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But then you turn right onto a small street called Rosenwald, and soon you find a neighborhood bistro like the ones you probably assumed disappeared from the Paris landscape long ago. Even better, you enter a world of Parisians — the kind of folk who go out to dinner for one reason: for the enjoyment of sharing a good meal with family and friends. From the experience of recent visits, there seem to be no foreigners, at least not yet.

On his five-course tasting menu, Benôit Gauthier, the 32-year-old owner and chef, offers whatever he likes, based on seasonal items he finds daily in the market: truffles in winter, asparagus in spring, lobster in summer, game in autumn (42 euros, $52 at $1.24 to the euro; there are also à la carte options).

“I can’t tell you in advance everything that I’ll serve you,” he said. “There always has to be a surprise.”

Our menu one evening included lobster soup with chorizo and croutons, tuna tournedos with foie gras and avocado salad, and line-caught merlu à la plancha.

Mr. Gauthier is the son of a butcher from the Corrèze, the south-central region where locals believe they produce some of the finest cattle in the land. It was there that his father taught him about cuts of meat. It should, then, come as no surprise that the most popular dish of the house is the côte de boeuf for two (52 euros), served with thick, long, hand-cut, double-fried French fries. It is such a sublime dining experience it will tempt even the committed vegetarian to fall off the wagon for an evening.

The two-room bistro’s décor is simple, from the red leather banquettes to the handwritten menu on a huge blackboard. Like his father, Mr. Gauthier is a rabid rugby fan, and souvenirs from a trip they took last year to New Zealand for the World Cup adorn one corner of the room — a reminder, like the côte de boeuf, of the importance of shared pleasures.

Le Grand Pan, 20, rue Rosenwald, Paris; (33-1) 42-50-02-50.

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Just a half-hour after leaving Dar es Salaam, our shaky 12-seater approached a dirt-and-gravel runway. As we made our descent, a few sparks of civilization flashed into view: a lone wooden dhow patrolled the coastline; a trio of gleeful children pointed up at the plane from the edge of a marshy mangrove; two women wrapped in colorful kangas, traditional African dresses, and headscarves walked by with large clay pots balanced on their heads.

With just a few thousand annual visitors, Mafia Island is hardly a tourist hot spot, and has few of the high-end accouterments that draw hordes of honeymooners to other Indian Ocean isles like the Seychelles, Mauritius and Zanzibar. Over the past decade, though, it has built a small but passionate following among travelers drawn by its simple charms and serene atmosphere. Serene, that is, on land; underwater, a protected marine preserve offers some of the most magnificent diving and snorkeling in the region, perhaps the world: sea turtles, stingrays and the occasional white-tipped reef shark troll these waters nearly year-round.

While few modern travelers know its name, Mafia has drawn international visitors since at least the 11th century, when it served as an important trading base for Shirazi sailors who controlled the region. Later, the island became a hub for the Middle East slave trade, then a military base for German, and eventually British, colonists. (While Italians number high among the expats running lodges on Mafia today, the island’s name has nothing to do with organized crime; it likely derives from the ancient Arabic word for archipelago. For the past century, Mafia and its 40,000 residents have been mostly ignored by the outside world, reached only by slow ferries from Tanzania.

That began to change in 1995, when the World Wildlife Fund and other environmental activists successfully lobbied the Tanzanian government to protect the southern half of the island and the surrounding waters as the Mafia Island Marine Park. The 510-square-mile preserve is home to 400 species of fish and 48 types of corals, as well as giant green sea turtles and at least a few nearly extinct manatee-like dugong.

With fishing and other industry sharply curtailed inside the preserve, Mafia’s rich reefs soon began attracting the attention of divers. After fishermen on the western side of the island discovered that friendly whale sharks liked the plankton-rich waters there, boats taking groups out to swim with the brightly spotted creatures became reason for water-bound visitors to stay longer. Regular air service from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s main point of entry, was added in 2006. The number of lodges and guesthouses on the island has mushroomed from just a handful a few years ago to roughly two dozen today. In 2010 the number of international visitors was up 300 percent from four years earlier, according to local government statistics — although the total number was still a modest 4,100 people.

