In Transit Blog: In Philadelphia, a New Campaign to Attract Gay Travelers

Ten years after producing the first American television commercial to promote a city to the gay community, Philadelphia is reinforcing its appeal to LGBT travelers with a new campaign video.

The new video builds on the city's memorable 2003 "Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay" campaign by showing the flamboyant female impersonator Miss Richfield 1981 touring some of Philadelphia's best-known sites, including Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Dressed in a red-and-white striped skirt and a tight blue bodice, Miss Richfield poses with Betsy Ross — the Betsy Ross House is in the city — and runs the "Rocky Steps" at the art museum but is distracted by the muscular torsos of a quartet of young male joggers on the banks of the Schuylkill.

Philadelphia's combination of culture and a gay-friendly atmosphere has proved to be a strong draw for the LGBT community, which has made the city one of the top 10 gay destinations in the United States, said Meryl Levitz, chief executive of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation.

Gay visitors not only spend more than other groups in Philadelphia, Ms. Levitz said, but also share their enthusiasm for the city via social media.

Ms. Levitz said the new commercial, to be unveiled at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Boston in late August, recognizes both the 10th anniversary of Philadelphia's campaign, and the recent gains in gay rights across the country.

"We felt the best way to celebrate would be to reinforce the invitation," she said.

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Pursuits: Uncruising to Alaska: Short on Frills, Long on Thrills

Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Some of the accommodations on board the Columbia, one of the boats in Alaska's Marine Highway System.

The thrum of the engines churning north through the Inside Passage to Alaska sounded soothing enough, rumbling up from below somewhere around 3 a.m. Outside, I knew, the dense forests and rocky islands of British Columbia would already be visible from the rail in the early dawn of northern summer. But the words that came to mind as I lay in my tent, trying to get back to sleep, were these: I am going to need more duct tape.

My two-man pack tent, taped down to the steel rear outdoor deck of the Motor Vessel Columbia — side by side with my co-campers on the Alaska Marine Highway's ferry run from Bellingham, Wash., to Juneau, Alaska — had seemed well anchored when I'd gone to bed. In the immediate and casual camaraderie of deck campers, those with tape shared with those unprepared (I'd brought one tiny roll, quickly used up). But ferocious winds struck during our first night aboard, and now one aluminum-post corner of my tent frame had come loose and was banging me in the head and clunking loudly on the deck with each powerful gust.

A cruise to Alaska with any of a number of competing luxury liner companies can be cushy and plush, a floating smorgasbord of sunset cocktails, plank salmon, jaw-dropping vistas, glaciers and wildlife.

An "uncruise," as I came to call my three-night journey on the ferry, run by the State of Alaska's Marine Highway System, offered some of those same charms, especially the Pacific Northwest scenery — gorgeous from a deck chair, however you go. But a continually surprising basket of differences came with my passage as well. Robert Frost suggested the road less traveled; uncruising to Alaska is the marine counterpart.

"This is the highlight, if I live to tell the tale," said Francine Verzi, 40, laughing as she and her husband, Tony, 47, put up their green cabin tent before the ferry left the dock. The tent was big enough for six: the two of them and their four children, ages 6 to 13. The Verzis, from Thiells, N.Y., in Rockland County, had been on the road for three weeks by the time they boarded the Columbia, tent camping their way west, and now north.

Their plan, in leaving home, was to have no plan at all except to find sights unseen. Booking a passage in a tent, on a ship, fit right in. "Our families think we're crazy," Ms. Verzi said. "We're going by the seat of our pants."

Uncruising is not for everyone: most traditional cruise ships have elaborate exercise areas, for example, and often a running track. On the Columbia, the crackly loudspeaker voice from the purser's office was stern and official-sounding in telling a jogger to stop his exercise regimen on the boat deck. "There is no running on the ship," she said. The same stentorian tone was echoed in the snack bar, where a curt, handwritten sign read: "No Decaf." Aboard the Columbia, you could have your coffee Alaskan strong, or not at all.

Reservations are made on an Alaska State government Web site, dot.state.ak.us/amhs. But once you have a reservation and a ticket, the camping and all the other spaces that people park themselves are first come first served.

