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World travel from the Philippines: News, features and tips

Hostels are getting stylish
Hostels in Europe used to be cheap but pretty down-market. Now they're still cheapish but they're going decidedly up-market in their amenities and feel. Among them, the Yellow hostel in Rome only accepts guests in their late teens to age 40. Dorm rooms are all mixed gender and some have private baths.   [Hostels in Europe]

Where Oscar Wilde was caught
London abounds in tour highlights for the literary-minded. For instance in this room at the Cadogan Hotel in London, writer Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" in 1895 over his liaison with young Lord Alfred Douglas.    [Literary weekend in London] 

Hotels & travel tips
 

ON TOUR IN EUROPE

Hostels in Europe are
getting stylish facelifts
By Jennifer Conlin, New York Times
Almost three decades after the fact, I can still recall with frightening clarity my first time at a youth hostel. What was billed in my “Let’s Go Europe” book as a “historic” Irish hostel in a “castle,” turned out to be a crumbling tower with no heat, stone floors and mildewed mattresses. I vowed never to stay in a hostel again.
Yet having heard that the hostel scene, while still being unbelievably cheap, had changed significantly over the years, I decided to try again – only this time, rather than being accompanied by a cute male hitchhiker, I had my teenage daughters in tow. And so it was with great trepidation that I approached the London Central Youth Hostel on a Friday evening in mid-March.
“Will there be sheets and blankets?” asked Harriet, my 17-year-old. “Please tell me there will be a TV,” said Florence, her 13-year-old sister. They have never stayed in anything but a full-service hotel, and usually one with a minibar, room service and a power shower.
“Of course,” I answered, entirely unsure. I wondered if we, clad in urban outfits with rolling suitcases in tow, should have been wearing rain ponchos and carrying huge backpacks.
Moments later we were standing in front of a stylish, modern building with gleaming plate-glass windows. I was certain I had the wrong address. Though I had read that YHA Ltd recently invested about US$8.4 million to renovate this hostel near Regent’s Park, it seemed too good to be true. Where was the peeling paint? Why wasn’t laundry hanging from the windows? Why wasn’t there a drunken student passed out on the stoop?
Instead, as we walked through the sliding glass doors into the entrance hall, I admired the floor-to-ceiling illuminated map of the London Tube system, as well as a good-looking 40-something man with a briefcase getting off the elevator. Already, things seemed different.
The girls quickly disappeared into what in my day would have been called the common room – typically a gathering place for grubby guests, complete with threadbare springy sofas, a rattling tea cart and a makeshift library of discarded travel books in every language but your own.
I braced myself and followed behind only to be shocked by the scene before me. The room could have been a model set for the Ikea catalog with brightly colored sofas and chairs arranged around sparkling white laminated tables.
One wall was decorated with enlarged photos of London landmarks – a red mailbox, an Oxford Street sign, the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Flanking the wall was a blackboard with information on the latest museum exhibitions, food and clothing markets, and shows. Mounted to the ceiling were several flat-screen televisions, including one showing a slide show of people partying in the hostel where we stood; Florence was mesmerized.
At one end of the room was a sleek, well-stocked bar. In my day, most hostels had strict no-alcohol policies, hence the need for the big backpack. Opposite was a line of computers, where Harriet was already logged on. Two older women with trendy haircuts and rectangular-framed glasses were enjoying their drinks at one table, and at another sat a family playing cards. There was not a single poncho in sight.
Most of the room was filled with young hipsters in low-slung jeans and tight T-shirts who did not seem to care that a parent was present, let alone a grandparent or two.
Watching my girls as they sang along to the background music of Coldplay, I couldn’t imagine them being any happier at the £250-a-night Mandarin Oriental hotel across town. Instead, we were going to pay £89 for a room that slept four, complete with a private bath.
“I love this place,” Florence announced, ready to check out our room upstairs. I peeped over Harriet’s shoulder and saw her update her Facebook status. It read: “Harriet is hanging out in a cool London hostel.”
