An Innocent Abroad

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2010-02-20T13:11:00.017Z

My wintry trip to western Europe was fruitful from a research standpoint. I visited many places listed in my grandfather's WWI diary, getting the lay of the land and solving some mysteries. I also made useful contacts along the way.

I got back to New York last Wednesday, and was surprised to see that Gotham was just as snowy as Germany. It's been a long and hard winter for many people.

One of the best decisions I made on this trip was to stay at B&Bs (chambres d'hote). Besides being an inexpensive alternative to hotels, it was a wonderful way to get to know some French families. All the rooms I had were comfortably furnished and cost less than $50 per night including breakfast. The breakfasts often included products made right on the spot: jams, jellies, fruit juice and yogurt. I recommend the experience highly if you're going to France and want to stay outside the cities. There's a French Web site that helps you find rooms and farm products for sale.

Here's a shout-out to the individual chambres d'hote where I stayed:

Outside Remiremont in the Moselle valley Bernadette and Jean-Marc Desmougin welcomed me warmly to Les Mitreuches. They were very helpful with my search and generous with their farm products.

Just down the road in the town of Vecoux I spent a night with Monique and Gerard DuPré and had a great home-cooked meal. Their chalet has one room to rent with a very comfortable bed. M. DuPré is a local historian and most interested in the project. He gave me some books about the local history and has already emailed material pertaining to my grandfather's stay in the region.

Then, in tiny Maxey sur Vaise (pop. 330), Danielle Noisette and her family made me feel most welcome. I had a private apartment off a side entrance to their 18th-century house. Danielle took pity on me and invited to dine with her family one evening due to the remoteness of the area. It was a real treat; again, practically everything came out of their farm. In addition to running her B&B, Danielle also rents entire vacation properties.

In Germany I stayed for two nights at „Die Scheune” mit Gästehaus „St. Hubertus”, or "The Barn" with "St. Hubertus" Guesthouse, near Bad Kreuznach. This solid stone house (and barn) was once a mill. The setting is probably really lovely in the summer with its many trees and a private garden. They host social events in the barn during the warm months. However, the courtyard was filled with increasing amounts of snow while I was there. In contrast to the inclement weather, I was greeted warmly by owner Klaus Moehring. He provides a delicious breakfast in one's room.

Castles on the Rhine

2010-02-16T20:48:00.013Z

The last two nights I've been in a Gästehaus near the city of Bad Kreuznach. The inn was an old mill with thick stone walls and, boy, was it cold inside! Must be great in summer, but I had to wear several layers to bed. It was okay since I was only there to sleep. I chose the location because it was convenient to several places Grant mentioned in his diary.

Monday I recreated a trip Grant made down the Rhine to Speyer with a stop in Worms on the return trip. Both cities have marvelous Romanesque cathedrals. The trouble often with traveling on Mondays is that many museums are closed. I would have like to have visited the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer, but it was „geschlossen." They had enticing posters all over town for an exhibit called "Witches: Myths and Truth" with a photo of a big green toad.

In the afternoon I intended to explore Mainz and find the exact location of the barracks where Grant and his outfit lived for several weeks. But once again I ran up against carnival! Roadblocks at every turn! So I parked the car and took a tram into the city. I followed the costumed throngs into the old part of Mainz and found a parade in full swing. I gave up trying to find the tourist office. Everything was closed anyway. So I decided to join the party for a while. I had a beer and snapped some photos of the crowd. I had to be careful where I walked because the pavement was littered with bottles of all kinds and other refuse. The crowd had clearly been enjoying themselves for hours.

This morning I drove up the west side of the Rhine from Bad Kreuznach to Koblenz, again recreating one of Grant's jaunts. Even though it was hazy, the castles that adorn both sides of the river were very visible. What also stood out were the incredible (nearly vertical) vineyards. Someday I would like to come here at harvest time and see how they do it. It must be hard to pick the grapes without tumbling down the mountainside.

I remember making this same journey past the Lorelei Cliff (only in the opposite direction) with my parents in the spring of 1984. My dad drove, of course, I navigated from the front seat, and my poor mother, who had a cold, lay down in the rear seat, rallying every once and a while to gaze at a castle before sinking back down again.

Once I hit Koblenz, the sun came out and I had bright sunshine the rest of the day. It's ironic that on my last day in Europe I had the best weather in three and a half weeks! Since it had snowed heavily for the past few days I had a beautiful drive through the forested mountains east of the Rhine to Limburg an der Lahn. The snow clung to every tree branch. The sunlight on the snow was blinding at times. In picturesque Limburg I wanted to talk to someone on in the tourism office, but it was closed for carnival. Grant evacuated a prisoner of war camp and I wanted to find its exact location. I had similar intentions later in the afternoon in Gießen, but gave up. These questions will have to wait.

Around three o'clock in the afternoon I arrived in a small town northeast of Gießen. It was an emotional experience for me because it happened to be the hometown of two brothers who live in my building in New York. Their family lived and worked in this small town for many years. And then the Nazis came to power. During World War II the family was deported to Theresienstadt (where they lost the grandmother) and thence to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There the parents were murdered in the gas chamber, but these two young brothers survived. Eventually they emigrated to America, settled down in New York and raised their own families. I feel lucky to know them.

Au Revoir, France… Hallo, Deutschland!

2010-02-15T20:49:00.009Z

Let me begin with a side note: One the real pleasures of this voyage is seeing so many birds of prey—hawks, ospreys, kites or kestrels. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know exactly which species I’m seeing. There have been so many large birds sitting on fence posts right beside the road, close enough to touch, or on a low tree branch or wire over the road. Sometimes a movement will catch the corner of my eye and it’s a hawk taking to wing and landing in a nearby field atop some prey. Each time I think of trying to photograph these beautiful birds I then think that by the time I stop the car and get set up they will have flown away.

Saturday I bade farewell to France and wound my way into Germany. Why Germany? I’m glad you asked. After the First World War came to a halt on November 11, 1918, my Grandfather Grant’s ambulance unit was sent into Germany with the occupying French army. Throughout the winter of 1918-19 Grant and his comrades ferried patients here and there, and evacuated prisoner of war camps, including the dreaded camp at Gießen.

Part of me was sorry to be leaving France because it meant I’d be losing my felicity in a foreign language. Although German was the first foreign language, it does not roll off my tongue as easily as does French. I’ll never be able to make myself understood as well in German as in French. I can't hold in depth political or social discussions in German. I can order a meal and ask for directions, sort of.

I lingered over some sites in the Argonne Forest before heading towards Germany and I’m sorry to say that I badly misjudged the distance between Verdun and Saarbrücken, my stop for the night. It was nearly eight o’clock by the time I’d finally found my hotel in that unfamiliar town. I was completely lost when I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. The clerk enlisted the advice of a taxi driver who was standing nearby. He said (auf Deutsch) that it was far to complicated to tell me how to reach my hotel and that it would be better to hire a taxi driver to lead me to the hotel. I thanked him for his advice and went to one of the nicer hotels downtown. The desk clerk spoke English and was very helpful. He gave me a map and showed me how to get there. I wasn't far off.

As I drove around downtown Saarbrücken I saw a couple on their way to a costume party. "That's nice," I thought to myself. Then I saw another couple. "They must be going to the same party," I thought. Then I saw another couple and another. Pretty soon everyone I saw was in costume. Teutonic maidens, cowboys, witches, etc.

Then I remembered: my visit to Germany was coinciding with that annual bacchanalia known as carnival. While people are sambaing in practically nothing in the streets of Brazil, Germans, young and old, are dressing up in wigs and costumes and partying in the snowy streets and beer gardens. I can't tell you how many cars I've seen in the last two days being driving by people wearing bright wigs. I feel kind of left out without a costume. I thought about putting down the earflaps on my hat while amongst the revelers in Mainz this afternoon, but thought I was funny enough looking with my overshoes on. But am I sure glad I brought them. Whether in Belgium, France or Germany, it has snowed most of the days I've been over here and I've been living in the overshoes. Pretty they are not, but practical.

Verdun

2010-02-13T09:07:00.014Z

It's been snowing in Verdun since I arrived on Wednesday. It's made the city very pretty, but the sidewalks are slick--I've nearly landed on my derrière a few times. There's not the same snow removal effort that exists in New York or Minnesota. Still, for having snowed for three days there's not much on the ground. I can still see the green grass poking up.

I realize by covering the same ground as my grandfather I'm traveling much faster than he could have done in 1917. I traveled between cities in a few hours--a journey that took him two or three days in an ambulance convoy. The French transportation infrastructure has changed so much in the last one hundred years. That sounds like a simple statement, but I don't think many of us stop to think about the speed and modes of transportation available to our grandparents a century ago and those that we use now. The world has changed so much.

I've had success in Verdun finding the locations of Grant's bases. I met with a librarian at the Verdun Memorial and she showed me "top secret" maps of the Verdun battlefield from 1916. The topographical map showed the locations of the various forts that had fallen into German hands. Carefully marked also was the system of trenches, the French in red and the German in blue, (red state/blue state?) that spread out in a very complicated maze. Each trench had its own name, sometimes named after the hometown of the soldiers fighting there, sometimes after famous people on one side or the other. The cartographers of the day were certainly kept busy by the continually shifting front lines.

After studying the maps I ventured off into the snowy woods to try to find a particular aide post Grant mentions frequently in his diary. But, alas, all I found were thousands of shell impact craters covered with trees and snow. I did walk a ways into an old trench that is still maintained and tried to imagine what it had been like to fight there. The snow and -4 C temperatures helped a bit, but I don't think one can really comprehend what happened there.

I have to say it was a shock to check into a tiny hotel room after having stayed in private homes for six nights! It's pretty sleepy at night, but I've managed to find a few good restaurants. And a fun bar called Le Lapin Qui Fume (the Smoking Rabbit). But they do seem to roll up the sidewalks not long after the sun goes down.

Then came the odor of mustard gas

2010-02-10T21:28:00.012Z

Beaumont

I've read war described as long periods of boredom broken up with moments of absolute terror. Tuesday I spent time in places where my grandfather and his comrades experienced that kind of terror. In the spring of 1918 they were scattered at aid stations across several square miles near a protrusion in the Western Front called the St. Mihiel Salient. I visited villages called Mandres-aux-Quatre-Tours, Rambucourt, Ansauville and Beaumont. Today they are sleepy farming villages. The loudest sounds are made by trucks rumbling through. Back in 1918 it was artillery fire from 77 mm German guns and gas shells exploding nearby. Grant survived a couple of run-ins with chemical warfare, but wound up in the hospital for several days... and he may have had lung problems for the rest of his life.

Rambucourt

April 19, 1918: "Our last trip down from Mandres took us through the fumes of a fruit gas shell which broke ahead of us right in the middle of the road. We were making pretty good time so it didn’t get us badly except in mind. My orderly, McDonald, a very plucky boy, got sick to his stomach and when we got in to the hospital we were ordered to stay in for the night. Boatman took my car and Mac and I went to bed pretty sick to our stomachs with eyes smarting and blood-shot... I found my car at Ménil-la-Tour all whole and we went back to Vignot with the Lieut. There we were met by a Captain who sentenced us to the hospital. Sunday and Monday were spent between sheets in the 104th Field Hospital where we received gas treatment and liquid diet. We were glad of the rest, but the liquid diet almost killed us because we hadn’t eaten very much on the two preceding days. Our day hospital sergeant was an ex-movie actor who was drafted. His assistant was a mechanic in Chicago. The night Sergeant was a bar tender in New York before being drafted so one can imagine what kind of care we had when the doctors were not around. They did the best they knew how."

Ansauville

Route Inondée

2010-02-09T11:24:00.014Z

Some general observations, nothing profound:

Many French people burn wood for heat. I noticed this in the Vosges Mountains and also along the banks of the Meuse, where I am presently. The air is redolent with the smell of a wood fire and there are chimneys everywhere smoking lazily.
I am amazed by the presence of moss in a lot of places. Moss on the trees, of course, but also on stone walls, concrete telephone polls, etc. The colors are vibrant: bright green, tumeric yellow and mushroom brown.
As is usually the case when I'm in Europe, I am struck by the ancient and the old being smack up agains the modern. In the city of Toul yesterday I saw a medieval tower against which had been built a building in the 18th-century against which in turn had been a built a building in an art deco style of the 1930s. Most of the farm buildings I've seen have to be at least 2o0 years old or more.
The Meuse and many other rivers/creeks have overflowed their banks due to melted snow and rain. This is normal, I guess, for this time of year, but it's a little disconcerting to me. Many smaller country roads are closed because of flooding.

On Saturday the weather cleared up considerably. There were patches of blue amongst the clouds and I could see the mountaintops. The temperatures were higher than they had been; the thermometer in my car didn’t keep warning me about the dangers of ice!

