A performance at the Strings of Autumn festival.

Though mainstream music fills the Czech capital all year, autumn is the time for the avant-garde to shine, with several festivals supplementing the usual operas and orchestras.

From the first day of fall through Nov. 18, the Strings of Autumn (www.strunypodzimu.cz) offers a kissing cousin of the long-running Prague Spring concert series, but more diverse in taste. The program stretches this year from the American jazz violinist Regina Carter to the Portuguese fado vocalist Ana Moura.

For cutting-edge tunes with visual accompaniments, check out Music on Film-Film on Music (www.moffom.org, from Oct. 18 to 22) for music-themed movies from around the world. Run by John Caulkins, an American resident of Prague, Moffom, as the festival is known, shows more than 70 documentaries, musicals, concert films and videos. This year's special focus on Russian films includes a live performance by the Beth Custer Ensemble during a screening of the 1929 Soviet silent comedy “My Grandmother.”

Through Oct. 21, more unconventional acts perform noise and electronic music at the Stimul Festival (www.stimul-festival.cz). Among them will be the Japanese sound performer Keiji Haino, the American experimental hip-hop group Dälek, the Italian duo My Cat Is an Alien, and the pioneering English guitarist Fred Frith.

In the middle of all this is Prague's Bollywood Film Festival from Oct. 11 to 14 (www.bollywood.cz), a long weekend of movies, music and food from the Subcontinent.

With several new high-end addresses, Prague has no shortage of excellent lodgings, though the most suitable for avant-gardists might be the high-tech Hotel Icon (V Jame 6; 420-221-634-100; www.iconhotel.eu), which opened this spring. Rooms, which start at 120 euros ($170 at $1.42 to the euro), come with a keyless “biometric” safe, a Skype phone and an iPod jack, so you can mix your own offbeat selections between events.

J. Adam Huggins for The New York Times

Gandhi’s room is sparely furnished, nearly as he left it.

MUMBAI didn't give me a headache, but it sure didn't help. My skull was already throbbing when I arrived in the city once known as Bombay, but as I strolled around Colaba, the shopping and night-life district at the city's southern tip, the hyperactive horns, the Friday-afternoon heat, the rollercoaster sidewalks, the indefatigable vendors and the children pleading for change all made me want to sprint back to my overly air-conditioned hotel room and hide under the covers.

I was about to do just that when I stumbled upon the Modern Juice Centre, a little stand that sold fresh fruit juices and chicken shawarma. I ordered a custard-apple milkshake, and with the first pull on the straw, the throbbing stopped and my world expanded.

Around me, I could now see, were gorgeous Victorian houses and quaintly run-down concrete buildings, sidewalks shaded by knobby-trunked tropical trees, shopkeepers and passers-by engaged not in ferocious arguments but in cheerful banter. I was cured of my headache, and it had cost a mere 35 rupees (about 81 cents at 43 rupees to the dollar, the exchange rate when I visited in mid-April).

Just to be safe, I dropped another 30 rupees on a ganga jamuna (orange juice with sweet lime) and surveyed my prospects. I was planning to live the Mumbai high life, a weekend-long party of shopping, eating and luxuriating, and I was hoping to do it on a budget of $500, or 21,500 rupees.

Let's be honest: in a city like Mumbai, that's a phenomenal amount, enough to sustain a backpacker for a month or one of the city's seven million slum-dwellers for a year. The idea of blowing it all in 48 hours made my stomach queasy (no, it wasn't the tap water), so I'd arranged to offset my indulgence with altruism: Sunday morning, I'd teach an English class for the Bombay Leprosy Project, a nonprofit group that helps victims of the disease.

The challenge was not staying within my budget, but doing so while chasing luxury, a tough prospect in a city where a decent hotel costs upward of $200 a night, a culture of private clubs breeds exclusivity and opportunities for throwing money away abound.

Still, I'd discovered the Ascot Hotel, an ultramodern hotel well-situated on a quiet street in Colaba. My deluxe room had pale marblesque floors, free Internet and more space than I could possibly use. For 4,500 rupees a night (plus 10 percent luxury tax), it was worth every penny — or rather, every paisa.

After my fruit shake, I wandered up Colaba Causeway, which was lined with vendors selling everything from — well, just everything. In the span of 30 minutes, they cheerily offered me bangles, shoes, pashminas, flashlights, marijuana, opium, Lonely Planet guides (bootleg and legitimate), ear cleaning (uh, no thanks), girls, boys and a horse. A horse?

I weaved my way to Bombay Electric, a spotless boutique that sold 900-rupee T-shirts and 5,000-rupee silk scarves by trendy Indian designers. I left empty-handed, and made my way to Michele Boutique, a custom tailor recommended by a friend. Up on Michele's second floor, I gave the head tailor one of my favorite shirts to replicate, then sifted through hundreds of rolls of fabric before I settled on two bright but refined stripes at 900 rupees apiece. The shirts, I was told, would be ready by Saturday evening.

Afterward, I wandered over to the tourist-clogged Gateway of India, the seaside arch that mixes Indo-Saracenic architecture with British monumentality. Just behind the Gateway was the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, a similarly massive hotel in the same style that symbolizes Mumbai luxury.

I certainly couldn't afford to stay there, but I'd arranged to meet two friends — Aditya, the son of an Indian steel baron, and Dave, an American consultant — for a drink at the Sea Lounge inside. My gin and tonic cost 620 rupees, and no lime!

Normally, the Frugal Traveler's strategy is to save on Friday and splurge on Saturday, but since I'd already cracked open my wallet, I figured I'd switch things around. So, for dinner, we hit Trishna, a well-known seafood restaurant. Aditya, Dave and I powered through spindly king-crab legs with butter and garlic, lobster meat in an emerald sauce of pepper, basil and mint, and Hyderabadi fish tikka. When the bill came, I braced myself; surely I'd be eating plain samosas the rest of the weekend. Instead, it was 1,300 rupees each, the price of two cocktails at the Taj.

It was still early, so we descended deeper into high-end Mumbai, popping into Busaba, a bar in Colaba so slickly international that I thought I was in Singapore — except a Tiger beer cost 300 rupees, about triple the price in its homeland.

Next up was Privé, a hot club in Colaba. It is members only, but if you say you know a member, you'll probably be allowed in. This was decadence: private booths floated in pools strewn with rose petals, and the men and women were not just beautiful but expensively beautiful. As a budget-conscious tourist, I felt terribly out of place, so I fled. At 5 a.m., Dave told me later, the Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan showed up. I was already asleep in my Ascot bubble.

In just one day, I'd spent 15,785 rupees (about $367), which meant Saturday would require some belt-tightening. Unfortunately, leaving my hotel took me again to Colaba Causeway, where this time the vendors had their way. I wound up buying two pairs of camel-leather sandals (850 rupees) and two boxes full of bangles (700 rupees) for my wife, Jean.

I also found “Ten Heritage Walks of Mumbai,” a new guide to the city's older neighborhoods (355 rupees at Search Word). The guide took me past the 1920s Y.W.C.A. International Guest House and the banyan-lined sidewalks around Oval Maidan, where Indians of all ages were playing cricket. But then I was hungry.

I knew exactly what I wanted. The night before, Aditya had been rhapsodizing about thalis, the vegetarian Indian meals, from Gujarat state, so I flagged down a black-and-yellow taxi and simply told the driver, “I want a good Gujarati thali.”

The Golden Star was low-ceilinged and packed. I found a seat next to a faux-Ionic column, and the feeding began: Waiter after waiter stopped by to fill my metal platter with curried chickpeas, spinach, spicy mashed tomatoes, a tart sambar soup, a variety of breads, tamarind chutney, mint chutney, a cucumber salad, a smear of chili paste, a pile of rice, a bowl of puréed Alfonso mango — any time I seemed to be making progress, another waiter would refill my plate.

“That's Indian hospitality,” the hefty man to my left said.

Cheap, too. With tip, the lunch cost 230 rupees. There was only one problem: I was so full I couldn't eat again all day.

In the spirit of frugality, I caught a 4 rupee commuter train to Mani Bhavan, a house where Gandhi once lived. Today it's a museum, with his room preserved nearly as he left it (i.e., nearly empty). Entrance was, unsurprisingly, free. As I walked back to the train, my phone buzzed with a text message: Dave inviting me to the red-light district with an Indian couple, Amit and Aparna.

Nothing illicit was planned. They were going to see mujra, a quasi-erotic dance (think belly dancing, not Scores). This mujra parlor was hidden down a back alley in a damp apartment building. In a linoleum-lined room, we settled on floor cushions as three overly made-up dancers in sequined saris gyrated before us, mimicking moves from Bollywood hits while musicians maniacally pounded drums and harmoniums. It was fabulous, weird, deeply unsexy (especially when I got up to dance) and fairly cheap: 1,150 rupees with a bottle of beer. (Dave and I split the bill.)

Saturday night ended early. I wanted plenty of rest if I was to teach the next day — in my new, perfectly tailored shirt, of course. But the leprosy project called in the morning: one of the students was sick, so class had been canceled.

I tried to assuage my despair with a hedonistic meal at Indigo, a Colaba restaurant whose brunch buffet would have shamed Trimalchio. But as I tucked into tamarind beef salad and sipped the first of many bellinis, I felt a little queasy. Yes, the room was cool, the tables populated by Mumbai's elite and the food delicious. But it felt too self-indulgent.