In the world of hip city hostels, who cares if your room has nothing but a bed (often a bunk), a simple bath (a shower with no bath products) and a small cupboard with no hangers? Common rooms, meanwhile, are often minimally – but stylishly – furnished with Scandinavian-style sofas and tables.
Countering the lack of amenities, there is usually an eclectic bar, a 24-hour internet cafe with Wi-Fi, group tours around the city, entertainment (DJs, live music and karaoke nights), kitchens where you can make your own meals or a restaurant where you can buy one – all providing a built-in social life for travelers.
Hostels across Europe have undergone a transformation over the last decade. “There has been serious quality improvement in the hostel movement,” said Johan Krüger, head of communications for Hostelling International, a consortium of youth hostel associations in over 80 countries that operate more than 4,000 hostels.
“Though hostels have always had the big shared dormitory-style rooms, we are now seeing more demand among travelers for double or single en suite rooms,” Krüger said, adding that hostels had grown even more popular in the midst of the recession. In 2008, Hostelling International had a 14 percent increase, to 1.4 million bookings, on its website, www.hihostels.com.
Krüger attributes the increased interest in smaller rooms to a changing clientele. “We are seeing business travelers coming to hostels now,” he said, speculating that in addition to the lower rates, they also prefer the social aspect of a hostel to the more staid hotel culture.
“Ten to 15 years ago, hostels were more commonly associated with the countryside for hikers and walkers,” said Duncan Simpson, head of communications for YHA Ltd., a youth hostel organization for England and Wales and a Hostelling International affiliate. “But we operate in cities and are now attracting customers who not only come to us because it is good value for the money, but also because they want a different, more relaxed experience than you get at a hotel.”
YHA’s newest project in London, the $1.5 million renovation of the St Pancras hostel, hopes to attract yet another growing customer base — the family. It has rooms designed for families, Wi-Fi in the common rooms, a restaurant open from 7.30am to 10pm, even cribs.
“At a hostel you don’t have to worry that your child is going to knock over an ornamental lamp in the lobby,” Simpson said. “The whole atmosphere is more casual.”
Tim Hierath, one of five owners who founded the Circus hostel in Berlin nearly a decade ago, has noticed a changing demographic in his guests, too. “Beyond the classic student backpackers,” Hierath said, “we get young urban professionals on a city break, families vacationing, business travelers and even older tourists.”
Most travelers are probably attracted by the great rates, he said. Group rooms with a shared bath start at 19 euros a person a night, while a single room with a private bath is 50 euros; one- and two-bedroom penthouse apartments are 85 and 140 euros, respectively. The younger clientele is probably drawn to the hostel’s popular subterranean bar, Goldman’s, he added, where there are framed photos of the American actor David Hasselhoff, vintage video consoles and décor straight from a 1970s Florida condo.
“We like the atmosphere here,” said Gudula Danyer, 69, from Fulda, Germany, who was traveling with a group of similarly aged friends and staying at the Circus. “It is different, and the price is good,” she said, adding that it was also fun for the group to stay in one room.
Abbey Rose, 29, from Chicago, agreed. Usually she stays in hotels, but she chose the Circus because “it seemed fun and funky.”
“This is actually better than a hotel,” said David Jones, 23, from San Francisco, who was also staying there. “It’s easier to meet people, and cheaper.”
So what is the difference between a hostel and budget hotel? “A hostel is about community spirit,” Hierath said. “The entire atmosphere here is one in which it is easy to get to know other people. It is not uncommon for guests to make friends and go off and do things together.”
He said his hostel staff members will help guests rent bikes or recommend off-the-beaten-path tours of the city, including a vacant airport from the days of World War 2. At the London Central hostel, the receptionist helped us arrange discounted theater tickets.
It is curious that hostels are so popular in cities given that when the movement began, 100 years ago, it was to encourage people to leave the cities and explore the countryside. In the early 1900s Richard Schirrmann, a German teacher, opened the first hostel in Burg Altena in the Rhine Valley (it’s still open for business). Over the next two decades, 12 more youth hostels were built. This, in turn, led to the formation of the International Youth Hostel Federation (now Hostelling International) in 1932.