I decided to take advantage of the clearer skies to visit the Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial on a bluff overlooking the Moselle River. There is a family connection buried here--a cousin by the name of Edward A. Everett. Known as Ted, he was my mother’s first cousin and her favorite, according to her. Tenderhearted, artistic and fun to be around, he was killed on October 2, 1944, just a few days after the Americans liberated Remiremont and Epinal from the Germans. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two. He survived marching up the boot of Italy and invading the south of France, but died somewhere near the Moselle. Naturally, I never knew him, but grew up around his sister and brother who live on still.

When I pulled up to the visitors’ building at the cemetery, it was obvious I was the only visitor. There was a bright-eyed American named Shane in the office who offered to show me to Ted’s grave. Shane had been in the US Air Force but now works for the American Battle Monuments Commission. As we walked we talked about my grandfather project, about Ted Everett, the cemetery and World War II. Shane had thoughtfully brought along a bucket of sand and a wet sponge. He explained that by rubbing sand into the inscription on the grave marker the lettering stands out much more than the bare marble. I was grateful for the extra attention this young man gave me.

Due to a miscommunication (my fault) I had to spend Saturday night at another chamber d’hote, but the cultivatrice Bernadette Desmougin helped me by finding me a room with a colleague down the road. This new host provided a great meal Saturday evening for a reasonable fee. All the food for the meal was either grown in their own garden, preserved by them in some way or purchased locally. This is very hard to do in New York City.

Sunday I left the Vosges and made my way in the northwesterly direction to the department of the Meuse. I stopped in several towns where Grant had been in 1917-18: Neufchâteau, Gondrecourt-le-Château and Vaucouleurs. I'm in Joan of Arc country town; strange that Grant doesn't mention her in his journal. I'm staying just up the road from the place where Joan claimed to have received a message from God to save France from the English. There's a basilica on the spot. One may also visit her birthplace.

I'm spending three nights in an 18th-century bourgeois house in a tiny town called Maxey-sur-Vaise. The family that runs the chambre d'hote welcomed me warmly; they don't get too many visitors in February. I have a little apartment all to myself with a separate entrance. Yesterday evening they invited me to dine with them and it was fun. We discussed the region, history and politics while eating, what else, quiche lorraine!

Today I am off to see several places where Grant found himself in the spring and summer of 1918.

Snow at Higher Elevations

2010-02-05T23:10:00.017Z

Yesterday, after several days spent with friends in Belgium and the Paris region, I struck out for Lorraine to find more traces of my grandfather Grant. I abandoned my original plan of a meandering trip along old highways though Champagne and other regions for the fastest automobile option which was taking the A5 autoroute most of the way. My goal was the city of Remiremont, nestled in the Vosges Mountains and the Moselle River valley. It was 270 miles away and I wanted to get there before it was really dark. The autoroutes are anything but cheap (it cost $27 to make the trip), but one may fly along at 130 km/h (78 mph) or slightly faster if no one is watching. Flying even faster still were the TGVs that passed me as if I were standing still at 130 km per.

The weather yesterday was some of the best I've seen since arriving in France the week before. A lazy sun succeeded in breaking out from clouds. For a change there was no snow or rain. I can't tell you how many hawks and ospreys I saw sitting on fence posts or landing on some carrion, but it was a least a dozen. I enjoyed watching the rolling countryside as I drew away from Paris and entered Champagne. The roadsign said simply: "You are in Champagne," and I thought how fun it would have been to taste some. But soon I was in other regions at higher elevations and there was snow on the ground. The closer I got to Remiremont the more snow there was. There are several feet on the ground in most places around here and even on the rooftops.

I am staying on a farm outside of Remiremont in a sort of bed-and-breakfast. The two farmers who run this place are husband and wife, and seem to be a good team. It made me realize we have no distinct word in English for a woman farmer. "Farmer and his wife" seem to go together but are sexist really. In any event, I welcomed warmly Mr and Mrs D. who thought for some reason that I would be German. They were a bit amazed when they discovered a French-speaking American. Madame seemed very interested in my project as most people who stay here this time of year are going skiing in the Vosges. She offered me a bowl of hot homemade soup to go with the baguette and cheese I'd bought along the way. Soon I was joined by three scruffy carpenters who are staying here while they build a hay barn. They and the farmer drank Pernod and water while we talked a bit.

I spent most of today driving around the area in the rain. It was hard to do much else. I spent time in Remiremont tracking down the location of an old French army barracks and hospital where Grant and his buddies spent Bastille Day, 1917. Their ambulance unit was camped out in Rupt-sur-Moselle (the soggy, snowy town in the photo), about 7 miles south of here, and on July 14, with the war on hiatus for the day, they walked all the way to Remiremont to check out the festivities. By chance they were mistaken for American officers and were invited into the Marion barracks to enjoy a concert for the wounded soldiers. Grant said it felt strange to be saluted by French majors, captains and lieutenants when he and his comrades were lowly volunteer ambulance men.

Afterward I drove over snowy mountain passes to an ancient spa town called Luxeuil-les-Bains. Because it was above freezing and raining there was a mist rising from the cold snow that blanked the region. The tops of the mountains were shrouded. Grant passed through Luxeuil but didn't stay long. The Romans called it Luxovium and created baths with the warm mineral water. In 590, St. Columban founded the Abbey of Luxeuil, and I found a modern statue of the Irishman outside the ancient basilica. I asked about the thermal baths and found they don't open for business until March 1. I'm not exactly here at the high season!

2010-01-29T11:51:00.009Z

I paid a visit yesterday to the Domaine de Sandricourt, about 30 miles northwest of Paris. On this large estate is an old farm used by American ambulance corps as a training camp during the First World War. My grandfather spent several months here in 1917 and 1918. Mr. G, the son of the owner in 1917, graciously showed me around before he and his wife offered a sumptuous lunch and interesting conversation in the chateau!

The old farm look similar to the way it looked in my grandfather's day, although the buildings are a bit rundown. Mr. G is trying to get them renovated and meanwhile has rented it to a budding beekeeper.

It was eery standing in the muddy courtyard of this place that I've read about for so long. But there may be several eery moments on this voyage of discovery.

L'amour, l'amour!

2010-01-26T15:54:00.000Z

I knew from the start the three vieilles françaises were going to be trouble. There was something about these women that set off my alarm bells. I'm not sure if it was the piles of carry-on luggage and shopping bags they had, or the sense of entitlement that eminated from them. They could have been sisters. They all had the same platinum blond dye job and were clad in matching fur jackets, velvet jump suits, Uggs and DG eyewear (real or knock-off). All of them had leathery wrinkled skin from too much sun and too many cigarettes.

Unfairly, I pegged them as first/business glass passengers for when we boarded they were just in front of me in coach. And my alarm bells were not wrong: the women delayed the whole boarding process by blocking the aisle, asking others to lift all their carry on luggage into the overhead bins and generally standing around as we tried to squeeze past.

Once we were airborne three vieilles françaises didn't cause problems. The one nearest me (diagonally across the aisle) was a nervous flyer and started having emotional fits when we spent hours flying through severe turbulence. The meal and beverage service was suspended twice. Every shake and side-ways motion of the plane sent her into a panic. She was trying to watch some of the classic films available on the entertainment system. As I watched what she was watching (George Cukor's The Women from 1939) I realized I'd seen it so many times that I could recite the dialogue just from watching the actresses' mouths. Jungle red!

Once at the baggage claim, these three women reverted to their entitled behavior, however. Not once, but twice the woman who'd had the fits on the plane pushed her way through people waiting for their bags on the carrousel to grab one of her bags and hit them with it as she went. If someone stood in her way she just stopped and glared at them until they moved out of her way. Encroyable!

Time of the Cicada

2009-09-04T15:46:00.009+01:00

The recent muggy summer days have been filled with the haunting, prehistoric sound of the cicadas. I've heard them out my window in Washington Heights, on bicycle rides through the leafy lanes of the Bronx and Central Park, and on strolls through lower Manhattan. At times the sound is omnipresent and deafening.

The song of the cicadas is the sound of summer--its creaking timbre immediately conjures memories of the hot dog days of July and August. The hotter the day the louder the song.

But now, inevitably, the days are cooling off and getting shorter. And the cicadas are singing less and less. But I can still hear them in my mind; and that memory will warm me during the cold winter.

One Year Later

2009-06-30T15:32:00.009+01:00

I began this blog a year ago tomorrow. It seems hard to believe--so much water under the bridge-but it is true.

A year ago I was hurriedly preparing to move to London for five months.

"The last few days have been hectic with packing and preparing our New York apartment for my departure. Furniture is being covered..."

A lot of that living room furniture is gone. When we returned last November we gave the living room a long overdue renovation: new paint, new furniture, new layout.

"...plants are being farmed out to neighbors..."

All but two plants left in the care of our neighbor died while we were abroad. Actually, they were murdered--left to die in the back patio when the frosts of November came. Our trusted neighbor, having had several spats with the co-op board, decided to take his revenge on our houseplants. I had chosen this guy to care for our green friends because he loved plants and animals--he had a real green thumb--and was a vegetarian. He turned out to be a petty plant killer. What does one call plant murder? Botanicide?

"...and the refrigerator cleaned out. I must be truly mentally ill: I found five opened jars of salsa in the fridge with varying dates of expiration and amounts of remaining salsa. In addition there were several nearly empty jars of old preserves at the back. Why? I vow to live more simply and efficiently."

Well, the ice box is full, but not as crammed as it had been. Levels of salsa and preserves are under control. Still, I threw out several pieces of cheese last evening that were like bricks! Simplicity takes diligence!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to Heathrow we go

2008-11-21T09:10:00.004Z

It is the morning of Friday, November 21 and our London experiment is coming to a close. Today John and I return to New York. It is very strange to be leaving this place. We've been here long enough to get used to it, pick up the linguistic differences, have favorite restaurants, know some local shopkeepers and, well, feel at home. But leave we must.

In no particular order, here's a list of things I will miss about the last five months:

Being able to pop into a pub from time to time and enjoy a beer or a light meal
The post office with the best exchange rate and the incredible services
Being able to buy a copy of The Guardian every morning and The Observer on Sundays
The efficiency and ease of the bus system, even if the 214 is crap!
The British Museum, The British Library, The Tate, The Tate Modern - and all free
The Tower and Hampton Court - not free!
The 100-foot flat screen LG television set in the flat
Having my own washer/dryer right in the flat even if it takes hours (we share laundry facilities with everyone in our building in Manhattan)
The United Nations of restaurants and services a stone's throw from my front door
Easy train access to the Continent. I have been to Paris, Rome, Tuscany, Brussels and NE France all within hours
Great architecture: ancient, modern and everything in between
Living amongst history
Great labeling on food in grocery stores
No high fructose corn syrup in our food
Knowing that the National Health Service was always there if I fell ill
Sharing my thoughts with you here

And now: back home.

Our Flat

2008-11-17T16:29:00.028Z

In this, our last week living in London, I thought I should talk a little about the flat that has been our home away from home since the summer.

Naturally, I can't complain. I've been living rent-free for four and a half months in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The one-bedroom flat has been claustrophobic at times, but has served us well.

We are on the 2nd floor (3rd for Americans) of a building built in the 1980s on Albert Street in Camden Town. You can see the location of the flat in this photo: the three windows at the upper left. According to a local history book there used to be a small factory of some sort on this plot. The only remnant of that older building is a stone plaque set into the facade that says E.R. VII for Edvardvs Rex, the seventh (King Edward VII). The first two stories are occupied by the British headquarters of World ORT, a Jewish non-governmental education and training organization.

There is an L-shaped entry hall off of which are the bedroom to the left and the bathroom to the right. The living room is straight ahead, and the kitchen is off the far side of the living room. The space is much smaller than what we were used to having in New York (The living room here is about the size of our second bedroom at home). But the bed is comfortable, we have a high speed Internet connection and a lovely flat-screen TV (it must be 3 feet across) with a gazillion cable channels.

An interesting aspect about the flat is the artwork that greeted us when we moved in. It's as if it had been selected especially for us. In the bedroom there a print of John Lennon and Yoko Ono watching over us every night. As some of you know, John Lennon was one of my John's idols and he's a fan of both artists. In the living room over the sofa or settee there is a painting of calla lilies in a vase--they happen to be one of our favorite flowers. On another wall Steve McQueen grins at us atop his motorcycle that he rode in the film The Great Escape, one of my favorite WWII films. (McQueen, a motorcycle enthusiast, got the producers to change the storyline so he could steal a German motorcycle and try to jump over the barbed wire border with Switzerland.) Finally, on the wall above the TV is the beautiful visage of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. She stares out at us directly wearing a black sleeve-less frock, long black gloves, a pearl necklace and diamond tiara, and is about to puff on her cigarette in a ridiculously long holder.