The biggest difference of all is that not everyone gets an actual bed, or wants one. On a ship with a capacity of 600 people — about 400 were aboard on my mid-July trip — there were berths for only about 300, with most of those inside four-bed staterooms. That fact creates the crucial dynamic of everything on board — all revolving around the question of where to sleep and, by extension, which of the ship's subcultures to join.

Some uncruisers stake out the front observation lounges, rolling out sleeping bags or cots between the rows of seats by night, keeping the tables as base camps by day for cards, reading and meals they brought from home or bought on board. Others claim the reclining deck chairs, which, over the course of several days, can become entwined neighborhoods of books, guitars and backpacks. Others sleep in the movie theater.

I threw in my lot with the tenters.

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Q&A: Walking ‘That Long Trailing Leg of Britain’

Heather Elton via Newscom

The South West Coast Path near Lynmouth, England.

On Aug. 29, the English poet Simon Armitage will set off to walk England's South West Coast Path or, as he put it, "that long trailing leg of Britain into the Atlantic." From Minehead, he'll go by foot 260 miles to Land's End and then by boat to Isles of Scilly.

On his Web site, he announced that he will give poetry readings along the route "in return for bed, breakfast and a round of butties," as Britons affectionately call sandwiches. "I want to see if I can pay my way with poetry alone," he wrote.

Already Mr. Armitage has proved he can do just that. In 2010, he walked the Pennine Way, a moor-strewed path sometimes referred to as Britain's equivalent of the Appalachian Trail, and succeeded at finding a forum for his poetry and a bed to lay his head each night. The recollections of his journey are set down in "Walking Home," a book published earlier this year.

Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Armitage about England's South West Coast Path, as he prepares to hike it.

Q. What kind of geography will you encounter along the coast? 

A. The counties that make up the coastline, Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, are seen as holiday destinations. It's a popular path to walk because there are lots of places to stay: bed-and-breakfasts, hotels, pubs. Minehead, the start of my walk, is known for a very old-fashioned British holiday camp, Butlins, so you have quite comic associations: the British and their organized leisure time.

People associate the coast with sunshine, and it's certainly milder down there, but it's still very exposed. Whatever weather is being generated out on the Atlantic, that's where it makes landfall. If it's raining, you'll be the first to know. And the shoreline is bisected by all of the streams and estuaries, so you're continually making your way down a valley and back up on the other side. It's quite rugged. There are really beautiful stretches of beach, some of them unspoiled and, even in high season, very quiet.

Q. What will be in your bag? 

A. As well as whatever you're wearing, you've got to have a waterproof jacket and leggings. I don't take guidebooks because they're bulky, so I razor out the pages that I'll need. Britain prides itself on having the greatest mapping service in the world, the Ordnance Survey, so I'll take some of those. Spare batteries. Various lotions and potions and balms for blisters. And a Leatherman, which is like a Swiss Army knife. It has about eight different blades, none of which I used for anything on the Pennine Way, but I quite liked the idea that it was in the bag.

Q. Any literary sites along the route? 

A. Coleridge lived in Somerset, and D. H. Lawrence in Zennor for a bit, and Virginia Woolf in St. Ives. Her book "To the Lighthouse," even though it's set in Scotland, is said to be written about Godrevy Lighthouse, which you can see from St. Ives. The idea of walking from Coleridge to D. H. Lawrence is quite interesting to me.

Q. From Robert Byron to Rory Stewart, Britain has its fair share of walking memoirists. For you Britons, what is it about walking?

A. Part of it, I would argue, is political. In the '30s, there was an effort by regular working-class people to reclaim the common land as their own. It's what's known as the "right to roam" movement, and behind it is a political notion that most of the land cannot belong to somebody else; it has to belong to the people. So the network of footpaths and open access to land in this country, I think, is pretty much unprecedented.

And more practically, you really can walk to places in Britain. It's not like walking from New York to Cleveland. You can actually set off and get to places here.

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Frugal Traveler: Eating in Iowa: Farm-Fresh, Fried and Frugal

The lunch and dinner I enjoyed on a recent day in Iowa didn't belong on the same planet, let alone in the same state. The first was a sandwich of loose ground meat on a workaday hamburger bun slathered with melted cheese, ketchup and mustard, served in a drab old building underneath a parking garage. The second, served in a reconstructed barn surrounded by miles of corn, was polenta-stuffed zucchini with kale, eggplant and squash, the vegetables raised on site and the polenta made from corn ground just 50 miles away.