As I plunked down 2,000 rupees to cover the bill, I had an idea. I totted up what I'd spent so far: 2,541 rupees remained in my budget. When I got back to Manhattan, I vowed, that cash would go to the Bombay Leprosy Project. It wasn't much, but I knew that in Mumbai, it would go a long way.

Total: 21,500 rupees.

VISITOR INFORMATION

WHERE TO STAY

Ascot Hotel, 38 Garden Road; (91-22) 6638-5566; www.ascothotel.com; doubles from 4,000 rupees.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Busaba, 4 Mandlik Road; (91-22) 2204-3779.

Golden Star, 330 Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road; (91-22) 2363-1983.

Indigo, 4 Mandlik Road; (91-22) 6636-8999.

Modern Juice Centre, Arthur Bunder Road; (91-22) 2281-2457.

Privé, 41-44 Mon Repos, Minoo Desai Road; (91-22) -2202-8700.

Sea Lounge, Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Apollo Bunder; (91-22) 6665-3366; www.tajhotels.com.

Trishna, Birla Mansion, Sai Baba Marg; (91-22) 2270-3213.

WHAT TO DO

Bombay Leprosy Project, 11 V. N. Purav Marg; (91-22) 2522-0608; www.bombayleprosy.org.

Mani Bhavan, 19 Laburnum Road; (91-22) 2380-5864; www.gandhi-manibhavan.org.

WHERE TO SHOP

Bombay Electric, 1 Reay House, Best Marg; (91-22) 2287-6276; www.bombayelectric.in.

Michele Boutique, 21 Shah House, Mandlik Road; (91-22) 2287-0116.

Search Word Book Shop, Metro House No. 7; 23-25 Saheed Bhagat Road, Colaba Causeway; (91-22) 2285-2521.

A LIGHT patter bounced off the titanium fish scales of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as a tour bus pulled up beside “Puppy,” Jeff Koons's 43-foot-tall topiary terrier made of freshly potted pansies. A stream of tourists fanned out across the crisp limestone plaza, tripping over each other as they rushed to capture the moment on camera. After the frisson of excitement dimmed, they made their way down a gently sloping stairway and into the belly of the museum, paying 10.50 euros to see the work of an artist that most had never heard of.

It was a ritual that repeated itself several times an hour, like a well-run multiplex. And if Anselm Kiefer, the controversial post-war German artist, was eclipsed by the metallic blob that held a retrospective of his work, consider how Bilbao, a rusty port city on the northern coast of Spain, stacked up to the very museum that put it on the cultural map.

“We don't know anything about Bilbao besides the Guggenheim,” said Luigi Fattore, 28, a financial analyst from Paris, who was taking pictures of his girlfriend under the puppy. As if to underscore the point, they showed up at the museum's doorstep with their suitcase in tow. “We've arrived half an hour ago,” he said, “and went straight to the Guggenheim. Aside from the museum, we don't have any plans.”

Such is the staying power of Frank O. Gehry's architectural showstopper, 10 years after it crash-landed on the public psyche like a new Hollywood starlet. The iridescent structure wasn't just a new building; it was a cultural extravaganza.

No less an authority than Philip Johnson deemed it “the greatest building of our time.” The swooping form began showing up everywhere, from car ads to MTV rap videos, like architectural bling. And in certain artistic and architectural social circles, a pilgrimage to Bilbao became de rigueur, with the question “Have you been to Bilbao?” a kind of cocktail party game that marked someone either as a culture vulture or a clueless rube.

“No one had heard of Bilbao or knew where it was,” said Terence Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum and a former architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Nobody knew how to spell it.”

The Guggenheim changed that overnight. Microsoft Word, Mr. Riley noted, added “Bilbao” to its spell checker. And as word of the Guggenheim spread, tourists of all stripes began converging onto the small industrial city — the Pittsburgh of Spain — just to check it off their list.

“I've been down there four times,” Mr. Riley added proudly. “That's probably more than most.”

Even for those who couldn't spell “Bilbao,” let alone pronounce it (bill-BAH-o), the city became synonymous with the ensuing worldwide rush by urbanists to erect trophy buildings, in the hopes of turning second-tier cities into tourist magnets. The so-called Bilbao Effect was studied in universities throughout the world as a textbook example of how to repackage cities with “wow-factor” architecture. And as cities from Denver to Dubai followed in Bilbao's footsteps, Mr. Gehry and his fellow starchitects were elevated to the role of urban messiahs.

But what has the Bilbao Effect meant for Bilbao?

I first visited Bilbao in 1999, a lone, wide-eyed tourist who had read about the “Miracle in Bilbao” on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, in which the paper's architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp, likened the “voluptuous” museum to “the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.” And on that cold and dark March afternoon, when the lush green folds of the region's coastal mountains were shrouded behind a gray veil, the Guggenheim indeed glinted like a blonde metallic bombshell.

After loading my 35-millimeter camera, I took pictures of the museum's sinuous curves, surreptitiously ran my fingers across the titanium shingles and marveled at the galleries' lack of right angles. Oh, there was art, too: Jenny Holzer's soaring L.E.D. columns, a collection of sketches from Albrecht Dürer to Robert Rauschenberg and — caged behind a chain-link fence in a parking lot — one of Richard Serra's “Torqued Ellipses” for a future exhibition.

But the thing that struck me most, more than the dazzling architecture or cool art, was the horrible smell. Here was this magnificent museum, the most celebrated piece of architecture in a generation, and yet the river beside it was as brown as sludge and as putrid as a sewer — a world-class museum swimming in third-world biohazard.

The Guggenheim, I later learned, was built on a former shipyard, and the Nervión River, which snakes through Bilbao to the Bay of Biscay, was the nexus of Spain's Industrial Revolution. Blessed with iron-rich mountains, railroads and an excellent port, Bilbao blossomed in the late 19th century with metalworks and shipbuilding. But a century of belching factories turned the mighty Nervión into a toxic cesspool, earning the city the unflattering nickname “El Botxo,” the Basque word for hole.

But the iron mines eventually gave out; shipbuilding moved to Asia. And when the Guggenheim opened its doors in October 1997, what remained was a Dickensian waterfront of rusting cargo rigs and hollow warehouses. Farther up the river, grease-coated factories croaked along its lifeless banks, like a cemetery for the Industrial Age.

The rest of the city hadn't fared much better. The boulevards radiating from the Guggenheim may have evoked grandeur with their neo-Baroque facades and monumentality, but they were caked in soot and sadly devoid of street life. Sure, there were other signs of design — the caterpillar-like entrances by Norman Foster for a new metro system, a sweeping footbridge by Santiago Calatrava — but they only made the city seem dingier, like a polished fork in a tray of dirty silverware.

But if Bilbao wasn't exactly ready for its tourist spotlight, the gray industrial air gave the city a raw authenticity and gritty undercurrent that was charmingly provincial. In the Casco Viejo quarter, on the other side of the river, the urine-soaked cobblestones and graffiti-covered walls (mostly in support of the Basque separatist group E.T.A.) may have needed a good scrub. But it felt like a real neighborhood, warts and all, that was proudly oblivious, bordering on rude, to tourists.

In the morning, stumpy grandmothers waited in line for fresh bread and Bayonne ham at antiquated shops. By noon, old men sat in dingy pintxos bars drinking txakoli, a semi-sparkling white wine. And when the weekend rolled around, the dark alleyways vibrated with roving bands of Basque youths stumbling between pubs and drinking kalimotxos, a local concoction made from cheap wine and cola. The futuristic Guggenheim seemed to be in another city, far removed from the grubby fish markets and well-tended flower boxes that gave old Bilbao its character.

That cultural schism, however, began to dissolve. In its first year, the Guggenheim was clocking about 100,000 visitors a month. And rather than drop off precipitously like a summer blockbuster, attendance rates have leveled off to “a cruising speed of around one million visitors a year,” said Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the Guggenheim's director, adding that the vast majority were from outside the Basque region, and more than half from other countries. By the end of 2006, some nine million visitors had paid homage to Gehry's miracle.

THE impact on this city of 354,000 was dramatic. Charmless business hotels and musty pensions were supplanted by trendy hotels like the Domine Bilbao and a Sheraton designed by the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. The rusty shipyards near the Guggenheim were razed for a manicured greenbelt of playgrounds, bicycle paths and riverside cafes. A lime-green tram was strung along the river, linking the Guggenheim to Casco Viejo and beyond.

And all across the city, a who's who of architects added their marquee names to Bilbao's work-in-progress skyline: Álvaro Siza (university building), Cesar Pelli (40-story office tower), Santiago Calatrava (airport terminal), Zaha Hadid (master plan), Philippe Starck (wine warehouse conversion), Robert A. M. Stern (shopping mall) and Rafael Moneo (library), to name just a few. It's as if Bilbao went on a shopping spree, commissioning a trophy case of starchitects and Pritzker Architecture Prize winners.

A tangle of construction cranes today rises over the city's terra-cotta rooftops, but the changes are already apparent at the street level. Bilbao, a muscular town of steelworkers and engineers, is slowly becoming a more effete city of hotel clerks and art collectors.