Our kitchen has been troublesome for us. John and I both enjoy cooking, but have felt sort of hamstrung in that department since we arrived. Although I brought some good knives with me we're missing a lot of utensils and pots/pans that we've grown accustomed to. The oven is a fan variety and works pretty well although cooking times have to be adjusted from a regular gas or electric one. The hob (stove) is a drag because it has electric plates; they heat up very fast, but you can't cool them down in a hurry. "Simmer" is a difficult operation on this hob. The fridge is very small. It fits below the counter and there's no freezer to speak of. It's a lot like the fridges we used to rent in our college dorm.

We have a clothes washer/dryer all-in-one unit in the kitchen, as well. One wash takes up to 2 hours, but is probably energy efficient. It sloshes the clothes around in about an inch of water! Then we line-dry the clothes or use the drying function in the unit. It's a slow process again, taking up to an hour and a half to dry a load.

Where's the Remote?

2008-11-13T20:31:00.007Z

You’ve got to have friends, or so Bette Midler sang in the '70s. Well, I am afraid I have to disagree. I am not referring to social connections, people to hang out with and share your life with. I am talking about the television show Friends. This show is broadcast on UK television about 8 hours a day. When you change channels during most hours of prime time chances are you will come across an episode. When you don’t find Friends, you find a mattering of other American sitcoms from the past 20 years.

I know most of us think of UK television as something a cut about the average American fare. We have images of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, Keeping up Appearances and Are You Being Served. Well, not to shatter your illusions but those are all from a long forgotten past. Today British television is made of mostly of reality show, shows about reality shows and chat shows hosted by former reality show participants interviewing reality show participants. There are a few bright moments in between but they are the exception.

One show we have mentioned on a previous post is called Booze Britain. This chronicles young Brits as the set about destroying their livers, and sometimes more, on a night out. Last night we watch a group of 8 young men in tailored suits spend almost 2000 pounds drinking on one night. If you recognize yourself in anyone on this show, it is time to enroll in a program! A brilliant television executive must have seen an opportunity in spawned a sister show--Boozed Up Brits Abroad. How original! On this show they follow around groups of young Brits in the age of low air fares mostly in Eastern Europe as they binge beyond belief. I guess they don’t consider it so bad when it is done abroad.

There is another show that follows around a “celebrity” couple. This couple became celebrities by appearing on different series (seasons to Americans) of Big Brother. They met when they both participated in Celebrity Big Brother. They had become celebrities by virtue of appearing on Big Brother! Once they had been firmly placed in the pantheon of a real live celebrity, they were given their won chat show (talk show). When nobody tuned in the decided to move to California, following in the steps of Posh and Becks (yes they are huge here even if most American don’t have a clue who they are). The result was a new reality show following them around from one agent to another trying to be famous. Fame in California eluded them so they are back here in the UK appearing in tabloids at the newsstands everywhere!

We can’t wait to return to the land of Letterman, Mad Men and HBO.

(Creative credit: John Carroll)

Oh Where Oh Where Has My Zipcar Gone?

2008-11-12T00:30:00.018Z

Yesterday morning in London was beautiful: sunny, crisp and autumnal. A world of difference from the soggy, rainy mess that greeted our eyes the morning before! The plan of the day was to pick up a Zipcar not far from our flat and drive John to his company's office in Basingstoke in the county of Hampshire, 50-some miles southwest of the capital. While he was busy with meetings, I would drive to Winchester to see the sights.

The plan hit the first hitch when I arrived to pick up the car--it wasn't there. Normally the Zipcar called Honda Jazz "Jonathan" is parked at All Saints Church in Islington, but all I found was an empty parking space with a sign telling me it was reserved 24 hours for Zipcar.

In a panic I called Zipcar.

"Are you sure you're in the right place?" asked the customer service nimrod at Zipcar.

"I'm where I'm supposed to be but your car is not here!" I shouted. (The wind was blowing into my cell phone.)

"All I can do, sir, is give you another available Zipcar. There appears to be one at a Travelodge on Museum Street, near High Holborn, about a mile from you. We would be happy to reimburse you for the expense of a cab."

What was I to do? I needed the car and the plan was rapidly falling behind schedule. Then the plan hit a second snag: when I called John on my English pay-as-you-go cellphone to give him the bad news, the phone told me I only had 2 minutes left to talk. Great! John heard panic in my voice and told me to calm down. I told him I was off to find this new car and would call back...somehow. Believe it or not I have not used a pay phone in four months in the UK.

Cursing Zipcar.com under my breath I started walking toward the King's Cross/St. Pancras area at the height of the morning rush to catch a bus, the Tube or a cab. I reached the new car's location by bus and foot. By the time I got back to Camden Town to get John, we were more than an hour behind time. Luckily we were going against the commuting stream and made good progress through London and into the 'burbs. We pulled up to his company's office at a quarter past 11 o'clock, so he was fifteen minutes late for a meeting.

Then I was off to Winchester, 16 miles away. This historic cathedral city is worth a visit. Ancient capital of England, it was the home of Saxon kings including King Alfred the Great. I made first for the huge Gothic cathedral. The building of the current edifice began in 1079, replacing a much older minster. It has one of the longest naves in Europe. It was once an important pilgrimage center: the ancient Pilgrims' Way traveling to Canterbury began at Winchester. I also visited the 13th-century Great Hall, the only part of Winchester Castle that Cromwell didn't have blown up during the English Civil War. Inside is "King Arthur's Roundtable." Though it's not old enough to be the real one, it's still charming to see.

The highlight of my day, however, was visiting the tiny village of Littleton on the outskirts of Winchester. It was here around 1615 that my ancestor, William Fifield, was born. Most Fifields in the US descend from this one man. William sailed from England on the ship Hercules in the spring of 1634 to Ipswich, Massachusetts. He became one of the original settlers of Hampton, NH in 1638 and died there in 1700.

I decided to look around the village church, Church of St. Catherine, for clues of Fifields. I'd just gotten to the front door of the church when I found a Fifield tombstone just to the left of the entrance! It was the grave of the wife a one Richard Fiffild. Then I found more and more Fifield graves around the churchyard. It was very exciting. It seems Fifields lived there for centuries.

Click here to see all my Winchester photos.

November 11

2008-11-11T23:41:00.014Z

Today my mind was on the men and women who served in World War I. And those who perished in that cataclysm who, to quote Eric Bogle, were "a whole generation butchered and damned." For my own selfish existential reasons I am grateful that both my grandfathers survived unharmed. I know that millions of families were not so lucky.

There was another ceremony at the Cenotaph in London today at which the last three surviving British veterans of the Great War "laid" wreaths. At ages 112, 110 and 108, respectively, these ancient men couldn't stand, let alone place a wreath on a monument.

The French don't have any WWI veterans left. At the Verdun battlefield, President Sarkozy and Prince Charles laid wreathes. In a last bit of WWI posturing Sarkozy had changed the memorial service to Verdun from the traditional Paris. The English were wondering why a purely Franco-German battlefield was chosen over an Anglo-Franco-German place like the Somme. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel canceled plans to attend. She is said to be furious the change of venue to the site of German ferocity. The war is over but it's still going on in a way.

I will leave you today with the thoughts of my Grandfather Grant Willard.

Monday, November 11, 1918:

The [82nd] Division is moving today and so are we. I reported back to our HQ. this A.M. and found them packing up. We left about noon for Clefmont on the main road between Neufchâteau and Langres about 35 km south of Neufchâteau.

While we were en route the news that the Armistice had been signed and all firing had ceased at 11 A.M. today was received and the towns were wild all the way down. Everybody was smiling. It’s hard to realize. I haven’t grasped the idea yet. How joyous everyone is!

When we reached Clefmont we went down to the school house and helped the kids ring the bell. We are the only soldiers in the town so we have things pretty much our own way. Our Frenchmen are busy making a hit with the French people around here. Luyx, Hap, Johnnie, Fraze, Eric, Titchmer, Schmittie, McGuire and myself ate in town this evening. We had chicken, french-fried, omelet, bread and raspberry jam and champagne to celebrate the armistice. A merry party.

Remembrance Sunday

2008-11-09T23:41:00.010Z

Today is Remembrance Sunday: the day that people remember Britain's war dead. The Queen laid a wreath of red poppies at the Cenotaph memorial in the middle of Whitehall Street as Princes Philip, Charles and William looked on. The prime minister and other members of the government also laid wreaths. British veterans of conflicts from World War II to Iraq and Afghanistan marched past the Cenotaph.

This year's Remembrance Sunday seems all the more poignant as it's falling just two days before the 90th anniversary of the World War I armistice. The Great War is more of a living presence in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany (and other countries) than it is in the United States. There are war memorials in every town and people turn out for these remembrance events. The British media, among others, have been running special WWI commemorative pieces in print, online and on the air. For weeks now Britons have been sporting red paper poppies on their jackets and coats, showing their support of British service people past and present. It's de rigueur that all TV presenters and personalities wear the poppy while on the air. And truth be told, I've been wearing one, too.

It's been a cold, rainy weekend for the most part. The streets and sidewalks (pavements) are covered with fallen leaves from the plane trees and every time we go in or out of the front door of our building leaves seem to blow into the hallway. Autumn is definitely here. The plane tree outside the flat is practically denuded.

We played host this weekend to an old friend from the Netherlands. M and John first worked together nearly twenty years ago and have been friends ever since. She was in England for a job interview and crashed on our settee last night. We had a good time strolling around Primrose Hill and Camden Town showing M the sights. It was great fun to talk about old times and future hopes.

Later in the day John and I went to the movies to see Oliver Stone's W. Josh Brolin gives an impressive performance as George W. Bush, and the supporting cast are all equally strong. Stone puts Bush on the analyst's couch, so to speak, and we find that he's been trying to live up to his father's expectations all his life. How many people are dead because W has been working out his demons in the White House? The movie's subject matter was maddening, but would have been worse if the outcome of last week's election had been different. To George Bush I say: good riddance to bad rubbish!

Fireworks!

2008-11-05T18:24:00.010Z

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Tonight is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night that commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the November 5, 1605, in which a number of conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. As I type, fireworks are being lit all around our flat in London. We can see and hear the explosions.

But John and I prefer to think that people are setting off fireworks in honor of the election of Barak Obama to the US presidency. It's a historic day, and I was up until 4 a.m. watching the election results. I am optimistic it's a new day for the US and the world.

How Long Are You Planning to Stay in Our Country?

2008-11-02T23:10:00.018Z

The rest of my time in France was filled with driving through beautiful autumnal countryside of rolling hills and pastures, visiting very sobering cemeteries and taking photographs of the places where my grandfather had been.

As it's difficult to put this moving experience into words I will let my photographs and my grandfather's speak for me.

On my way back to London I had to change trains (and train stations) in Paris. At the Gare du Nord before boarding the Eurostar to London one must pass through the UK border control. I was already sweating from the 10 minute hike between Parisian stations when I started getting grilled about why I was visiting the UK. The agent started flipping through my passport and saw all the entry and exit stamps I've acquired since the summer. And I start sweating a little more...

When did you first arrive in the UK?
How long did you stay in March?
What is your occupation?
How much money do you have with you?
How much money is in your bank account?
Whose flat is this in London you wrote down?
What does your partner do?

All the while she's madly scribbling notes on the back the landing card I had filled out. Did I say something wrong? I know I haven't been in the UK longer than the allotted 6 months. I know I've done no work paid or unpaid while here. I haven't broken the law. I have an airplane ticket to take me back to NY on November 21.

Still, the agent was suspicious and not entirely satisfied with my answers. She let me back into the UK for 6 months, but she stamped my passport with a special stamp with a code number that can allow another agent to pull up her remarks the next time I try to enter the country.

Now I understand a little about what visitors to the United States go through when they fly into our cities. How everyone has to be fingerprinted when visiting America; how Latinos or Arabs must feel when they get singled out try to pass legally through our borders. It's not pleasant.

Verdun to Pont-à-Mousson

2008-10-27T21:27:00.012Z

The weather in this part of France turned cold and rainy overnight and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I decided to return to the Verdun battlefield this morning in an attempt to find the exact spots where my grandfather had been. I think I got pretty close--as close as I'm going to get without tramping through the woods with a compass to find the aid stations he serviced. I wouldn't want to set off any unexploded shells.

It's been ninety years since the slaughter here and most of the battlefield has grown over into a managed forest. It was hard to equate the photos of the area that Grant Willard took showing a desolate, cratered, moon-like surface with the beautiful, peaceful autumn forests I found today.

It was difficult to spot this:

In this:

From Verdun I drove southeast along the Meuse River and a beautiful canal built alongside, the surface of the canal like a mirror. At St. Mihiel I turned east into the heart of what had been the German-held St. Mihiel Salient, a knife-like protrusion in the Western Front. In September 1918 the Americans fought the Germans for the first time on their own and won a decisive victory. The salient was removed.