Yet both meals were decidedly Iowan, and dismantled the illusion that in three days of cruising the state's two-lane highways I could somehow pithily define its food. Really, the only thing every meal — and I had about five a day — had in common was their prices. That polenta entree, by far the most elegantly presented of my month on the road, was just $13.

The sandwich, meanwhile, was $3.60. Iowans may already know where it came from: Canteen Lunch in Ottumwa, a modest meatpacking city of 25,000. Since 1936, the restaurant has sat in a squat, yellow box of a building; it didn't budge when a municipal parking garage was literally built over it. (If you follow a GPS there, you'll find yourself in the garage; otherwise cut down an alley off South Court Street.)

The experience at the lunch counter feels very middle school cafeteria: a lunch lady look-alike takes your order and spoons loose ground beef — sloppy joe without the slop — onto a bun, slathers on extras, wraps it and hands it to you. (What, you wanted a plate?) It's a signature Iowa lunch, generically known as "a loose meat sandwich." Here it was simply a Canteen.

The Canteen is proof that if an expert combines fat, carbs, sugar and salt in just the right ratio, the result can be worth the calories and ensuing sluggishness. I augmented the coming lethargy by ordering a strawberry malt ($3.95), after being encouraged to do so by the visitors next to me, a couple from Georgia who had come up to Iowa to look at a used RV. (In Ottumwa, that counts as out-of-state tourism.)

For that farm dinner, I headed 120 miles west (driving long distances burns calories, right?) to the 400-person town of Orient, or, more accurately, to the Henry A. Wallace Country Life Center (wallace.org) outside it. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Mr. Wallace, who was secretary of agriculture (and then vice president) under Franklin D. Roosevelt, was raised in the main house, now a gift shop; the center, in that reconstructed barn, is part of a nonprofit that promotes "local food, sustainable agriculture and civility." The restaurant, also housed in the barn, is only open on Fridays and some Saturdays. Whatever does not come from the farm itself comes from a producer somewhere in Iowa, I was told by my server, who dutifully provided all the sustainable-locavore-other-buzzword details — almost, but not quite, to the point of parody.

Everything was as fresh as the canteen sandwich was processed: a $7 "cheese and relish plate" had bursting cherry tomatoes, crisp cauliflower lightly marinated in vinegar, pickled beets, and a crumbly local Cheddar, then came the polenta-stuffed zucchini. Outside, farmland stretched to the horizon, inside, my wallet barely stretched at all — I was out $25, including tip.

During the rest of my sprint around the state I would continue to Ping-Pong between fatty gluttony and farm freshness.

More gluttony: the pork tenderloin sandwich, which has spawned best-in-state competitions and the cleverly named Des Loines blog. Newcomers will laugh at the little bun haplessly trying to cover the enormous tenderloin, pounded into the irregular shapes that often resemble Eastern European nations. For my representative pork tenderloin sandwich, I decided on Goldie's Ice Cream Shoppe (goldiesicecreamshoppe.com), an ice cream stand turned diner in Prairie City, whose $5.98 version won best of show in 2009 from the Iowa Pork Producers.

The staff was gentle to a newcomer, explaining that the conventional toppings were pickle, raw onion, ketchup and mustard. Ketchup and mustard seemed heavy-handed, so I went for just pickles and onions to add a little pop. When the sandwich arrived, I struggled with its size — I had been given only a knife, not a fork. I gave the server a perplexed look. "Cut it in half," she said. I felt, and not for the first time on this trip, like a bumbling foreigner.

Back to lean and green: Fairfield, home to the Maharishi University of Management, which calls itself a "home of consciousness-based education," has more than its share of vegetarian cafeterias and restaurants. I went to the Golden Dome Market and Cafe, near (but alas, not in) the campus's two golden domes. The vegetarian buffet ($7.50 a pound) yielded some saag paneer, a bean taco loaded with vegetables, some tasty artichoke lasagna and a piece of fresh peach blueberry pie.