The city's main artery, Gran Vía de Don Diego López de Haro, is no longer a soot-stained canyon of bank offices. In the tradition of the Champs-Élysées, the sidewalks were widened, curbside parking removed and stone buildings scrubbed. On a warm Friday last May, shoppers streamed out of countless Zara boutiques. Men in natty business suits sat on benches, smoking cigarettes and reading El País. In front of the opulent Hotel Carlton, a handsome couple was being married.

The beautification was echoed throughout the city. Traffic circles like Plazas Campuzano and Indauxtu had been transformed into piazza-like parks, with sculptural lampposts, ergonomic benches and ultramodern landscaping. In place of polluting cars, laughing children now use them as impromptu soccer fields.

Casco Viejo was almost unrecognizable. The graffiti had been erased. The stone facades sandblasted. And old butchers shared the sidewalk with H & M and Billabong.

At lunchtime, crowds converged on upscale pintxos bars like Sasibil, grazing on octopus and Iberian ham sandwiches, which were exhibited like jewelry under polished glass cases and halogen lights. After sundown, well-dressed couples strolled through the warren of alleyways and tunnels, now brightly illuminated by cheery shop windows and klieg-like streetlamps.

But the most striking metamorphosis wasn't cosmetic: the Nervión River no longer stank. With the sludge-spewing factories gone and sewage treatment plants installed, the river began to heal itself. It may not be as blue as the Danube (the color today is more like a rusty green), but within an hour of my arrival, I spotted a lone sculler in a red jersey, gliding by a pair of cormorants.

The cleaner water, however, hasn't necessarily brought more tourists upriver. Despite a host of tourist information centers, including a glass shed outside the Guggenheim staffed with professional guides and a rainbow of color brochures, Bilbao remains very much a one-attraction town.

On a cloudless Sunday morning, the Museo de Bellas Artes — with important works by El Greco, Francis Bacon and Eduardo Chillida — was nearly empty, despite a 2001 expansion and being just a quick stroll from the Guggenheim. Maybe that's why the museum closes at 2 p.m. on Sundays. (At least it was open. The city — restaurants, grocery stores, cafes — shuts down on Sundays; everything, that is, except the Guggenheim.)

The Maritime Museum, which traces the city's port and sailing history, was completely deserted, save for the bored-looking woman at the ticket counter. Even the Moyúa neighborhood next to the Guggenheim, which should have benefited from the Bilbao Effect most acutely, is far from tourist ready. There's one postcard store across the street and a couple of hip restaurants nearby, but this residential district is otherwise filled with featureless stucco apartments, five-and-dimes and plain bodegas. A clutch of art galleries have sprung up along Calle Juan Ajuriaguerra, but its proximity to the Guggenheim is merely coincidental.

“There's no art market in Bilboa,” said Javier Gimeno Martiñez-Sapiña, who owns the year-old photogallery20. “I don't think the Guggenheim has helped. It's still very hard for local artists to sell art here. They have to go to Madrid or Barcelona.”

No wonder many guidebooks still devote as many pages to the Guggenheim — reprinting floor plans, offering tips and expounding on the museum's design — as they do the rest of Bilbao. On paper at least, Bilbao seems to have it all: world-class museum, fine Basque cuisine, a rollicking night life and lots of shopping. But like the new bike paths that were rarely used during my visit, the city lacks the critical mass of attractions to take it from a provincial post-industrial town, to a global cosmopolitan city. And in the meantime, it is losing the shabby edge that gave the city its earlier appeal.

The concentration of first-rate architecture is astounding, even without Gehry's titanium masterpiece. But architecture alone does not a city make. Bilbao is all dressed-up, but hasn't figured where to go.

“Our local culture still hasn't integrated with the Guggenheim,” said Alfonso Martínez Cearra, the general manager of Bilbao Metropoli-30, a public-private partnership that is guiding the city's revitalization. “This is still an industrial city.”

The disconnect between Bilbao the brand, and Bilbao the city was on display one Saturday night, when the narrow streets of Casco Viejo were once again packed with young bar-hoppers. The smell of marijuana wafted from a crowd outside a bar on Calle de Somera. In the group was Ikel, a 22-year-old studying to be an engineer, like his father.

“I've never been to the Guggenheim,” Ikel said between puffs, as mechanical street cleaners starting scrubbing beer and urine from the cobblestones. “It's for tourists.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

GETTING THERE

Flights from New York to Bilbao, with stopovers in either Paris or Madrid, start at about $700 for travel next month on a number of airlines, including Iberia. From Bilbao airport, a taxi to the city center is about 25 euros ($35 at $1.40 to the euro).

Most attractions can be reached by foot, though the futuristic metro system is an attraction in itself. A BilbaoCard, for unlimited metro and tram rides, plus museum discounts, starts at 6 euros for a day and can be purchased on the city's tourism Web site (www.bilbao.net/bilbaoturismo).

WHERE TO STAY

Iturrienea Ostatua (Santa Maria Kalea 14; 34-944-16-15-00; www.iturrieneaostatua.com) offers Old World charms and exposed oak beams in the heart of Casco Viejo, with rates staring at 60 euros. Ask for a room with a balcony overlooking the cobblestone street.

Gran Hotel Domine Bilbao (Alameda de Mazarredo 61; 34-94-425-33-00; www.granhoteldominebilbao.com) is across the street from the Guggenheim and has 145 modern rooms starting at 140 euros a night. The rooftop terrace offers great views of the museum and surrounding hills.

Hesperia Bilbao (Campo Volantín 28; 34-94-405-11-00; www.hesperia-bilbao.es) is a trendy newcomer, next to Santiago Calatrava's footbridge over the Nervión River, and has 151 boutique-style rooms starting about 90 euros.

MUSEUMS

Guggenheim Bilbao (Abandoibarra 2, 34-94-435-90-80; www.guggenheim-bilbao.es). Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day except Monday. Admission is 10.50 euros.

Museo de Bellas Artes (Museo Plaza 2, 34-94-439-60-60 www.museobilbao.com). Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m, Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed Mondays. Admission 5.50 euros.

Pavel Horejsi for The New York Times

La Degustation, a Prague restaurant that only serves seven-course tasting menus, with no à la carte.

IT'S never been terribly hard to convince travelers of Prague's appeal, at least not when it comes to its architecture, music and history. Czech cooking, however, has long been viewed as the lone downside, as if Prague's delicious buffet of castles, concerts and cobblestones simply had to have a counterbalance. Locals and tourists alike have gotten by on high-end French, Italian and Japanese restaurants since the mid-90s. But recently, some restaurants here have begun taking traditional Czech cooking into new territory, treating hearty Bohemian fare with the same respect afforded classic haute cuisine.

Take La Degustation (Hastalska 18; 420-222-311-234; www.ladegustation.cz), a sleek, loungelike restaurant that opened in Prague's Old Town last November. As the name implies, there is no à la carte menu. Instead, there are just three seven-course tasting menus: one featuring Continental recipes, one composed of daily market specials and one designed around traditional Czech dishes.

When I called to reserve a table, I was told that the Czech menu, Bohème traditionnelle, came primarily from an obscure 1880 cookbook by Marie Svobodova, and was warned that I should probably cancel my after-dinner plans, as the meal itself would take around three hours. Indeed it was a full 180-minute performance of unusual (and unusually fantastic) Central European fare, starting with an over-easy “lost egg,” pan-fried with the meaty, aromatic bolete mushrooms called hriby in Czech, listed on the English menu as cèpes. After this, the procession of small dishes began with a light, clear bouillon of wild poultry, spring carrots and a rich, chicken-liver dumpling, continuing with a single ravioli, stuffed with diced beef lungs, poached in a buttery cream sauce and served with a marjoram-scented demi-glace. Beefy, sticky-sweet and sharply sour, it seemed to connect old Czech cooking with the contemporary global lust for offal.

Though the set menu comprises seven courses, there's an even greater number of amuse-bouches staggered throughout, including a savory anchovy-and-root-vegetable escabeche; a silver-dollar-size sandwich filled with garlicky beef tartare; and a shockingly white tomato meringue, topped with honey and aged balsamic vinegar. (This raises the question: just how amused can your bouche really be after eight or nine such creations?) Among all the hors d'oeuvres were more meats, mushrooms and herbs: cubes of tender smoked calf tongue with chanterelles, a slow-braised rack of lamb in sweet thyme sauce and a grilled pork belly with red cabbage (organic, no less). The dessert was a palacinka, the traditional Czech crepe, but fluffier than the standard version, made of quark, a type of cream cheese, and served with fresh strawberries and vanilla ice cream.

What was most startling was how light it all seemed, especially after three hours of constant consumption: instead of heavy starches and rich sauces, the dishes seemed to focus on building intense flavors, but presenting them in delicate portions. The staff was similarly refined, easily describing oddball Czech grape varietals while dropping off the many new dishes and refilling glasses. About the only thing that wasn't terribly light was the check, which came to about 5,000 korunas for two (or nearly $250 at 20.8 korunas to the dollar).

I spent half that amount at the restaurant U Petrske veze (Petrska 12; 420-222-329-856; www.upetrskeveze.cz), or At Peter's Tower, next to the gothic spire of that name. A set of small rooms with candles and stained glass, U Petrske veze comes off as slightly more rustic, offering such old-fashioned conveniences as an à la carte menu and the traditional, plopped-down local welcome of lard and sliced rye bread.