During a recent visit with my girlfriend, our first stop was the standard tourist pilgrimage to Zanzibar. While I had no complaints about the white sand beaches, ample hammocks and tropical cocktails, I was turned off by the overdeveloped oceanfront and omnipresent beachside hawkers. I craved a more far-flung beach break before returning home, and every time I opened my guidebook my eyes kept floating back to the smaller island south of Zanzibar, about which I knew little.

Three weeks later, after returning to Dar es Salaam, we left for Mafia, where we spent Christmas weekend at Mafia Island Lodge, inside the marine park. The sandy, semicircular strip of beachfront was the perfect antidote to busy Zanzibar. No more than a handful of tourists lounged on the swinging wooden beach beds, and when a group of four of us sailed out on a small dhow to snorkel among schools of zebra fish and bright red corals, we had a prime slice of tropical reef completely to ourselves. Those reefs are in part preserved by a $20 per-person, per-night fee, paid by tourists at the park entrance (U.S. dollars are accepted all over the island). A scattering of budget guesthouses have recently popped up just beyond the park’s boundaries for those wishing to avoid the fee — including an outsize number of genuinely environmentally friendly options.

“Most people who make the effort to come to Mafia are of a particular mindset,” said Michelle Vickers, who was raised in Tanzania and lived in Britain before returning four years ago with her husband, John, to open Ras Mbisi Lodge, an eco-conscious resort on the west side of the island. “They aren’t looking for incredibly high-end luxury. They just want a place to chill out, relax, and not feel that because they’ve chosen to stay somewhere sustainable that it has to be hard work.”

After two days of snorkeling and swimming inside the marine park, I headed off on my own to Ras Mbisi Lodge. Hailing one of a handful of the 4×4 taxis that ply the island’s dirt roads, I reached the thatched-roof compound after a bumpy, 40-minute drive.

There, luxury beachside bandas, or cabins, are built from sustainable, indigenous coconut wood, lighted with biogas-powered electricity and stocked with solar-heated water. The resort blends seamlessly into the coconut groves, with nary another unnatural object visible along the five-mile expanse of beach that fronts the property. On an early evening walk, I shared the entire stretch with just a few others: a fisherman tending to his dugout canoe; two women hunched over in the low tide, digging for clams; and dozens of sand crabs that skittered out of their holes and into the sea.

Though the lodge arranges excursions, including trips out to swim with whale sharks, I chose to spend my time reading alone on the beach with nothing in sight but coconut trees and an endless expanse of aquamarine water. I was happy to be disturbed only when summoned for meals centered around the catch of the day — turmeric-scented, beer-battered squid one evening; hot green chiles atop fresh filets of a local snapper known as chugu the next.

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The castle, though, became just one gem in a city that is home to many. The Prussian royal family continued to live in Potsdam, adding residences, including the Orangery, in the 19th century. Babelsberg, Potsdam’s largest district, developed into a prewar Hollywood with the founding of Studio Babelsberg, the world’s first major movie studio. Large villas appeared along the city’s lakes and the River Havel.

“Potsdam is unique in Germany in its history and diversity,” said Thorsten Becker, author of “Fritz,” a 2006 novel about Frederick, whose title is the monarch’s commonly used nickname. “It’s a place whose beauty mixes with a certain mythology.”

This year, visitors have more reason than usual to explore the city: Its many attractions are home to a host of celebrations in honor of Frederick’s 300th birthday.

The city looks better than ever. After World War I and World War II — whose spoils were decided at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 — the city’s landmarks, decrepit and shrapnel-scarred, ended up on the dark side of the Iron Curtain.

But in the past 10 years or so, Potsdam has been quietly spiffing up — owing to new (often well-heeled) residents as well as preparations for Frederick’s birthday.

