turizmus

Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times

Bulicame is one of the natural sulfur springs that dot the province of Viterbo, near Rome. They were discovered by the Romans in the fourth century B.C.

"IT'S an inferno in here,” yelled a middle-aged woman as she plunged into a foul-smelling hot spring in central Italy. She wasn't the first to compare these scorching sulfur baths to Hell. In Canto XIV of “Inferno,” Dante wanders past a pool oozing with boiling red water and is reminded of these thermal spas about an hour north of Rome “whose waters are shared with prostitutes.”

In truth, Bulicame is actually far from Hell. Situated on the outskirts of the Viterbo — a provincial capital where popes once took refuge — the Bulicame sulfur springs bob with pleasure seekers whose only sins may be self-indulgence and a proclivity for smelling like rotten egg.

The countryside around Viterbo is studded with Roman ruins and sprinkled with these so-called wild spas: natural springs that bubble up from the ground and spill into artificial basins in the middle of fields. In most cases, there are no entrance fees, no towel services and no changing rooms. The only things you need are a car and a little geography lesson.

Of the half-dozen wild spas in the region, the best known may be Bulicame, but it's not the most popular. Several are closely guarded secrets, which is why I was glad to be sitting across from Giovanni Faperdue in the Gran Caffè Schenardi in Viterbo (Corso Italia, 11; 39-0761-345-860; www.caffeschenardi.com), a gilded high-ceiling 19th-century cafe in the city's historic center. Mr. Faperdue, a journalist for the local newspaper and the author of six books on Viterbo's history (including one about the sulfur springs), is passionate about the city's mineral-water-rich landscape.

“In a sense, the springs like Bulicame are volcanoes of water,” he said, referring to the former volcanic craters that serve as the steamy water's source. “In ancient times, the spas in Rome were heated only by fire,” he added. “So when the Romans came to Viterbo in 310 B.C. to conquer the Etruscans, they took notice of the naturally hot springs.”

The Romans built huge complexes around the springs. Bulicame may be the easiest to find, just off the main road as you head toward the town of Tuscania. The four pools, of varying temperatures and sizes, are set into a gentle white knoll. Heaps of steam waft from a fenced-off hole atop a hill that channels 140-degree water to the pools.

Couples arrived carrying slippers, bathrobes and water bottles across a field. Perhaps it was my bare feet and boxer shorts that pegged me as a novice, but as I stood on the sidelines wondering which of the four pools I should dip into first, someone in the largest, swimming-pool-size bath offered a tip: “The smaller pools nearest the source are the warmest.”

I glanced at a bigger pool, where a man in skimpy bathing trunks was smearing greenish mud across his face and flipping water onto his enormous belly. I walked to a smaller pool, dangled my toe in the steaming hot water and plunged in.

After an hourlong soak — my skin smooth and soft, my mind at ease — I understood the addiction. The sulfurous water gushing from the ground around Viterbo is said to be therapeutic. The locals say it's particularly good for the skin, the respiratory system and aching bones. The Etruscans and Romans also believed in its curative properties. And after several popes in the Middle Ages were believed to have been cured of chronic back pain after a dip, Viterbo's baths became a near-obligatory stop for travelers on the Rome-to-Florence route.

Although the region's numerous sulfur springs draw from a single water source, each spa has its own personality and devotees. Another popular wild spa is Bagnaccio, which sits at the end of a long gravel road a few miles from Bulicame. This three-basin spa is known for its lively social scene, which, for the uninitiated, is a lot like crashing a private pool party. “You see the same people every day,” said one of the chatty regulars sitting in chest-high water. “It's like the coffee bar in the morning, but we happen to be sitting in smelly water.”

Le Pozze di San Sisto, about five miles south of Viterbo, may be the plushest, thanks to its civic-minded bathers. And Terme dei Papi is the most commercial, with its campuslike structures and spa product line.

The thermal baths around Viterbo weren't always so inviting. Until a few years ago, the pools were littered with trash. Taking advantage of the parasite-killing sulfurous water, farmers would bring their livestock for a dip, sometimes even lowering horses or sheep into the pool as people were bathing.

That began to change after Mr. Faperdue wrote a series of articles about the spas for the local newspaper. “It caused quite a scandal,” he said. Local residents, unaware of the state of the spas, were outraged. A volunteer force sprang up to police the springs.

At Bagnaccio, regular bathers now pay voluntary annual dues of 12 to 18 euros (about $16.60 to $25 at $1.38 to the euro) to keep the pools clean. Le Pozze di San Sisto went a step further: it became a members-only cultural association (annual dues of 15 euros, plus a 10-euro initiation fee). Unlike Bagnaccio, San Sisto checks for memberships at the door, which may explain why it may be the cleanest and most family-friendly of the wild spas.

“I liked the spa so much, I bought a house nearby just to be close to it,” said Mario Bracci, a resident of Rome who is the president of the San Sisto cultural association. “When the condition of the place was worsening, I decided to do something about it, so that's when we formed the association.” With 25,000 members, Le Pozze di San Sisto offers perks other area spas do not: a bar, changing rooms, picnic tables and seminars on yoga, crystal therapy and massage.

For spagoers seeking even more amenities, Terme dei Papi, or Baths of the Popes, a few miles west of Viterbo's historical center, offers up-market comforts in exchange for a more sterile atmosphere. Terme dei Papi now charges 10 euros to float in its sleek 100,000-square-foot pool. Much of the original medieval architecture has been replaced by charmless structures where Swedish massages and mud baths are administered by stern women in medical garb.

That may explain why spas like Bulicame seem to hold more appeal for the locals. In addition to being free, its commercial-free atmosphere and ancient Roman ruins infuse the bath with history. Besides, Dante's journey through “Inferno” and Bulicame eventually led him to “Paradiso.”

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE

Viterbo is about 50 miles north of Rome. The two-hour train ride from Rome's Ostiense railway station departs hourly and costs 4.10 euros, or about $5.65 at $1.38 to the euro (www.trenitalia.com). By car, take the SS2 Cassia Bis straight to Viterbo, about one hour.

SPAS

Bulicame (corner of Strada Provinciale Tuscanese and Strada delle Terme): A 10-minute drive from Viterbo's historical center, it has four baths of varying degrees and a smattering of Roman ruins. Free.

Bagnaccio (from the S2 Cassia north, take the S7 toward Marta and turn left at Via del Garinei, a gravel road): A members-only bath, it has three pools that attract chatty and friendly regulars.

Le Pozze di San Sisto (Cassia south, toward Vetralla; 39-3286-893-884; www.lepozzedisansisto.org): About five miles south of Viterbo, its natural landscape and plush amenities brings spa lovers from all over the area.

Terme dei Papi (Strada Bagni 12, 39-0761-3501, www.termedeipapi.it): A mile or so from Viterbo, this famed spa is the most commercial of the bunch.

HOTELS

The Hotel Niccolo V at Terme dei Papi (Strada Bagni 12, 39-0761-350-555, www.termedeipapi.it) has 23 spacious rooms, some overlooking the thermal pool, starting at 120 euros.

Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

NOT SO HUMBLE Fried clams, big bellies bulging, at the Clam Box in Ipswich, Mass.

RECAPTURING a childhood memory is nearly impossible. Chasing after it in a black 1964 Thunderbird convertible with red interior certainly helps.

The memory: lightly fried clams with big, juicy bellies, like the kind I munched on nearly every summer weekend growing up in Swansea, Mass. The car, owned by my friend Bob Pidkameny: a nod to my godfather, a local celebrity and stock car driver, who would pile my two cousins and me into whatever sleek beauty he was tinkering with and take us to Macray’s in Westport, Mass. There we sat — three lard slicks — digging into red-and-white cardboard boxes, while screams from the riders on the Comet, the wooden roller coaster at a nearby amusement park, floated across the highway.