Since then, hostelling has been an accepted form of travel throughout Europe for all age groups. Europeans are typically introduced to hostels when they are young. “We have a lot of summer camp programs through schools for 11- to 18-year-olds to get them out into the countryside,” said Simpson of YHA.
Americans usually first encounter hostelling during college and then, usually, abandon it – as in my case. “It is definitely true that we get fewer American families than European ones,” Simpson said. “But we still get a lot of young people from the States.”
He said that on average in England and Wales, the hostel association has about 35,000 Americans visitors a year, the fourth-largest national group after Germans, French and Australians. Last year, Hostelling International also noted that American online users were the largest group to book stays on its website.
Linda and John Wetherby of Alaska began staying in hostels in Europe when they were teenagers. Even after marrying and becoming parents (their daughter Aelwen is now 25), they continued staying in hostels. The family tries to travel every other year to Europe for at least a month.
“There is no question it has changed a lot,” said John Wetherby, 60, an anesthesiologist based in Anchorage. “Now it is easy to find clean private rooms with a bath of your own in a hostel, as well as internet access.” He said they often stay in city hostels – most recently in Madrid and London – something rare among Americans in their age group.
“I think when people here grow up and make a real income, they want to spend it on decent accommodations,” said Linda Wetherby, 63, who works in public education. The Wetherbys are “outdoor, unostentatious people, who just want a clean, safe place to sleep,” she said, adding that they would rather spend their vacation time and dollars at plays, restaurants and museums.
They also like the community aspect of the hostel. “Sometimes I have had to travel on my own before meeting up with Aelwen and John,” Linda Wetherby said, referring to her daughter and husband, “and have met people I have then taken the train with to the next city.” She said security is a factor for her as a woman traveling alone at times.
Indeed, hostels are particularly safe, with doors locked after a certain hour at night and staff members at the reception desk 24 hours. “You don’t feel so alone when you stay in a hostel,” Rose from Chicago said of her stay at the Circus hostel in Berlin.
In fact, most remarkable is the casual mixing of age groups. “Often, when our daughter was young, a traveling student would want to play a game with her because they missed their younger siblings back home,” Linda Wetherby said.
She now finds that students offer to help her with her bags. “Once they talk to me they learn that I am a younger old person that they can really have a conversation with,” she said. “When you speak to people from different countries it opens up your mind so much.”
Still, some things never change. On a recent Saturday night at the Circus, where merriment is cheap (during happy hour at Goldman’s a small glass of beer was only a euro, and at the London Central hostel a double shot of gin, rum or vodka with cola or tonic was just £3.70), guests of all ages began to empty the bar around 1am.
Thirty-year-olds, reliving their glory years, stumbled up the stairs and into the awaiting elevator, pausing at a nearby trash can a bit too long, having overindulged in the cheap beer. The clientele may be getting older, but not necessarily any wiser.
Meanwhile, back in London, my daughters and I were firmly tucked into our comfy bunk beds by 11pm after a meal in Chinatown and an amusing walk around Leicester Square. As we talked in the dark until midnight with no television to break our chatter, I began planning our next trip, perhaps to Krakow, where the Hostel Deco has named every room after an actress, or to the Urbany in Barcelona, a recently opened green hostel with a rooftop terrace, or Oops! near the Latin Quarter of Paris, decorated with wild wallpaper.
At these cheap rates, the possibilities suddenly seemed endless. I vowed never to stay in a hotel again. Though I am sure I will break that promise, in this economy it would certainly make sense to keep it.
Low cost and chic, urban hostels are a viable alternative to the boutique hotel. While most hostels provide bedding, towels must often be rented for a small fee. Most rooms have individual reading lights and outlets for charging batteries, and all have storage facilities.
Though hostels are open to the public, some have a temporary nightly membership fee you must pay unless you choose to buy an annual membership (often worth it if you are staying more than just a few nights). It is also common to pay for your room upon arrival. Among the best websites for finding hostels in Europe are www.hostelbookers.com; www.hihostels.com; and www.hostelworld.com.
Here are a few samples of good hostels around Europe:

