Recently in Guides Category
I’ll get into the chaos another time; first, let’s talk about the Guggenheim. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection was on the top of my list of things to see in Venice, right after “as much Palladio as possible”, but we didn’t get there until the afternoon before we left. In fact, I was so afraid we wouldn’t get there (because others - who shall remain nameless - were dragging their feet) that I felt the need to add a small motivational tantrum to the mix. I don’t know if it helped, but it seemed in keeping with Ms. Guggenheim’s eccentricity.
The collection is in Guggenheim’s gorgeous house which fronts on the Grand Canal but looks nothing like most of the surrounding Venetian palazzos: it’s white, it’s angular and it’s modern, modern, modern. (Not that I’d be averse to living in one of those other palazzos, mind you. If you’re offering, I’m in.)
I fell for Rauschenberg at the Guggenheim’s retrospective in New York in 1997. I joined the museum that year, even though I was a pauper, so that I could get the exhibition catalog and go back to meet Rauschenberg at the reception (and by “meet” I mean, “look at from the first floor while he spoke in the lobby.”)
I loved the Combines the most, constructions of found materials (including, infamously, a stuffed goat), original paintings, recycled print, and photography. A close second was the amazing Hiccups, a set of 97 segments of handmade paper printed with images and zippered together. The constructions struck me as imaginative and somehow dynamic (literally, in the case of Hiccups, which can be rezippered in any configuration). Rauschenberg seemed…happy, I guess. Curious. Conflicted, but funny, not tortured. His work noted what was going on around him not by representing it or reducing it, but by collecting it. It felt like he saw what other people missed - junk, goats, discarded newsprint, tires - and accepted it all into his work without shying away from its grime or rust, elevating it to notice by recycling it.
(Slideshow overview of some of his work, including that goat, here.)
A few years later, the Whitney bought Synapsis Shuffle, another moveable work. Rauschenberg created fifty two 9.5’ panels (each 5’ or less wide), each its own piece of art. When it came time to show it, he’d collect a set of people - mostly famous, all from different walks of life - and stage a lottery. Each person drew a set of two numbers: the first indicating how many panels they’d get and the other a rank denoting in what order they’d be able to select their panels. Then they’d construct what they liked from their panels or barter with the other participants to get different panels.
I love the flexibility of that idea. Every time it shows, it’s different but it’s still absolutely that same work underneath. It’s done - for now and until the next time it’s done.
Gluts is a series of sculptures (for lack of a better word) produced from the mid-eighties until Rauschenberg’s death last year. The Guggenheim Collection is exhibiting a fraction of the huge series. Over twenty-odd years, Rauschenberg pillaged junkyards for materials - twisted bumpers, discarded signs, bits of wrought iron metalwork - took them back to his studio and constructed these pieces - some enormous, some small - a testament to glut, to overproduction and the abandonment of the resulting goods. The pieces are a criticism and a resurrection all in one, a whimsical and substantial response to the issue.
(An excellent virtual tour through the exhibition here. A good, albeit very flatly lit, set of images from Gluts here.)
The standing collection at the Guggenheim house is wonderful as well. I love museums of personal collections - the Frick in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston are two of my other favorites. For me, there is something intimate and human in visiting a personally curated collection that is very different from visiting a professionally curated exhibition in a museum. There are always lovely surprises among the selections and combinations.
The Rauschenberg is up through September 20th.
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Apparently, he’s also a great father.
French food? Mais oui. Italian? Buongiorno! Spanish tapas? Si! Swiss cooking? Um…what? It just doesn’t sound right, does it? If you’ve only focused on chocolate and fondue though, you’ve been missing out. Swiss food is the ultimate comfort food and man is it ever comforting: comforting to the tune of fifteen additional pounds in my first year on Swiss soil.
There are the cream sauces, used on cutlets and, my favorite artery-clogging example, whole hardboiled eggs. There are the breads: soft, braided white-bread zopf on Sundays and nussgipfeli (croissants wrapped around tasty, tasty ground up nuts and sugariness). There are the endless cookies and the herbs-and-croutons cup o’ soup, the rosti, the rosti with cheese, the rosti with bacon. The raclette. And, oh my Lord, the cheese. Bring me all the cheeses. ALL of them.