Fried clams are to New England what barbecue is to the South. Like barbecue, the best clams come from small roadside shacks run in pragmatic mom-and-pop style. Flinty Northerners, like their porcine-loving counterparts, can be fanatically loyal to their favorite spots. To eat at any place but Macray’s was considered familial treason when I was growing up — it was Macray’s or nothing, until it was shuttered and we were set adrift.

This summer, in search of the clams of my youth, Bob and I covered more than 625 miles, visited 16 shacks and unashamedly basked in the attention the Thunderbird commanded from Branford, Conn., to Portland, Me., and back. In between rolls of antacid and scoops of ice cream, the unofficial finish to a fried-clam meal, we found that this summertime classic is even more fleeting than the season of its peak popularity.

Storms, public taste, government warnings about saturated fats, even school vacation schedules conspired to keep the clams of my memory mostly out of reach. But every once in a while, fate jiggered events and passed me a pint or two of the luscious, plump-bellied beauties I remember.

To many New Englanders the humble clam, which stars in chowders, clambakes and clam cakes, reaches its quintessence when coated and fried. And ever since July 3, 1916, when Lawrence Woodman, a k a Chubby, the founder of Woodman’s in Essex, Mass., fried a clam in lard normally reserved for his famous potato chips, cooks have been trying to create the perfect fried clam.

But unlike pit masters who rabidly guard their secret sauce recipes, fry cooks are an open book. All work with the same four elements: soft-shell clams, a dipping liquid, a coating and oil. According to almost all the cooks and owners I met the liquid is usually evaporated milk, and the coating is nothing more than some combination of flours: regular, corn or pastry. Most places use canola or soybean oil, which are high in unsaturated fats. Only Woodman’s and Essex Seafood, in Essex, Mass., still fry clams in pure lard.

So why are the clams I dream of so hit-or-miss?

“I’ve been doing this for 21 years,” said Dave Blaney, owner of the Sea Swirl in Mystic, Conn., “and the hardest part is training the new kids.” He explained that it takes two weeks to train summer help, usually college students, but it requires almost two months of supervision to turn them into bona fide fry cooks. He warned me about visiting shacks too early in the season (when the students are gearing up) or too late (when the exodus occurs, and deep-fryers can be left in the hands of most anyone — the owners’ sons or daughters, say, or the cleaning help).

Improperly cooked clams can range from oil-laden to burned. Indeed, the Clam Shack in Kennebunkport, Me., a favorite place I’ve been recommending to friends for years, presented Bob and me with a pint of puny dark-brown clams that tasted faintly of burned liver. Champlin’s Restaurant in Narragansett, R.I., another well-regarded spot, served clams so overcooked we dumped them after eating only a few. In both places, the kitchen crews looked like a cast from “The Real World” on MTV.

The Sea Swirl’s clams, on the other hand, were golden, with a light crunch, and the bellies, while on the smaller side, were plump and filled with ocean flavor. What caught my attention was that the siphons, or “necks,” were snipped off. That made for a soft chew, without the rubber-eraser bite common to most fried clams — even, I must admit, those from the hallowed boxes I remember at Macray’s.

I asked if this was a customary practice of purveyors. “No, I snip them here,” Mr. Blaney said. “Otherwise I’m at the mercy of the supplier, and I can’t afford that.” Of all the places we visited, only the Sea Swirl offered completely snipped necks; the others sold clams with just the tops nicked off.

This snipping, though, shouldn’t be confused with the iconic, and tasteless, clam strips featured on every Howard Johnson menu in New England. These impostors can be as varied as de-bellied steamers — a rarity — and slices cut from the “tongue” of the larger multipurpose Atlantic surf clam. No strip has the oceanic flavor of a true steamer with its belly firmly attached.

It was later that day, after leaving two small Massachusetts shacks empty-handed, that we understood just how much weather influences what we eat, or rather do not eat. As a result of several days of heavy downpours and runoff earlier in the week, the clam flats, the most highly prized of them off the coast of the state’s North Shore, specifically Ipswich and Essex, were closed.

The water can take several days to normalize after a big storm, according to Curt Fougere, a great-grandson of Chubby Woodman and the manager of Woodman’s. That’s why those smaller spots, which don’t sell as many clams as Woodman’s, had to turn us away. Larger places with purchasing muscle can buy from Cape Cod or even as far away as Maryland and Canada, but none of those clams have the Ipswich richness, a byproduct of the nutrient-filled mud.

“Cape Cod clams tend to be gritty,” Mr. Blaney said, “because they come from sandbars rather than mud flats.” Maryland steamers, while deliciously large, are too soft, he said, and break apart while cooking. Maine clams are considered the closest to Ipswich clams, and are the most common substitute.

In between shouts from classic car enthusiasts along Route 1, Bob and I theorized about the reasons for the dearth of the big-belly clams. We batted around global warming, pollution, disease, but none seemed likely to have knocked out only the pudgy clams. No, the biggest threat, we discovered, was far more menacing: fashion.

“Clams kind of go through cycles,” said Terry Cellucci, an owner of J. T. Farnham’s, one-third of the famous Essex clam shack trifecta that includes Woodman’s and Essex Seafood. For years, she explained, smaller clams have been in vogue. “Right now that’s what our customers like, so that’s what we buy.” The same was true of most every place we visited. The clams at Farnham’s fried up dark golden and pleasantly crunchy but were missing that burst of juicy belly brininess.

Two diners at the next table in Farnham’s, Janice Shohet of Lynnfield, Mass., and her guest, Stacey Malcolm, of Wichita, Kan., were of the plump-clam camp. When asked their favorite of the three popular Essex spots, Ms. Shohet tapped the table. “I like it here — it feels like a real seaside place,” she said, referring to the deep-blue inlet outside. Then she mentioned the most important clue to my past: “But we love the Clam Box, too. They give you a choice of big or small bellies.”

As we pulled up outside the Clam Box, eight miles northwest in Ipswich, Mass., the first thing we noticed — aside from the whimsical roof that looks like (what else?) an opened clam box — was the line snaking out the door. It numbered more than 20 and according to the owner, Marina Aggelakis — known to all as Chickie — had started forming, as always, 30 minutes before opening.

Taking Ms. Shohet’s advice, I searched the huge menu above the order window and found the one line of neat, tight printing I was hoping to see: “Big belly clams available on request.” The Clam Box was the only shack on our trip to offer up this critical piece of information unbidden.

When I ordered a pint of the big bellies, the woman behind the counter winced: “Are you sure? They’re big.”

“I’m positive.”

“You’ll only get about nine,” she said.

“That’s fine.”

She tried once more to dissuade me, but I resisted. When my number was called, a tray was pushed through the pickup window: on it was a mound of golden clams with bellies so big and soft the coating was chipping off. The necks, though not trimmed like those at the Sea Swirl, had none of the elastic bite I had encountered in many pints along the way. And the bellies dripped sweet, briny clam juice down my chin.

To pull this all off, Ms. Aggelakis uses only Ipswich clams unless bad weather or high demand causes her to turn to Maine suppliers. She also double-dips her clams while cooking. Excess coating stays behind in the first deep-fryer, allowing for cleaner cooking in the second. In addition, she closes the restaurant between lunch and dinner — unheard-of — to change the oil, ensuring a clean taste all day long.

It was an offhand comment, though, that gave me the final piece of the puzzle: darker-fried clams, she said, have a nuttier taste, while the lighter version lets the clam flavor predominate. Bingo. “I like to please my customers,” she added. “Some like them big, small, lightly fried, dark — we give them what they want.” Funny, the concept of requesting anything special at a clam shack’s takeout window had eluded me for 40 years.

Putting together the experience from the trip, I decided to try my hand at customizing my meal at Lenny’s Indian Head Inn in Branford, Conn. First, I called ahead because we had had two days of steady rain. The clams were frying. When I ordered, I asked the waitress, a bubbly young woman, if the restaurant had big-bellied clams. She wasn’t sure, so went to ask the cook.