London:
London Central Youth Hostel (104 Bolsover Street; phone 44 845 371 9154; www.yha.org.uk) is five minutes from Oxford Street and Regent’s Park. It has a 24-hour cafe/bar, internet access, Wi-Fi, a self-service kitchen and a laundry. There is even a plasma-screen and Nintendo Wii.
Prices for May range from £19.95 per adult for a single bed in a shared room with no bath to £136.95 for a six-bed family room with its own bath. Temporary membership fees of £3 per adult and £1.50 per child a night are payable upon arrival. Annual memberships are available.

Berlin
The Circus (Weinbergsweg 1a; phone 49 30 2000 3939; www.circus-berlin.de) is in the Mitte district, the heart of the city. There are a cafe and bar, and Wi-Fi in every room. The hostel can arrange airport pickup. Prices are 19 euros for a bed in an eight-person room to 140 euros for a four-person, two-bedroom penthouse apartment with kitchen and bath.

Paris
Oops! (50 Avenue des Gobelins; phone 33 01 4707 4700; www.oops-paris.com) is near the Latin Quarter. All rooms have air-conditioning and private bathrooms. Dorm rooms are 23 euros a person in the low season (usually November through February) and 30 euros a person in the high season. Private rooms are 70 euros in the low season and 80 euros in the high season. All rates include breakfast, internet, Wi-Fi and luggage storage.

Barcelona
Urbany (Avinguda Meridiana, 97; phone 34 93 2458 414; www.barcelonaurbany.com) has self- service kitchens, a laundry, a bar, a rooftop terrace and a common room with PlayStation consoles, DVDs and games. Guests may also use a fitness club nearby, which has a pool and sauna. All rooms have private baths, Wi-Fi and air-conditioning. Beds in an eight-room dorm are from 12 euros a night, and from 25 euros for a double. All rates include breakfast. Half- and full-board options are available, with meals at the Tolc bar/restaurant.

Rome
Yellow (Via Palestro, 44; phone 39 06 49 382 682; www.yellowhostel.com) is normally restricted to guests between 18 and 40, though 17-year-olds may stay under some circumstances. Dorm rooms are all mixed gender and some have private baths.
Rates are 35 euros for a four-bed room with a private bath and 24 euros for a mixed-gender dorm with no bathroom. There are internet access (laptops can be rented), a game room and a bar. The Yellow offers an inexpensive breakfast (French toast for 3 euros), with a menu that changes monthly.

myPH recommendations
•   Good hostels and hostel booking channels in the United Kingdom and Europe, with recommendations, advice and tips from other travelers,  are available through TripAdvisor, myPH's partner in travel.
For hostels in London and elsewhere around the United Kingdom, check out the TripAdvisor UK hostels website.
For hostels in most parts of continental Europe, we recommend the TripAdvisor Europe hostels website. 

TIME OUT IN BRITAIN

Literary weekend in London
By Sarah Lyall
There are many different Londons, and they appeal to people with many different passions: museum lovers, theatergoers, opera buffs, devotees of royalty, students of history, people who like to walk in the rain. But richest of all, perhaps, is the London for book lovers.
Because the city is the star and the backdrop of so much great literature, it is possible to believe you know it intimately – how it looks, how it feels – without ever leaving your home country, or indeed your home. But it is better to visit, if only for the joy of seeing the landscape of your imagination come to life.
How thrilling to happen upon Pudding Lane, where a bakery mishap led to the Great Fire of 1666, after reading Pepys’s account in his diaries. Or to wander along Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes once fictionally solved the unsolvable. Walk across London Bridge and gaze down, toward Southwark Bridge: this is the stretch of the Thames where Dickens’s sinister characters dredged up corpses in “Our Mutual Friend.”
The city is not so foggy as it was in 1952, when Margery Allingham published “The Tiger in the Smoke,” or as socially stratified as it when Marianne Dashwood waited in “Sense and Sensibility” for a suitor who never called; or as greedy as it was in the thrusting 1980s of Martin Amis’s “Money.”
But it is all of those Londons, an accrual of different descriptions and eras. It is a city made for description – reread the first passages of “Bleak House,” also on the subject of fog, for a moody introduction – and one that so reveres its authors that it buried a number of the best ones in style, in Westminster Abbey.
There are plenty of organized literary-themed excursions around the city, easily found on the internet. Or you can ramble idiosyncratically on your own, which is more fun. Here are some suggestions for a do-it-yourself few days touring around London (if you take the Tube or the bus, make sure to carry a book).

Friday, 6pm: Wilde nights
Check into the Cadogan Hotel (75 Sloane Street SW1; phone 44 207 235 7141; www.cadogan.com), where Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” in 1895 over his liaison with young Lord Alfred Douglas. Elegant, quiet and also a favorite spot of the actress Lillie Langtry, the hotel is in the heart of Knightsbridge, where there is plenty of shopping to leaven even the most serious intellectual pursuit.
Poems to read at the bar: John Betjeman’s “Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel,” which dramatically lays out the scene, and Wilde’s heartbreaking work “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” written after he served the prison sentence that broke and ultimately killed him. A double room costs £295.