This part of France is very rural. I doubt the land has changed much in thousands of years. The towns are very small--a church, a townhall and a WWI monument. I passed some of the spots where my grandfather spent the spring and summer of 1918 seeing some of the most grueling action just south of the salient. While in these tiny villages he and his comrades were subjected to chemical warfare. They were all shaken out of their sleep my a mustard gas shell exploding outside their quarters. They spent the night in the cellar in the gas masks with rats dying around them. In the following days they were gassed further while removing the wounded. Grant wound up in the hospital for a few days.

By September, Grant and his unit were working the eastern end of the offensive around Pont-à-Mousson. That's where I'm spending the night.There has been a bridge across the Moselle here since the Middle Ages, but the present one was built after heavy bombardment during both world wars. The town survived relatively unscathed, despite the importance of the St-Gobain iron foundry – the name Pont-à-Mousson is familiar throughout France as just about every manhole cover in the country is made here.

Here's what was on my grandfather's mind ninety years ago:

Sunday, October 27:

Got 3 hours of sleep last night. Pretty good for me on post. Our guns cut loose this A.M. at 4 o’clock and a couple of big boys over back of us somewhere shook me out of bed. Sat in the dressing station until 6 A.M. when I got a call to Sommerance. "Fritz" raised hell in Fléville last night. Several new shell holes in the road and many newly killed horses.

Read Pres. Wilson’s reply to German plea for armistice. Hope there is no armistice until we have German militarism ousted. Don’t think it will be long now. What is the new German system going to amount to?

Took a shower bath this A.M. at headquarters -- the first since returning from Paris. Everybody has cooties!

On My Grandfather's Trail

2008-10-26T21:00:00.002Z

I’m spending five days in northeastern France retracing the footsteps of my grandfather, Grant Willard, who was an ambulance driver with the French and U.S. Armies during the First World War.

Tonight I am in Verdun, a sleepy city on the Meuse River—very sleepy. Last night was Saturday and half of the restaurants in the center were closed. I couldn’t tell if they were just closed or out of business. Perhaps I’m here at the low tourist season. But then as elsewhere in the world, I don’t think the economy is hopping here in the Department of the Meuse.

I’m staying at this comical old inn called Le Coq Hardi (The Hardy Cock)—no jokes, please. The inn is housed in several old houses that easily could be several hundred years old. There is a marvelous stone fireplace in the lobby with a fire blazing away and a wood-beam main staircase. There is also an Otis elevator from the 1920s or 30s with a grate across the door that you have to open and shut yourself. To get to my room I go to the 2nd floor, walk down a hallway, then up a ramp and then down a ramp. The rooms are actually very nice and well-apportioned. There is also a bistro downstairs as well as a “restaurant gastronomique” with a menu whose prices made my eyes pop out of my head. Naturally, both are closed tonight. (As it happened, the entire hotel was closed last night including the "business center.")

I spent a good part of today exploring the Verdun battlefield. Although it’s been ninety-two years since the big battle, the earth is still scarred from the thousands and thousands of artillery shells that were fired by the Germans and the French. It is hard to visualize the hilly terrain completely devoid trees and vegetation as I have seen in photos.

Driving through the beautiful fall forests my eyes were drawn to the ground under the trees that was incredibly pockmarked and cratered. It’s damaged for centuries. I visited the Fort de Vaux and Fort Douaument, two major focal points of the battle. Both of these 19th-century fortresses were smashed into heaps of rubble and still look that way. So many explosives fell here that the land can still kill. There were signs warning not to stray off the paths.

I also saw some of the cemeteries that litter the area. It was interesting to see a Muslim section in the cemetery at Douament with all the tombstones facing Mecca. The white crosses next to them were aligned completely differently.

Grant Willard was my mother’s dad. As part of a volunteer ambulance corps he evacuated wounded French soldiers from the Verdun front line in August 1917 under pretty awful conditions. Then he joined the U.S. Army to do the same job as a buck private. He served at the St. Mihiel Salient and the Meuse Argonne Offensives in 1918.

Throughout it all Grant kept a detailed diary during his service and was a prolific letter writer. Both have been invaluable in planning this trip.

Ninety years ago today Grant was in the thick of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that helped end the war. During a brief respite he wrote to his mother back in Mankato, Minnesota. Although he did so practically every day to his family and fiancée, everyone in his unit was ordered to write home:

Saturday, Oct. 26, 1918

Dearest Mother,

In compliance with Section Order #46, I am writing you this note. The order calls for a letter but this is the best I can do now. Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow – if so I’ll write again.

I have just come in from 24 hours on post with no sleep and just enough gas to make me very sleepy and dopey so I’m afraid I can’t do much by way of a letter.

Tonight another big racket starts and the chances are that we shall all be called out again before morning so I must pull in for a bit of sleep.

Am enclosing a “Lettre de Félicitations” sent, I think, to all [ambulance] sections by General Pétain. It makes a rather good souvenir.

Expect we’ll be going forward again tonight. Am very tired as is everyone else in the section but excitement keeps our minds off of such trivials.

Heaps of love,

Grant.

In his diary Grant wrote today:

Went up on post again this a.m. Artillery activity is picking up on our front. Apremont is shelled every morning and night to endeavor to cripple operations on the railhead. No damage has been done so far. They are coming darn close to [us], however. I prescribe another advance to spoil Fritz’s range on our home. Fléville is under almost constant fire. It’s an awfully good thing they moved our dressing station out and back to the farm because the old place has been hit twice and our nice little ambulance home is in ruins. Fléville is lousy with artillery -- 75s, 155s and 210s. Every clump of bushes and every natural shelter the other side of Fléville bristles with howitzers and 155 rifles. Tonight the roads were so choked with guns and ammunition and we had a great deal of difficulty in getting our ambulances through. "Speed" left the farm for Sommerance this evening at 6:00. At 9 o’clock he hadn’t returned. We began to get worried. At 9:15 McCrackin and I went up to the ditch and barns and Fléville. Got but one patient. Things were quiet. Told Mac that I would run up to Sommerance on phone and were told that "Speed" had left there at 7:30 with three patients. I was just starting out when in pulled "Speed." I sure was relieved because I never saw a darker night, and a heavier fog with just enough sneezing and tear gas on the roads to make things disagreeable -- and traffic! "Speed" had been held up all this time in traffic. Couldn’t do a thing against it. Never saw so many guns.

I Left My Stinky Cheese in Paris

2008-10-21T14:54:00.020+01:00

John and I arrived in Paris last Friday afternoon for a fun, relaxing and unstructured weekend. We walked a lot--returning to some favorite old haunts and exploring some new places--and enjoyed some of the city's gastronomic pleasures.

A highlight of the trip was the apartment we stayed in. I found it on the Internet and it was a great alternative to staying in a hotel. Located on the Rue de Poissy in the 5th arrondissement, the apartment was on the ground floor of a typical Parisian apartment building. It was modern, clean and comfortable. And pet-free! For my life, I couldn't find a hotel in Paris that didn't allow pets.

We strolled around Père Lachaise Cemetery in beautiful sunshine on Saturday. Neither of us had ever visited before. With its hilly terrain and cobblestone lanes, it's a huge city of the dead. There were too many graves of famous people for us to see all of them, but some of those we saw included Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, and, of course, Jim Morrison. Wilde's tomb is covered with the lipstick traces of kisses, and Morrison's has a security guard standing by to prevent vandalism. Fans of The Doors have nevertheless scribbled notes on nearby graves and trees.

Saturday evening we had a fantastic meal at Brasserie Lipp, the renowned Alsatian "brewery" in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Generations of French writers, artists, actors and politicians have hung out "Chez Lipp." Part of the charm of the place is due in no small part to the maintenance of the original 1926 art deco interior with its bright tiles, decorated mirrors, painted ceiling and lights. It's the sort of restaurant where one can really feel the history.

I had one of the specialties of the house: choucroute garni (sauerkraut with sausages, pork and ham) and John had a delicious beef pot-au-feu. With our starters and these substantial main courses, we had no room for dessert. But we did linger over coffee and got to talking to two women to our left. They were both Australian nurses on a grand tour of Europe. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we treated the nurses to a bottle of champagne and made their night.

We had fun exploring some of Paris's produce and specialty markets. Near Notre-Dame cathedral there were merchants selling birds and other animals as pets. John worked his magic with the parakeets and soon had them talking to him. And near our apartment there was a great meat and produce market. I bought some beautiful soft-n-stinky French cheese and enjoyed eating part of it back at the apartment with a glass of Côte-du-Rhône. Then in the rush to vacate the apartment on Monday morning I left the cheese stinking up the fridge. Oh well...

Click here if you want to see our Paris photos.

The Moveable Feast

2008-10-18T22:53:00.021+01:00

John and I have escaped to Paris for a long weekend. His birthday is coming up this week, and we thought it would be fun to get away considering how hard he has been working.

We barely made it.

We had reserved seats aboard the Eurostar from London's St. Pancras Station to Paris's Gare du Nord at 10:28 AM on Friday. We got to the station with an hour to spare--bought some sandwiches before passing through security. We were in no rush. Just as John was withdrawing some Euros from an ATM, I heard the final boarding call of a train to Paris and rechecked our tickets. It was our train!!! Some how our train was leaving 20 minutes earlier than scheduled and no one had had the goodness to tell us!

Mercifully having packed light, we scampered up the rolling ramp to the platform, found our carriage and seats, and sat down slightly out of breath and little peaved as the Eurostar pulled out of the station. It turns out that due to the fire in the Channel Tunnel on September 11 last (some of you may have read about it), trains are running through the Chunnel at much reduced speeds. That means that much of the schedule has been disrupted, but no one had told us and I had not had the foresight to verify the timetable.

In any event, we were soon flying down the rails at 180+ mph (mostly) in glorious weather on our way to Paris. The trip under the English Channel took more than half an hour in place of 20 minutes, but it was still worlds better thank flying and all that that entails. Once aboard the only serious drawback to our train travel was a 2-year-old English girl named Jemima. She had beautiful golden curls and reminded me quite a bit of Shirley Temple in her heyday. She also had a voice and scream that could etch glass. She was traveling with her parents and an older (calmer) sister.

After dear Jemima had subjected the entire carriage to her screeches, screams and yells for more than an hour, a Frenchman across the aisle from us had had enough. (He swore outloud in French which tickled me no end.)

"Putain," he said, "Ce n'est pas possible!" (Fuck! I can't believe this!) He continued in English with a gallic accent: "Please--could you calm your children?" he asked Jemima's mum and dad. They said they would try. Jemima informed her parents that she didn't want to be quiet, but somehow they got her to color, and she was pretty calm for the rest of the trip.

I appreciate that it's very difficult for children to be cooped up on a train (or plane) for hours, and it's amazing the control parents can exert when they are engaged.

More on Paris later.

Do You Like Bacon?

2008-10-15T21:20:00.015+01:00

I went to the Tate Britain yesterday to see a new exhibition of works by the late Francis Bacon (1909-92). He's an artist whose name I've known for years, but whose paintings I haven't seen much in person. Like so many artists, Bacon had a miserable, twisted childhood and it influenced his art. While I can't say I would hang one of his paintings over my mantle (well... maybe I would if I were rich enough to buy one), I did enjoy seeing them and appreciated Bacon's talent and artistry.

I had not been to the Tate Britain since 1982 when it was called the Tate Gallery. I don't recall much about it then except they were so cramped for space; the walls were crowded with paintings from floor to ceiling. Now that they have separated the "British" and "Modern" aspects of the collection into separate buildings in London, there is more space. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain and is the national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day, as well as some modern British art. Tate Modern, in the former Bankside Power Station on the south side of the Thames, opened in 2000 and now exhibits the national collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, including some modern British art.

There was a piece of "modern art" at the Tate that really tickled my funny bone. As I was making my way down the museum's marble halls to the Bacon retrospective, a guy ran past me at full speed. I thought maybe he'd lost his tour group or was a chaperon gone awry. But when another guy ran down the hall at full speed a moment later, I realized I must be seeing a "work of art" of some kind. Indeed it turns out what I was witnessing was Martin Creed's Work No. 850. According the Tate web site Work No. 850 is based "on a simple idea: that a person will run as fast as they can every thirty seconds through the gallery. Each run is followed by an equivalent pause, like a musical rest, during which the grand Neoclassical gallery is empty." Seeing people run in the museum struck me as silly and not much of a work of art, but that is only my opinion. It made me wonder what Creed's Works No. 1 through 849 were like.

On a patriotic note: my absentee ballot for the November general election arrived yesterday in the post. I voted when I got home yesterday afternoon and mailed the ballot to New York today at Her Majesty's Post Office. I'm trusting that the envelope will arrive by November 4. The clerk (read: clark) at the PO agreed with my choice for president.

Indian Summer in London

2008-10-12T11:50:00.005+01:00

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in London. To the right is a shot of Albert Street taken today from our living room window. In fact, we've been enjoying gorgeous weather all week. It's been sunny with high temperatures in the upper 60s.