She returned deeply crestfallen. All he had, she said, was medium-size, “but he’ll try to pick out the biggest ones.” Equally crestfallen, I agreed and asked for them to be lightly fried.

What was placed in front of me 10 minutes later was a platter with clams nearly as large as those at the Clam Box. They had a light golden almost tempuralike coating. And the bellies? They were briny, sweet and so juicy a lobster bib wouldn’t have been out of the question.

I could almost hear the screams from the Comet again.

Ed Alcock for The New York Times

In the summer, the Eiffel Tower is open until 12:45 a.m., and once an hour its own lights fire off.

LIKE many of the best things in life, this one came along by chance — though it had been hiding in plain sight.

On a witheringly hot summer day a few weeks ago, our niece and daughter had chickened out of the trek to the Eiffel Tower, and the long wait to go up it. But a friend recalled that it was open at night, and, indeed, to my surprise I learned that you could ride up as late as midnight.

So we set off, and hit the tower line around 10 p.m. As during the day, the lines snaked away from the elevators at the north and east pillars, and the stairs in the south pillar. But you weren't wilting in heat, forced to buy bottled water or ice cream at exorbitant rates from nearby stands. Nor was the wait quite as long — an hour or so, better than the 90 minutes you can expect on the average summer day in July and August, when the tower attracts up to 31,000 visitors during the hours the elevators are open.

The crowning pleasure was, of course, the view that unfolded at the second stage. There you are, 377 feet above Paris, with the illuminated bridges sparkling in the Seine's reflection, the cleverly illuminated tricolor fluttering above the vast crystal roof of the Grand Palais, the summer Ferris wheel turning above the Tuileries gardens, tossing shadowy light onto the Rue de Rivoli and toward the Louvre. Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Coeur, the Invalides, the Panthéon, St.-Sulpice — all these famous monuments laid out in a visual feast.

Sure, by day, this is a spectacular view. You see in detail how Paris has preserved its ancient core, cleverly consigning the architectural gems or monstrosities of the late 20th century to the city's outer reaches, where they cannot sully the wonder of the heart. You appreciate, too, the hint of the Mediterranean that is part of Paris's lure: the buildings are pale, like many across Southern Europe, with streets running like dark rivulets across the cityscape.

At night, however, there is a seductive magic to the glittering spectacle of Paris. And there is mystery, the hint of romance and adventure, in all those dark spots dotted with lamplight and the odd burst of neon color from stores and theaters. What is going on down there, in between the lights?

For the complete thrill, you must go to the summit (elevator access to the top is limited, so to be sure of making it in time, get to the tower line by 9 p.m.). That puts you roughly 1,000 feet above all this. On a rainy night, your head is literally in the clouds, which scud across a sky riven by the spotlight that rotates continuously from the apex, adding another aspect to that view.

Everyone is beguiled: Waldemar Neufeld, 40, on his third visit to Paris from Koblenz in Germany, simply rolled his eyes when someone asked what was different at night. “Everything.” The Cisneros family, from Montclair, N.J., was enthralled. “I think it's great; you just see it all sparkle,” said Claudia, 9, her eyes radiant. “C'est très, très, très bien,” gushed her mother. Even a more cynical spectator, a middle-aged Russian named Valentin who noted proudly that “I am from St. Petersburg, so you can't surprise me with much,” conceded: “I got what I wanted. This is how it should be.”

At the summit, there are clear, helpful guides to all the monuments you can see, and reminders of how far you are from home: 9,739 kilometers from Tokyo, for instance. You gaze in at replicas of Gustave Eiffel's office and apartment on the tower, where, on Sept. 10, 1889, the year the tower was built for the World's Fair, Eiffel received Thomas Edison, who brought a model of his recently unveiled phonograph. And, yes, you will feel the tower sway.

There are so many marvels to a nighttime visit, but here are two more.

First, the elevator ride up and down, through the illuminated lattice work of the tower itself, and the even greater pleasure when it is lighted — a giant flashing sparkler with 20,000 light bulbs, for 10 minutes, on the hour every hour till 2 a.m. (1 a.m. in winter). The ride makes you appreciate the true genius of Eiffel's tower: it is an engineering marvel and an aesthetic masterpiece, its curls and swirls echoing the filigree stonework of Notre Dame's rose windows, or the carefully wrought balconies of all those buildings along Haussmann's boulevards. You can see this by day, but much more clearly at night.

Secondly — and this too is true by day, but enhanced by the cocoon of darkness — it's a chance to savor all those people around you. I have traveled a lot, but can think of few spots where you will see so many different people from across the planet as you do here. Lovers kiss. An aging Chinese woman in a wheelchair marvels, while a young South Asian man in another wheelchair strains upward so his friend can snap his face against the backdrop of that nighttime view. You will hear Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, German, oh, yes, English, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and, of course, Chinese.

It is also here that you appreciate how fast mass tourism has grown. Last year, the Eiffel Tower had a record 6,695,000 visitors, according to Carole Baudry, of the Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the private body that runs the tower. That is one million more than in 1997. When the Chinese (already 4 percent of the annual visitor total) really start traveling en masse, will 15 hours a day be enough to accommodate all those rightly longing to see one of the wonders of the modern world?

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Eiffel Tower is open daily (www.eiffel-tower.com). From June 15 to Sept. 1, the elevator is open 9 a.m. to 12:45 a.m. Stairs are open 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Last tickets are sold 45 minutes before close; last trip to the summit is officially 11 p.m. but may be earlier depending on weather and crowds. Around the Easter and May holidays, these hours also apply. Otherwise, from Jan. 1 to June 14, and Sept. 2 to Dec. 31, the elevator is open 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.; stairs, 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Elevator to summit: 11.50 euros (about $16 at $1.38 to the euro); 6.30 euros for children age 3 to 11. To second stage: 7.80 euros; 4.30 euros for children. The first stage, which features a movie on Eiffel Tower history, is 4.50 euros; children, 2.30 euros. Disabled people with papers attesting to disability go at reduced rates, as does one accompanying person. Wheelchairs are not allowed to the summit.

RESTAURANTS

Altitude 95 (telephone 33-1-45-55-20-04), on the first stage, has a panoramic view over the Seine and the Trocadero. Appetizers start at 11 euros, and main courses from 17 euros (for a vegetable plate); salmon fillet with asparagus risotto is 24 euros; and a two-course fixed-price lunch is 26 euros. The Jules Verne (33-1-45-55-61-44), on the second stage, is pricey; at least 100 euros a head for dinner; lunch menu is 65 euros. Reservations for dinner are needed at least six weeks in advance.

More suggestions on what to do and see in Paris can be found at nytimes.com/travel.

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

The church at Laguna Pueblo.

By MARY DUENWALD

IN October of 1852, a French clergyman saddles up a fine cream-colored mule and rides south out of Santa Fe. As the new Catholic bishop of the territory of New Mexico, he is embarking on his first visit to Indian pueblos.

“His great diocese was still an unimaginable mystery to him,” wrote Willa Cather in her novel “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” “He was eager to be abroad in it, to know his people.”

Isleta Pueblo, 13 miles south of Albuquerque, looks almost familiar to the bishop, with its startlingly white church, its clustered town and its acacia trees of the same blue-green color he knew in the south of France.

The scenery turns strange, though, as he rides west with his young Indian guide to Laguna Pueblo, and he begins not to believe his own eyes. Clumps of wild pumpkin look “less like a plant than like a great colony of gray-green lizards, moving and suddenly arrested by fear.” What seems at first to be bright waves of sand turn out to be petrified rock, “yellow as ochre” and dotted with ancient juniper trees.

By the time the travelers approach Ácoma, the third pueblo, they are passing colossal rock mesas, jutting upward 700 feet from the sandy plain. These formations look so bizarre to the bishop as to seem not part of nature at all, but rather like “vast cathedrals” or the remnants of a monumental city.