Beyond that, the ubiquitous Czech pork seemed to have been abandoned in favor of game. Our starters included a hearty venison pâté, topped with a sweet-and-sour, red-currant jam, filled with crunchy whole green peppercorns and bits of roasted almonds. Another starter, kulajda, a soup, brightened a rich chicken broth with loads of fresh dill, bulking it out with more cèpes, chunks of potatoes and a whole poached egg. The menu lacked the classic svickova na smetane, beef tenderloin in cream (more on this later), though in its place was a variation: zajic na smetane, or hare in cream. The sweet and tangy cream sauce was thick enough to build load-bearing walls out of, perfect for the four very fluffy knedliky, or dumplings. (Though this seemed a ridiculously small number: in the kingdom of goulash and thick sauces, four knedliky is considered the right amount for a toddler.) Falling easily from the bone, the chunks of tender dark meat contrasted the slight sourness of the sauce. Another main dish, quail medallions with pepper and rosemary, brought to mind M. F. K. Fisher's observation on the intensely fragrant nature of quail.

One of U Petrske veze's great strengths, the drinks menu, includes a hidden weak spot. Though the restaurant stocks wines from many of the best producers in Moravia (the second half of the Czech Republic, east of Bohemia and just across the border from Austria's Weinviertel), it also taps one of the country's best beers, Rohozec, a rich and malty pilsner with a pleasant, peachlike fruitiness and a minty, hoppy finish. After trying one as an aperitif, my girlfriend and I had little interest in drinking anything else. I did give in to a post-meal Bavorak, or Bavarian, a cocktail of tonic and peppery Fernet Stock, licensed from the Italian Fernet Branca and produced in Bohemia since 1927.

Despite the obvious appeal for travelers interested in traditional fare, U Petrske veze feels like a local neighborhood secret, filled with the Czech language and few English speakers.

The same cannot be said of the restaurant inside the Prague Hilton, CzecHouse (Pobrezni 1; 420-224-841-111), which started out proudly introducing local dishes to its international clientele. When I visited in August, though, it seemed to have scaled back its Czech offerings in favor of more international dishes. When asked for a recommendation of a traditional Czech starter, the waiter said, “That's the one question I was hoping you would not ask.” However, he offered to consult the kitchen for help, and returned with the suggestion of a ham roll, assuring me it was a typical Czech treat.

That might be true: I've seen hundreds of them over the years, everywhere from opera premieres to beer halls. However, this was the first I thought was very good: a slice of moist ham, rolled up with a thick filling of sour cream and chives and served with a small pond of sharp horseradish cut with sweet diced apples. This is also the first one I've paid anything close to 420 korunas for, a shockingly high price for a pub snack.

The other Czech dishes at CzecHouse are also commonly found in pubs, though the prices for these seem somewhat more justified. The svickova na smetane is surely the best in the city: true beef tenderloin (most restaurants here switched to cheaper rump roast decades ago), served in a properly sweet and tangy cream bath, topped with sour red currants and served with dumplings — again just four, though the waiters were happy to bring more, recognizing the inanity of such a meager portion. The Hilton's goulash might be the world's most exclusive: 540 korunas for an oniony, thick beef stew that lacked a bit of a real Czech goulash's mysteriously deep flavor, one which allegedly comes from using each day's leftovers to start the next batch, on and on for generations. At least CzecHouse's version is probably in accordance with European Union health codes, something that can't be said for the generations-old goulash, and the tourist-friendly setting does provide an easy way into a couple of Czech classics.

The opposite was true at Cerny Kohout (Vojtesska 9; 420-251-681-191; www.cernykohout.cz), the Black Rooster, at least at its earlier location: it earned a dedicated following way in the far reaches of the Prague suburbs. Then it moved to a more accessible location in New Town a couple of years back. The owner, Vojtech Petrik, works the stoves while his wife waits tables, creating a mom-and-pop feel that perfectly suits Mr. Petrik's at-home-in-Provence style of cooking. I once joked that Mr. Petrik's recipes were political in nature, attempting to abolish Germany forever by forging a direct connection between the Czech lands and France. On this visit he seemed to be veering toward Asia, however, with a fish soup that would not seem out of place in a Korean diner: a savory, clear broth filled with deeply satisfying chunks of salmon, shallots, carrots and trout.

A main course, duck “confit,” had a richly sweet-and-sour skin and was served with a buttery, dessertlike baked green apple. Though tender and moist, it was not a confit in the classic sense of the word, and despite the appearance of more cèpes, it tasted less like a French duck than one from Peking. (It was also almost inappropriately delicious, causing me to moan loudly more times than is proper in a public dining venue.) Another main course seemed like a gamekeeper's recipe: a tender venison tenderloin paired with a slice of seared goose liver, fragrant sautéed shallots and chanterelles, sweet roast chestnuts and a syrupy raspberry sauce brightened by marjoram and thyme.

There's a lovely homey nature to the dishes at Cerny Kohout. As she cleared away a few plates, Mrs. Petrikova noted that all of the cèpes they were using came from the three kilos she and her husband had gathered in the Czech forests the previous weekend; they hadn't been so lucky with chanterelles and had to buy those. Even our dessert palacinka seemed like something straight from Grandma's house, at least at first glance, but then we noticed the hot plums inside the crepe were counterbalanced by a sweet plum ice cream — a traditional flavor here in the land of slivovitz and plum pies, but served up in a new recipe.

In many ways, the modest Cerny Kohout is probably the best of the bunch: though it can't match the shoot-the-moon variety (and prices) at La Degustation, it, too, shows that Czech food is opening up to new things, though still strongly based on local traditions.

It will almost certainly never supplant Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square and great pilsners as Prague's top draw. But at this point, Czech food is far from a downside.

Jeff Topping for The New York Times

The view from the Sky Suite, available to visitors.

I'D stopped to use the bathroom at the McDonald's three miles from Arcosanti, the famously never-finished experimental city in the Arizona desert. This is cactus country, an arid hour north of Phoenix, and the McDonald's and Arcosanti were the most prominent outposts of civilization for miles. I asked the woman at the register what she'd heard of the place.

“Very bad, very bad. The people there ...” she trailed off, searching for a word that might capture the terribleness. “I've heard it's a cult.”

Sold.

To emerge from the massive, improbable strip mall that is Phoenix, after all, is to suspect the species needs a new plan, and soon. Sprawl stretches interminably. Sustainable growth, as an issue, suddenly feels palpable; you're parched and not seeing a lot of water around. The radio admonishes bored teenagers against using meth.

To finally crunch over the three-mile dirt road near Cordes Junction and arrive at this dusty alternative — well, it's a breath of hot, desert air.

At first approach, the skyline — a pair of concrete apses, a network of modular concrete dwellings, a rusty old crane — fails to make much of an impact. But it swells with the dream behind it. The Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a former student of Frank Lloyd Wright, began construction of this ecologically harmonious community in 1970.

With its radical conservation techniques and a brilliantly scrunched-together layout, Arcosanti was intended to reinvent not just the city, but also man's relationship to the planet: picture a 60s vision of a Mars colony, but with a cutting-edge, eco-friendly design. Evaporative cooling pools release moisture into the air. In winter, heat from the foundry furnace is collected by a hood and sent through the apartments above.

And there are always apartments above, or a library below, or another set of rooms just beyond those Italian cypresses. Through a carefully managed density, the impact is minimal, and the idea of community is reimagined.

In 1976, Newsweek declared: “As urban architecture, Arcosanti is probably the most important experiment undertaken in our lifetime.” “Undertaken” being the key word — then and now. Completion has legendarily eluded Arcosanti. Built in stages and chronically underfinanced, the place exists in a permanent state of half-doneness.

What was once the future of intelligently designed communities has morphed into something less optimistic: a stalled revolution in urban planning or a moldering relic of impractical idealism, depending on whom you ask. Often enough it's referred to as Mr. Soleri's “desert utopia,” and as with all utopias, reality doesn't always match the blueprints.

And yet.

The place hums with purpose. An educated, diversely aged and surprisingly international collection of residents rises early each morning for on-site duties: silt casting, or foundry work, or a general tending of the odd, gray structures they call home.

Later, the focus turns to capoeira practice or evening strolls along the canyon ridge. A cozy, dormitory-in-summer feel suffuses the place — if you were to set the college on broil then take away the college part. Shared living spaces. Shared tasks. Even a shared music room.

Conceivably you could let the word “commune” slip over a delicious resident-prepared lunch of roasted yams and bell peppers. Bite your tongue.

“This isn't about divided labor, or shared space or living with your friends — although that all happens here,” a visiting seminar student told me when I was there last spring. “Everyone who comes is here to make arcology work.”

Yes, Mr. Soleri doesn't just imagine cities — he invents words, too. “Arcology,” the portmanteau of architecture and ecology, guides Arcosanti as well as other, generally unrealized, Soleri creations. The pinnacle of arcology, the Hyper-Building, exists only on paper: a kilometer-high tower that would house 100,000 residents plus all their commercial and cultural requirements.

There are not 100,000 people at Arcosanti. The plan was, and is, to draw 5,000; the population is under 100.

To visit Arcosanti now is to catch it at an odd moment. The principles put into practice there long ago — environmental sensitivity, anticonsumerism — have started making their way into general consciousness. As its founder predicted decades ago, the outside world is finally discovering its current course to be unsustainable. Interestingly, for vastly different reasons, Arcosanti finds itself discovering the same.