I went out a while ago to buy a Sunday newspaper; Albert Street and Parkway were very quiet in the sunshine. That was a great contrast to last night with raucous crowds outside the pubs. It was also particularly noisy outside our flat because there was a party going on in one of the townhouses opposite. The revelers spilled out onto the street several times before they lost steam.

A Rainy Day in Camden Town

2008-10-07T15:30:00.018+01:00

I flew back to London yesterday. For the first time I took a daytime flight: Virgin Atlantic's Flight 26. The plane left JFK at 7:30 in the morning and got to Heathrow at 7 in the evening. Thanks to a strong tail wind the flight only lasted six hours--that's a little longer than it takes to fly between the two American coasts.

It was a strange sensation to take a flight to Europe that didn't fly by night. We didn't hit dusk until we were almost on the ground in England. Somewhere over the Atlantic we must have passed the hoards of planes from Europe bound for the New York airports that arrive in the afternoon.

While I was waiting at the gate at JFK I sat next to an Irish couple. They were married and probably in their 70s. The man had a stunned look in his eyes and seemed feeble. I was fascinated by his facial hair. He was clean shaven, but had hairs growing out of the tip of his nose--white hairs that matched the snow white hair on his head. He also had a big forest of white hair growing out of his ears.

The plane was pretty full with no room to stretch out, but I had an aisle seat. There was a pleasant guy next to me wearing an expensive gangsta jacket and matching oversize baseball cap. He was a good travel companion: only got up once the whole flight. He said he was coming to London to see his girlfriend for a month.

It is truly autumn now in England. The nights are nippy and the days can bring rain and temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. As I look out the living room windows of the flat I can see that the leaves of the large plane tree are changing from deep green to yellow and brown. Soon our living room will not be cloaked as it has been by the tree all summer. I daresay we'll have more sunlight pouring in... when there is sun.

John and I are both experiencing the strange sensation of having lived here for three months, then having returned to our home in New York for a very brief period, and now being back here in London. We're a bit topsy-turvy. And the sensation may only get more pronounced as there is less than a month and a half left in our London experiment.

By the way, I took the fall color photos in Duluth, Minnesota, following my nephew's wedding. The maple trees were on fire.

Beef-A-Rama

2008-09-29T15:40:00.020+01:00

The first thing I saw was a majestic white-tail deer with a beautiful rack of antlers springing into motion in the crisp autumn air. The beast had a terrified look in his eyes. From behind I saw a large bear, probably a grizzly, growling with bared teeth. It stood on its hind legs with forelegs outstretched, claws ready to tear into the deer's flesh. It was an exhilarating moment: would the deer escape the clutches of death or would the bear get a decent meal?

I never found out the answer because these animals were dead and stuffed--perpetually stuck in a game of the hunter and the hunted. These were among the dozens of dead animals that adorned the hotel in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where I just spent a long weekend for my nephew's wedding. There were many antlered-heads on the walls of the hotel lobby: deer and moose, mostly. Many fish were also to be found collecting dust. On the mantle piece of the great stone fireplace was an interesting collage of five trouts swimming vertically up a piece of drift wood! The hotel was slightly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel and I was afraid I might meet Jack Nicholson carrying an ax in the corridor.

Minocqua is a picturesque resort town situated on an island in a lake surrounded by many other lakes. The German restaurants and bars downtown tell of the heavy German ancestry in the area. And the above average real estate prices tell of moneyed folks from Milwaukee and Chicago who own second homes on the area's lakes.

In addition to my nephew's wedding, the big do of the weekend in Minocqua was the 44th Annual Beef-A-Rama--a major street festival and celebration of...well...beef. The restaurateurs of the town grill meat right on main street. Some of the events that I tragically missed included a "Beef Eating" contest at Culver's Restaurant, the Rump Roast Run, the "MOOnocqua" Moo Calling Contest and the Famous "Parade of Beef."

On Saturday morning a bunch of us went to Paul Bunyan's Restaurant for the all-you-can-eat "Logging Camp" breakfast. For a fixed price you get platters of hearty breakfast food served family style at your table. You eat off of tin plates, just like the old lumberjacks. The logging camp decor was even more rustic than the hotel.

As for the wedding, the bride was very beautiful and radiant, and my nephew didn't look too shabby, either. The party they threw for us was memorable and I wasn't making too much sense by the end of it. I was happy that all six of my siblings could be together in the Wisconsin woods, however briefly. That doesn't happen too often anymore.

New York Bound

2008-09-22T09:05:00.003+01:00

I'm off this afternoon for New York, Minnesota and the hinterlands for two weeks. A nephew is getting married and the family beckons.

I'll be back in London in early October.

Stay tuned...

The West Country: Aquae Sulis and Beyond

2008-09-18T13:06:00.019+01:00

A word to the wise: don't try driving out of London at rush hour on a Friday evening. We did, and my left ankle is still sore from all the clutching. The A40, M4 and roads in-between were all stop-and-go. A trip of 119 miles from London to Bristol that should have taken a little over two hours took four. But eventually we reached our hotel in Bristol and all was well.

John and I realized that in the months we've been living in London we hadn't really seen much of England outside the big city. So we decided to spend a weekend in the West Country. The gods must have smiled on us because we were very fortunate with the weather: sunny skies and mild temperatures.

Some of the highlights of our weekend in the West Country included:

A visit to the city of Bath, called Aquae Sulis by the Romans, was wonderful. I had not been there in many, many twenty-some years and John had never seen this Georgian city made of pale golden stone. Visiting the old Roma n baths is a trip back in time.

Getting to know the city of Bristol a bit. We didn't get to see all the things in Bristol we wanted to do. There was a half marathon going on one day which closed a good deal of the town to us. But we found some good restaurants and visited a 16th-century pub called the King's Head (a very popular pub name).

Driving through the beautiful English countryside to the mystical city of Glastonbury and the city of Wells. We arrived at the Wells Cathedral late in the afternoon and evensong was being sung in the choir. It's a beautiful building. It has unique double pointed inverted arches in the crossing (to help support the tower). I found the effect to be beguiling.

A return visit to Avebury and the ancient sites around this remarkable place. We viewed Silbury Hill, the largest man-made earthen mound in Europe. It's purpose is still a mystery. The stone circle at Avebury is ever fascinating: it's older than Stonehenge and there are many theories about its purpose.

And we planted our feet in a village called Fyfield. Enough said.

Booze Britain

2008-09-15T15:19:00.013+01:00

If you have read this blog before, or if we have spoken in the past few months, you will know that we have both been shocked by the public drunkenness and overall alcohol consumption here in the UK. Back in March, we spent a long weekend in Edinburgh and witnessed 17-year-olds drinking pitchers of green booze at 11:00 AM on a Saturday morning, and in July we were stunned by the folks at a street festival being so inebriated at 1 PM that they couldn't stand. In London we live on a street with two pubs and are nightly serenaded by a combination of thousands of bottles being dumped in recycling bins as well as drunk revelers talking on cell phones, getting into arguments and flirting both with each other and disaster.

Overall we have thought this pretty amusing. It didn't stress us out--it was just part of the local character. We watch a TV show here called Booze Britain where the camera follows groups of Brits out on the town drinking to excess. Imagine starting out your evening at home with a few cases of beer washed down with some Smirnoff vodka. Then hitting the pubs with your "lads" or "ladettes" challenging each other to drink dozens of shots of black Sambuca, super-chilled Jägermeister or some other ungodly concoction. This inevitably leads to public displays of rowdiness, urination, vomiting and some really unmentionable behavior. But it's all captured by the camera. We assumed that people on Booze Britain were encouraged somewhat by the presence of the camera to indulge in over-the-top behavior. Well, we were wrong.

We just returned from a weekend in the West Country, having deposited ourselves in the city of Bristol. On Friday night we were walking back to our hotel from dinner and a visit to a great 17th century pub named for Charles II. It was after 11 PM when we rounded the corner near our hotel. Lying flat on his back on the pavement was a man in his 40s wearing a tuxedo (dinner suit to the locals). We didn't know what to do, and certainly didn't want to risk moving him and causing injury. His breathing was shallow and there were no apparent cuts or bruises. Had he had a stroke? A heart attack? We didn't know. Amazingly this man had keeled over in full view of the night watchman of a nearby building, but we had to tap on the glass and get the guard to call the emergency services (999). We waited, not for a police car or an ambulance, but for an emergency response car purpose built to handle drunks on the street. The dead man came alive when the medical technician touched his neck to get a pulse. He was able to get the man to sit upright, at least briefly. The medic asked if he had been drinking. The man said yes. No drugs, only drink. He admitted to drinking since 7:00 PM. In 4 hours he drank himself into a state so he didn't know where he was, how he got there or how he would get home. He could easily have died on the pavement that night. Booze Britain isn't so funny anymore.

(Creative credit: John and Peter)

Back in the Land of Smurfs, Waffles, French...er...Fries and Beer

2008-09-07T13:50:00.028+01:00

Flashback to August 1983: I was a nerdy teenager who went to Belgium to live for a year with a family whom I had never met. The family's name was Dupuis and they lived in Waterloo. There was a maman, a papa, a son and three daughters--a close-knit family that laughed often.

Fast forward to August 2008: La famille Dupuis has grown as families do over the years. The children are adults with homes and lives of their own. There are grandchildren for the bonne maman and bon papa to dote upon. But they are still close and laugh a lot when they get together. Their smiles and laughter are infectious even if one doesn't always get the joke's punch line as it speeds past one's ears in rapid French. It's been a quarter of a century and I still feel like part of the family.

I "flew" from London and Brussels on the new Eurostar train; the trip lasts just two hours. It used to take the good part of a day to travel by train and ferry boat between the two countries. The Eurostar speeds along at 186 mph and goes right under the English Channel in the Channel Tunnel. Twenty minutes under ground and you barely notice you're moving. Amazing!

My first night I stayed with my Belgian brother X and his wife and sons. They live in a small rural village in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant in an old farm house that they've renovated largely themselves. I enjoy spending time with this family, talking over old times and new situations. I've seen their sons, now teenagers, grow up during my sporadic visits to Belgium. It was fun to hang out with them a bit. They are fans of the American TV show Desperate Housewives and we whiled away a few hours watching some episodes on DVD dubbed into French. The youngest boy also went with me on a walking tour of the university city of Louvain-la-Neuve where I spent 1987-88 studying and sharing an apartment with two Belgian guys.

The rest of my nights were spent at the home of M. and Mme. Dupuis in the Walloon community of Braine-l'Alleud, not far from Waterloo where they'd raised their family. They built their retirement house about ten years ago amid farm fields and pastures; the backyard looks out onto corrales with four horses. There's something very calming about watching these beautiful animals in the distance all day.

Mme. Dupuis is an amazing cook and I probably gained 5 lbs eating her food. There is almost always a soup course, a delicious main course and some dessert that she just whipped up. It was good to spend some quality time with the parents again. We visited a museum dedicated to the works of the late Belgian artist, Jean-Michel Folon, and attended an interesting outdoor concert at a beautiful 18th-century château near their home. And they hosted two family dinners so that I could see everyone again.

Where Charles Lost His Head

2008-09-04T19:41:00.028+01:00

John and I have been making the most of a membership in the Historic Royal Palaces. It gives us unlimited access to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace. It also gives us royal intrigue, infidelity, marriages, death and executions until we're blue in the face.

We visited the Banqueting House and Kensing ton Palace one weekend recently. Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House is the only remnant of the Palace of Whitehall that was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698. Before most of it was destroyed by fire it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe, with over 1,500 rooms.

As you can see from the photo on the right the most amazing thing in the Banqueting House are the ceiling paintings done by Peter Paul Rubens in the 1600s. Charles I hired the Flemish master to immortalize his father, James I, as a god. And, indeed, one sees King James floating around the stratosphere with classical gods, cherubs and the like on several of the major panels. And why not? I asked myself. James and Charles both believed they had a divine right from God to rule over Great Britain.

The problem was Charles I really put the Divine Right of Kings to the test when he tried to rule without the consent of Parliament, came out on the losing side in the English Civil War, was tried and found guilty of high treason and was sentenced to death. In January 1649 he was beheaded (ironically and ignominiously) on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting Hall he loved so much.

Our visit to Kensington Palace on the western edge of Hyde Park was a different experience. Much of that royal palace is off limits to the general public because it houses the offices and private apartments of a number of members of the Royal Family. We did tour the Royal Apartments used by Stuart and Hanoverian monarchs. One room I found particularly interesting was Queen Victoria's childhood bedroom; it was here that she learned early one morning that she was queen.

In the former apartments of the late Princess Margaret there's a borderline camp exhibit on the last debutante season of 1958. Ball gowns, cut-aways, dance and etiquette lessons and just how to curtsy. The amount of detail about this right of passage for young aristocratic women was staggering.