Today, these three pueblos are connected by freeways. Isleta and Ácoma have their own casinos. But each community still preserves its ancient identity. Eighty years after Cather's novel was published and more than 150 since the events she recounted, it is possible to use her narration as a visitor's guide. One warm March day, paperback in hand, I found my way to all three pueblos, grateful for Cather's sensitivity to the great beauty and mystery of the Southwest and for her ability to bring to life the characters who had encountered one another in the same landscape so long ago.

Cather's portrayal of Jean Marie Latour (her fictional name for the real-life bishop, John Baptist Lamy) paints a complicated but very romantic picture of New Mexico in the mid-19th century, just after its annexation to the United States. Despite its fictional embellishments, her book provides a realistic account of the bishop's efforts to replace the lawless and profligate Spanish priests of the territory, his visits to a beloved Navajo chief, his friendship with the Old West explorer Kit Carson and his dream of building a cathedral in Santa Fe.

But it is the trip to the pueblos that reveals the most about the bishop's predicament in the new country, because it imagines how he felt as he first entered the strange world of the Pueblo Indians. In Cather's telling: “When he approached the pueblo of Isleta, gleaming white across a low plain of gray sand, Father Latour's spirits rose. It was beautiful, that warm, rich whiteness of the church and the clustered town. The church and the Isleta houses were made of adobe, whitewashed with a bright gypsum.”

Today the pueblo houses are earth-colored, but the church is still pure white, its surface still regularly refinished. With its plain walls and heavy iron bells, it is an archetype of humble Southwestern style.

The church would have looked a little different in the bishop's day, and even then not as it did when it was first built in 1613. The roof and choir loft of the original building — a simple, long, high-ceilinged sanctuary — were destroyed in 1680, when the Pueblo Indians rebelled against the Franciscan missionaries. Rebuilt on the same walls in 1716, the church was given two wooden bell towers, now gone, which the bishop would have seen.

Leaving Isleta, Father Latour and his guide, Jacinto, ride through a sandstorm on their way to Laguna Pueblo, passing by the lake for which the village was named. That lake is dry now. But the 300-year-old mission church of St. Joseph remains precisely as Cather described it: “painted above and about the altar with gods of wind and rain and thunder, sun and moon, linked together in a geometrical design of crimson and blue and dark green, so that the end of the church seemed to be hung with tapestry.”

The bishop says Mass at St. Joseph's, but retires with Jacinto to the rocks north of the village to camp for the night. As the sun sets, the two men have the briefest of conversations about the stars and then lapse into their accustomed silence, contemplating the night sky.

“There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind,” Cather wrote of the bishop, “and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.”

The two continue their ride west, across the low plain among the great mesas, and the bishop is struck with the way each of the rock towers seems to be “duplicated by a cloud mesa, like a reflection, which lay motionless above it or moved slowly up from behind it.”

On the freshly paved highway through the same territory, just before reaching Ácoma, I passed another mesa that once had been inhabited, but was a ghost town even by the time the bishop rode by. As Jacinto explains in the novel, “the stairway which had been the only access to it was broken off by a great storm many centuries ago, and its people had perished up there from hunger.”

How, the bishop asks, did the people come up with the idea of living hundreds of feet in the air on naked rocks with no soil or water?

“A man can do whole lot when they hunt him day and night like an animal,” Jacinto says. “Navajos on the north, Apaches on the south; the Ácoma run up a rock to be safe.”

Ácoma is no longer the community it once was either. Ácoma families keep houses there as weekend and vacation homes. But the tribe has decided not to outfit the mesa top with electricity or running water, and it now lives mainly in a village on the valley floor. To reach the top now requires signing up for a guided tour, and taking a bus ride up.

For the bishop and Jacinto, a rugged rock stairway with primitive steps and handholds is the only route. When he reaches the top, the bishop is amazed at the white two- and three-story dwellings clustered together on the 10-acre pueblo, with “not a tree or blade of green upon it.” And he is alarmed at the sight of the mission church.

“Gaunt, grim, gray, its nave rising some 70 feet to a sagging, half-ruined roof, it was more like a fortress than a place of worship,” Cather wrote.

The bishop wonders why such a big church had even been built there in the early 1600s: “Powerful men they must have been, those Spanish Fathers, to draft Indian labor for this great work without military support.”

The priests forced the Indians to carry up not only building materials for the church but great quantities of earth for the churchyard cemetery.

“Every stone in that structure,” the bishop mused, “every handful of earth in those many thousand pounds of adobe, was carried up the trail on the backs of men and boys and women. And the great carved beams of the roof — Father Latour looked at them with amazement. In all the plain through which he had come he had seen no trees but a few stunted piñons. He asked Jacinto where these huge timbers could have been found.

“ ‘San Mateo mountain, I guess.'

“ ‘But the San Mateo mountains must be 40 or 50 miles away. How could they bring such timbers?'

“Jacinto shrugged. ‘Ácomas carry.' Certainly there was no other explanation.”

The Ácoma woman who guided my tour seemed to regard the building of the church with the same outrage. The Indians resented the missionaries' demands on their ancestors to such a degree, she remarked, that the Ácoma today speak only English and their native language, but never Spanish.

The Indians clung to their ancient religion even as they genuinely cooperated in the Catholic rituals. The practices still go on side by side. A short walk from the mission church is the pueblo's sacred kiva, its white-painted outdoor ladders angled northward, toward the place from which the ancestors came.

When the bishop says Mass in the church, he finds it difficult to go through the ceremony. “Before him, on the gray floor, in the gray light, a group of bright shawls and blankets, some 50 or 60 silent faces; above and behind them the gray walls. He felt as if he were celebrating Mass at the bottom of the sea, for antediluvian creatures; for types of life so old, so hardened, so shut within their shells, that the sacrifice on Calvary could hardly reach back so far. ...When he blessed them and sent them away, it was with a sense of inadequacy and spiritual defeat.”

Father Latour waits until the next day to descend. That night, he sleeps in the loggia in the corner of the priest's cloister. “He was on a naked rock in the desert, in the stone age, a prey to homesickness for his own kind, his own epoch,” Cather wrote, “for European man and his glorious history of desire and dreams.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

Isleta Pueblo is a 15-minute drive south of Albuquerque on Interstate 25. Laguna is a half-hour drive west of Albuquerque off Interstate 40 (exit 114), and Ácoma is 20 to 25 minutes farther west from Laguna. To reach Ácoma, take exit 102, turn south and drive through mesa country for 11 miles. Park at the visitors center.

WHERE TO STAY

The pueblos are close enough to Albuquerque that it is convenient to stay in hotels there. But the Sky City Casino Hotel in Ácoma, 11 miles north of the old mesa-top pueblo, has modern, clean and comfortable rooms for $89 a night (888-759-2489; www.skycity.com).

To get a flavor of the bishop's favored New Mexico landscape, stay on the grounds of his old getaway. The sprawling Bishop's Lodge (505-983-6377; www.bishopslodge.com), three miles north of downtown Santa Fe, has preserved the simple little white wood-and-stone chapel and rooms where Bishop John Baptist Lamy planted orchards and spent his retirement. Today, the 450-acre resort offers horseback riding, pool swimming, tennis, extensive walking trails and, in the spa, massage therapy. Rooms range from $200 to $1,500.

WHAT TO SEE

St. Augustine Church (505-869-3398) at Isleta Pueblo and the San Jose Mission Church (505-552-9330) in Laguna are both open to the public. (No charge but donations are accepted.) The only way to see the old Ácoma mesa-top pueblo and its mission church of St. Stephen is to take a guided tour (800-747-0181; www.skycity.com). Buses drive visitors to the top of the mesa, and the tour of the church, cemetery and surrounding homes and cisterns takes about an hour. The cost is $12 for adults, $11 for seniors and $9 for children. A $10 permit is required to carry a camera.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (505-982-5619) in Santa Fe, whose construction was planned and overseen by Bishop Lamy, is a block east of Santa Fe Plaza and open to the public.