In the Schiffbauergasse theatrical district — a lakefront group of converted military and industrial buildings including a museum, theaters and several restaurants opened in 2006 — the Hans Otto Theater is in the midst of a run of “Fritz.” Visitors can take in more theater at Metropolis Halle, a multimillion-dollar event space that opened in 2008 in Babelsberg, where “Friedrich, Das Musical,” starts in June.

Starting in April, an extensive exhibition, “Friederisiko,” traces the monarch’s life in 70 rooms, some never before open to the public, in the recently restored portion of the New Palace, on the grounds of the extensive Sanssouci Park. Visitors to the exhibition should go to the Orangery, a greenhouse and guesthouse in the park that had been a crumbling ruin. Now its restored windows reveal real trees wintering inside.

Frederick gets star treatment at an exhibition and screening series at the Filmmuseum Potsdam, “Der Falsche Fritz. Friedrich II im Film,” which explores the king on film through March. The University of Potsdam is also offering a Thursday-night series that includes lectures, readings of the king’s poetry, performances of his musical compositions, and even traditional potato-laden Prussian meals. 

The city has much to offer beyond Frederick, of course. “Potsdam was always a strange mix of nations, a very open-minded, cosmopolitan place,” said the fashion designer Wolfgang Joop, who was born there. 

The Dutch quarter, with red brick buildings dating to the 1730s, is now lined with shops. On the grounds of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, the restored Einstein Tower, a curvy structure used for solar research, is a testament to the city’s 30-odd scientific research institutes. And Studio Babelsberg, which turns 100 this year, is back in the film business (much of the recently wrapped film “Cloud Atlas” was shot there) and is open to tours.

Though other draws beckon, Frederick’s first contribution to the city, Sanssouci, remains its crown jewel. Mr. Joop, who left Potsdam when Germany was divided, returned in 2003 and runs his newest label, Wunderkind, from here. “It was such a paradise as a child,” said Mr. Joop, who often walks through old gardens and favorite places. “Sanssouci was my visual education. It pops out of my fingers. Real Potsdamers, who are rare, have a certain modesty and tolerance. But there’s also this rococo, a kind of mad decoration.” It seems the contradictions transcend time.

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The tourist crush was seemingly what the Olympic bid committee had in mind when it proposed London’s East End, about a dozen Underground stops northeast of fixtures like Big Ben, as the epicenter of the competition, which begins July 27. Though sailing races will be held in Weymouth and Portland, and soccer matches around the country, most of the games will take place in this industrial wasteland now poised for a turnaround.

But long before the Olympics came to town, the East End played a leading if shadowy role in London’s history. In past decades, few tourists may have felt compelled to visit an area known for abandoned warehouses, racial strife and Jack the Ripper’s murder spree. Now two tours reframe the area, in the first case as a shining new home for the Olympics, and in the second as a collection of vivid neighborhoods that once absorbed the worst of the bombing in World War II, gave birth to the Salvation Army, inspired George Orwell and Jack London and now is home to a mix of striving immigrants and artists.

“The bid was predicated on a part of London that was sorely in need of help,” said Steven Back, a Blue Badge guide with Tour Guides, who led me and 12 other visitors on a two-hour Olympic Walk departing from the Bromley-by-Bow tube station. “The East is the only direction in which London could grow.”

Standing before the restored 1776 House Mill, Mr. Back described the area during the years before the Industrial Revolution as “London’s breadbasket,” where agricultural fields banked the Lea River, and mills processed grain. Industrialization transformed the area, introducing soap factories, leather tanneries and chemical plants that polluted the air and water but remained downwind of posh districts to the west.

Pockets of gentrification in East London predate Olympic efforts. Shouldering a tripod, a cameraman stopped to ask directions to nearby 3 Mills Studio, the largest sound-stage in London, used by the filmmakers of “Never Let Me Go” and “Sherlock Holmes II,” and currently engaged in preparing for the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies. Despite a few apartment buildings and funky houseboats lining the canals, the Olympic vicinity of East London felt empty, with construction cranes appearing to outnumber people.

