as well be a few generations. In February, I decided to head West to reacquaint myself. The trick: I had a lot of catching up to do, and only a few nights to do it in. A whirlwind bar crawl — sprint? — ensued. I encountered a cocktail scene that features distinct leanings (citrus, pisco, Chartreuse, mezcal), but like New York's, one that is also impressively varied. Did I survive? You'll have to read to the end.
THURSDAY
Trick Dog, San Francisco's bar of the moment, seemed a good place to start. This Mission District spot is the work of Josh Harris, Scott Baird and Jason Henton, who call themselves the Bon Vivants. The bar's look is all cement and open space, but the atmosphere manages to be warm. The clever cocktail list fans out like a paint wheel, the drinks named after actual Pantone colors. In the Polar Bear, aromatic and clear as melted snow, smoky mezcal is soothed by crème de menthe and vermouth. The Alligator Alley gives the mouth a savory shellacking with a base of olive-oil-infused gin. The highball pairings are oddball, but if ever a spirit cried out for Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda, it's aquavit.
Not too far away is Beretta, a haute pizza palace with cocktail cred. The place bubbled with a youthful din. A young blonde in braids and a leather jacket hugged a paperback copy of "Othello" in one hand, a flute of rosé Champagne in the other. I ordered an Airmail, a sort of fat, swaggering daiquiri made with honey and sparkling wine.
At Bar Agricole, in the SoMa neighborhood, adjacent to the Mission, a long, wooden ramp leads past under-the-stars seating to a bar serving Thad Vogler's cocktail program, widely considered one of the most advanced in town. The choices of spirits behind the bar is very selective, and the drinks well made. The spicy-fruity Bourbon Old-Fashioned, for example, is made with house-made stone-fruit bitters, giving what might otherwise be a standard drink an edge of individuality.
Back in the Mission, Dalva is a good-enough bar with a better one, appropriately called the Hideout, in the back. If there's a theme to the décor, it's irony: a Farrah Fawcett poster on one wall, a mounted jackalope on another. The space was packed, like every other tavern this night. The drink special, Lydia's Lunch, was straight out of the crisper: cucumber, lime, celery bitters, all on a base of gin. Fresh produce was once what distinguished the San Francisco cocktail world. It hasn't quite relinquished that calling card yet.
FRIDAY
At 6 p.m., a collection of disparate people lurked outside an unmarked door at the corner of Jones and O'Farrell. On opposing corners, others loitered outside aging S.R.O.'s with perhaps more discernible purpose. The door finally opened. Welcome to Bourbon & Branch, a time portal to 2006, when neo-speakeasies were the thing. There is a rigor to the entry process: please wait here; these are your seats; I'll take your coat now. But, like many bars of its type, B&B is friendly once you're inside. The darkened space, with its tin ceiling and shadowy booths, is beautiful. Patron ages range from 20s to 60s. And the drinks are good: The Frank Lloyd Wright is dry and lightly spicy; the Stiletto, contrary to its name, full-bodied. Delve further in and take a couple of rights and you enter the velour-wallpapered Wilson & Wilson, a speakeasy-within-a-speakeasy.
Just across the street is Tradition Bar, run by the same team as B&B. It's easier to get in, but harder to get a bead on. Booths called "snugs" look made for 19th-century trysts. The thick drinks list contains several thematic mini-menus, including a catalog of barrel-treated spirits, like a Russell's Reserve Rye with a Chartreuse finish. The Afternoon Tea Sour, categorized as a "Traditional Public House" drink, tastes like tea and cakes in a glass. It all feels a bit mixed-up, but the drinking ain't bad.
Next up: a quick dash into Jasper's Corner Tap & Kitchen, which is vibrant and convivial — instant fun. The Negronis on tap have become a city tradition. A little later, while drinking pisco sours at Cantina, a relative old-timer, Duggan McDonnell, an owner, commented: "This town loves its Negronis."
Further confirmation comes at my next stop, A/Q, where a man cries: "I'll have a Negroni on the rocks. I mean, it's Friday!" I go with a Fool's Wager, maybe the darkest gin cocktail ever: Islay Scotch, sweet vermouth and Gran Classico Bitter rough those junipers up.
SATURDAY
I walked into darkness. Was Smuggler's Cove closed? No, I heard burbling water and Bobby Darin. Slowly, my eyes adjusted. On the ceiling were shapes resembling barrels and crates. A group of four sipped from a bowl, recently set aflame, through straws as long as fireplace matches. I had indeed found a Polynesian wonderland and arguably the best tiki bar in the country. Here, the banana daiquiri, mixed with house-made banana liqueur, is an elegant revelation, not a joke. The Expedition, eight ingredients strong, is anchored by a deep espresso note from Bittermens New Orleans Coffee Liqueur.