At a community meeting while I was there, Mr. Soleri, who lives near Phoenix but spends a night or two a week at Arcosanti, eased into an old couch and quietly asked how his creation was going to keep the lights on. While tourism and the sale of bronze and ceramic bells bring in some money, he said, another $50 million would come in especially handy. Residents batted around money-raising strategies that wouldn't sell out Arcosanti's core identity; few stuck.

“Of course, we're sitting on a billion-dollar view,” one woman said, glancing toward the canyon, with its dramatic basalt cliffs and picturesque scatterings of scrub brush. But the idea of selling off a chunk of the dream only drew laughs. Somebody mumbled something about “Disney Arcosanti” and soon conversation moved on.

This is not Disney, or the Plaza, or even Motel 6. Mr. Soleri has defined his creation as “the city in the image of man,” and it forces a certain question where visitors are concerned: Which man, exactly? Certainly not the type who needs to lock his doors, or have his bathroom trash can lined with something finer than a grocery bag. Wheelchair access is limited, and guests are encouraged to bring flashlights.

But the redefining of comfort becomes contagious. And short of, say, financing it for the next century, the best way to appreciate the Arcosanti experiment is to walk it: Here, the site of a future “energy apron” around the perimeter, wherein greenhouses trap heat and disperse it throughout the apartments in winter months; there, enormous concrete armatures reaching out to one day support a canopy for the music center. A moat runs around the stage, cooling it.

For some of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 annual visitors who want to stay overnight, two options exist.

One is a row of small, austere guest rooms ($30 to $50 a night) lining the outer edge of the site. Far more inviting and central is the Sky Suite. At $100 a night, it offers a double and a single bedroom, a snug living room and a kitchenette with stunning views of the mesa. Just outside, a roof makes for a private patio with a breathtaking panorama.

Mr. Soleri continues to call Arcosanti his “lean urban laboratory.” And a well-disciplined optimism persists here, despite the occasional writing on the wall — or the occasional absence of a wall.

But aging visions of the future have a singular appeal, and at Arcosanti, it's possible to enjoy the hopefulness without betraying it. It is not cynicism to find a special beauty in what hasn't yet come to pass.

Precisely what I was going to tell the McDonald's cashier on my way back to Phoenix, but I was running late.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Arcosanti (928-632-6217, www.arcosanti.org) is 65 miles north of Phoenix. Take I-17 to Exit 262 (Cordes Junction). Small signs will direct you to a three-mile stretch of dirt road leading to the Visitor Center.

General tours are offered seven days a week, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.; suggested donation is $8. Specialty tours — architecture and planning, agriculture or bird-watching — can sometimes be arranged if requested in advance.

For overnight stays, reservations are recommended. One-week ($475) and four-week ($1,125) seminars and workshops are also available; contact the coordinator at (928) 632-6233.

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, on the Rio Negro, opened in February.

WE were in a canoe tethered to a submerged tree, fishing for piranha in the dark waters of the Rio Negro, about 125 miles northwest of the Brazilian city of Manaus. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already beginning to set behind a fleecy thicket of clouds, tingeing them with hues of purple, pink and gold. Suddenly a dolphin surfaced less than 10 feet away, carved a graceful arc in the air and then disappeared into the water again.

That night, back at the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, my base for that foray into the world's largest tropical rain forest, dinner — which included onion soup with sweet potato chips, an Amazonian fish called dourado prepared in ginger sauce, beef tenderloin and coconut flan — gave no hint of our rugged surroundings. Nor did the air-conditioned cottage where I slept, with its elegant tropical wood paneling and modern tiled bathroom. The next morning, I sought refuge from the overpowering heat and humidity in the lodge's swimming pool, where I watched boats of all shapes and sizes putt-putting their way up and down the river.

Not too long ago, options for visitors to the Brazilian Amazon region were limited: you flew to Manaus, stayed at the Tropical Manaus Hotel on the outskirts of the city, and took day trips to the edge of the forest. But that, thankfully, is no longer the case. Responding to the international boom in ecological and adventure tourism, lodgings have sprung up all over the region in the past four or five years. Travelers with a yen for the exotic and a tolerance for the unpredictable can now book a stay in the jungle with an expectation of, if not luxury, then at least a reasonable degree of comfort. ( Still, don't be surprised when you see signs like these, posted in the rooms at the Tiwa Amazonas Ecoresort, just across the river from Manaus: “Warning: The simultaneous use of the shower and the air conditioner is forbidden!”)

There are easily a dozen of these new hotels — a type of lodging I couldn't have imagined when I started traveling in the Amazon 30 years ago, often sleeping in grimy hammocks in $3-a-night fleabags with dirt floors. The main concentration is on the Rio Negro, to the north and west of Manaus, where the tannic acid that darkens the water and gives the river its name inhibits mosquitoes from breeding, so visitors don't have to worry as much about malaria or dengue or other typical tropical maladies.

And there are more lodgings to come. The most ambitious is a 102-room complex being built just off the road to the town of Novo Airão by the Accor group of France, which is scheduled to open in 2010 and will be the first international luxury chain hotel actually in the jungle; the Hilton company has also announced plans to build a 196-room “eco-lodge resort” near Novo Airão .

For the moment, however, the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, which opened in February, is the newest and perhaps the most chic example of the lodge phenomenon. Operated by a couple from São Paulo, it is on a bluff above the Rio Negro, within sight of the Anavilhanas Ecological Station, a government nature reserve that encompasses the world's largest riverine archipelago, with more than 400 islands and hundreds of lakes and igapós, an indigenous word that means flood forest. Astonishingly rich in both animal and plant life, the reserve area, which has been designated a Unesco World Heritage site, is unspoiled and uninhabited.

No matter what their location, the lodges tend to follow a certain pattern when it comes to outings. In the morning, for instance, before the heat gets too stifling, a nature walk is, more often than not, de rigueur; I've seen all sorts of monkeys, macaws and toucans, not to mention sloths and anteaters, on such treks. Afternoon excursions to fish for piranha provide the kind of bragging rights that delighted my teenage son when I took him with me on an Amazon trip a few years ago.

After dinner, it's often back to the boat to hunt for the Amazonian caiman known as the jacaré. But instead of carrying guns or spears, guides are armed with powerful spotlights that freeze the reptiles in position and make it possible to remove young ones from the water so that guests can run their hands over their cool, ridged carapaces.

All can arrange an excursion for you to witness the “meeting of the waters,” the spot just southeast of Manaus where the Rio Negro's dark waters converge with those of the Amazon's other major tributary, the Solimões. I've stopped there at least a dozen times and never cease to be amazed at the way the two great rivers, markedly different in color and temperature, collide with such force and volume that they seem to be fighting each other.

But each lodge also tries to offer something its competitors do not. For instance, the Amazon Ecopark Jungle Lodge, 40 minutes from Manaus, is famous for its “Monkey Jungle Reserve.” Here, woolly monkeys, some confiscated from contraband dealers, others injured, are monitored at a rehabilitation center on the lodge grounds.

At the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, a group of more than a dozen botos, or gray dolphins, show up daily to be fed at nearby Novo Airão. A motorboat from the lodge takes guests to a floating restaurant alongside the main dock there, where a pet anaconda circulates among customers sipping chilled beers or soft drinks. As we stood on a raft attached to the restaurant, the dolphins cavorted, sticking their long snouts up from the water for pieces of fish tossed their way or seizing fish snacks from tourists intrepid enough to go into the water.

“If we'd let the botos, they would spend the entire day here, just eating,” said Marisa Grangeiro de Almeida, whose family operates the restaurant. “But the environmental agency and the university scientists have established fixed feeding hours.”

The Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge has its own strict rules when it comes to the guides it employs. Most lodges rely on freelancers who come in from Manaus. The Anavilhanas lodge hires only residents, which quickly pays off for the visitor. My guide, Célio Silva Nascimento, not only knew all the best fishing spots and how to navigate tricky river channels that come and go with the seasons, but also had detailed knowledge of local flora and fauna, no matter how obscure.

That is important because the sheer abundance of wildlife on view can be staggering, especially as one gets farther away from Manaus. I have never seen as many birds, for example, as I did two years ago at the Pousada Uacari, which is situated inside the Mamirauá nature reserve, 350 miles west of Manaus at the confluence of the Solimões and Japurá Rivers. Startled by the sound of our motorboat, huge flocks of snowy egrets, herons, cormorants, kites, tinamous, bitterns, ospreys and curassows took to the air as we navigated an igarapé, or narrow tributary.

Like several of the new lodges in the region, the Pousada Uacari is not on land, but sits on floating rafts at a bend in the river. Here guests can view wildlife in remarkable proximity. After dark, for instance, I could see caimans, some as large as eight feet, their eyes glowing like orange lanterns; some came startlingly close, banging against the dock and making querulous grunts, a symphony that continued through the night.

There is even a lodge that is literally up in the trees. The Ariaú Amazon Towers, opened in 1987 and recently expanded and modernized, is a two-hour boat ride northwest of Manaus. One of the oldest and by far the largest of the jungle lodges, it has been visited by celebrities like Bill Gates and the King and Queen of Spain. All 269 rooms are up in the jungle canopy, as much as 60 feet above the river, and connected to one another and the dining hall and common areas via aerial walkways.