WHERE TO SHOP

The best place to buy Ácoma pottery, distinguished by pale pink clay and delicate designs, is on the mesa top. Individual artists sell directly to visitors from tables on the tour path.

In Isleta, Pueblo Indian pottery and other arts and crafts are on sale at Josephine Padilla's Hummingbird Gift Shop (505-869-3941), a short stroll from the mission church.

Christinne Muschi for The New York Times

Next year, Quebec City will celebrate the 400th anniversary of its founding by Samuel de Champlain.

WHEN the makers of the 2002 movie “Catch Me If You Can” were looking for a stand-in for France for a pivotal scene, they looked to Quebec City. With its fortified stone walls, narrow streets, venerable churches, beckoning cafes, and French-speaking populace, Quebec oozes Old World Gallic charm.

But despite the sense of history palpable in the old stone buildings and narrow streets, Quebec — set to celebrate its 400th anniversary in 2008 — is also a vital, modern city, and a new crop of artists and entrepreneurs are enlivening old neighborhoods and imbuing them with a youthful energy and spirit. The energy is especially noticeable now, as the city prepares to celebrate the anniversary with an $83 million party.

A full calendar of events highlighting the city's history, culture, food, theater, music, art and outdoor recreation opportunities are on offer (information: 418-648-2008; www.myquebec2008.com). In anticipation of the yearlong celebration the federal, provincial and city governments have invested $151 million in infrastructure projects, including improved access to the St. Lawrence River with a new 1.5-mile riverside park, and Espace 400, a gathering place and performance site that will be at the heart of many commemorative activities, said Roxanne St-Pierre, a spokeswoman for the anniversary committee. In addition, she said, the Jean Lesage International Airport is undergoing a major face lift.

This is all to celebrate the founding of the city in 1608 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who established the early settlement on the banks of the St. Lawrence. In doing so, Champlain began an era when, according to the University of Laval anthropologist Bernard Arcand, who has been working on the celebration, “Quebec City became the center of the new universe, from the Arctic to the Mississippi Delta.”

The buildup to the French Revolution, the geopolitical struggles of the native peoples, the Counter-Reformation in England — all influenced the formation of the provincial capital. Although rich in history — the Old Town has been designated a Unesco World Heritage site as “one of the best examples of a fortified colonial city” — visitors should also understand that Quebec is a modern city, with a growing technology industry.

Quebec is divided into the Lower Town and the Upper Town, connected by steep streets, funiculars and staircases (one near the turreted Château Frontenac hotel is called the Breakneck Staircase). Old Quebec, home to many restaurants and shops, is in the part of the city within the walls of the old fortifications, in Upper Town, as is the Quartier Petit Champlain. Narrow streets and limited parking make these areas ideal for walking.

Just outside the gates are the Plains of Abraham, where a battle in 1759 resulted in the French ceding Quebec to the British. The plains are now a public park offering walking trails and river views and, in winter, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and sledding.

Nearby is the Lower Town neighborhood of St. Roch, once a gritty industrial area, recently revived by young artists and entrepreneurs. It offers some of the city's most cutting-edge cuisine, theater, art installations and clothiers.

The official 400th anniversary inauguration will be on Dec. 31, 2007, with an outdoor multimedia show at the Place d'Youville, just inside the walls that separate the Old Town from the new. Ms. St-Pierre said that images will be projected onto a “screen” made of falling snow ejected from snow cannons.

On June 5, 2008, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts (866-220-2150; www.mnba.qc.ca) on the Plains of Abraham will show 277 pieces from the Louvre in an exhibit entitled “The Louvre in Quebec City: Arts and Life.” Katherine Noreau, a spokeswoman for the Quebec museum, called the loan unprecedented and noted that pieces will be shown from all departments of the Louvre collections, including Egyptian Antiquity, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquity, Oriental Antiquity and Islamic Art, and will include art objects, paintings, sculptures and graphic art. From June 20 to July 29 of next year, the celebration continues with an event called “The Image Mill” at Espace 400. The sound and light show will use huge grain silos (nearly 2,000 feet long and 130 feet high) as projection screens. Ms. St-Pierre said that the slides would include images of both old and new Quebec and will be visible from all over.

July 3, the day commemorating Champlain's arrival, begins a four-day event featuring an “urban opera.” Ms. St-Pierre says it will feature at least 1,000 artists and use the city's buildings as a backdrop as it moves from one area to another. The opera will incorporate music, dance, fireworks and art and focus on combining Quebec history with an appreciation of the seasons.

The closing extravaganza, a special performance by the Cirque du Soleil written specially for the event, will be held on Oct. 19. Ms. St- Pierre said free tickets for the event, to be held at the Colisée, will be awarded by lottery, and that the performance will be projected onto a giant outdoor screen.

Even without the anniversary celebrations, there will be plenty to occupy the visitor (city tourism office: 877-783-1608; www.quebecregion.com). There are several notable museums: the Musée de la Civilisation and its sister museums, the Musée de l'Amérique Francaise, the Maison Chevalier, the Place-Royale Interpretation Center (866-710-8031; www.mcq.org), as well as the Fine Arts museum and shopping and dining year round. Summer offers outdoor cafes, galleries, a two-week music festival (www.infofestival.com), sailing, kayaking and canoeing on the St. Lawrence, and cycling tours of the nearby Île d'Orléans, home to many small farmers and artisanal food producers (866-941-9411; www.iledorleans.com).

In winter, outdoor skating rinks beckon in the Old Town, the 270-foot-high wooden toboggan run outside of the Frontenac offers a thrilling ride, and there are winter sports on the Plains of Abraham. A ferry ride across the St. Lawrence offers a breathtaking view of the city and, in winter, a chance to watch ice canoeists navigate the icy waters up close.

Ms. St-Pierre said Quebec is expecting that 2008 will bring a 5 percent increase in the five million visitors who pass through each year.

Most tourists will want to stay in or near the Old Town. The luxury-minded might check out the Auberge St.-Antoine, a Relais & Chateaux property (888-692-2211; www.saint-antoine.com, doubles from 289 Canadian dollars, or $240 at 1.08 Canadian dollars to $1 U.S.; in summer, and from 159 Canadian dollars in winter) or the castlelike Fairmont Le Château Frontenac (418-692-3861; www.fairmont.com; doubles from 299 Canadian dollars in summer, 199 dollars in winter).

For the budget-conscious, rooms at the small Manoir sur-le-Cap start at 105 Canadian dollars in summer and 75 dollars in winter (866-694-1987; www.manoir-sur-le-cap.com). Families may want to look at more affordable properties like Hotel Palace Royal (800-567-5276; www.hotelsjaro.com; standard rooms for a family of four start at 140 Canadian dollars in summer and 119 dollars in winter).

POTENTIAL PLAYGROUND An arid region of Crete that is the proposed site of the Cavo Sidero resort development.

ONE of the Mediterranean’s prized stretches of virgin coast lies on the eastern tip of the Greek island of Crete — more than 6,000 acres of land on a craggy peninsula dotted with scrubby bouquets of thyme and sage. If all goes as planned, a group of international investors will turn that land into Cavo Sidero, which is already being promoted as the largest eco-friendly luxury tourism development in southeastern Europe.

On paper, Cavo Sidero looks like the ideal confluence of traditional elegance and environmental respect. A brochure shows watercolors of whitewashed village homes and photographs of starfish, birds and a father and his young son surf fishing. Local environmentalists, however, say water-starved Crete cannot support this $1.6 billion year-round resort, which would include hotels, vacation homes and golf courses.

The debate over the project reflects a concern throughout the Mediterranean, which is now facing drought and scorching heat waves: can a resort built on fragile land be ecologically sound?