That sense of desertion changed as we ascended the Greenway, a 4.4-mile elevated footpath that follows the area’s sewage system and skirts Olympic Park (“Sometimes we get a whiff, but it smells quite good today,” our guide observed). Roughly one mile from our start, we joined other groups milling in front of the construction zone to survey the stadium, the distant stingray-shaped aquatics center designed by Zaha Hadid, and the Orbit Tower, a viewing platform designed by the sculptor Anish Kapoor. Strolling north, we glimpsed the white cube that will host basketball games and the elliptical, wood-clad velodrome by Hopkins Architects nicknamed the “Pringle.”

The tour ended at the View Tube, a neon green shipping-container-turned-community center. Its Container Cafe, posted with local artwork and populated by lingering coffee sippers, offers the tour’s only glimpse of residents in the Olympic area, a mix of scruffy artists, quiet pensioners and working-class mothers shepherding their children to an adjacent playground.

After the Games, plans include converting the stadium to a home for one of the area’s professional soccer teams; the swim center to a community pool; and the athlete’s village to affordable housing. But a tour of Olympic Park reveals little about local life in East London, which is considered Britain’s gateway for immigrants, with large concentrations from Bangladesh, Africa and the Caribbean.

For a more insiderly tour of the East End, I contacted the new London Greeters service. Founded last February, London Greeters offers free, resident-led, one-on-one tours that range from one to four hours. The organization’s 22 volunteer guides cover the five East London boroughs, as well as Camden in Central London.

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Before I went, everyone told me I’d be disappointed, wished me the best of luck, said it was a real shame I wasn’t headed to Paris or Copenhagen or some other — any other — European capital of note. Afterward, they checked back, eager for affirmation about how underwhelming my experience was. The only thing finicky gastronomes enjoy more than shared rapture is shared ridicule.

Sorry to disappoint. I ate very well in Berlin, a city that has clearly made strides over the last few years. And in several of the restaurants mentioned below, I ate adventurously, too. The food had a sense of place, with German staples and traditions in the foreground or background. But it also had a sense of improvisation, with other impulses and parts of the world rounding out the picture. The balance of the two was just right.

At one place I had what might be called German-Chinese fare and at another what might qualify as German-Italian. Befitting a city that is home to a sophisticated international crowd, its kitchens are taking an increasingly polyglot approach.

And perhaps because Berlin doesn’t have an image of culinary transcendence to live up to, even its ambitious restaurants tend to be blessedly bereft of puffed-up airs. I left them feeling not only elated but also relaxed. Dining at its happiest is supposed to do that for you.

Restaurant Tim Raue

Although only 37 years old, the chef Tim Raue has been kicking around Berlin kitchens and channeling his love for Asian cuisines for a good long while now. With this thrilling restaurant, which opened a little over a year ago, he is poised at last to attract widespread international note.

I dropped by for a long lunch in November, and was handed a menu rife with small-plate selections labeled “dim sum.” Among the entrees was Peking duck, along with a veal dish in “XO jus.” I wondered: was this simply an haute Chinese experiment that happened to be situated in Berlin? Or was Germany going to have some say?

One of the dim sum selections came looking like traditional steamed dumplings. But inside each was stewed goose: a German touch, and a seasonal one at that. And the plate the dumplings were on was dabbed with circles of a red cabbage cream, certainly not a Chinese condiment.

In place of pancakes, the Peking duck came with a thick waffle, another departure from the Chinese norm. It served as a pedestal for slices of duck breast, and that arrangement was but one part of a dish that also included a swish of duck liver mousse and an intense duck broth with bits of various duck organ meat. There was French technique and spirit at work here, too.

In fact Mr. Raue’s cooking and sensibility reminded me of the renowned work of a Frenchman in America: Jean-Georges Vongerichten. There was the same romance with Asia. The same orchestration of carefully chosen spices and peppers, from Japan and Thailand as well as China, to achieve a melody of hot, sweet and tart notes. The same attention to aromatics. The same substitution of heavy sauces with nimbler broths, like the intensely citrusy one that coddled a fillet of loup de mer.