Naturally it's difficult to go to Kensington Palace and not think of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lived there from the time she married Prince Charles until her death in 1997. There's an exhibit of about a dozen of her designer dresses as well as reminders of the public outpouring of grief at her accidental death. John recalled flying to London on the day of her funeral for business, driving by the Palace and seeing the million bouquets of flowers left at the gates.

Mother of All Parliaments

2008-08-26T16:53:00.020+01:00

The other week I took advantage of the fact that the UK Parliament is in recess until early October to take a public tour of the old place. The official name of the Victorian pile where they meet is the Palace of Westminster. Once the home of the royal family, officially remains a royal palace. The site was used as a royal residence until Henry VIII moved the royal family out in 1512 following a fire.

After passing through several layers of logical, thorough, polite British security, I entered the complex through Westminster Hall--a room I've wanted to visit for a good part of my life. Westminster Hall is the oldest part of Parliament. Once used as a law court, the hall has held several notable trials, including that of Sir William Wallace (1305), the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (1606) and King Charles I (1649). Today the hall is used for important state occasions and the lying-in-state of famous Britons. The walls were built in 1097, but the thing I really wanted to see was the huge hammerbeam roof from the 1390s. It's one of the best examples of that kind of architecture in world and amazing that it wasn't destroyed in WWII.

It was in the Hall that our tour group met Nigel, a well-informed guide. A retired Metropolitan police officer, he prefaced and punctuated almost every sentence with, "Ladies and gents." Nigel led us first to the west end of Westminster Palace--the royal end, one could say. We saw the Monarch's Entrance, Her Majesty's Robing Room where Elizabeth II gets dolled up to open the Parliament every fall, the Royal Gallery and finally the House of Lords. All of these rooms were decorated in opulent colors: red and gold, mostly. The decor is really over-the-top Victorian. Most opulent of all was the throne where the monarch opens Parliament every year.

As we made our way through the central lobby to the Commons side of the palace, the opulence vanished and one was left with subdued colors, predominantly green, wood paneling and plain stone walls. Nigel brought us into the antechamber outside the Commons where there are statues and bust of former prime ministers. There was a scary statue of Margaret Thatcher: she's pointing at someone or something and looked as though she might speak.

A highlight of the tour was to stand in the House of Commons. I know it's corny, but I couldn't help but think of the important issues discussed there, the lively speeches given and the great people who have served the British people. We stood amongst the government's benches looking over at the opposition side. On departing I even got to touch the dispatch box from which the PM and his ministers speak.

Life Love Legacy: Hadrian: Empire and Conflict

2008-08-21T23:44:00.027+01:00

Back in London less than a week, we were still in the grip of Rome. On Saturday John and I ventured out to the British Museum to see its new exhibition about the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD). Presented in the beautifully restored Reading Room, the exhibition contains objects from 28 museums worldwide and finds from recent excavations (including this head from a statue of Hadrian unearthed in Turkey in 2007).

The Roman Empire ruled by Hadrian encompassed much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. He had a great passion for travel, architecture and Greek culture. (He wore a beard in Greek fashion unlike previous clean shaven Roman rulers.) And this exhibition provides fresh insight into the sharp contradictions of Hadrian’s character and challenges faced during his reign. We were very pleased to see it dealt honestly with Hadrian's relationship with his male lover, Antinous. When Antinous died he was worshiped as a deity by Romans.

The British Museum has great educational programs for children and students, and we saw a good example the day we visited. Visiting children (or anyone) got to help recreate Hadrian's fabulous villa at Tivoli outside Rome. Kids could color templates to make various buildings or they could personalize statues. All these were placed in the reconstructed villa complex.

Naturally we couldn't resist revisiting some of the treasures the Museum possesses like the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone. It's amazing to realize that this fragment from a larger tablet was the key to unlocking the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it's difficult to get close to the stone with so many people clamoring around its Plexiglas container.

In the Beautiful Valdichiana

2008-08-15T11:05:00.060+01:00

The second part of our vacation started early on Saturday, August 2. I left our hotel before 6 a.m. to fetch John’s sister and brother–in-lawn at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport. The streets of Rome were quite at that hour save for a few merchants already setting up their stalls in the Campo de' Fiori for the daily market. On the way back to central Rome I gave the new arrivals a short driving tour of some of the sites like the Colosseum and the Forum. We made a fast pit stop at our hotel and showed them the market in Campo. Then began our Tuscan sojourn.

We'd rented a brand-new Opel Zafira at Rome's train station and it performed very nicely. It had a diesel engine with a 6-speed manual transmission. There was no problem keeping up with the others on the autostrada at 140 km/h (87 mph), although you didn't get to stay in 6th gear very long before you had to downshift or or brake. It was pretty good about fuel consumption as well. This was important since the price of diesel fuel was about $8 per gallon.

Arriving at the Azienda Agricola Il Pantano (aka Family Reunion) brought back so many memories of our first time here in October 2002. Some of you know that John rented the place to celebrate his 40th birthday--a very memorable week for all involved. On the Pantano Winery they produce the glorious Vino Nobile de Montepulciano and olive oil, among other products. The owners also rent vacation houses around the vineyard to supplement their income. For the most part, Family Reunion hadn’t changed. The collection of three houses was the same (except now there was AC) and the pool was open to us because of the season. The blue Tuscan sky and air of calm had not changed. We had a few hours at the house to get settled, go grocery shopping and have a swim before anyone else arrived. We had an afternoon of calm.

Shortly after 6:00 p.m. the other guests started to arrive. By nightfall the place was buzzing with 21 people who had gathered from 3 countries. John and his sister cooked a meal for the entire crew. Some wine was consumed and plans were discussed over dinner. The week was off to a good start.

In the following days in between spending time by the pool, we made excursions to hill town after beautiful hill town in Tuscany and Umbria: Assisi, Orvieto, Pienza, Montalcino, Montepulciano, Torrita di Siena, Sinalunga, Foiano della Chiana, Lucignano, Monte San Savino, San Quirico d'Orcia, and the like. We even made a 60-mile trek over the mountains to the seaside at Grosseto. All this was accomplished under the watchful eye of “Gretchen,” our friendly GPS device. We also got invaluable advice from guidebooks and www.commandatore.com. Others in the group spent their days visiting the same towns as us or journeying to the larger cities like Pisa, Siena and Florence. John and I had decided before the trip that we would avoid the larger attractions on this visit.

By the time the following Saturday rolled around we were, as it said in my previous post, a Tuscan kind of tired. I mean, how much good wine, good food, sunshine and fellowship can one person take? It was time to head back to Rome for one night and then to London.

We arrived in Rome around four on Saturday afternoon, in plenty of time to return the car. I navigated the crazy Roman streets pretty well and soon we were parked in front of our hotel on the noisy Piazza Venezia. I left John to check in and get our bags upstairs to return the car to the train station. While we started to have a few misgivings as we entered the hotel, things really started getting bad when John opened the door to Room 210. It was tiny, steamy and smelled like a mix of cigarette smoke and disinfectant. The hotel advertised itself as fully air-conditioned, modern and with no smoking rooms. This room clearly was not one that was advertised. John decided to wait outside, in the relative cool of the afternoon sun. I knew something was amiss when I phoned John from the station to say I was on my way back to the hotel. "How's the room?," I asked. "I'll see you when you get here," was his response. Getting an indirect response from John is never a good sign.

When I arrived, I saw the state of the room and knew this was not where we wanted to spend our last night in Italy. I calmly called the Hotel Campo de' Fiori, secured a room (at a discount), marched down to the lobby, bags in hand, and denounced the room as unacceptable. The front desk agent was unmoved, but he did ask us to write in a complaint registry why we were unhappy. So I wrote my name, the date, Room 210 and complained that there was no AC as advertised, the room was dirty and the toilet plumbing really sub-par. As I looked at some of the earlier complaints on the same page, they were almost all about Room 210 and its myriad of problems! Obviously this is a room they try to pass off on the one-nighters. So I warn all readers of this blog: do not stay at the Hotel Piazza Venezia in Rome. Surely you'll be disappointed!

Returning to the Hotel Campo de' Fiori, we were greeted by Emanuel at the front desk. The room was cool and comforting. We decided to hit the Campo for a light drink and followed by dinner. The Campo has come to symbolize Rome to us in so many ways. It is warm, friendly and full of good food and wine.

On Sunday we managed to jam six bottles of wine into our luggage (we'd had gone from 2 pieces to 3) along with our clothes (including new underwear). We got to the airport in plenty of time to shop, get to the gate and relax. Did I say shop? Yes, I did. We had managed little or no shopping for 2 weeks except for some wine. Well, what did we buy in the airport? Italian wine, naturally, and some virgin olive oil. We took off and arrived two hours late; I don't think we will fly Alitalia again if it can be helped. London was cool and damp. Never has rain been so welcome!

Click here if you wish to see our photos from Tuscany and Umbria.

(Writing credit: John and Peter)

Rome Part II

2008-08-13T21:15:00.026+01:00

You haven’t heard much on this site for a few days. It has been difficult putting into words our two weeks in Italy.

The balance of our time in Rome was wonderful--HOT--but wonderful. We could spend much more time there and never tire of it. Every street offered a history, architecture or archeology lesson. All of Rome is built on something older so one discovers interesting tidbits everywhere.

This trip to Rome will be memorable partially because of the interesting people we met:

A young Irish couple from Limerick with whom we sat up talking and socializing until the wee hours;
The French woman eating alone at a table next to us with whom we struck up a conversation knowing how lonely eating by oneself can be;
The Danish couple who had made a boodle in business and now occupied their time with their philanthropic foundation that helps less-fortunate Danes.
Emanuel, a desk clerk at our hotel who was always so helpful when we were stressed out;
The Australian with ADA and his Italian boyfriend who was constantly trying to get him "off stage."

I will also think of the gallons of delicious mineral water we guzzled in an attempt to fight the heat and dehydration. Every day the sun shone and the high temperature was in the mid- to upper-90s Fahrenheit. The cold bubbly water was a natural antidote.

On our last full day in Rome, we took our rental car on a trip to the sea side. We stopped in Ostia, ancient Rome's port. Apart from the sprawling ruins at Ostia Antica, the seaside city could have been almost anywhere in the world. We continued our drive down the coast to Anzio where the Allies landed in January 1944 during WWII in an attempt to circumvent the German lines. The area is dotted with war memorials, military cemeteries and centuries of history to put it all in perspective.

Click here if you want to see our photos of Rome. I'm still working on describing all the shots, but it will give you an idea of our week in the Eternal City.

(Creative credit: John and Peter)

A Tuscan Kind of Tired

2008-08-09T17:44:00.002+01:00

Just a quick entry to let you know we're still kicking. John and I have just returned from a week on a vineyard near Montepulciano in southern Tuscany, and are spending one last night in Rome. There's much to discuss, but it will have to wait until I have some time to sit and think and not pay for Internet time by the minute.

I'll leave you with an aerial view of the place.

Hot Time in Rome

2008-07-31T16:49:00.011+01:00

The past few days are almost too much to blog about, but we are going to give it a try. I say "we" since John is joining me in the editorial department since he is on holiday (that's vacation, if you are a yank).

When you fly from Heathrow Airport on an intra-European flight it’s a different experience than flying to the US. The shops are smaller and simpler. There really is no duty free. There also aren’t any lush spaces to relax and begin a journey. John likes to stop, have a nice meal and drink a glass of wine. He prefers a certain bistro in Terminal 3, but there is no branch in Terminal 2. As we wound our way through the airport we finally found luxury. It was ridiculous, but we decided to stop at a caviar-teria to have a nosh and something to drink. What better way to depart England for Italy?

Our Alitalia flight was uneventful. The airline and its planes are looking tired and worn. The flight was late and the supposedly "luxurious" in-flight service didn’t really materialize. When we retrieved our luggage, John’s bag had a strange tag on it. It said something along the line that the airline and airports take no responsibility for lost or damaged articles. More on this later…

We had arranged for a car to meet us and take us to our hotel. We booked a room at the Hotel Campo de’ Fiori online, sight unseen, and had no idea what to expect. It is hot in Rome and John does not tolerate the heat. He has more patience for Republicans! We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find a charming place with air conditioning and an elevator. The hotel continues to be pleasant, clean and well run. It is centrally located in Rome’s historical district, halfway between the Vatican City and the Roman Forum. And it’s just off a square that will play a central role in this blog.

Il brutto americano

Many Americans who travel come up against both the myth and the reality of the Ugly American. Americans abroad are often seen as unsophisticated, rude, arrogant and otherwise crude. This is somewhat unfair. Many Americans make their way through the capitals and small cities of the world with deference and appreciation while people of other nationalities often stand out as insensitive and rude. However, we cannot deny that the Ugly American exists and insists on being seen and heard. Over the years we have overheard phrases like: "How much is this in real money?" or "Who do you think invented democracy?"