The first thing on my list when I land in Zurich is Migros, the grocery store chain. Say, “Grüzi,” to the family and then off to Migros. Unfortunately for our vacation plans, R had to come back to San Francisco for business three days into our time in Switzerland. Fortunately for our autumn, that meant he could schlep back a duffle of culinary goodies that we then didn’t have to take along on the Italian leg of the trip. (It also meant that we could reload that same duffle when we passed through Zurich on our way home a week and a half later. How sweet is that? Pretty sweet, that’s how sweet.)
So here’s what you should try while you’re there, plus some tips to getting Swiss goodness on this side of the Atlantic (or the Pacific, if you’re really disoriented and into flying the wrong way round).
Kuche
The VICTORY of the trip: kuche (if you’re in Bern) or wähe (if you’re in Zurich). Kuche is a fruit tart with a firm custard-like filling that’s made in a flat bottomed, wide quiche pan. The fruit is usually fresh, the custard filling not very sweet, and the crust approximately like a quiche’s but covered with a thin layer of ground hazelnuts. (If you want it sweeter, you can serve it with a little whipped cream. A very little.) I love it and have loved it since I first had it as a teenager.
However, I’ve never been able to find a recipe in the States and even if I had, I doubt I would’ve tried it because it involves dough. Let’s be clear: dough and I have a long and unhappy history punctuated by embarrassment and disaster. (For me, that is. The dough just sits there all smug.) It sticks. I add flour. It stops sticking. I stop adding flour. It ends up tough as nails. It took me three years to produce a decent biscuit, I won’t even try bread, and pie crusts make me cry.
Times they are a’changing though, people. With the aid of a Xerox machine (for the recipe, not the dough), Migros’ pre-packaged pastry (smuggled), and a Cuisinart (for pulverizing hazelnuts), I am the proud owner of a kuche of my very own, served in the photo on my grandmother’s china with a cup of afternoon tea.
It turns out that the recipe is so absurdly simple that no one even bothers to publish it in real cookbooks. R’s cousin Tanja found it for me in her Home Ec textbook from high school and it has all of five ingredients (besides the dough). Cut-up fruit (apricots are my favorite), the hazelnuts, milk, an egg, and a little sugar. Yeah, I’m an idiot, but now I’m a self-satisfied, fruit-filled idiot.
Amaretti
Another wild success from this trip. I got hooked on the Swiss, chewy version of these almond cookies while visiting Tessin, the Italian canton in the south. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would spend the next ten years purchasing and swearing at the super-hard, not-at-all-like-what-I-wanted version offered by Italian restaurants and stores in New York and San Francisco before giving up on ever finding what I was looking for again.
Lo and behold, as I was waiting for my train to Milan at the Zurich station, I happened to dawdle by a farmer’s market vendor selling breads and pastries. Next to the linzertorte lay a few craggy cookies powdered lightly with sugar and labeled as amaretti. I braced for disappointment and handed over a few francs. I needn’t have (braced, that is, not paid. It’s Switzerland: you always have to pay.) Ah, the chewy taste of sweet success! I’m back, baby!
It turns out, after further research and discussion, that these amaretti are, after all, a different animal than the hard as rocks Italian cookie. Nice of them to name them differently, don’t you think? Jerks.
Another trip to Migros and I scored three different versions of my (re)new(ed) best friend which I’ve worked my way through at an alarming pace since we got back. I got some small square ones, 20 to a bag, that are OK, still soft but without the slightly crunchy exterior layer. The layered ones in the photo are ridiculously good but might put you in sugar shock: the middle layer is an inch of soft milk chocolate laced with liqueur. The closest to the homemade are the same cookie (same photo) without the chocolate and I would eat them until I threw up except I only bought one pack so I had to ration them. They’re gone now, so I might have to start experimenting with recipes off the internet. Good thing I just joined that gym down the hill.
Meringues
Aside from chocolate, I always bring back meringue cookies, usually the ones with their little bottoms dipped in chocolate, but this trip, Tanja converted me to a straight-up meringue lover. Put them (or just one, if you’ve gotten or made the large ones) in the bottom of a bowl, cover them with whipped cream and throw on a bunch of berries. You’re welcome.
I know I could’ve been eating this all along if I bothered to make meringues, which I know how to do, but meringues take so long to bake I just can’t take it.
(Reading all of the above, I do seem to have issues with patience and preparation in the kitchen, don’t I? I’ll have to have a long think about that as soon as the sugar-induced hyperactivity wears off.)
Spätzle
Spätzle, translated charmingly as “little sparrows” is a kind of tiny dumplingy tastiness. Again, something I could make myself, but I prefer to rely on Migros’ vacuum-packed goodness that is at the ready in my cupboard whenever I need my fix. I’ve bought the dried spätzle available in supermarkets here, but it’s not quite right, dry instead of moist and a general disappointment.