Iowa's farm-fresh side melds with its gluttonous side at the Des Moines Farmers Market (desmoinesfarmersmarket.com), which takes over a chunk of the capital's downtown every Saturday morning, May through October. One minute I was dipping pretzel sticks into eight flavors of artisan goat cheese from Reichert's Dairy Air or enjoying herb lemonade (infused with rosemary, thyme, lemon balm and ginger) from Blue Gate Farm. I followed this up with something called "Breakfast Ice Cream," offered at a dairy stand for $5: a server put glazed doughnut holes in a bowl, covered them with bacon ice cream and added crumbled bacon and maple syrup. Big mistake. Unlike the Canteen, this unholy combo of sugar, salt and grease did not come to an agreement.

I did find a truly harmonious greasy-locavore masterpiece, however, in Iowa City, just what you would expect from a college town in a farm state. Short's Burger and Shine (shortsburgerandshine.com) gets its black Angus beef for its long list of burgers from a farm 26 miles outside of town; its buns are baked locally and its 10 taps filled with Iowa craft beers. (Another option: its own bean-based burgers.)

At the bar, I ordered a Gravity burger, with caramelized onions, bacon, tame green chili sauce and a swipe of jalapeño flavored cream cheese and buried under a load of fries for $9.49. After sampling several brews, I ended up with a pint of Golden Nugget I.P.A., and wish I could have stayed for more, but solo traveling means you are the permanent designated driver.

Indeed, I logged about 800 in-state miles in under four days. But Iowa turned out to be the most pleasant and picturesque of the states I've driven through so far: It's not dead flat, at least not for long stretches; its gently sloping farmland reads like some sort of fantasy Americana: deep-green soy fields, wavy rows of corn (which I tried not to think of ending up as high fructose corn syrup), picturesque red barns and the occasional old could-be-haunted farmhouses.

I did miss the most famous house in Iowa: the "American Gothic" house in Eldon, where the Pitchfork Pie Stand operates on summer weekends. I had planned a visit, but read on its Web site, TheWorldNeedsMorePie.com, that it would be closed the weekend I was in the state. It was probably for the best: the world may need more pie, but after three days of eating in Iowa, I sure didn't.

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Cultured Traveler: In Istanbul, Seeing Art Through Two Lenses

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

A recent solo exhibition by the Turkish artist Volkan Aslan at Arter.

The art scene in Istanbul has gradually shifted from a heavily traditional one that celebrates the city's history to a contemporary one that prizes its upstarts. Less than a decade ago, the city's Museum of Modern Art was inaugurated. Last year the contemporary art space SALT opened. This year nearly a dozen Istanbul galleries were on hand at London's Frieze (and the Randalls Island New York version) and at Art Basel.

Now, it seems, the city has truly come into its own as a contemporary art hub.

Because culture so often regenerates, even within this nascent world is an older guard — established artists whose work graces the sort of pristine minimalist galleries you'd find in Chelsea in Manhattan — and rogues who create subversive street art. They, too, are gaining a foothold, sometimes presenting works in cooperation with cosmopolitan institutions. But their art, which is often on view in public spaces, seems more accessible to tourists, who may unknowingly come across it on a stroll through the city. Many works by these newer artists were inspired by — and on view during — demonstrations at Taksim Square this summer.

As I wandered around Istanbul in the wake of the protests, I explored this bifurcated world, and realized that seeing one side without the other is an incomplete viewing. Below is a survey of the two approaches juxtaposed, the best way for the eye to recognize contrasts.

ESTABLISHED CONTEMPORARY

Elipsis Gallery

This small photography gallery, opened by Sinem Yoruk in 2007, is tucked away on a leafy street in the newly stylish neighborhood of Karakoy. But don't let its size fool you. Elipsis has relevance in the broader art world; it even counts the Guggenheim among its followers on Twitter. It has the requisite white walls and charcoal matte floors of a big-city gallery, and when I was there had a show called Edition III that included the work of an art darling: Civan Ozkanoglu, a Turk who now lives in New York. (He is also part of a show at the Museum of Modern Art.) Opening next month is an exhibition featuring digitally reproduced works of the avant-garde photographer Sahin Kaygun, whose medium in the early '80s was Polaroids.

Elipsis Gallery, Hoca Tahsin Sokaka, Akce Han, 10, Karakoy; elipsisgallery.com.