On Monday evening we lived through one of the most shocking moments of Ugly Americanism possible. We were sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant on the Campo de’ Fiori enjoying a wonderful meal. A very blond and very bland American family was seated near us. The father was immediately rude to the waiter, demanding water, olive oil and bread for his sons. As we heard bits and pieces of the conversation our ears became sharp as spears and the family didn’t seem bland any longer. At one point they were discussing Roman history and their single frame of reference was the movie Gladiator. While that film does a reasonable job of portraying the lives of gladiators and the bloody games the ancient Romans adored, it does take great liberties with history and has to be taken with a grain of salt. It was sad not to hear a single reference to a book, play, novel or historical document about Rome. The real shock came later as the family discussed their trip to the Vatican earlier in the day. One of the three sons asked his father (the mother rarely spoke up) if the Cardinals of the church still reported to the Jews. The father answered yes. He explained that the Catholic Church in Rome is and has always been a vehicle for the Jews to control the world and that is why the evangelicals left the original church. Who knew Hitler had spawn?

Sitting along side us was another American family: a father and daughter. They were clearly estranged by divorce or maybe separated by physical distance. Was he visiting her or was she visiting him? I don’t know. They tried, however. The father attempted Italian and the daughter tried to be interested in her father. They ate. They left. Nothing was settled. Location doesn’t always make a difference.

The Campo

The Campo de’ Fiori offers some great things. Six days a week there is a morning market with wonderful fresh fruit, cheese, meats, spices and oils. There are numerous cafes and restaurants lining the square. There is a wine bar called Vineria Reggio. Called "the coolest bar in the campo" by one of our guidebooks, this place has the most amazing collection of wines by the bottle or glass. You can also buy a bottle to take away. But you can’t buy drinks in bottles after 8 pm Friday through Sunday.

In the evening the campo is filled with street performers and musicians plying their trade. Some of the music is not bad, but the repertoire is a bit limited. One saxophone player only seems to know "My Way" and "Over the Rainbow." The star of the square was a teenage violin player with some skill and style. He was also able to belt a song (but day 3 of "O Sole Mio" was enough). We made sure we tipped him every evening and were soon greeted with a hello when we crossed the plaza.

Una donna perduta

All of our time in the campo has been shadowed by a homeless woman. She is perhaps around 60 years old, but might be younger. She is heavy set, gray, ruddy and dressed in a blue and white striped muumuu. She is in some strange way a personification of Italy. She doesn’t beg. She doesn’t perform. She is. People bring her food and water. We gave her water several times. We have seen her every day at different hours. I would never want to live her life, but I am happy that she actually smiles when you give her water or something to eat. She lives in this square and nobody disturbs her; amid all the commerce going on around her, she is allowed her space. We may not be able to learn from her as she is lost, but I can learn from the people around her.

L'intimo perso!

How do you explain that as you forage through your suitcase for some fresh underwear you suddenly realize you’ve been robbed? When you can, tell me how and I will do a better job than this! I know I packed at least eight pair--I remember counting. I had four in my suitcase when I got to Rome. Hmmmm. The only missing underwear was Italian. So I bought some new ones today. Let's see if they get stolen on the return trip.

2008-07-25T22:04:00.009+01:00

This past week was a fairly quiet week. On Sunday John went down to Stratford-upon-Avon for a sales meeting so I was on my own until Wednesday.

One evening I went to the Old Vic to see a performance of Shaw's Pygmalion, or as it's known in some circles: My Fair Lady without the singing and dancing. Tim Pigott-Smith played Henry Higgins and newcomer Michelle Dockery was a riveting Eliza Doolittle. The theater itself is historic; the walls of the lobby and stairways are covered with photos of so many famous actors in productions going back to the last century: Peggy Aschcroft, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Lawrence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, etc.

Another highlight of the week was going out after work with John's colleagues. I'd heard a lot about them, but had never met most of them. As it happened, the chosen pub was Fifty-five Bar & Lounge near our flat that I mentioned in my blog on July 9. It was fun to put faces to the names I'd heard. Unfortunately, at 2:4:1 I had too many Manhattans and awoke with a groggy head.

Why is there a photo of the Roman Colosseum on the page, you ask? That's because we're going to Italy on Saturday evening for two weeks. A week in the Eternal City and a week in Tuscany. I will try to write some entries while in Italy.

Time Travel

2008-07-21T10:23:00.019+01:00

I returned Sunday to Cambridge, England, for the first time in 26 years. In the summer of 1982 I was a naive 17-year-old who spent three weeks there with a group of high school classmates and an Anglophile history teacher chaperon. Our group was one of several that descended on this British Mecca of higher education every summer "to study" light subjects. Ours were Shakespeare, British geography and parliamentary debate, and I'm sure we were a constant pain to our teachers. On the whole, we were privileged American children with little world experience.

Our Shakespeare instructor was a young man trying to get us excited about Much Ado About Nothing and had the bad luck of teaching us first thing in the morning. "WILL YOU PLEEEEEEASE STOP YAWNING!" is the phrase I remember him uttering the most--much more than anything about the Bard. The geography teacher was a jolly Scotsman who preferred to talk more about golf than the origins of the River Thames. And the debate teacher a very colorful, degenerate Anglican priest who taught us the finer points of verbally tearing the opposition to shreds, with humor and sexual innuendo, if possible.

After my recent visit, I'm not sure what has changed more: the town or me. The ancient college buildings don't seem to have aged at all. But the signs that the university as a whole and the town had changed were everywhere. Cambridge has become modern with new shopping centers, chain stores and shiny new hotels. There's a Starbucks, for Pete's sake. And the tourists! The hoards and hoards of tourists! Had it been like that way back when? I don't think so.

The most striking change for me was the fact that all the colleges now charge an entry fee for visitors. In 1982 we strolled through the various college courts free as birds. We'd cut through one college to get to another. You could enter the magnificent Chapel at King's College whenever you wanted. No longer. Some colleges are completely closed to visitors and others charge anywhere from 2 GBP to 5 GBP to enter. I had to visit my old haunts at Clare College (2 GBP) and I coughed up the 5 GBP ($10) to get into King's College Chapel, but I rebelled at the others. So I missed seeing some of my favorite architectural highlights, like the Wren Library at Trinity College.

I commiserated with several university employees about these changes and they agreed that things were not as nice now as they were years ago. "It's just the way the world is now." I know it's a sign of the times, but it made me sad. You can't take one step in London, Cambridge and elsewhere without your movements being recorded on closed circuit TV. You see CCTV signs everywhere.

Still, I tried not to let it get me down. I visited the residence hall where we stayed and the Old Court of Clare College where we took our mediocre meals. I gazed at the beautifully manicured lawns, remembering that walking upon them was verboten. I spent a long time in King's College Chapel staring at the amazing fan-vault stone ceiling from the 16th century. The vaulting, stained glass windows, soaring spaces, make the Chapel one of the greatest wonders of architecture anywhere in the world. I watched people punting on the River Cam, enjoying the summer sun.

By then it was nearly 4 o'clock and I'd been walking around the town since 10 in the morning. I suddenly noticed I was 43 years old, tired and my feet hurt. So much for reclaiming my youth! Time to point my tired feet toward the train station and head back to Camden Town.

Click here if you want to see more photos of my stroll down memory lane.

Interesting Summer 1982 tidbits:

In the summer of '82 Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union...there still was a Soviet Union. Israel had just invaded Lebanon, sparking a war and the Lebanese Civil War. We arrived into a triumphant Great Britain: they had just won the Falklands War and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was riding high. Prince William, the heir to the British throne, had just been born and was baptized; an intruder broke into Buckingham Palace and sat on the bed of Queen Elizabeth II, chatting with her for 10 minutes before security arrived; and the Provisional IRA detonated 2 bombs in central London, killing 8 soldiers, wounding 47 people, and leading to the deaths of 7 horses. The first CDs went on the market.

The Man Who Was "Bond...James Bond"

2008-07-18T19:38:00.015+01:00

The Imperial War Museum London has an interesting special exhibit right now on the life and works of writer Ian Fleming. The exhibit is irresistibly entitled For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond. Being a major James Bond fan I could not help but go.

I knew the basic facts about Fleming's life and, as some of you know, I've been working my way through the James Bond novels, but this exhibit gave me a much fuller vision of the man.

Fleming had a lot of love affairs--a real playboy. He preferred older, married women with no strings attached. There were numerous photos of him with these women on the beach, on the ski slopes and at cocktail parties. He didn't marry until he was over 40.

Despite coming from a well-connected family (his father was a close friend of Winston Churchill), Fleming lacked direction in his life until World War II. His work in British naval intelligence was the making of him, and the making of James Bond, as it turned out.

The exhibit has great JamesBondania within. Original manuscripts of the novels, hundreds of examples of the novels translated into other language, posters of the movies, original movie production sketches, guns, gadgets and on and on. I particularly enjoyed seeing the shoes with the poisoned knife in the toe that Lotte Lenya tried to stab Sean Connery with in From Russia With Love.

The rest of the Imperial War Museum is amazing and daunting. I hadn't been there since 1995 and the place has been improved so much. The main hall displays airplanes, armor (armour), missiles, weapons, bombs and all that good stuff. There are extensive exhibits on the World Wars and conflicts post-1945. There is also a very sobering Holocaust exhibit. The place is worth a visit if you make it to London.

In the museum shop I was sorely tempted to relive my childhood by buying a Corgi model of the Q Branch Aston Martin with the ejector seat or the Corgi model of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (which Fleming wrote) with the wings that spring out when you move the gear lever forward...but I didn't.

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For All You Wizards & Muggles Out There

2008-07-18T16:07:00.005+01:00

From www.Londonist.com:

Platform 9 and 3/4 To Be Disapparated

"Harry Potter may have completed his seven years at school, but younger wizardlings are in for several years of service disruption on the Hogwart's Express. Platform 9 and 3/4 will be shifted later this year to allow construction work on the West side of King's Cross, according to Jon Burden the former Duty Station Manager at King's Cross, who led a tour of the area yesterday. The enchanted platform will be relocated to the front of the station, close to the ticket office, in September."

Read on...

Hampton Comes Courting or Learning to Drive on the Left

2008-07-16T14:56:00.024+01:00

Last Saturday was a perfect day to go for a ride. It was sunny and warm, and we had a ZipCar reserved for the day. The only trick was I had to remember how to drive on the left side of the road. How hard could it be?

It wasn't the big city driving that worried me. I like driving around New York when I have the chance. No, it was remembering to stay on the left side of the road, to follow all the rather foreign traffic signs and to operate a left-handed manual transmission. We were in a new Cooper Mini. It's a cool and trendy automobile, but rather challenging to get into and out of especially if one has large feet like me. I did get the hang of driving it, after a fashion, but had trouble judging the location of the left front tire a few times. Just ask passenger John.

Anyway, Saturday was a great day for hopping in a car and heading up (or is it down or maybe sideways) to Hampton Court Palace. We didn't have a detailed road map of England so we got a bit lost and went a wee bit out of our way. We also decided to visit the palace on the weekend when the largest flower show in Europe is held there. Traffic jams are more aggravating on the left for some reason. Just when we were seriously questioning our judgment, we arrived and found a reserved parking lot just for palace visitors.

Hampton Court Palace is an amazing place architecturally and historically. Thomas Cardinal Wolsey built it into a magnificent palace and Henry VIII took it from him as punishment when the cardinal and chancellor could not get the pope to approve Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Henry lived here with 5 of his 6 wives. Two of those lucky women would be beheaded, one died in childbirth, one was annulled and one survived him.

Hampton Court remained the British monarch's principle residence through the reigns of the Tudors, Stuarts and Hanoverians (up to George II, after which it fell out of favor). It is incredible in part because you can see very different architectural styles: Tudor/Elizabethan and Baroque. William and Mary hired the great Christopher Wren to renovate Hampton Court. He wound up destroying much of the Tudor palace, but built an equally impressive addition. What remains is part 16th century, part 17th century. We spent hours walking through the rooms and courtyards captivated by the wealth on display at every turn. Highlights included the Great Hall with its amazing hammer beam roof and the Chapel Royal. The gardens are lush and there is a maze which we have to return to see. It's well worth a trip.

Click here if you want to see more my Hampton Court photos.

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East End

2008-07-14T13:04:00.036+01:00

After the excitement of seeing those bats in their feeding frenzy I decided to have a different kind of experience on Friday. John worked from home in the morning. His colleagues were all attending a company cricket match. Since he doesn’t know a googly from a wicket he decided to pass on a visit to the pitch (too much local colour?).

In the afternoon we hopped on a bus for a nice ride to the East End of London. This is the home of Cockney speech, Jack the Ripper, beigels along Brick Lane and, of course, that great British soap opera: EastEnders.

We arrived at a place called Old Spitalfields Market. We had been here 10 years before, but now didn’t recognize a thing. Built in the 1880s as a wholesale fruit and vegetable market, it became a general market where vendors sold antiques, bric-a-brac, clothing, artwork and the like. It was a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon when it got very crowded. The run-down market was a special slice of London life.