Only one lodge that I know of can claim to be on the Amazon River itself. The Amazon Riverside Hotel makes the most of that distinction, offering excursions to see the sun rise from a century-old British-built navigation beacon in the middle of the river; it also has a nature trail that leads to a hilltop observation post with a commanding view of both the jungle and the river, and has arranged hammocks at the dock for guests keen on doing nothing but watching the river flow.

Just to remind guests where they are, the Amazon Riverside's reception area, built around a lagoon, displays the outsize skulls of an adult caiman and a toothy onça, the Brazilian cougar. Lined up near the dining area is a series of jars with pickled remains of some of the animals that have been found on or near the hotel grounds: poisonous snakes, scorpions and spiders, including a giant caranguejeira, or crab spider.

The owners of the Amazon Riverside are members of Manaus's flourishing Japanese community, which migrated to the region nearly a century ago to work on jute and pepper plantations. The Tsuji family caters to Japanese tourists, an effort that is reflected in an innovative menu that includes dishes such as sashimi of tambaqui, a prized Amazon game fish, and tempura made with okra and abóbora, the Brazilian equivalent of pumpkin.

The piranha fishing there was extraordinary. On a Sunday afternoon I ventured out in a small motorboat with a couple from the Tokyo area, Satoshi Tatsumi and Kazuko Ito, and in less than two hours, we caught nearly two dozen piranha, the largest of which we took back to the hotel and ate in a tasty stew. The piranha were so plentiful that Satoshi, a martial arts instructor who was wearing a cast on his arm because of an injury suffered in a competition, was able to catch them one-handed with nothing more than a simple bamboo pole and small pieces of beef as bait.

Many lodges organize visits to the homes of people who live nearby, at the river's edge in houses usually on stilts. Known in Portuguese either as caboclos, a term equivalent to hillbilly, or more respectfully as ribeirinhos, or river dwellers, they have limited incomes and little contact with the rest of Brazil. If you've never seen liquid latex being roasted on a spit over a fire to be made into rubber or if you don't know how manioc is turned into the golden flour that is one of the Amazonian staples, then take one of these tours.

But sometimes there is an element of exploitation that I find unsettling. The Amazon Riverside Hotel pays the river-dwelling families that its guests are taken to see, but some other lodges do not. When I was visiting another lodge, I was taken to the home of Iraci Cantuária dos Santos, the 67-year-old matriarch of a family of eight. I asked her whether she would make any money from our visit. She replied, “Only if you buy something,” and pointed to herbs and carved wooden animals for sale.

To the river dwellers all visitors seem impossibly well-off. But luxury, of course, is a relative concept. The reality is that it is tremendously difficult and expensive to bring in fuel, food and other supplies by boat, and no Amazon lodge I've visited would ever qualify as a five-star resort.

You are, after all, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, and your accommodations, no matter what they might lack in grandeur, would have been the envy of the area's first European explorers. They came looking for “El Dorado” and found a “green hell” instead. Fortunately, you, the 21st-century traveler, now have other options.

VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

Until mid-2006, getting to Manaus from the United States was a cumbersome process that often involved flying to Rio or São Paulo and then doubling back. But Brazil's TAM Airlines (www.tam.com.br) now operates a daily five-hour flight from Miami. A round trip in late September or October starts at $1,025; Copa Airlines (www.copaair.com) also has flights from $969, but those include a stop in Panama.

WHERE TO STAY

The packages mentioned are per person and include three meals a day. Except as noted, transportation from and back to Manaus is also covered.

The Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge (55-92-3622-8996; www.anavilhanaslodge.com) has been open for only about six months, and is perhaps the most elegant lodging in the Amazon. It has 16 air-conditioned, wood-paneled rooms decorated with regional art, and an open-air common area stocked with DVDs and books. The minimum two-night package is 950 reals total, or $475 at 2 reals to the dollar.

Unlike most other new lodges, the Amazon Riverside Hotel (55-92-3622-2789; www.amazonriversidehotel.com), which opened in 2002, is 40 minutes downstream from Manaus, not upstream. As a result, transportation to the hotel includes a visit to the site where the Rio Negro and the Solimões join to form the Amazon. There are 15 rustic apartments, with fans but no air-conditioning. The one-night package is 625 reals; the hotel also offers a day-use option for 250 reals.

The main lure of the Pousada Uacari (97-3343-4160; www.uakarilodge.com.br) is its privileged location, in the Mamirauá nature reserve about 90 minutes by speedboat from Tefé, which is on the banks of the Solimões River. There are 5 floating wood cabins, offering a total of 10 rustic apartments, with water for the showers and sinks coming directly from the river. The minimum three-night package of 1,000 reals a person does not include transportation from Manaus to Tefé.

In a competition for most unusual setting, the Ariaú Amazon Towers (55-92-2121-5000; www.ariau.tur.br) would win hands down. Just off the west bank of the Rio Negro, its 269 rooms, some with air-conditioning, and trees growing through them, are up at the level where monkeys live. One night costs 860 reals.

The Tiwa Amazonas Ecoresort (55-92-9995-7892; www.tiwa.com.br), which opened in 2003, has 52 air-conditioned rooms on stilts over a lagoon, plus a common area with a restaurant, bar, game room and a view of the Manaus skyline. One night is 595 reals.

Less than an hour from Manaus by boat, the Amazon Ecopark Jungle Lodge (55-21-2256-8083; www.amazonecopark.com.br) has 64 rooms and 3 bungalows, a beach on the Rio Negro and a pool. At 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., there are opportunities to feed the monkeys. One night is 720 reals.

WHEN TO GO

“In September, October and November, the water levels are quite low,” said Wedson Franklin Santos, a guide who works at the Amazon Riverside Hotel, “so you get to see all the exuberance of the wildlife,” which is forced out into the open. He added that during the middle of the year, when the flood plain is starting to recede, “the attraction is more the landscape itself and not the animals, which are mostly in hiding.”

STAYING HEALTHY

Most doctors recommend a program of antimalarial medicine, beginning several weeks before arrival and continuing during a trip. (I stopped taking such prophylactics because of the unpleasant side effects, and besides, there is now a drug-resistant strain of malaria.) But there are other measures one can adopt to reduce the risk of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue. Rather than going outdoors with arms exposed, for example, wear a long-sleeve shirt made from a lightweight fabric. And do your best to avoid being outside during the period local people call “the malaria hour,” about 5 to 7 p.m.

LARRY ROHTER, who has just completed eight and a half years as chief of the Rio de Janeiro bureau of The Times, is on leave, writing a book about Brazil.

Illustration by David Simonds

IF YOU believe what they say about themselves, big companies have never been better citizens. In the past decade, “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) has become the norm in the boardrooms of companies in rich countries, and increasingly in developing economies too. Most big firms now pledge to follow policies that define best practice in everything from the diversity of their workforces to human rights and the environment. Criticism of CSR has come mostly from those on the free-market right, who intone Milton Friedman's argument that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” and fret that business leaders have capitulated to political correctness. But in a new twist to the debate, a powerful critique of CSR has just been published by a leading left-wing thinker.

In his new book, “Supercapitalism”, Robert Reich denounces CSR as a dangerous diversion that is undermining democracy, not least in his native America. Mr Reich, an economist who served as labour secretary under Bill Clinton and now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, admits to a Damascene conversion, having for many years “preached that social responsibility and profits converge over the long term”. He now believes that companies “cannot be socially responsible, at least not to any significant extent”, and that CSR activists are being diverted from the more realistic and important task of getting governments to solve social problems. Debating whether Wal-Mart or Google is good or evil misses the point, he says, which is that governments are responsible for setting rules that ensure that competing, profit-maximising firms do not act against the interests of society.

One after another, Mr Reich trashes the supposed triumphs of CSR. Socially responsible firms are more profitable? Nonsense. Certainly, companies sometimes find ways to cut costs that coincide with what CSR activists want: Wal-Mart adopts cheaper “green” packaging, say, or Starbucks gives part-time employees health insurance, which reduces staff turnover. But “to credit these corporations with being ‘socially responsible' is to stretch the term to mean anything a company might do to increase profits if, in doing so, it also happens to have some beneficent impact on the rest of society,” writes Mr Reich.

Worse, firms are using CSR to fool the public into believing that problems are being addressed, he argues, thereby preventing more meaningful political reform. As for politicians, they enjoy scoring points by publicly shaming companies that misbehave—price-gouging oil firms, say—while failing to make real changes to the regulations that make such misbehaviour possible, something Mr Reich blames on the growing clout of corporate lobbyists.

What will CSR advocates make of this? Few will dispute that government has a crucial role to play in setting the rules of the game. Many will also share Mr Reich's concern about the corrosive political power of corporate money. But Mr Reich has it “exactly backwards”, says John Ruggie of Harvard University. If citizens and politicians were prepared to do the right thing, he says, “there would be less need to rely on CSR in the first place.”

Thoughtful advocates of CSR also concede that companies are unlikely to do things that are against their self-interest. The real task is to get them to act in their enlightened long-term self-interest, rather than narrowly and in the short term. Mr Reich dismisses this as mere “smart management” rather than social responsibility. But done well, CSR can motivate employees and strengthen brands, while also providing benefits to society. Understanding and responding to the social context in which firms operate is increasingly a source of new products and services, observes Jane Nelson of the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum. Telling firms they need not act responsibly might cause them to under-invest in these opportunities, and to focus excessively on short-term profits.

