Travel

Near Pier 70 on the eastern waterfront of San Francisco, stray dogs used to roam in search of discarded bits from the area’s meatpacking facilities. The canine scavengers were so numerous at the turn of the 20th century that the neighborhood became known as Dogpatch.

But today, the only pooch I see is a perfectly groomed golden Lab panting next to his owner, who’s biting into a beignet at a sidewalk cafe. And the only purveyor of meat around here is Olivier Cordier, a Frenchman whose gourmet butchery has found a cultlike following among foodies and restaurant owners.

The star power still twinkles at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, just at a different wattage.

The ginger-haired woman I swapped pleasantries with in the parking garage — she’s working on the sequel to the “Anchorman” movie, which is being filmed in Atlanta. And that man in baggy jeans and a parsley sprig of hair? He’s also with the movie crew. During five floors of elevator conversation, I was tempted to ask if Will Ferrell was staying here, too.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I rented a car for four days. But not just any car. Somebody else’s car. Somebody who was on a trip like me, except that while I was landing at SFO, this person was taking off — or more likely was already gone. I’d have the car back long before the person needed it, or so went the plan.

FlightCar, the California startup behind all this, aims to be the Airbnb of rental cars. It began when Kevin Petrovic, then 18, had a striking realization when he was returning from a trip: Long-term parking was full of cars sitting idle while their outbound owners traveled, and in the next lot over a fleet of rental cars sat idle waiting for inbound travelers to pick them up.

“We thought, ‘Couldn’t we make those two lots the same thing?’ ” said Petrovic, now 19, one of three teenagers behind FlightCar. He and the other two founders, Rujul Zaparde and Shri Ganeshram, put their college plans (MIT, Harvard and Princeton) on hold once they determined that the answer was yes.

This is a story about Underground Los Angeles. Not the underground music scene — the underground art scene. The subway art scene.

Yes, there is a subway in L.A. Even some Angelenos don’t know about it, and most have never used it. But a system of subways and light rail was started in the early 1990s, and it’s steadily expanding.

Depending on where you live, the subway’s an efficient way to get downtown, which has become more of a destination in recent years, what with the Music Center with its plays, concerts, ballets and operas; fine museums; a funky, lively boho arts district; the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall; the relatively new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Plus the old attractions: Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street’s cheesy but charming Mexican street fair, and such architectural gems as Union Station and the Bradbury Building, featured in “Blade Runner.”

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Green chili strips, chili soup, chili lasagna, chili margaritas and chili-tinis pepper the menus. Chili ristras, chili wreaths, chili earrings, chili trail mix, chili brittle and chili chocolate spice up the markets. There’s even the Chile Pepper Institute, where I learn which pepper recently snatched the “world’s hottest” title from the 1,001,304 SHU (Scoville heat unit) Bhut Jolokia.

Cravings for something spicy are amply satisfied in Las Cruces.

Chili peppers, the fruits of plants from the genus Capsicum, were brought to this part of southern New Mexico in the late 1500s by Spanish colonial expeditions. In Spain, chilies had become a culinary hit after explorers carried them back from the Caribbean. It’s understandable, given their addictive qualities.

It’s a chilly spring day, with lots of wind, so I was pretty startled when Okefenokee Adventures guide Joey Griffin commanded me to take off my shoes and climb out of his pontoon boat.

But you just don’t say no to a big, burly swamper. So here I am, standing on a soggy, boggy mound of peat rising out of the black water all around us.

“Now bounce up and down,” Griffin orders.

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“Jump!” he instructs, hiding a bemused smile.

Feeling a bit of trepidation, I start jumping straight up and down, like a Masai warrior. Then something weirdly wonderful happens: The ground quivers, jellylike, beneath my freezing bare feet.

“Whoa!” I laugh. “This is fun!”

“There you have it.” Griffin nods knowingly. “The trembling earth.”

For the first decade and a half of my professional life, staying in an Embassy Suites meant nothing more than dreary travel for work: bland hotels scattered across cities that began to blend together, every cookie-cutter suite identical to the last, all racking up hotel points I hoped never to redeem.

Then I had a baby.

Suddenly, all my previous notions about staying in a hotel were upended. Gone was my passion for a plush Four Seasons room, no matter how small — as long as it had a deep tub and that decadent perfumed smell. Now I cared not about the ambience in the lobby bar. Nor the Yelp ratings of the spa. Nor the thread count of the sheets.

I sought just one thing: a suite. A real one. With a door that shut.