If you live in San Francisco, hit Suppenkuche in Hayes Valley for the original and order the Jägerschnitzel in Champignonsoße mit Spätzle und grünem Salat. It’s what spätzle should be: soft, yummy and covered with a creamy mushroom sauce.
Rösti
Rösti is R’s preferred side dish: grated potatoes fried as a pancake and flipped so both top and bottom are brown and crispy. (I make a mess of the flipping bit, so R handles that. Can you tell I’m not much of a cook?) Yet again, not so hard to make at home, but that would require forethought, patience and a lot of grating, none of which sound good to me, so packs of plain rösti, cheese rösti and rösti with bacon bits come back with us.
Pastetli
I can’t begin to explain to you how rich pastetli are and how much you need to make some.
Here’s what they are: puff pastry shells filled with mushroom cream sauce with little kügeli, or balls, of what they claim to be veal. (I know I shouldn’t eat veal, but I console myself that little Swiss cows have much happier lives than American calves who are treated abominably and whose farmers must, I fear, have black hearts.) I say “claim” because the little meat balls are the consistency of bratwurst, not regular meat. Those meat balls are the missing link. I’ve found the pastry shells in the freezer section of the grocery store courtesy of Pepperidge Farm, so I’m set there, and I can make a mushroom sauce by adding milk to roux, but the meat escapes me.
In Switzerland, you can buy packages of the fleisch kügeli to add to your sauce and come at it that way or, of course, you can rely on Migros 100% and buy their packets of pastetenfullung as I have and horde them for comforting dinners at the end of your very worst days. I’ll keep you posted if I sort out the meat component and figure out how to make my own.
So we’re sorted for now on the Swiss food front, but I might need to start an import/export ring to keep the supply lines properly open. Or learn to cook, I guess , which somehow seems harder.
The tour included business and theater in London (humid, grey), a wedding in Switzerland (formal), a couple of sweltering days in Milan, holiday with family in Venice, a little down time in Zurich, a lot of time in flight, a couple days on trains, and short trips on trams and boats. That’s a lot of different climates and even more transitions from flats to hotels and back and forth between countries.
Across all that, there were a few things that stood out as being incredibly handy to have and made the trip’s insane logistics so much easier to manage.
The Best Bag Ever (especially on the road): Marghera Convertible
To be fair, that laptop is a Mac Air (which, incidentally, I love like my unconceived children), so its weight doesn’t put a strain on the bag’s leather shoulder strap and its unusually slim form allows it to slide horizontally into a bag like this that wouldn’t accommodate either its Apple bretheren or any other standard size laptops. Don’t look at this as a drawback though: this is your opportunity to justify both a new computer and a new bag.
When not housing your ‘puter, the capacity is generous enough to hold small purchases in addition to the usual wallet, iPhone, keys and assorted cousins. Two flat outside pockets are exactly the size of your airline ticket and one small one inside will hold your passport.
Where to get it: Sundance Catalog. Currently on sale for $250.
iPhone
R talked me into an iPhone the day before we left the country, mainly so I could make international calls and send text messages in Europe without buying a just-for-international phone with a different phone number everybody then has to remember. I was ambivalent. Did I really want to get worked up about something so many people are already worked up about? Wouldn’t it be more fair to the coolness marketplace to get worked up about something more obscure? And wouldn’t I look cooler if I did that second one instead?
Also, I liked my little Blackberry Pearl and the consistency of Verizon. Why move to something bigger with AT&T’s terrible coverage?
Because it’s pocket-sized awesomeness, that’s why.
Really, though, the main thing was having a phone and text messaging which meant we could split up for the afternoon and still coordinate keys, dinner, and so on. I don’t know what we’d have done without it.
Where to get it: Apple.
iPhone App: Hi Converter
It converts things. Correction: it converts EVERYTHING. Do you want to know how many hectares are in a bunder? How many ngarns are in a square angstrom? Did you know there was such a thing as a square light year? The area converter can help. When you’re done there, the distance converter will turn your miles into gnat’s eyes (.00000007761). You can do electric current and digital image resolution conversions in your spare time.
Where to get it: App Store.
iPhone App: Collins Italian-English Dictionary
Since I speak German and a chunk of Spanish and can get by in French, I’ve been arrogantly cruising around Europe for quite a while without having to feel like a complete tourist. Those days came to a jarring end at the Italian border. Enter the iPhone (again).