Intriguingly, Mr Reich looks back fondly to what he calls the “not quite golden age” in America after the second world war when firms really were socially responsible. Business leaders believed they had a duty to ensure that the benefits of economic growth were distributed equitably, in contrast to their modern counterparts, argues Mr Reich. What changed? Back then, big American firms enjoyed the luxury of oligopoly, he says, which gave them the ability to be socially responsible. Today's “supercapitalism” is based on fierce global competition in which firms can no longer afford such largesse.

Lenny Mendonca of McKinsey takes a different view of the post-war period. After the war business leaders realised it was in their enlightened self-interest to rebuild the global economy and reinvent the social contract, he says, and there is a similar opportunity today, given problems ranging from climate change to inadequate education, where firms' long-term self-interest may mean that they have an even greater incentive to find solutions than governments do. Certainly, in America, business leaders are advocating government action on education, climate change and health-care reform that is neither zero-sum nor short-termist, and which, indeed, may not differ much from Mr Reich's own preferences.

Though his book hits many targets, both bosses and CSR activists are likely to dismiss it as fundamentally unworldly and to agree with Simon Zadek, the boss of AccountAbility, a CSR lobby group. “The ‘whether in principle' conversation about CSR is over,” he says. “What remains is ‘What, specifically, and how?'”

Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency

By CATHY HORYN

Just before the start of Ralph Lauren’s 40th anniversary show, as guests like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and the actors Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman took their seats, there was music from “My Fair Lady.”

A tug of Broadway, and then the show began, the music shifting to a faster contemporary beat as the first model stepped out in a white silk gown with a frilly black-edged hem and a wide black straw hat. Masculine coats, satin jodhpurs, trim vests and long polka-dot skirts with romantic white blouses seemed to animate the racecourse painting in the background.

The show, on Saturday night in the Central Park Conservancy, was a vigorous display of Mr. Lauren’s imagination and wit, from the veiled bowlers and snow-white riding boots tipped in black to the long ruffled dresses in pastel garden prints, and the only location that might have better served his purposes than the park would have been Fifth Avenue itself. The clothes, while far from being costumes, had the pomp of an aristocratic parade.

Mr. Lauren could have gone in any number of design directions to mark his 40th anniversary. To Newport, the American West, the Adirondacks. Instead he chose New York, reflecting its energy and sophistication with crisp tailoring, a black leather coat banded in taxi-bright yellow, and a silver chain-beaded gown as cosmopolitan as the Chrysler building.

He could afford the schmaltz of Frank Sinatra’s “The Best Is Yet to Come,” as he came out to an ovation and personally greeted guests like Barbara Walters, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart and the designers Donna Karan, Vera Wang and Carolina Herrera.

How many other, younger designers will reach such a milestone? There has been a shift in perspective in the last few years as stores and magazines seemingly burn through new names in the business. The same is true of the music and film industries. The process inevitably anoints the superficial.

Designers like Benjamin Cho and Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte have their distinctive pool of admirers, but despite their best efforts — and in the case of Rodarte, the help of editors and fashion plates like Liz Goldwyn and Lisa Airan, who came to the show dressed in a fanciful Rodarte suit — the pool essentially remains the same. One has the impression that a lot of retailers have figured out how to sell the idea of new talent without actually having to commit to any one name for the long haul.

The most inventive looks in Mr. Cho’s collection included jersey tops that had been twisted around the neckline into rope coils, narrow jackets inspired by trench coats, and slim black silk dresses that incorporated into the bodice or neckline smooth, cross-sectioned stones that had been wired together.

As always, Mr. Cho’s clothes answer some design question that absorb him exclusively, and with perfect craftsmanship.

Ohne Titel, a new line by Alexa Adams and Flora Gill, who previously worked for Karl Lagerfeld, offered lanky pantsuits in neutral tones, bustled silk skirts and some fine, body-hugging knits in textured patterns that evoked tribal art.

Though still cloyingly precious, Rodarte looked less lunatic than usual. Some of the tulle and chiffon dresses, in cloudy shades of pink and blue, had a wispy effect, as if the Mulleavy sisters were attempting to give the clothes the lightest possible structure.

Shapes were engaging, notably a rounded jacket in ivory organza with wandlike sleeves and a coppery pleated skirt. I couldn’t make out if a slim dress and matching jacket in broken waves of blue, gold and beige were embroidered or knitted, but the outfit was beautiful, nearly evoking body art.

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez are widely acknowledged to be among the most promising of the new generation of brand-builders, blessed with talent and charm. On Friday, they took their Proenza Schouler collection to the Armory on Park Avenue, a good place to display military-precise tailoring and braid, fitted jackets in pieced sections of ivory and black linen ( the garments were shown inside out for better effect, the designers said), and two-toned pumps with chunky straps and nailed-studded heels.

On the demerit side, a detectable Balenciaga influence in the proportions and layers cast a degree of doubt over the designers’ ability to establish a clear brand identity.

But their use of fabrics like rough cotton was very appealing, and the mix of masculine elements like belted vests with poplin shirts and short flaring skirts in washed organza helped give them the primary silhouette for spring. So in that sense they were on the right track. And short dresses embroidered in matte-gold sequins and feathers (by the Paris house Lemarié) added to their sophisticated capital.

Yoray Liberman for The New York Times

Hot-air balloons float above the hills and rock formations of Cappadocia.

“WATCH your head,” warned my guide, Edip, as we ducked into a stone cave in the otherworldly Turkish region of Cappadocia. The ceiling, which was covered with black soot, was just a foot above our heads. “The third and fourth floors were used as kitchens,” Edip said, as we entered another cave with two troughs carved into the volcanic stone floor. “They also made wine here. It was their only real luxury.”

Spread across the middle of Turkey like a lunar landscape, Cappadocia is home to a bizarre field of anthill-like cones, rock-hewn churches and underground cities where Christians once hid to avoid persecution. It is a spectacular sight and one that has captivated travelers for centuries.

An area that has traditionally attracted backpackers and archaeology-minded tourists, Cappadocia is now going upscale and drawing a younger more sophisticated crowd. As evidence, in April the area welcomed its first true designer hotel, the Serinn House, which has been built around and carved into the area's soft rock like the subterranean chapels created centuries earlier.

Situated near sandy yellow cliffs in the town of Urgup, the Serinn has five guest rooms, each designed by the Istanbul architect Rifat Ergor to blend the caves' natural contours with contemporary features. In the largest suite (the hotel's only noncave room) a black chandelier by the Dutch design firm Moooi hangs over the bed and a red lounge chair by Ron Arad. My smaller cave room was no less design-savvy, with a colorful rug from Habitat, a light-blue Vitra chair, plastic drawers designed by Werner Aisslinger and Wi-Fi.

I didn't notice until the second day that there weren't any flat-screen televisions, but it hardly mattered. There were far better things to do, like having breakfast on the tranquil terrace where, every morning, freshly baked focaccia was served with bowls of cherries, apricots, yogurt, cheeses, tomatoes, cured ham and muesli.

But I didn't let breakfast keep me from exploring the nearby sights. You need at least three days to wander through the dusty, ancient villages scattered across Cappadocia and to survey the fantastic panorama of towering stalagmites that stretches across 50 square miles of sun-baked hills and valleys.

On that first morning I went to Pigeon Valley near the village of Uchisar, so named for the thousands of pigeon houses carved into the rock. It was a surreal vision: an outrageously phallic landscape straight out of a Salvador Dalí painting.

The conical formations are the result of volcanic eruptions that took place millions of years ago. Eons of wind, rain and other forces of nature have eaten away at the volcanic rock creating tufa, a soft and malleable stone. Many of these cones, known as fairy chimneys, contain caves and labyrinths.

As early as the third century, those chimneys became a hiding place for early Christians who fled persecution from the Romans, and then later from raiding Muslims. They dug deep into the rock, carving out underground cities that went eight stories below ground, as well as thousands of cave chapels and monastery cells.

As recently as 20 years ago, most of the cave dwellings were empty — abandoned for more modern, concrete homes. In the last several years, though, affluent Turks and foreigners have started turning them into second homes and, in a few cases, boutique hotels like the Cappadocia Cave Suites and the recently opened Anatolia Houses.

“It was the soap opera ‘Asmali Konak' that started it all,” said Laura Prusoff, an American who lives in the tiny Cappadocian village of Ortahisar, referring to a Turkish television series in 2002 and 2003 that was set in Cappadocia. “It made Cappadocia famous among Turks and put it on the map.”

Cappadocia is also becoming known as a great place for hot-air ballooning. On any given morning, it's possible to spot as many as 20 balloons in the sky. One morning, I watched two enormous balloons land on the back of separate trailers as 26 exhilarated clients drank glasses of Cloud Nine — Champagne with cherry juice.

Kaili Kidner, a British expatriate who owns Kapadokya Balloons with her husband, Lars-Eric More, said that it was the combination of amazing landscapes, consistent temperatures and a long season that made Cappadocia an ideal ballooning destination. “There's also the right kind of people who come here,” she added, “upmarket cultural tourists and adventure seekers.”