Rampa Gallery

This gallery sits in a renovated row house in Besiktas, northeast of the old town, nestled in the little hills of the city and facing the Black Sea. Founded in 2010 by the husband-and-wife team of Arif and Leyla Tara Suyabatmaz, it is one of the most renowned galleries in Istanbul. It reliably delivers work by a set of high-priced artists who are no strangers to prestigious art fairs across Europe, and the gallery was part of New York's Frieze this year. Its next exhibition, called "Open Phone Booth" (and opening Sept. 11), features pieces by the Turkish artists Cengiz Cekil, whose work is part of MoMA's permanent collection, and Nilbar Güre, who now lives in Vienna.

Rampa Gallery, Sair Nedim Cadessi, 21/A, Akaretler; rampaistanbul.com.

Arter

Midway between the medieval Galata Tower and Taksim Square, and sandwiched between stores on the busiest shopping street in Turkey, is this well-regarded exhibition space. It opened in 2010 as an initiative of the Vehbi Koc Foundation. Since then it has regularly featured thought-provoking shows. Its recent solo exhibition by the Turkish artist Volkan Aslan, for example, included a memorable section with hybridized statuettes, like a lady in a red dress with a duck's head, dispersed around the room. Come September, Arter will be hosting the Istanbul Biennial, this year cheekily entitled "Mom, Am I Barbarian?"

Arter, Ystiklal Cadessi, 211, Beyoolu; www.arter.org.tr.

SUBVERSIVE UNDERGROUND 

Ha Za Vu Zu

Your timing needs to be perfect to catch the experimental performance art collective Ha Za Vu Zu on stage, or on the street. This eight-year-old group is made up of a mix of five 30-something Turkish artists each of whom come with his or her own mixed-media super power. It seems fitting since their mission is to save the world, or rather to inspire social change and new ways of political engagement. One of their recent works unfolded at Bethnal Green in London, where as part of an exhibition with the Whitechapel gallery, they used 20 volunteers to supply vocals in an agitprop performance. Their intention was for these participants to make such statements and use them as a gesture of reaction for onlooking crowds.

This summer they tried to further their cause as citizens (not artists) at Taksim Square during the protests. To track down Ha Za Vu Zu, it helps to check their blog.

hazavuzu.blogspot.com

Elif Nursad

Originally from the Black Sea area, this protest artist regularly contributes cartoons to the political magazine LeMan. The writing may be in Turkish but the work is not lost in translation: it stars a cloaked superheroine on fantastical adventures within the Istanbul metro and on ancient cobbled streets. Ms. Nursad also sells some of her pieces online and through the Ilhami Atalay Gallery, which her father opened 30 years ago as a protest art haven. But the best way to enjoy her work is to keep an eye out for her feline murals around town, especially en route to the Hagia Sophia Mosque in the Golden Horn area.

Elif Nursad murals, Alemdar Cadessi, 22, Sultanahmet; elifnursadatalay.com.

Anonymous Protest Art

Politically charged street art proliferated across Taksim Square as the protests against redeveloping Gezi Park got under way. Temporary installations like a "Post-It" tree with revolution-inspired messages, a throne meant for a resting princess after protesting all day, a life-size chessboard with the Turkish police as the pawns and a Caterpillar loader sprayed bright pink all surfaced as artists were on view. More permanent works are still on view, for now. All manner of stenciling and graffiti with a political bent can be found on the tight streets in the bourgeois areas of Cukurcuma and Cihangir, including Liva Sokaoi, Balyoz Sokaoi (off the bigger Mesrutiyet Caddessi), Yüksek Kaldirim Caddessi and Sah Kulu Bostan Sokaoi. The names might be a mouthful but they are certainly showcasing some of the best work in the city.

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In Transit Blog: Calendar: Coming Events in Trinidad and Tobago; Lucas, Ohio; Charlottesville, Va.

The Biswas House, Trinidad and Tobago The childhood home of V. S. Naipaul, above, the Nobel Prize-winning author, which is at the center of one of his best-known novels, "A House for Mr. Biswas," has been converted into a literary museum that will open in October. Some sections of the property, in Trinidad and Tobago in the Port of Spain suburb of St. James, resemble how it would have looked in the late 1940s, when it was acquired by the Naipaul family. Many original furnishings and items, some described in the 1961 novel, will be on display.