Of all the dictionaries I tried, the $25 Collins was the best. It covers a lot of ground: direct translations, peripheral usage, colloquialisms and common (or, in the best cases, not at all common) phrases.
$25 is a lot for an app and I know no one wants to pay more than 99 cents, but the frustration of looking up a word and finding no results repeatedly on other apps gets old fast. You spent $1200 to get to Italy, you can spare another $25 to pull up with, “L’ho gettato nel water,” to explain the whereabouts of your passport/hairbrush/traveler’s checks. (Translates to, “I threw it in the toilet,” by the way.)
Where to get it: App Store
Hideo Wakamatsu 20” Viewer Trolley
The day after we got back from Barcelona in June, I biked over to the Hideo Wakamatsu store to check out superlight international carry-on sized luggage. I biked home with a silver 6.5 lb., 20” Viewer Trolley hanging from my handlebars.
My problem is that we have a bunch of stuff - some of it heavy - that I won’t check. R’s 35mm camera, my jewelry, things I’ll want on the plane (sweater, megaphone, another sweater, snacks) and essential clothing (an extra T-shirt and undies, plus whatever we would die without if they lost our luggage, like a swimsuit if we’re going to be beach or my dress for the wedding we’re attending). That pile of stuff always ends up being more than I want to carry in a shoulder bag, but I don’t want to drag around an actual suitcase with all the rest of my non-essential stuff too. (Besides, most American 22” roll-on suitcases are too heavy, once packed, to meet international flight restrictions.) What to do? Until last month, I chose “suffer” rather than add another suitcase to the mix.
That was the wrong choice. The Viewer kicks ass. It’s super light for getting in and out of bins, and its four wheels allow you to roll it next to you with your computer bag on top. It’s like walking a very quiet, rectangular pet. Your hands are free, your shoulder is relaxed, and you look like the seasoned traveler you actually are.
Quick warning: the lovely matte finish on the bag will mark, so brace yourself for that before you check it (if you ever decide you need to, that is). I haven’t checked it yet myself, so I’ve no idea how well it holds up to airline abuse, but it’s done beautifully inside planes, trams, and trains.
Where to get it: Currently out of stock at the eponymous shop but available - albeit inaccurately described as having two wheels and not four - at Flight 001.
Business Class
Traveling in business class (or above) is the way to go. I know there is no one (except possibly this jerk) who is in favor of the turn that air travel has taken in the last ten years. These days, the coach cabin on a long-haul flight looks more and more like the back of a Central American chicken truck. Between the the addition of bad things (longer lines and delays, ineffective security, fees for everything) and the elimination of good things (space, food, customer service), there’s pretty much nothing positive to say about flying except that you will get where you’re going not dead (mostly).
R travels for work, which rots but has a significant up side: he accumulates crazy numbers of miles and little stacks of upgrade certificates. We use the former to get me where he’s already going and the latter to get us there, occasionally, in business class. I don’t need warmed nuts and real china, but the quiet and the space bring the airborne experience back from the brink of catatonia into the land of, “I might not maim someone first thing when I get off the plane.”
Where to get it: Get a job where you a.) travel a lot (our way), b.) make a lot of money or c.) can commit a lot of untraceable financial fraud.
- Have they no shame?
- True or false: Having a picture of yourself in a place is more essential than actually having seen that place.
- What exactly does a pictogram of a camera with a red line through it mean in Japanese?
I know: it’s absurd. We just got back from Spain. Don’t say it. The planning seems lacking, if not downright ridiculous, but it was unavoidable. Trust me: I tried to avoid it, but there it is.
London for three days (business for R, theater for me), then Zurich for four days (wedding), then Venice for ten days.
July - well, summer in its entirety - is not the time to go to Venice, but we’re doing it anyway, because that’s how our particular cookie crumbled. Given the summer heat (which I hate) and the summer crowds (which I hate), I’m going to need a plan to make this work. Here’s what I’ve been thinking:
- Buy my own gondola. Live in it for ten days. Refuse to come out.
Pros: I will not have to pay to get anywhere, thus avoiding the $176/hour fares for private gondola rides. (For $176/hour, that gondola better be made of gold and taste like frosting.) If I want company, I can charge other people for giving them a ride.Cons:
- I do not know how to, er, gondol.
- I get seasick.
- Gondolas cost $35,000.
- Gondola insurance might be required to transport strangers.