Mr. Raue’s execution lags behind his ideas: the duck breast was slightly tough, the dumpling shells a bit soggy. But he pulls off moments of crazy delight. An appetizer broth of very German, very seasonal pumpkin had electric currents of flavor, courtesy of accents that included dried ginger, mandarin, cranberry and red, black and white peppers.

The contemporary dining room, done in dark blues and purples, is dashing without being cloying, and the restaurant’s attention to detail extends from beautiful chopsticks to extensive, impressive lists of Asian teas and European wines. I almost canceled other reservations to return to Raue, but the spirit of exploration egged me on. And a good thing it did.

Restaurant Tim Raue, Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26; (49-30) 25-93-7930; tim-raue.com. Four-course lunch for two with wine and tip, about 170 euros, about $210 at $1.24 to the euro.

Horvath

This charming restaurant, on a leafy and largely residential street, underwent a significant transformation midway through 2010 with the arrival of a new chef, Sebastian Frank.

An Austrian native, he came for love. After many years working under other cooks in acclaimed restaurants in Vienna, he followed a woman he met to Berlin and got a kitchen of his own, at Horvath, in the bargain. He’s making the most of the opportunity by turning out expertly composed dishes that are just busy enough to rivet you but not so busy they exhaust you.

And they’re firmly grounded in the local, seasonal spirit of the day. Before my meal, a pumpkin patch somewhere in or near Berlin had been freshly depleted, its fruits — or, rather, gourds — relocated to Horvath, where the terrific bread was accompanied by a butter infused with pumpkin seed oil, which tasted somewhat of tahini, only richer, darker. For dessert, there was pumpkin brittle ice cream. It had a nutty panache.

The dinner menu at Horvath is divided into two parts, on two pages. One is labeled traditional, and meant to hew more closely to German traditions. The other is labeled innovative. I ordered from the former while Tom, my partner, focused on the latter. Our meals were less different than we expected, and each yielded as many standouts as the other.

From the traditional menu there was suckling pig, served as pink slices of loin and gooey balls of cheek. These were accompanied by an enormous potato dumpling stuffed with minced blood sausage. Germans know how to go for gastronomic broke. And I’m happy to follow them every meaty, fatty step of the way.

From the innovative menu there was a fillet of Arctic char with an amalgam of cabbage and tomato and red pepper purées that tasted like sauerkraut in ketchup. That’s a comfort-food compliment.

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But coming so soon after the holidays, you don’t want to travel too far. After all, there is still spring break and summer vacation to plan. Ideally, your destination should be somewhere you can reach in an easy drive or on a nonstop flight and that will have enough activities to occupy the children — or at least wear them out — so the grown-ups can actually relax and have some fun, too.

How about Scottsdale, Ariz., where children can enjoy mornings spent horseback riding cowboy-style or exploring nature trails in the Sonoran Desert, followed by a mellow afternoon at the pool for the grownups and gallery hopping in the evening? Or go your separate ways — the children to ski school, while you hit the spa— in Mont Tremblant, Quebec. Want something you will all enjoy together? Explore ancient Mayan temples in Mexico, bike along Miami’s shore or ice-trek through gorges in Banff, Alberta. Since you don’t have time to research all of that, I’ve done much of the heavy lifting for you. Here are 10 family-friendly winter escapes you can run off to for a weekend or longer at a range of prices.

Banff, Alberta

For the Kids: Spotting wolf tracks on snowshoe tours, yelling “mush!” from a dogsled and trying out gentle slopes for beginner skiers and boarders. For ages 8 and up, there are also ice walks through frozen gorges. Banff Adventures Unlimited offers four-hour ice walks through Grotto Canyon, past unusual rock formations, Native rock art and icefalls (40 Canadian dollars for children 8 to 12; 62 dollars for adults; Canadian dollars are about the same in value as U.S. dollars).