Ohio Heritage Days Festival, Lucas, Ohio Malabar Farm is the site of a festival focused on Ohio history. Originally the home of Louis Bromfield, an author and conservationist, the farm is now a state park. The festival, Sept. 28 and 29, celebrates the state's heritage with local crafts and antiques, food, events exploring the Civil War era and archaeological displays. There is a barn dance on Saturday evening with live music and square dancing. Admission is free, and beginners are welcome.

Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase, Charlottesville, Va. Dulcimer making and moonshine stories are a few of Virginia's traditional art forms celebrated at this year's Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase on Sept. 15. This free event, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, highlights the work of master artists who are paired with apprentices for nine months. Performers include Wayne Henderson, a guitarist and luthier whose guitars are now so coveted that Eric Clapton once waited nine years for one, the program's organizers said. Oyster shucking, old-time clawhammer banjo music and a dance by Chickahominy Indians are among the festival features.

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In Transit Blog: Hotel Drinking Gets Specialized

Bartenders are a mainstay at most upscale hotels, but some properties today have staff members who are specialists in just one type of alcohol.

The Four Points by Sheraton Los Angeles International Airport has a director of brewer relations who helps guests navigate the 100 choices on the beer menu at its beer-centric bar. The director also holds beer tastings with different themes.

The CasaMagna Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort now has a tequila sommelier who leads tastings and discussions on the 126 selections and also takes guests to see the agave azul plants grown on site that are used to produce the property's own tequila. Hotel Arts Barcelona has a new cava concierge program; several employees who are experts in cava lead guests staying on the club floor through a complimentary tasting of of three varieties daily.

The Mixing Room at JW Marriott L.A. Live has a new whiskey director who oversees the aging of the spirit done in house in French oak barrels and creates flight tastings of different whiskeys.

And, the Waldorf Astoria New York has a cocktail creator at its Peacock Alley bar and restaurant who is responsible for creating a changing menu of drinks using ingredients from the hotel's rooftop garden, honey from its beehive and house-made infusions. The roster includes the Wax Poetic made with vodka, honey and lemon juice.

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In Transit Blog: A Loyalty Program Offers Spas and Meals

Hotel loyalty programs typically reward regular customers with upgrades and free nights. Now the new iPrefer program from the Preferred Hotel Group adds a range of hotel amenities and services into the mix, including spa treatments, cocktails and meals.

Members accumulate one point per dollar spent at a participating hotel – currently more than 450 of the group's 659 independent hotels, including Montage Laguna Beach in Southern California, the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs and the K Club in Ireland.

Guests must spend $2,500 in the first year of membership to earn their first $50 gift certificate eligible for use at any participating hotel.

Occasional travelers unlikely to rack up $2,500 in hotel bills over a year can benefit from joining the program. All members receive complimentary Internet access and early check-in and late check-out privileges when available.

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Digging Up Family Roots in Sicily

Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times; Shorto Family

Top left and upper right: San Pier Niceto, Sicily, the author's ancestral town. Lower right and bottom left: Masseria Santa Mamma, an agriturismo where the author stayed in Sicily. Center: Antonino Sciotto, the author's great-grandfather, in a family photo.

As a writer I've always tended to seek out origins. My first book, about the search for the historical Jesus, was an attempt to get at the "real" story behind my Catholic upbringing. After living in Manhattan for several years, I wrote "The Island at the Center of the World," a book about the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, the seed from which New York City grew.

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Follow @nytimestravel for tips, features and photography from all over the globe.

Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

Mario Italiano and his son Alberto in San Pier Niceto.

Recently I began considering my family. Among its manifold curiosities is our last name. People always ask me about the derivation of "Shorto." The story I'd heard as a child was that after my illiterate Sicilian great-grandparents settled in my hometown of Johnstown, Pa., they enrolled their children in school and said the name aloud: Sciotto. And the administrator wrote it as he or she heard it.