8pm: Elementary, dear Holmes
The Sherlock Holmes pub (10-11 Northumberland Street WC2; phone 44 207 930 2644; www.sherlockholmespub.com) may be slightly kitschy, but it has an authentically musty-without-being-dingy ambience, enthusiastic service and generous portions of traditional pub food.
Enjoy dishes with names plucked from the works of Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – “The Sign of Four,” for instance, signifies the soup of the day, while “Hounds of the Baskerville” refers to toad in the hole, or sausages in Yorkshire pudding – in an upstairs dining room decorated with pictures of the masterful fictional detective. A three-course meal for two is about £46. The pièce de résistance is a meticulously reconstructed study decorated à la Holmes. It looks as if he has just stepped out for a second, laying down his cup of tea and his violin.

Saturday, 10am: Lazy mornings
Have breakfast in bed while reading Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” an exuberant hymn to a vibrantly multiracial modern-day London. Or, if you’re motivated, head to the fifth-floor cafe at Harvey Nichols (109-125 Knightsbridge SW1; phone 44 207 235 5250; www.harveynichols.com) for eggs Benedict and interesting hot chocolate (£12.50).

Noon: Books for all seasons
Authors wailed and gnashed their teeth when the history-laden old British Library Reading Room was uprooted from the British Museum and plunked down in a modern brick building on a busy road near St Pancras and King’s Cross railroad stations (96 Euston Road NW1; phone 44 870 444 1500). But what the library might lack in atmosphere it more than makes up with the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, where some of the greatest treasures of the written word in fiction and nonfiction are exhibited.
The collection includes much-scribbled-on first drafts of works by authors like James Joyce, and treasures like a 600-or-so-years-old manuscript of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” one of the first illustrated works of literature in the English language.
There is also an original copy of Magna Carta, one of four in existence; the crumpled piece of paper on which John Lennon scrawled the first lyrics to the song “Help!” (here you learn that the line “I do appreciate your being ’round” was first written as “I would appreciate your being ’round”); and the 11th century will of Aethelstan the Atheling, son of Aethelred the Unready (he left his worldly goods to, among other people, his friends Aethelweard the Stammerer and Godwine the Driveller).

3pm: A lexicographer’s delight
As you walk around, you can spot all the blue plaques telling you which writer lived where (there were William Makepeace Thackeray, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, for instance, all living at some point in west London).
For a peek inside a writer’s home, go to Dr Johnson’s house (17 Gough Square EC4; phone 44 207 353 3745; www.drjohnsonshouse.org), a little gem of a place tucked in a quiet spot near to, but worlds away from, the bustle of Fleet Street. Here Samuel Johnson, critic, essayist and aphorist, worked in the mid-1700s on his famous English dictionary – an effort, he explained in his comma-heavy introduction, to regularize a language that had been “hitherto neglected, suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.”
How Johnson went about such an imposing undertaking is explained in easy-to-digest room-by-room exhibits, culminating in the attic, where a team of clerks sorted through potential words and their sharp, opinionated meanings. Visitors are allowed to leaf through one of the original dictionaries, published in two volumes in 1755, and find for themselves Johnson’s wry definition of a lexicographer as a “harmless drudge.” Further investigation shows the truth in the story that Johnson really did define oats as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

5pm: A walk of one’s own
In Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs Dalloway,” the well-heeled heroine takes a long, contemplative walk through central London, pondering everything from flowers to life itself.
Follow along and take in the changing of the seasons – you can tell what time of year it is not only by the blossoms (or lack of them) on the trees in St James’s Park, but also by the migratory ducks, and the number of ducklings, on hand at any time. Bring a book – maybe “The Hours,” Michael Cunningham’s reinterpretation of the novel – to read quietly on a bench in the park, near the pelicans.
8pm: Vanity Fair
Treat yourself to dinner at the Wolseley (160 Piccadilly W1; phone 44 207 499 6996; www.thewolseley.com), a glamorous restaurant near the Ritz Hotel beloved by more social members of the London literati. Housed in a large, high-ceilinged space whose previous incarnations include a bank and car showroom, the restaurant has been meticulously refitted to evoke a sophisticated old-word Viennese cafe.
The layout gives a feeling of tête-à-tête intimacy while also providing lots of people-watching opportunities. The menu is impeccable – leave room for the rich, beautiful desserts – and its old-fashioned tenor perfectly suits the setting. A three-course dinner is £50 to £100. Alert diners might well catch a glimpse of, among others, the authors Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.

Sunday 10am: All the world’s a stage
Go south to Shakespeare’s Globe (22 New Globe Walk SE1; phone 44 207 902 1400; www.shakespeares-globe.org), a loving reconstruction of a real-life Elizabethan theater. The season runs only during the warmer months, but the theater houses a permanent exhibition devoted to the playwright’s life and times that includes a rotating case of archival material, like the famous will in which “Shakespeare” was spelled three different ways, leaving to posterity a permanent spelling conundrum.