“In the Mediterranean, where there’s still a dynamic tourism industry, sustainability is crucial,” said Gabor Vereczi, environmental quality chief in the sustainable development department of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, based in Madrid. “Unfortunately, there are many developments going up in very arid areas. If they want to survive, it’s just good business sense to make sure all environmental safeguards are followed rigorously.”

Indeed, signs of an environmental crisis are everywhere in the region. Parts of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey are facing desertification, or the degradation of once-fertile soil, because of overbuilding, overgrazing, poor water resource management and an explosion in hothouse agriculture.

Many hoteliers and developers say they have already adopted greener practices. For instance, the Vila Sol Spa and Golf Resort in the Algarve region of Portugal and the Amathus Beach Hotel in Limassol, Cyprus, are touting their water management operations, while the Grecotel chain in Greece is experimenting with water-efficient organic farming in raising food for its hotels. Key Resorts, which operates the Mosa Trajectum resort near the southern city of Murcia in Spain, is promoting “100 percent ecological golfing”; its courses are built on biodegradable foam that is said to reduce water evaporation.

Dolphin Capital Partners, an Athens-based private equity firm specializing in real estate developments in southeast Europe, is working with resorts in Greece, Cyprus and Croatia that will have on-site desalination and wastewater treatment plants and use native plants for landscaping. One Dolphin project, Sitia Bay, is set to go up near the Cavo Sidero site.

“If you are somewhere with water problems, like eastern Crete, you cannot make the area all green, as if you’re recreating Norway,” said Spyros Tzoannos, Dolphin’s asset management director. “You have got to work with the natural environment.”

The Minoan Group, the developers who are planning Cavo Sidero, spent about 2 million euros on an environmental study and also pledged to build desalination and wastewater treatment plants. They say their golf courses will be filled with seashore paspalum, a salt-tolerant grass, and with local flora instead of grasses that require a lot of water. The developers have also partnered with a British-based environmental organization, Forum for the Future, and plan to educate vacationers and homeowners at Cavo Sidero on responsible water use.

“The last thing we want is for people to come here and drive through a desert,” said Christopher Egleton, president of the Minoan Group.

The Greek government strongly supports the project, which includes six villages with traditional homes, villas and apartments as well as hotels, sports facilities, restaurants and shops on about 1 percent of the site. The rest will be set aside for trails, nature areas and three golf courses. When the developers presented their plans earlier this year, the Greek tourism minister, Fani Palli-Petralia, said it would be “one of the greatest projects ever carried out in Greece.”

The Cavo Sidero land belongs to Toplou, a wealthy monastery that owns much of the land in eastern Crete, where it grazes goats and cultivates olives. Philotheos, the monastery’s abbot, has long wanted to invigorate the local economy with more tourism. In 1994, a foundation of which the abbot was a founder agreed to lease the tract, more than 6,000 acres, to the Minoan Group (then called Loyalward Ltd.) for 40 years with an option for 40 more years, in exchange for 10 percent of the gross annual revenue.

But many environmentalists and residents do not want the project. “We don’t want to be in the position of running out of water because it’s being pumped to the tourists there,” said Manolis Tsantakis, an Itanos council member who voted against Cavo Sidero.

Scientists say Greece’s water reserves could dwindle by a quarter by 2030 because of rising temperatures and a decrease in rainfall. The situation is especially sensitive in Crete, which faces chronic droughts and where half of the island is at risk of desertification.

Mr. Tsantakis and other critics of the project would rather see the site used for a public cultural park or not developed at all. They have taken their appeal to Greece’s highest court, which is set to hear the case late this fall.

Mr. Vereczi of the United Nations tourism organization says assessing the ecological viability of luxury developments can be difficult because it’s hard to define exactly what “eco” means in this context.

For many ecotourism devotees, “luxury is the opposite of eco,” said Antonis Petropoulos, director of the Athens-based Ecoclub, an international network of affordable lodges that focus on nature. In Spain, for instance, Ecoclub’s sole member is Mas Lluerna Eco Farm in Catalonia, where visitors live on an organic farm and surrounding wetlands and cook on solar-powered ovens.

Those looking for affordable ecotourism accommodations in the Mediterranean can check with groups such as Sustainable Travel International in Boulder, Colo., and the British-based Responsible Travel, which screen their member hotels for ecological responsibility. The European Union also awards “eco-labels” to accommodations that meet several guidelines, including limiting water usage and waste production. But the eco-label has gone to only a handful of operators, including Sunwing resorts in Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

“Part of the problem is that sustainability is a difficult thing to measure,” said Brian Mullis, president of Sustainable Travel International, which is working with Leading Hotels of the World to draft eco-certification guidelines for that organization’s 440 member hotels. That will take at least a year, said Kristin Glass, marketing director for Leading Hotels of the World.

Meanwhile, the Rome-based Luxury Camps and Lodges of the World offers an international directory of 89 small-scale “eco-luxury” options. Enrico Ducrot, the organization’s president, says he hopes more leisure resort developers in the Mediterranean get serious about sustainability.

“Unless a new model of sustainability is adopted,” Mr. Ducrot said, “it is hard to know who is just talking and who is the real thing.”

Gary Bartlett's 1957 Jaguar is the only XKSS that has never been restored.

Pebble Beach, Calif.

WHEN it came time to freshen up Michelangelo’s “David” a few years ago, a spirited debate broke out over which restoration process would be most appropriate for the priceless artwork. Though the cleaning techniques under consideration varied widely in their aggressiveness, it is safe to assume that no conservator recommended sandblasting the 14-foot tall hunk of marble to remove the centuries of accumulated grime.

A similar reverence for original finishes and the patina of time is developing among collectors of classic cars, an appreciation for automobiles that have been well preserved through the years rather than restored to showroom (or better) condition.

One sign of the evolving attitudes can be seen at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Élégance, taking place here today on the Monterey Peninsula. Considered the premier American concours, Pebble Beach added a Preservation Class for unrestored prewar cars in 2001; this year, a second Preservation Class, for unrestored postwar cars, is included.

The new class is a validation of the values held dear by collectors like Gary Bartlett of Muncie, Ind., who owns one of the most significant unrestored postwar cars, a 1957 Jaguar XKSS. One of 16 built before a factory fire ended production, it was the ultimate supercar of its era, essentially a street-legal version of the D-Type Le Mans racecar, and a favorite of celebrity playboys.

Mr. Bartlett purchased the Jaguar at a 1998 Christie’s auction, virtually untouched from new — a time capsule — and the only one of the 16 XKSS’s that had never been restored. The car, which was displayed at the 1957 Chicago Motor Show, had been all but given up for lost. In fact, it was hiding in plain sight, still in a garage, still in Chicago and in the hands of the second owner who had bought it in 1960.

Sloppy handwriting had resulted in the misreading of the owner’s last name and sent searchers on wild goose chases over the years. A dealer of rare cars, contacted by the second owner, took charge of the XKSS and consigned it to the Christie’s auction in London.

Externally, the car is exactly as it appeared in Chicago in 1957. The paint, the interior and even the tires, convertible top and top cover are original. Naturally, the car has a patina but it is utterly authentic and remarkably well preserved. Mr. Bartlett had the mechanical systems inspected and reconditioned as needed with original parts.

As a comparatively new pursuit, car collecting has yet to adopt the guidelines typically followed by collectors of other historic objects. Europeans have been a bit ahead of the curve on this; the mandate of the Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens, founded in 1966 in France, is to identify and classify vintage vehicles of all types and to assist in sorting out the differences among vehicles that are original, reproductions or fakes. No equivalent organization exists in the United States.

Tom Cotter, co-director of the Amelia Island Concours d’Élégance, a major show held in Florida each March, said he thought the psychology of car collectors was somewhat different from that of other collectors. Cars are an expression of one’s personality, and “car collectors are often perfectionists who simply cannot resist putting their thumbprint on a car,” he said.