Anecdotes like that were good enough before, but once I began to take a serious interest in my roots they felt soft. I wanted a better sense of who we were and where we had come from. I'd grown up with some of the atmosphere of the Old Country — the primal aroma of frying meatballs, the smothering embraces of old relatives, whispers of Mafia shenanigans, funny traditions like taping a silver dollar to the bellybutton of a newborn. But really it was an American childhood. There was almost no information about how it all began, about the generation that had emigrated at the start of the 20th century. It wasn't even clear where in Sicily the family hailed from.

Having done a good deal of historical research in my time, I knew that seeking out family roots must be a business filled with vagueness and generally lacking in eureka moments. I cautioned myself that tracking ancestors would be a crapshoot. So my initial objective was modest: to trace the path backward, from Pennsylvania to Sicily.

Maybe it was good to set the bar low, because it didn't take long to get results. Some relatives said they thought our roots were in a town near Messina. My father's cousin's wife, who used to drive the oldest aunts to their doctors' appointments, and thus served as listener, said she thought the ancestral home was called "San Pedro Something." I didn't think we were from Mexico, but took "San Pietro" as a possibility.

I did an Internet search of Sciottos in Sicily. A village called San Pier Niceto, 13 miles from Messina, was among those with the biggest number of hits. My father then suggested I call his cousin Anthony Verone, a retired doctor in New York City. Anthony, it turned out, remembered quite a few things his mother had told him about Antonino Sciotto, my great-grandfather. Once he'd left Sicily and established himself in Pennsylvania, he apparently became Johnstown's first moonshiner; foreseeing the end of Prohibition, he had a scheme in place to start a legitimate distillery, a plan that was cut short by his early death. Did Anthony recall his mother mentioning the name of the Sicilian village our enterprising forebear had come from? He pronounced it straightaway: "San Pier Niceto."

So I had confirmation: the hometown of my father's grandfather. But Anthony told me one thing more. Not only Antonino Sciotto, but Anna Maria Previte, the woman he would marry, had also come from San Pier Niceto. I'd known Previte as a name in the family, but didn't realize that both of these ancestors had emigrated from the same Sicilian village to Pennsylvania coal and steel country.

By now my interest was piqued. A more substantial plan began to take shape, one that involved airplanes.

I'd been to the Italian mainland many times, but never to Sicily. I had no intention of trying to do the whole island. The plan was  that the contingent of our blended family that was able to join me would stay in one place, relax, eat good food and give ourselves some sense of the island's dizzying history. I'd be exploring my family background, but, again, in a limited, roundabout way. As for San Pier Niceto, my idea was to just show up in town and poke around: simply to get a feel for the place my people had come from.

Russell Shorto is the author of the forthcoming "Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City."

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Cultured Traveler: In Istanbul, Seeing Art Through Two Lenses

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

A recent solo exhibition by the Turkish artist Volkan Aslan at Arter.

The art scene in Istanbul has gradually shifted from a heavily traditional one that celebrates the city's history to a contemporary one that prizes its upstarts. Less than a decade ago, the city's Museum of Modern Art was inaugurated. Last year the contemporary art space SALT opened. This year nearly a dozen Istanbul galleries were on hand at London's Frieze (and the Randalls Island New York version) and at Art Basel.

Now, it seems, the city has truly come into its own as a contemporary art hub.

Because culture so often regenerates, even within this nascent world is an older guard — established artists whose work graces the sort of pristine minimalist galleries you'd find in Chelsea in Manhattan — and rogues who create subversive street art. They, too, are gaining a foothold, sometimes presenting works in cooperation with cosmopolitan institutions. But their art, which is often on view in public spaces, seems more accessible to tourists, who may unknowingly come across it on a stroll through the city. Many works by these newer artists were inspired by — and on view during — demonstrations at Taksim Square this summer.

As I wandered around Istanbul in the wake of the protests, I explored this bifurcated world, and realized that seeing one side without the other is an incomplete viewing. Below is a survey of the two approaches juxtaposed, the best way for the eye to recognize contrasts.