For the Grown-Ups: Three ski areas (Mount Norquay, the Lake Louise Ski Area and Sunshine Village) in a Unesco World Heritage site, Banff National Park. After a day on the mountain, adults can enjoy some farm-to-table dining or soak their sore muscles in hot springs. Family rates for two adults and two children (17 and younger) at Banff Upper Hot Springs, where temperatures are kept between a steamy 98 and 104 degrees, are 22.50 dollars.

Where to Stay: The Douglas Fir Resort Chalets, about four minutes from downtown Banff, has two indoor water slides and offers rooms with full kitchens and fireplaces, from 109 dollars a night including free unlimited use of the Town of Banff shuttle bus. The Fairmont Chateau in Lake Louise, just outside Banff, offers supervised activities in their playroom during ski season for ages 3 and up. Rates start at 279 dollars a night; children 5 and under eat free.

Getting There: Nonstops under four hours are available from major United States cities including Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Phoenix, into Calgary International Airport, less than two hours from most ski resorts.

Grand Cayman

For the Kids: Swimming with stingrays (Stingray City), stroking the chin of a sea turtle (Cayman Turtle Farm) or snorkeling just off shore. Or visit the Blue Iguana Recovery Program, which offers “safari tours” for spotting the rare creatures ($10; free for children 12 and under) at the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park.

For the Grown-Ups: Lounging in hammocks under great pine trees (Rum Point) and spectacular diving. The newest dive site is the U.S.S. Kittiwake, a submarine rescue ship, which the Cayman Islands government submerged off the coast of Seven Mile Beach last year for tourists to explore and for wildlife to inhabit.

Where to Stay: Sunshine Suites Resort, a short walk from the beach, has suites with two queen beds, a full kitchen and dining area from $220 a night including Internet. The Westin Casuarina Resort Spa on Seven Mile Beach has a Kids’ Club and offers water sports through its Red Sail Sports program. Rates start at $349 a night.

Getting There: Nonstop flights of less than four hours are available from several East Coast cities including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Miami.

Miami

For the Kids: Feeding parrots at Jungle Island, spotting manatees from glass-bottom boats (Biscayne National Park), and easy biking along shoreline trails. Miami Beach has a bike sharing program with stations all over the city. A two-hour rental is $10.

For the Grown-Ups: Beach yoga, Art Deco gems and loads of shopping, dining and night-life options. There are also free outdoor evening “Wallcast” concerts and movies projected onto a 7,000-square-foot wall of the Frank Gehry designed New World Center.

Where to Stay: Fontainebleau Miami Beach has 10 pools, a 40,000-square-foot spa, two nightclubs, and Kids Night Out programs on weekend evenings. Rooms start at $489 a night. Hotel Urbano at Brickell is a 65-room art-inspired hotel in downtown Miami with a pool. The hotel offers discounts for Miami Seaquarium and boutique shops within Mary Brickell Village, a nearby open-air promenade. Room rates start at $209.

Getting There: Nonstop flights from more than 130 United States cities.

Mont Tremblant

Ski Resort, Quebec

For the Kids: Three beginners’ ski areas and lessons (from 95 Canadian dollars) for ages 3 and up, plus ice-skating, snowshoeing and sleigh-riding. Ages 3 and up can go dog sledding for between 83 and 142 dollars a person for a two-hour excursion by booking online or stopping by the resort’s activity center, located in the pedestrian village.

For the Grown-Ups: Ninety-five trails and a casino that is a short gondola ride away. Just off-site, you can spend the day soaking in thermal waters at the Nordic-themed Scandinave Spa from 48 dollars a person; massages start at 128 dollars. French cafes and a village-style atmosphere will make you feel like you’re “in the Alps,” said Kyle McCarthy, editor at FamilyTravelForum.com, who has visited the resort with her own family.

Where to Stay: Hotel rooms within the pedestrian village start at about 170 dollars a night from Feb. 20 to March 16, including free ice-skate rentals, tube sledding evenings and early mountain access through the resort’s first tracks program. Book before Feb. 14 for 99-dollar five-day lift tickets for ages 6 to 17.