“The first thing a lot of car collectors want to do when they buy a car is to tear it apart and make everything like new and to their particular preference.” That is understandable, he said, because cars, unlike most other types of collectibles, are actually used.

Collectors and preservationists outside the old-car hobby take exception to “better than new” restorations that result in cars finished to a level of perfection no production line could have achieved. According to Linda Edquist, a conservation specialist at the National Postal Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, the prime directive among preservationists is to do no harm.

The Smithsonian’s philosophy of preservation and conservation — among other things, knowing when to leave well enough alone — clearly resonates with Bloomington Gold, an organization based in Normal, Ill., that certifies vintage Corvettes based on levels of authenticity and preservation.

David Burroughs, founder and chief executive of the organization, said that cars were among the few collectible objects for which refinishing generally did not have a negative effect on value. “With nearly any other collectible object you can think of, whether it is a coin, a stamp, a piece of furniture or a firearm, refinishing harms the value.”

Mr. Burroughs recounts with a sense of resignation the large numbers of Corvette owners, who, disappointed at not winning top honors with their unrestored cars at the annual Bloomington Gold show, would return the next year with the same car, this time freshly redone. Mr. Burroughs would lament that “another authentic, original Corvette had been lost forever.”

In an effort to end Bloomington Gold’s unintended contribution to the practice of restoring cars that might have greater historical value if preserved in their original state, Mr. Burroughs created the concept of Survivor cars and registered the term as a trademark. Survivor certification is a straightforward and simple process that Mr. Burroughs says is applicable beyond Corvettes to other collectible cars and even nonautomotive historic items.

Survivor certification simply asks whether the car remains essentially intact — unrestored and unaltered — and whether it is preserved well enough to be a model for authentic restoration.

In simpler terms, Mr. Burroughs calls it a “worn-in but not worn-out” standard. In his opinion, restoring a car that has been certified as a Survivor is tantamount to an act of vandalism.

Mr. Burroughs’s preservationist zeal is such that Bloomington Gold will happily license its Survivor trademark free to any organization that wishes to use it, provided they adhere to the proper certification guidelines. Additionally, Mr. Burroughs and Bloomington Gold are planning for 2008 what will be the country’s first concours open only to well-preserved unrestored cars.

The Survivor concours seems like an idea whose time has come. In 2008, the Amelia Island Concours will add a class for them, said Mr. Cotter, the event’s co-director.

Mr. Bartlett’s XKSS has been successful in many shows; on a number of occasions, it has beaten competently restored cars. In addition, more people appreciate his car for the historic artifact it is, he said.

Several years ago, in the Louis Vuitton Concours at the Hurlingham Club in London, Mr. Bartlett watched the owner of a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider unload his car from a trailer with the help of workers wearing white gloves and outfits that resembled hazmat suits. As they were removing the plastic covers from the sealed Ferrari, Mr. Bartlett drove up in his Jaguar.

When the judging was done, the Ferrari owner was outraged at his defeat at the hands of the slightly scruffy Jaguar, but it was impossible to argue with the charm of the rare unrestored XKSS.

Its authenticity is what appeals to Mr. Bartlett. “Every rivet, the paint and the leather is as it was applied by craftsmen in Coventry, England, a half-century ago,” Mr. Bartlett said. “When I first purchased the car, whenever I’d show it, people would ask me, ‘When are you going to restore the XKSS?’ My answer was always the same: Never.”

FOR a vacation to Italy in June, Dominique Linchet had packed everything she thought her family of four would need when they arrived: toiletries, bathing suits, dental retainers. But when they stepped off their Alitalia flight in Rome, the suitcases they had checked were missing.

After filing a claim with the airline and being reassured by an Alitalia employee that they would be reimbursed for half of the expenses incurred because of the delay, the family frantically shopped for bare necessities.

“Underwear is not easy to find in Rome,” said Ms. Linchet, an associate professor of French from Birmingham, Ala., “except for the high-end kind.” Finding clothes that would fit her husband, whom she describes as “a big American guy,” proved difficult as well. “It wasn’t like going to an American mall and finding what we need at the Gap,” she said.

The Linchets ultimately spent 2,300 euros (about $3,250 at $1.41 to the euro) on everything from bathing suits to tennis gear as the days passed and the bags remained lost. “I think we were pretty good at just buying what we needed,” Ms. Linchet said. “At the same time, we had to buy enough so we could have a nice week of vacation.” She added, “When you think about it, 2,300 euros for four people is not outrageous, but it was about $3,000 more than we had planned on spending.”

Finally, nine days into the trip, the Linchets were reunited with all of their luggage, thanks in large part to repeated visits to the airport to search for their belongings.

But as August wore on, they still hadn’t yet received any compensation for their inconvenience in June. “What is the airlines’ responsibility in such a situation, and what are the travelers’ options in making sure that this responsibility is fulfilled?” Ms. Linchet said.

It’s a question on many travelers’ minds these days as reports of mishandled luggage continue to increase. The top 20 domestic airlines mishandled 7.92 checked bags per 1,000 passengers in June, higher than both June 2006’s 6.30 rate and May 2007’s 5.93 mark, according to the most recent Air Travel Consumer Report issued by the Transportation Department.

The answer largely depends on the carrier. Most will pay for reasonable expenses you incur while your bag is missing, but specifics are often vague. For example, if you are traveling away from home on United, its Web site says, it “may consider up to 50 percent reimbursement of the necessities purchased, taking into account your ability to use the new items in the future.”

Other airlines state that they will attempt to return your luggage within 24 hours but make no promises about reimbursing you for your costs. Northwest is among the most straightforward. Its Web site states that a customer whose luggage is delayed may request a free toiletries kit at the airport and reimbursement for personal items purchased as a result of the delay, limited to $50 for the first 24 hours and $25 for each additional day of delay, up to $150 per ticketed passenger. Alitalia says it refunds all expenses incurred by clients during the period they are without luggage. The airline is investigating why Ms. Linchet has not yet received reimbursement.

Airlines are required to pay valid claims for luggage that is never returned, but the Transportation Department doesn’t specify how much. In fact, liability rules favor the airlines, not the passengers. For a trip within the United States, an airline can invoke a ceiling of $3,000 a passenger on the amount of money it must pay, up from $2,800 before Feb. 28, according to the “Fly-Rights” guide of the Transportation Department (airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm).

On international round trips that originate in the United States, the allowable liability limit is set by a treaty called the Montreal Convention at roughly $1,500, depending on the exchange rate of the dollar against foreign currencies.

When Air France misplaced her bag for her entire weeklong trip in Europe last month, Rebecca Bernstein, 13, from Bergen County, N.J., spent $564 to furnish herself with clothing, luggage and toiletries. Her father, Peter A. Bernstein, a marketing communications consultant, paid for the items and eventually received an apology letter and a note saying he would be getting a check for the full cost.

BUT that was only after he made multiple long-distance calls to the airline’s Paris office (after being turned away by the stateside customer service office), wrote a letter to the airline detailing the issue, and eventually tracked down the assistant to an Air France executive to hear his case.

“All in all, not exactly a ringing endorsement of Air France,” Mr. Bernstein said. His advice for getting the airline to pay up: Go through the appropriate channels to start with. Keep a diary of what you’re told, and include the names of people you speak with. “If that’s unsatisfactory, call headquarters and ask to speak to the secretary of whoever is in charge,” he said. “Then you say, ‘O.K., here’s what I’ve done.’ ”

His daughter’s lost bag eventually made its way to Mr. Bernstein after she returned home. “A guy shows up in a station wagon loaded with bags and proceeds to drop off a green bag,” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “My daughter’s is black. I look at the guy and say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. That’s not her bag.’ ” Mr. Bernstein ended up digging the right bag out of the back of the vehicle.

For those who don’t mind paying for convenience, companies with names like Luggage Express, Luggage Forward and Virtual Bellhop will pick up and deliver bags, bypassing the airline baggage system altogether. Prices vary depending on a bag’s weight, destination and shipping time.