While tourism is booming, at least one tradition is dying out: rug weaving. “I give it 10 more years,” said Hasan Kalci, whose family has been selling handmade Turkish carpets for three generations. Interestingly, it's not tourism that is destroying the craft, but social progress. “Now that it's mandatory that all girls go to school, there are very few women left willing to stay at home and weave a carpet.”

So, like other entrepreneurs in the region, Mr. Kalci has branched out into luxury tourism, opening the Anatolian Houses in the town of Goreme in May 2006. “The future of Cappadocia's economic success is in higher standards and sophisticated tourists,” Mr. Kalci said, and then confided: “I've heard that Shakira might be coming to Cappadocia after her concert in Istanbul.”

It ended up being a rumor; the Colombian singer went to the Turkish coast instead. But with a descendant of Tolstoy booked into his presidential suite, Mr. Kalci wasn't that disappointed.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Turkish Airlines flies from Kennedy Airport to Kayseri, with a plane change in Istanbul. Fares start at about $1,000 for travel in October. Car rentals are also available at the airport, though it's a good idea to go with a guide for at least one full day. One of the more reputable outfits, Argeus (90-384-341-4688; www.argeus.com.tr), offers a full-day tour of Cappadocia's moonscape at $145 per person for a group of two.

WHERE TO STAY

The recently opened Serinn House in Urgup (Esbelli Sokak 36; 90-384-341-6076; www.serinnhouse.com) is a chic five-room property that offers cave rooms, glass-walled showers and Wi-Fi. Rooms start $120 a night, including breakfast.

The luxurious Anatolian Houses (Gaferli Mah, Goreme; 90-384-271-2463; www.anatolianhouses.com), which opened last year, has 19 rooms outfitted with whirlpool tubs and Anatolian antiques, including several suites in the fairy chimneys. Rates start at $300 a night.

WHERE TO EAT

Alaturca in Goreme (90-384-271-2882; www.goremealaturca.com) serves big portions of traditional Anatolian cuisine.

Ziggy's in Urgup (Yunak Mahallesi Tevfik Fikret Caddesi 24; 90-384-341-7107) is a stylish restaurant that occupies three floors of an old stone building. A favorite of local expatriates, it serves fresh salads and pasta.

Somine in Urgup (Cumhuriyet Meydani 9; 90-384-341-8442; www.sominerestaurant.com), with a rooftop terrace, specializes in traditional Turkish cuisine.

WHERE TO SHOP

Kaya Seramik in Avanos (Eski Nevsehir Yolu Uzeri, 90-384-511-2374; www.gurayseramik.com.tr) sells colorful ceramic platters and traditional Iznik tiles.

Udo Kröner/lufthansa

Munich Airport, with its single terminal, is known for efficiency and short layovers for transfers.

Correction Appended

AS a former American Ambassador to Morocco and now an international business consultant focused primarily on Eastern European markets, Michael Ussery has spent his career perfecting the art of the European airport transfer. Over the past decade he has logged more than 110 flights between his Washington base and Europe and the Middle East.

“There was a lot of trial and error,” Mr. Ussery said. “But at some point in the late 1990s I found Vienna airport to work best for me, and I have been flying through it ever since.”

As travel expands throughout Europe and the Middle East, Americans are increasingly having to trade nonstop flights for journeys with pit stops along the way. Many are unprepared and unaware of the potential connection headaches awaiting them.

With major airports from London to Madrid adding terminals, and already sprawling hubs like Frankfurt and Charles de Gaulle in Paris operating at full capacity, airport waits of over an hour have become frustratingly commonplace. Add in limited runway capacity, delays on arriving flights and frequent ground crew strikes, and “connecting between flights is simply inconvenient, unreliable and stressful,” according to Henry Harteveldt, principal travel analyst with Forrester Research in San Francisco.

Yet as travelers like Mr. Ussery can attest, “transiting” through Europe need not be a nightmare. The trick is knowing which airports most efficiently link American gateways with the maximum number of onward destinations — offering the quickest journey times between gates, along with high-quality restaurants and lounges along the way.

“The key factor here really is speed,” said Edward Plaisted, chief executive of Skytrax, a London-based consultancy specializing in traveler-satisfaction surveys.

In its most recent annual survey of some seven million passengers from 93 countries, Skytrax named Munich Airport the best airport in Europe, and No. 4 in the world. Skytrax respondents specifically noted Munich’s “service, efficiency ... and the ease of the transit process” as key components of its appeal, the survey report said. “While Munich still cannot rival Frankfurt in terms of service from the U.S., for connecting it really is the best example in Europe today,” Mr. Plaisted said of the airport, which saw 10 million transit passengers last year, an increase of more than 7 percent from 2005.

Indeed, connection times in Munich average just 30 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in Frankfurt, 50 minutes in Amsterdam and up to two hours in both London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle, according to Munich airport officials. And with a new daily nonstop to Denver starting this summer on Lufthansa, there are now direct Munich flights from 13 United States cities, linked to 383 weekly onward flights to Eastern and Southern European destinations. Although time savings can vary by season, flying via Munich can prove prudent. For instance, a flight from Kennedy Airport to Naples, Italy — for which there are few nonstops — can require more than three hours of layover at Heathrow on British Airways, while flying Lufthansa via Munich requires a layover of less than an hour. The Lufthansa flight takes off later, but arrives in Naples some two hours ahead of British Airways.

Much of Munich’s success is attributed to its layout. It is a 15-year-old structure designed as a single terminal and purpose-built as a transit hub. It’s a contrast to most of its regional counterparts — relics of mid-20th-century aviation architecture with terminals added as needed, often far from the original center.

But Munich is not the only central European airport that makes transiting relatively easy to bear. With layovers even at the most efficient European airports occasionally stretching beyond a few hours, easy access to a city center is a key lure for many frequent travelers. George Antoniadis, chief executive of Alpha Flying, an airplane leasing company based in Manchester, N.H., says the 15-minute train trip between downtown Zurich and its main airport is part of the reason he flies only via Zurich on his twice-monthly journeys between Boston and Athens. “It’s fully integrated into the urban life of the city, so you can easily jump out to catch some air and then quickly get back to your next flight,” he said. Zurich was ranked as the No. 2 airport in Europe by Skytrax.

When choosing to stay in the airport, Mr. Antoniadis says his transfer times at Zurich average a mere 15 minutes, thanks to its small size and essentially single-terminal layout. It’s this kind of ease that has made him a Zurich — and Swiss International Air Lines — loyalist, despite far greater numbers of Boston flights on Lufthansa, British Airways or Air France.

Mr. Ussery feels much the same about Vienna Airport and Austrian Airlines, as does Douglas Combs, a Washington-based private equities investor who travels 200 days a year, often to Eastern and Central Europe. “If I am not going to Paris or London, I am flying via Vienna,” Mr. Combs said. “There’s free Wi-Fi, the city center is just 20 minutes away, and I am usually between terminals in under five minutes.”

While Zurich and Vienna continue to dominate routes connecting to Eastern and Southern Europe, Munich is expanding on its flights to India and the Middle East, including new summer flights to both Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The moves come as both regions (the Persian Gulf most dramatically) are inaugurating nonstop flights to the United States and building airports aimed at transcontinental transit passengers.

For the moment, Dubai “remains the best airport in the Middle East out of what’s available,” said Mr. Plaisted of Skytrax. The airport’s success is almost single-handedly due to Emirates, Dubai’s national carrier, which not only flies some of the most luxurious cabins in the sky — with dine-on-demand “room service” and in-suite minibars in first class — but offers three daily flights to New York efficiently linked to extensive onward connections throughout India, Asia and Australia.

Emirates’ separate morning flights to Sydney and Melbourne, for instance, depart just two hours after their first New York arrival, while Emirate’s Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore connections are also under two hours. With Delta’s new nonstop from Atlanta operational and Emirates introducing a nonstop Houston flight in December, Dubai International Airport is now a viable transit option for Southeastern and Midwestern fliers, as well.

Still, with Dubai Airport, now sprawling and struggling to cope with some 29 million annual passengers, experienced travelers are beginning to look elsewhere for stress-free Gulf transit points. “While Dubai certainly offers connectivity to almost every place in the world, the airport is just too big, too busy and lacks things to do,” said Phil McGrane, director of Dubai-based 3P Events, which produces corporate events, who regularly flies between regional capitals and the United States and Britain. “I prefer Abu Dhabi, which is small, compact and easy to navigate. The only thing lacking are good coffee stations.”

Mr. Plaisted of Skytrax confirms that the Persian Gulf will see the next great battle of the airport hubs, as both Doha and Dubai complete entirely new airports and Abu Dhabi spends billions of dollars improving its own.

In Asia, Shanghai and Beijing are also spending billions on new or improved airports — though sluggish Chinese bureaucracy and inconsistent visa policies will make it difficult for them to compete with regional hubs like Hong Kong or Singapore for United States-based passengers. And Mr. Plaisted says Warsaw, Budapest and especially Prague airports offer acceptable levels of ease and efficiency for connections to the rest of Eastern Europe. “Still,” he added, “service can vary greatly here depending on the specific airline.”

Correction: September 16, 2007

The Heads Up column and a picture caption on Sept. 9 about making connections on international flights incorrectly described the Munich Airport. It consists of two terminals, not one ­ the one built 15 years ago and another one added in 2003.