Getting There: Porter Airlines offers nonstop flights to Mont Tremblant from New York, or you can fly to Montreal, about a 90-minute drive from the resort.

New Orleans

For the Kids: Street car rides ($1.25), cemetery tours, beignets and king cake. There are also pre-Mardi Gras parades with glittering floats and G-rated bead throwing, including one specifically for kids, the Krewe of Brid, on Friday, Feb. 3, in the Lakeview neighborhood.

For the Grown-Ups: Creole cuisine, zydeco-blaring bars, live jazz and plantation tours. For smaller crowds, better bargains and less bacchanalia, avoid Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 21.

Where to Stay: The Hyatt Regency New Orleans, which reopened in October after a $275 million renovation, has rooms from $189 a night. The stylish International House is near the city’s Children’s Museum and has rooms from $159 a night.

Getting There: Nonstop flights from several major United States cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York.

North Guanacaste,

Costa Rica

MICHELLE HIGGINS writes the Practical Traveler column.

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Clement DauventJeanne Susplugas, left, and Alain Declercq, with a work they created, Glaive.

Paris

Gilbert and George, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, Christo and Jeanne Claude: art history is peppered with artist couples coming together creatively – and sometimes breaking a few plates in the process.

A multimedia exhibition in northern Paris (W Jamoisart Space, Loft CMJN, 46 boulevard Magenta, 75010; through Feb. 25, appointment only; 33-9 51-74-75-39) examines works created by such unions. Entitled “Je hais les couples” (“I hate couples”), the show consists entirely of pieces by artistic and romantic duos and aims to question the process of living and working under the same roof.

“Collaboration is natural in couples – and if you’re going through a rough patch, the work can be the only peaceful time between the two,” said Jeanne Susplugas, who, fittingly, curated the show with her partner, Alain Declercq. The two artists work as a pair and individually, and say that collaboration affects the way they create art. “It’s like having a third person in the room, and I can be a lot more objective and less worried than in my personal work.” They also contributed to the show by creating a piece that they feel is “a perfect equilibrium” between their aesthetics, mixing Ms. Susplugas’ focus on the medical field and Mr. Declercq’s interest in authority.

For other couples, working on a piece together was a lengthier, more animated process. Gaël Davrinche is a painter working on self-portrait and Sarah Jérôme uses multiple media to explore science and gender. “We have to find a form of cohabitation within one piece, which can take time,” Ms. Jérôme said. The pair presented a half-abstract half-figurative series of superimposed drawings on tracing paper, “a novel form of communication, of compromise emerges, that wouldn’t happen when working alone.”

Ms. Susplugas said that the experience of working together varied with each duo. “Some couples fought like mad, others found peace. In the end, the show is a metaphor for relationship, regardless of art.”

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The Fragrance Butler delivery display at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas.

Hotels today are in the thick of a trend that caters to their guests’ seemingly smallest needs, by doing things like providing custom playlists for their iPods and giving them eight choices of pillows for their beds. Now, the luxury brand Rosewood has a new amenity to add to the list: perfumes that are specific to each property. This month, eight Rosewood properties began supplying guests with a fragrance butler, who is trained on the merits of the different scents being offered.

Within five minutes of receiving a call to the concierge to request the service, a fragrance butler arrives at a room, carrying a silver tray of perfumes and colognes. Guests spritz themselves with a scent from the fragrance menu, which is tailored to each hotel.  (The Carlyle, for example, has an elegant, old-world feel, and the choices include Chanel Chance and Hermès Eau des Merveilles for women and Ralph Lauren Polo Black for men.) There is no limit to the number of times that the fragrance butler can be summoned.

In addition to the Carlyle in New York City, the Rosewood Hotel Georgia in Vancouver and the Rosewood Corniche in Jeddah are among the hotels that provide the service.  Kersten Rettig, a Rosewood spokesperson, said  that the fragrance amenity is designed primarily for the city traveler who doesn’t check bags. And that the hotel won’t roll out the offering to other locations unless guests start demanding it.

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