Luggage Express charges an average of $89, for example, to send a duffel bag weighing up to 40 pounds one way ahead within the United States, with three to five days of shipping time. Overnight delivery costs $137.

You can also buy travel insurance to protect yourself if your bag is lost or delayed. American Express, for example, charges cardholders $5.75 a trip for up to $500 against loss or damage to your checked or carry-on bags and up to $200 for replacing personal items when bags are delayed six hours or more.

Lou Urneck

Nikos Tsanos, the writer’s guide to fly-fishing in Greece, casts on the Kalarritikos River in the mountains of Epirus, the northwest region of the country.

MY search for trout fishing in Greece began on the slopes of the Taygetus Mountains of southern Greece where Spartan boys once toughened themselves for battle against the Persians at Thermopylae.

Not finding fish in the Evrotas River, which waters the oranges and olives of the Spartan plain, I pushed farther up into the mountains of the Peloponnesus, the big peninsula that gives Greece its characteristic shape. I followed maps and my instincts and asked questions of local villagers and others, who responded with puzzled looks. Fly-fishing for trout in Greece? Greeks catch their fish in the sea, often with spear guns and sometimes with dynamite.

Ever since I had first looked on the rugged peaks that define the Greek landscape, I was seized with the romantic notion of catching a trout in an ancient mountain stream, home to some of Homer's woodland nymphs. It seemed a preposterous notion at first, but finally my journey was rewarded in Epirus, about 180 miles north of my starting point, in the northwest corner of Greece.

I found cold crystalline rivers that flowed through glorious oak-clad mountains and held a lot of wild trout. It is trout fishing as Lord Byron would have imagined it: a wild and rugged land, softened here and there with touches of classical antiquity. I had stumbled into a fisherman's paradise.

On one section of the Louros River in Epirus, I cast my fly in the eddies created by the ruins of a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct, which had carried the river's sweet water 30 miles south to the ancient city of Nikopolis. Octavian built the city to commemorate his victory at Actium in 31 B.C.

My guide through the region was Nikos Tsanos, 41, a serious fly-fisherman and the owner of a door and window plant in Ioannina, capital of Epirus. He owns a fine collection of fly rods and reels, reads widely on fly-fishing in the United States and Britain and has organized a small group of fishermen, Greek and British, in the area to protect the fishing.

He and I met one morning at one of the many pleasant lakeside cafes in Ioannina. As with many things in Greece, planning a fly-fishing trip begins with strong coffee and a cigarette. Mr. Tsanos explained to me that Epirus offers freestone streams (rain and snow fed) and limestone streams (spring fed). It also produces an astonishing variety of insect life for fly-fishermen. The rivers have regular hatches of mayflies, caddis and stoneflies. “This is the Montana of Greece,” he said.

It is also close to the place where fly-fishing was born. Scholars say the first reference to the sport was by a Roman in the second century A.D. who described fishing with feathers in a river in a region near Epirus.

Fishing the area's limestone streams requires skill. The water is clear as pane glass, and the brown trout are easily spooked. They are also highly selective, taking only the flies that imitate insects, in size, color and shape, that naturally occur in the stream.

As a cool breeze came to us under our cafe umbrella off Lake Pamvotis, we planned to meet again in the evening to catch the insect hatch at dusk on the nearby Louros River.

At dusk, Mr. Tsanos picked me up at my hotel, and we drove to the village of St. George, which shares its patron saint with many Greek villages. A hole pierces the mountain above the village, and in the hole stands a cross, visible for miles. The old story, he told me, is that St. George flew through the hole on his horse, an event that gave the village its name. The Louros River flows below the hole and the cross.

If there is a more visually seductive place to fish, I have never seen it. The river gurgles past the village, under giant and sinuous oaks and through the Roman aqueduct. It is a scene from an Italian Renaissance painting. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't hook a fish as Mr. Tsanos landed one brown trout after another. At dark, we called it quits and decided to meet early the next morning for a trip to the Kalarritikos River.

“Tomorrow, you will catch a trout,” he assured me. “The river is a nursery of trout.”

He was right. In 40 years of fly-fishing in North America, I have never fished a stream that was both more beautiful and more productive. We drove about an hour over hairpin roads through the deeply cleft mountains. We parked at an iron bridge that spanned the stream and scrambled down the steep rocky slope to the silver band of water.

Mr. Tsanos offered me his British-made rod. It was a lovely super-light rod designed for this kind of finesse fishing. It was a generous offer, and I couldn't resist.

Our plan was to fish from the iron bridge upstream to an ancient stone bridge below a monastery that seemed magically fastened to the side of the mountain. It was about a half mile of water, and it would take us all day to cover it.

The river wended through a narrow gorge, rushing here and pausing there, to form an ellipsis of small waterfalls and quiet pools. The water was as cold as refrigerated gin, and the sun was so bright in the sky of sheer blue that the fly seemed to dissolve in the light when I lifted it from the water.

Mr. Tsanos soon began catching 10-to-12-inch trout on a big cream-colored dry fly. I was going fishless with my fly, an Adams Irresistible. “Here, try this rod and fly,” he said. “Maybe you will like it better.” He handed me his favorite rod, a stiff nine-footer that was perfect for reaching the far end of the pools.

I began picking up trout, gorgeous colorful browns, with vivid aureoles of yellow, orange and blue.

We had lunch in a vale of oaks that were placed like dancers among the boulders and then we made our way onward, climbing a high bank and looking down to a deep pool of transparent blue water and white stones. We could see three very large trout — one possibly six pounds — moving along the bottom. We knew they would be hard to catch on a dry fly, but we tried anyway. No luck.

We reached the old stone bridge, a marvel of stones, mortar and ancient engineering. We said goodbye to the stream and ascended to have a look at the monastery. “The men went there for a religious life and to get away from the Turks,” Mr. Tsanos said. “Who could reach them there?”

I had to agree: the monastery gripped the cliff like a piece of moss. It was a series of cells cut into the stone with individual doors and a rope that ran down to the path, so that food could be passed up to the monks.

Below the monastery, a stream flowed directly out of the rock of the mountain — the rock appeared to yawn, and from its yawn a stream poured out. Exhausted but pleased with our successful day, we kneeled and drank the delicious cold water with our cupped hands. I imagined the presence of nymphs.

If YOU GO

Ioannina can be reached on a 45-minute flight from Athens on Olympic or Aegean Airlines, which have several flights a day, or by car (a six-hour drive). You'll need to rent a car either in Athens or Ioannina to reach the rivers and the classical, Byzantine and Ottoman historical sites of Epirus.

Because the fishing is hardly known outside the region, there is no established guiding industry. For information on where and how to fish and local conditions, send an e-mail message to Nikos Tsanos at tsanos1@otenet.gr. You should bring your own equipment, though Gerontas Gun and Tackle Shop in Ioannina offers rods and flies. No fishing license is required.

A wide range of hotels is available in the city, including the Epirus Palace (30-26510-93555, www.epiruspalace.gr), Du Lac (30-26510-59100, www.dulac.gr) and Hotel Olympic (30-26510-25147; www.hotelolymp.gr), which range in price in price from about 125 euros to 150 euros a night (about $175 to $210 at $1.41 to the euro). You can also choose a clean, adequate small hotel or pension near the old section of the city. I stayed in the Egnatia Hotel (30-26510-25667) and found it better than adequate. It advertises a rate of 65 euros a night.

There are a dozen or more restaurants on the lake promenade, and you will be among many people, old and young, enjoying the soft Greek night outdoors. A high-end meal is 25 euros, and many excellent meals can cost far less. Be sure to leave room after dinner so that you can walk along the lakeshore and sample the bakeries that stay open into the evening.

Lou Ureneck’s memoir "Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly Fishing and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska" will be released next month by St. Martin’s Press.