Well, we found 2/3 of the historic market had been demolished. Where once there was a Victorian iron-and-glass canopy there is now a steel-and-glass commercial office complex, complete with designer brands, attitude and gourmet food. The general market still takes place in what's left of the old place, but in our opinion it's been scrubbed a little too clean and its quirkiness is gone.

We left the market hoping to find the remains of the East End we once saw. Still standing across from the Market is an interesting old pub called The Ten Bells. It was the place where two of Jack the Ripper’s victims were last seen. It still retains a worn shabby look, but it's a planned shabby-chic look for tourists like us. The beer was OK but no ghostly apparitions to report.

We also stopped in Christ Church across from the pub. It has been restored magnificently, reversing the effects of a misguided Victorian "renovation" (what was wrong with those Victorians?) and decades of neglect. The church is a beautiful example of "English baroque" architecture.

After the church tour (sounds so wholesome) we headed to Brick Lane. This street is something like a one-block version of the Lower East Side of New York. Over the past 2 centuries every recent immigrant group established a beach head and now there is a commingling of cultures with some chic fringe. This is one place you can get a nosh at two in the morning if you have a craving. We headed to one of the famous beigel emporiums (that is bagel shops for you Yanks). What a bargain: 6 fresh plain bagels in a bag plus 2 filled bagels (that means one with tuna and another with butter) all for 2.50 GBP ($5). This is the cheapest thing you can buy in London. We finished the afternoon off by stopping into a South Asian grocery store and buying enough spices, sauces and assorted things to satisfy any curry cravings for a while.

Click here if you want to see my photos from this outing.

The Bats Were Hungry

2008-07-12T23:32:00.011+01:00

Thursday evening I went on a "bat walk" in Regent's Park. I'd seen a sign posted when I went walking in the park on Monday last: "Bat walk Thursday evening, equipment provided, wear appropriate clothing." I was intrigued. Equipment? Appropriate clothing? I rang the number from the sign and put my name down.

The group assembled at Hanover Gate in the park at 9 o'clock PM. A bookish husband and wife (and their son) from the Bat Conservation Trust arrived to lead the group. The equipment they provided was a bat detector--a black box about the size of an old transistor radio that picks up a bat's echolocation ultrasound emissions.

Our small group of ten waited by the lake until the sun had really gone down. At this time of year the sky remains light in London well past 9 PM. While we waited the bookish man gave us various lectures about bats: the varieties we might see that night, social behavior, feeding habits, etc. All around us insectivorous birds (swifts, swallows) were skimming the surface of the lake in a feeding frenzy. But pretty soon the birds all disappeared and it was time for bats to take center stage.

We moved around the lake to a grove of sturdy old trees and set the bat detectors at 45-47 kHz. Very shortly the detectors started squawking, almost like Geiger counters. The bats were right over our heads in the trees. It seems the first bats to appear in the evening tend to feed under the shade of trees to protect themselves from their natural predators (owls, etc). As the night deepens, the bats feed out in the open.

We ventured out into the open ourselves, down by the lake, and the bats were everywhere. They were swerving and diving all around us. These were all pipistrelle bats whose bodies are about as big as a man's thumb! As small as they are they eat thousands of insects per night of feeding. And these were especially hungry because the night before had been rainy and bats don't fly or eat in the rain. The rain interferes with their echolocation and they can't find food.

By shining the light of a torch (flashlight) along the surface of the lake we were also able to make out a Daubenton's bat. This variety skims the surface of a body of water eating bugs. It's like a natural hovercraft.

After ninety minutes the group headed for the locked gate and were released by a park ranger. I thought this was a fun and unusual way to spend an evening in London!

Two 4 One

2008-07-09T18:19:00.011+01:00

English drinking--makes you think of a nice pint of lager on a warm sunny day or perhaps a warming stout in a pub where you have escaped from the cold rain.

Well, brace yourselves. Patsy and Edina, Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty, these are the images that should come to mind.

Since I arrived I have been astounded to see how much alcohol the average resident of London consumes during a night out. I already mentioned the public drunkenness witnessed on Saturday afternoon. I thought to myself that this was an exception, a celebration.

Tuesday evening we went to a cocktail bar a few blocks from our flat. It was recommended by one of John’s colleagues as a reasonably priced place with good cocktails, both a rarity in this city. Good cocktails? Yes. Reasonably priced? Yes. The only trouble is, cocktails are not like the animals being lead onto Noah’s ark. They should be consumed one at a time, not two at a time. Fifty-Five (www.fiftyfivebar.co.uk) is the name of the place and during happy hour (6:00-8:00) all cocktails are served two at a time. I ordered a manhattan for myself and a martini for John. The bartender poured two of each. I was sure it was a mistake but no. I quickly realized that all around me Brits were double down, and getting ready to fall down as a result. As the clock neared 8:00 the cue (more local language for you) at the bar was growing. Nobody wanted to miss the last shot of 2:4:1 madness.

Not one to shun local customs, I drank my two manhattans, we went on to dinner (where I had only water) and then stopped at the Earl of Camden pub on the corner. This place had a special as well. Order two glasses of wine and get the whole bottle! What is one to do? With the dollar so weak you have to economize somewhere. Now if only I could get rid of this headache.

My Beefeater was Royal Marine

2008-07-09T16:46:00.020+01:00

Tuesday morning I ventured out on the London Underground to visit the Tower of London. It really is one of the most remarkable places on earth. The White Tower was built by William the Conqueror in 1078--more than 900 years ago. The centuries reach out and grab you. It's amazing when you think of all the people who passed through the Tower's gates and those that perished there. Some of the famous prisoners included kings of England, Scotland and France.

The Tudors seemed particularly bent on executing people. The great lawyer and scholar Sir Thomas More was imprisoned and executed there because he wouldn't recognize Henry VIII as head of the Church in England. Henry also had wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard beheaded at the Tower. Lady Jane Grey met the same fate. Princess Elizabeth was imprisoned for a time by her half-sister Queen Mary I, and it was from the Tower that Elizabeth set out to be crowned in Westminster Abbey after the death of Mary.

In addition to serving as a fortress and prison, the Tower was a royal palace, an armory, a treasury, a zoo (first in Europe), the Royal Mint, a public records office, an observatory, and is the home of the Crown Jewels.

I took an intimate guided tour with a Yeoman Warder--just me and 100 other tourists. The Beefeaters (don't call them that to their faces) always put on a great show. Most would do well at a stand-up comedy club, and this guy was no exception. He had a supply of jokes up the sleeve of his blue and red tunic--hundreds of years of jokes. All Yeoman Warders are retired non-commissioned officers from the British armed forces (except the Royal Navy). Our Yeoman was the only former Royal Marine at the Tower. I got points with him for being the only person on the tour who knew the date of the Battle of Trafalgar (1804).

After spending several hours wandering around the Middle Ages, I found myself in the City of London, smack in the middle of a modern financial center. The streets were full of conservatively-dressed professionals with grim faces. Britain's economy is slipping into recession.

Click here if you want to see more photos of my day.

The Beauty of Roses

2008-07-08T00:06:00.015+01:00

Monday I went to our local post office in the Camden High Street to post something to the States. (Impressed with my English?) I'd forgotten that post offices in England (as with the rest of Europe) are not merely places to mail a letter. The Royal Mail acts as a bank, investment house, insurance broker and in a myriad of other roles. Besides the obvious, this P.O. sells such things as greeting cards, computer supplies (including printers) and passport photos. While I was waiting in line (queuing) a rack with brochures for all kinds of investments and insurance (including pet insurance) caught my eye. On my way out a Royal Mail employee tried to interest me in opening a savings account at seven percent. He was very friendly, but backed off when he found out I wasn't a British subject.

At midday I walked over to Regent's Park, the 410 acre park not far from the flat. It features "stunning rose gardens with more than 30,000 roses of 400 varieties." Somehow the few hours I spent there coincided with the break in the downpours we'd had all day. The park was beautiful; I'll let my photos speak for themselves.

On the southwest end of the park is Baker Street, of Sherlock Holmes fame, where there's a museum at No. 221b. There was a throng of tourists outside; it's interesting to see how popular a man is who never existed yet lives today.

My First Weekend in London

2008-07-06T16:26:00.000+01:00

Here's a cocktail recipe for you to try:

Mix
1 part sunny Saturday afternoon in London
2 parts Amy Winehouse drag
1 part public display of drunkenness (keep separate from above until ready to mix)
2 parts bemused tourists
1 part bemused Londoners
1 part Peter and John

Shake gently and viola!
You have gay pride day in London.

We woke on Saturday morning with no plans. I was checking on the state of public transportation (which Tube lines have delays, etc.) when I discovered that it was gay pride day in London. The theme for London Pride 2008 was "Fairytales, Myths and Legends."We decided to go take a look at the parade and walk around the street festival. What we saw amused, disturbed and sometimes shocked us. Who needs to be staggering drunk at 1:30 in the afternoon? Well, a number of Londoners is the answer.

We meandered around for a few hours, had an expensive Malaysian lunch and bumped into an American couple John met back in December. We headed back home for dinner. I made a leaning tower of lasagna, well we did. It was a mix of cheeses and whole wheat pasta, but there wasn't quite enough pasta to bring the dish to a symetrical finish. Though it was a split-level lasagna, it was still pretty tasty.

Sunday has been a little more subdued. We have had our first day of traditional London weather. The skies opened several times today. We spent an hour walking around a wonderful old church and church yard, St. Pancras Old Church. One of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London and England as a whole, people have been praying there for 1700 years. We followed that up with a light lunch and a stroll. We are now back at the flat (I am being forced to speak the language) and planning a quiet night in.

More to come...

England on the Fourth of July

2008-07-03T17:17:00.000+01:00

I arrived in London yesterday without incident. The Aer Lingus flights to Dublin and London were pretty good: friendly service and, quiet passengers. Many of the passengers had been on vacation in the U.S. using the power of the euro to have a great time. I also overhead that several Irish had come over to attend weddings of American relatives.

You have to pay for any alcohol you want to drink on Aer Lingus, and they encouraged passengers to buy two (or more) bottles or cans of whatever during the cocktail service because they wouldn't have time to serve drinks at mealtime. I bought two bottles of Chilean cabernet. I enjoyed observing the many Irish faces I saw on the plane and on the ground.

Our flat is located on Albert Street in the Camden Town section of London. It's a leafy street of Georgian townhouses, and feels a bit like home as J has rented two other flats in this same building. The flat is on the 2nd story (3rd story for Americans) and the sunny living room (at left) and bedroom looks out onto trees and the street. This is both a blessing and a curse as the view is inviting, but the noise from the street can be pretty jarring. The Jewish Museum is directly across the street and is undergoing an $18 million expansion that will last into next year. There's a lot of hammering, sawing, drilling, etc., during the day. Then there are two pubs on the nearby corner: the Spread Eagle and the Earl of Camden. The crowds from these pubs add a constant din in the evening into the night. And when a staffer dumps all the empties into a dumpsters outside, there is a brain-shattering sound.

Today we managed to find one of the few supermarkets in the area. There are a lot of small scale stores/shops, but very few things on the scale of an American supermarket with reasonable prices and selection. Well, welcome to Morrison's! They even had caffeine-free Diet Coke! A rare find! We will be back.

After shopping for provisions, we took a walk around the Camden Markets. Here along a picturesque canal you find merchants selling cool clothing, jewelry, artwork, knickknacks and inexpensive street food. We had some success in finding purchases and walked out of other stores empty-handed. We ended up sampling the beer at the Crown & Goose and the aforementioned Spread Eagle. The latter is usually subdued, but this evening there were crowds enjoying the fine July weather, Wimbeldon on the telly and imbibing. We can hear them still...

Not too much notice being taken here of the 232nd anniversary of American independence, but a London paper did have a piece about where to have an American meal on the Fourth. In observance of the day, J and I ate dinner at a good Indian restaurant in solidarity with another former British colony that fought for its independence.

Departure Day

2008-07-02T19:00:00.000+01:00

I am packed (mostly and ready to leave home for four and a half months.

I leave for JFK very shortly. See you on the other side.

The Adventure Begins

2008-07-01T16:44:00.000+01:00

I am off tomorrow to live in London, England, for several months. My husband, J, has a job that requires him to be in London for a time. Being in between jobs myself I decided to tag along. I am looking forward to his sojourn in another country albeit one that shares the same language (mostly) with the United States.

The last few days have been hectic with packing and preparing our New York apartment for my departure. Furniture is being covered, plants are being farmed out to neighbors, the refrigerator cleaned out, etc. I must be truly mentally ill: I found five opened jars of salsa in the fridge with varying dates of expiration and amounts of remaining salsa. In addition there were several nearly empty jars of old preserves at the back. Why? I vow to live more simply and efficiently.

I am flying on Aer Lingus tomorrow for the first time, via Dublin. I am curious to see how it compares to other airlines.