12.30pm: All’s well that ends well
It’s only a short walk to lunch at the George Inn (77 Borough High Street; phone 44 207 407 2056) a 17th-century coaching inn that is now the only galleried pub – meaning that it has balconies – left in the city. The menu is modern; the ambience is noisy in the downstairs bar, and quieter in the upstairs dining room. Dinner for two is about £45.
It’s hard to resist the urge to stand on one of the balconies and shout things – lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” perhaps? – at the people below. Dickens was an enthusiastic patron of the George and mentions it in “Little Dorrit,” which would be a fine choice of reading material, either to read to yourself or aloud to your companion over lunch. 

TIME OUT IN SCOTLAND

Weekend in Edinburgh
By Stuart Emmrich
Every August, the global theatrical community - well, at least the part that is drawn to an all-male, musical version of Chekhov's “Three Sisters” – heads to the Scottish capital of Edinburgh for a month-long celebration of the dramatic arts, from world premieres by celebrated authors to one-man shows by unknown novices.
The main event is the Edinburgh International Festival, which is headlined by lavish, famous productions, many of them premieres. But for many people, the real draw is the Fringe, a riotous collection of performances all around the city by hundreds of performance artists, comedians, memoirists and monologuists. The crux of the action is at the Assembly Rooms (54 George Street), one of several places where tickets are sold each day, and where hundreds of festival-goers gather each morning – almost like theatrical futures traders – to swap information about what is causing the latest buzz, what's a must-see and what's turned out to be a flop.
The great thing about many of these shows is that they often run an hour or so, and thus you know that even the most painful theatrical experience will soon come to an end if you've chosen unwisely.
I did once earn the lasting enmity of one playwright whose tortured attempts to tell a coherent story were so inept that I walked out about halfway through the show. The fact that there were only four other people in the audience might be why he glared at me so intently as I gently closed the theater door behind me.
Still, Edinburgh, even in August, is more than just about sitting in darkened theaters all day. The city itself beckons, and often provides the perfect kicker to a day spent discovering an amazing new talent, or the perfect antidote to a theatrical experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. Here’s a guide to some of the city highlights that can be taken into a couple of days in Edinburgh.

Friday, 6pm: Higher ground
Who's to argue with Robert Louis Stevenson? This native son of Edinburgh once wrote that the best views of the city could be found on Calton Hill – and and he was right. The monument-studded hilltop, at the far east end of Princes Street and reachable by stairs from Waterloo Place, offers magnificent vistas of Edinburgh and the surrounding countryside, from the port town of Leith in one direction to Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags in another.
When the skies are blue and the late-afternoon sun shimmers on the city below, it becomes clear why Edinburgh is considered among the most beautiful cities in the world.

7pm: Starting the weekend
Grab a Candy Cosmo or a Pear Drop at the Candy Bar (113-115 George Street; phone 44 131 225 9179; www.candybaredinburgh.co.uk) during happy hour (5 to 9pm), when drinks are two-for-one and this trendy basement bar is packed with Edinburgh's young scenesters getting revved up for the weekend ahead.

8.30pm: Italian food, of course
Edinburgh's new Restaurant Row runs along George Street from St Andrew Square to Charlotte Square, with a clutch of sleek, upscale establishments. Expertly prepared Italian food, from lightly breaded fried calamari to a braised lamb shoulder with polenta, is served at Est Est Est (135 George Street; phone 44 131 225 2555 or 44 870 401 2109; www.estestest.co.uk), an elegant space dominated by 130 black-and-white photos. Dinner for two, with wine, runs about £70 including a tip.

11pm: Before they were famous
There are dozens of excellent places around town to hear live music, from Bannermans, where you'll often find unsigned local bands looking for their big break, to Sandy Bell's, a place for devotees of traditional Scottish music.
Perhaps the best of all is Whistlebinkies (4-6 South Bridge; phone 44 131 557 5114; www.whistlebinkies.com), a sprawling basement bar that is often the first gig for start-up acts – from testosterone-fueled garage bands to soulful lesbian folk singers.
The crowd ranges in ages and temperaments, and the talent runs from slickly polished to amusingly clueless (“I know we have a song list here somewhere,” one young rocker – surely not far removed from high school – kept telling the small audience on a recent night). But nothing compares to the frenzy that grips the room when an unknown singer unleashes a powerful voice and sets the place on fire. Open every night until3am (5am during August).