ESTABLISHED CONTEMPORARY

Elipsis Gallery

This small photography gallery, opened by Sinem Yoruk in 2007, is tucked away on a leafy street in the newly stylish neighborhood of Karakoy. But don't let its size fool you. Elipsis has relevance in the broader art world; it even counts the Guggenheim among its followers on Twitter. It has the requisite white walls and charcoal matte floors of a big-city gallery, and when I was there had a show called Edition III that included the work of an art darling: Civan Ozkanoglu, a Turk who now lives in New York. (He is also part of a show at the Museum of Modern Art.) Opening next month is an exhibition featuring digitally reproduced works of the avant-garde photographer Sahin Kaygun, whose medium in the early '80s was Polaroids.

Elipsis Gallery, Hoca Tahsin Sokaka, Akce Han, 10, Karakoy; elipsisgallery.com.

Rampa Gallery

This gallery sits in a renovated row house in Besiktas, northeast of the old town, nestled in the little hills of the city and facing the Black Sea. Founded in 2010 by the husband-and-wife team of Arif and Leyla Tara Suyabatmaz, it is one of the most renowned galleries in Istanbul. It reliably delivers work by a set of high-priced artists who are no strangers to prestigious art fairs across Europe, and the gallery was part of New York's Frieze this year. Its next exhibition, called "Open Phone Booth" (and opening Sept. 11), features pieces by the Turkish artists Cengiz Cekil, whose work is part of MoMA's permanent collection, and Nilbar Güre, who now lives in Vienna.

Rampa Gallery, Sair Nedim Cadessi, 21/A, Akaretler; rampaistanbul.com.

Arter

Midway between the medieval Galata Tower and Taksim Square, and sandwiched between stores on the busiest shopping street in Turkey, is this well-regarded exhibition space. It opened in 2010 as an initiative of the Vehbi Koc Foundation. Since then it has regularly featured thought-provoking shows. Its recent solo exhibition by the Turkish artist Volkan Aslan, for example, included a memorable section with hybridized statuettes, like a lady in a red dress with a duck's head, dispersed around the room. Come September, Arter will be hosting the Istanbul Biennial, this year cheekily entitled "Mom, Am I Barbarian?"

Arter, Ystiklal Cadessi, 211, Beyoolu; www.arter.org.tr.

SUBVERSIVE UNDERGROUND 

Ha Za Vu Zu

Your timing needs to be perfect to catch the experimental performance art collective Ha Za Vu Zu on stage, or on the street. This eight-year-old group is made up of a mix of five 30-something Turkish artists each of whom come with his or her own mixed-media super power. It seems fitting since their mission is to save the world, or rather to inspire social change and new ways of political engagement. One of their recent works unfolded at Bethnal Green in London, where as part of an exhibition with the Whitechapel gallery, they used 20 volunteers to supply vocals in an agitprop performance. Their intention was for these participants to make such statements and use them as a gesture of reaction for onlooking crowds.

This summer they tried to further their cause as citizens (not artists) at Taksim Square during the protests. To track down Ha Za Vu Zu, it helps to check their blog.

hazavuzu.blogspot.com

Elif Nursad

Originally from the Black Sea area, this protest artist regularly contributes cartoons to the political magazine LeMan. The writing may be in Turkish but the work is not lost in translation: it stars a cloaked superheroine on fantastical adventures within the Istanbul metro and on ancient cobbled streets. Ms. Nursad also sells some of her pieces online and through the Ilhami Atalay Gallery, which her father opened 30 years ago as a protest art haven. But the best way to enjoy her work is to keep an eye out for her feline murals around town, especially en route to the Hagia Sophia Mosque in the Golden Horn area.

Elif Nursad murals, Alemdar Cadessi, 22, Sultanahmet; elifnursadatalay.com.

Anonymous Protest Art

Politically charged street art proliferated across Taksim Square as the protests against redeveloping Gezi Park got under way. Temporary installations like a "Post-It" tree with revolution-inspired messages, a throne meant for a resting princess after protesting all day, a life-size chessboard with the Turkish police as the pawns and a Caterpillar loader sprayed bright pink all surfaced as artists were on view. More permanent works are still on view, for now. All manner of stenciling and graffiti with a political bent can be found on the tight streets in the bourgeois areas of Cukurcuma and Cihangir, including Liva Sokaoi, Balyoz Sokaoi (off the bigger Mesrutiyet Caddessi), Yüksek Kaldirim Caddessi and Sah Kulu Bostan Sokaoi. The names might be a mouthful but they are certainly showcasing some of the best work in the city.

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