Saturday 10.30am: Old masters
The National Gallery of Scotland (National Gallery Complex; phone 44 131 624 6200; www.nationalgalleries.org; free) has an impressive collection of artists from van Dyke to van Gogh. But this inviting museum also offers a good introduction to Scottish art. Names like Raeburn and McTaggart may not be as well known, but paintings by these Scottish artists compare well with their more famous contemporaries.

11.30am: Scotland’s art
You've seen Scotland's artistic past. Now it's time to fast-forward into the present. For a survey of the country's contemporary art scene, go a few blocks north and stroll among the galleries on and around Dundas Street, from the Open Eye Gallery (36 Abercromby Place; phone 44 131 557 1020; www.openeyegallery.co.uk), to Bourne Fine Art (6 Dundas Street; phone 44-131-557-4050; www.bournefineart.co.uk) and the tiny Randolph Gallery (39 Dundas Street; phone 44 131 556 0808; www.randolphgallery.com). Almost all will have special exhibits during festival month, but you're sure to come across an intriguing local artist any time of year.

1pm: Blue plate special
The modestly priced Blue (10 Cambridge Street, phone 44 131 221 1222; www.bluescotland.co.uk) shares the same head chef (Neil Forbes) and commitment to local seasonal ingredients as its better-known culinary sibling, the award-winning Atrium. Dishes include whiskey-cured salmon with crème fraîche (£5.50) and pan-fried mackerel with toasted almond, orange and fennel (£13).

2.30pm: Split personality
Is there any major thoroughfare in the world more conflicted than Edinburgh's Princes Street? On one side is an urban blight of harshly lighted department stores, foul-smelling fast-food joints and generic cellphone shops.
But turn your gaze to the opposite side of the street, and you'll see elegantly landscaped gardens, inviting park benches and massive trees framing a view of Edinburgh Castle off in the distance, looming over its former kingdom. It's a breathtaking sight, and one you should come back and experience again later in the evening, when the softly illuminated castle glows against the slowly darkening skies.

5.30pm: How was Alan Cumming?
The Theater Royal Bar (25-27 Greenside Place; phone 44 131 557 2142) may not look like the best place to mingle with serious theatergoers (the signed posters of “Mamma, Mia!” and “Annie” hint at a more mainstream theatrical heritage). But this lively after-work, pre-theater hangout is a good place to mix with the locals and catch up on Festival gossip, particular if the weather is nice and you can snag one of the dozen or so outdoor tables.

8pm: China on the North Sea
Chinese food may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to Edinburgh, but Kweilin (19-21 Dundas Street; phone 44 131 557 1875; www.kweilin.co.uk) is a longtime local favorite, particularly for its classic Cantonese seafood dishes like steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onions (£17) and wok-fried sliced monkfish with fresh broccoli (£12.50).

10.55pm: No bagpipes here
End the night back on George Street, where the city's nightspot of the moment is Lulu, in the basement of the Tigerlily Hotel (125b George Street, phone 44 131 225 5005; www.luluedinburgh.co.uk), a sleekly designed dance bar that stays jumping until the early hours of the morning. Free entry before 11pm; £7 after that.

Sunday 10am: Royal promenade
You can't leave Edinburgh without doing the traditional tourist stroll along the Royal Mile, with Edinburgh Castle at one end and the Palace of Hollyroodhouse and the new Scottish Parliament at the other. Predictable? Yes. Worth doing? Most definitely.

12.30pm: Catch of the day
Rose Street, a long, narrow alley running between Princes and George Streets, is home to dozens of pubs, cozy cafes and informal restaurants – one one of the most popular being the Mussel Inn (61-65 Rose Street; phone 44 131 225 5979; www.mussel-inn.com). This bright and airy space, with unfinished wood floors and butcher-block tables, serves fresh, simply prepared seafood.
As the name implies, mussels are the house specialty, served in a choice of different broths, from the traditional (white wine, garlic and shallots) to the unexpected (leeks, horseradish, cider and cream). All but the most ravenous of diners will find the half-kilo order plenty, particularly as it is accompanied by delicious freshly baked bread, perfect for soaking up juices (£5.20). Thus sated, you should be ready to hit the theater again. That Polish production of “Macbeth,” with actors performing on stilts, sounds interesting.

myPH recommendations
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