Con mitigation: air bags, shock absorbers, gondoling classes, win the lottery.
- Go out only between the hours of 1AM and 7AM.
Pros: No crowds. No heat.
Cons: No light. General suspicion that I am a vampire.
Con mitigation: Flashlights. Avoid drinking blood. No capes. - Navigate based on crowd density: if there are more than ten people already in a street, take a different street.
Pros: I will not get claustrophobic.
Cons: I will spend most of my day standing in the middle of an intersection.
Con mitigation: Step 1: Get very famous. Step 2: Hire assistant to clear streets ahead of me. - Invent the human hamster ball I’ve been meaning to get around to inventing.
Pros: Air-conditioned comfort. Personal space. Floating transport.
Con: Generator required for air conditioner + intercom system for communicating presence of oncoming hamster ball to crowds may weigh too much to allow for floating in canals.
Con mitigation: Also invent floating generator. Take megaphone.
As with the other guides on this site, I don’t pretend to cover everything. These are my personal highlights and low lights of what’s out there. I hope it’s the supplement you were looking for to narrow down, expand or otherwise warp your itinerary. Enjoy!
A quick note on travel guides: I was a Let’s Go girl when I lived abroad. Then they got a little newsprinty and I cut over to Lonely Planet, but they’re not as selective as I’d like (I know what they include or omit constitutes an opinion but they don’t narrow it down a lot), so I went looking for a new, more opinionated and organized guide for this trip to Spain. My new best friend is the Top 10 series by DK Publishing: excellent photography, small enough to carry around, removable map included, and content divided by area and category. Sweet.
What You Should Do
Sagrada Familia
Let’s just get it out of the way: yes, you should probably go and see Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s unfinished monster cathedral. You’re going to see it whether I say you should or not, so I’ll get behind your effort. I can’t stand Gaudi and the Modernista style, but the cathedral does have sort of a Guinness Book of World Records appeal, given how long they’ve been building it (128 years and counting). In my view, that’s on a par with the world’s largest ball of twine, but, truth be told, if I were within walking distance of that twine ball, I’d probably go see that too. Seriously though, it is impressively large and unique, so man up, get over your horror of tile work and head over there. I wouldn’t walk to the top of the spire though - punishing trip, I hear.
Unless you’re a fan, Sagrada Familia will also relieve you of any responsibility to go out of your way to catch Parc Guell, or the apartment building La Pedrera, other highly recommended Gaudi constructions. You’ll probably pass some Modernista work on your way to other places you’re going anyway, so no need to plan special outings.
Palau de la Musica Catalana
Surprisingly, given that it’s also in the Modernista style, the Palau de la Musica Catalana makes the top of my list. Maybe that’s because I love me some stained glass and the concert hall has a one-ton inverted stained glass bell in the center of the ceiling. Also, unlike Sagrada Familia’s endless ramblings, the palau has a tight, efficient design with a purpose: a concert hall with the best possible acoustics for one of the first co-ed professional choirs. All the sculptures and tiles and columns and iron work fooforah support that objective. Mad props. It’s an amazing thing. Oh - and they got the whole thing built in a mindboggling three years. Take that, Gaudi.
To see inside, you have to book a tour (in the right language, mind you) or attend a concert. Tour’s just under an hour and they run regularly in English, but the tours book up and the Palau’s web site is not helpful, so it might be a good bet to wander by on your way elsewhere, buy a ticket at the box office for another day so you know you’re sorted.
Eat fideuà, olives, and jamon iberico
See notes on fideuà and restaurant recommendations here.
If you don’t like olives, as I didn’t before my first trip to Spain, this is the place to learn. You don’t have to go out of your way to find them - they’ll be served before almost any meal at a restaurant - but you may want to track down a grocery store to bring some back with you after you’ve had them. Most likely the ones you’ll be served are manzanilla olives, native to Spain, or manzanillas stuffed with - don’t gag: they’re not the same as the ones you pick off your pizza - anchovies.
Jamón ibérico is a must. It’s cured ham from pigs fed exclusively on acorns. Which sounds boring for the piggy but is salty and tasty for you. You don’t have to buy one of the entire legs, hoof included, that you see at the grocery store to gnaw your way through before you get to customs (or smuggle it in a tennis racket case as someone who shall remain nameless told me she did); the cheap stuff in sandwiches from bodegas will be stringy and unsatisfying, and the $95/lb. offerings are a little rich for some of us. Start with ordering some at a proper restaurant one afternoon and see how you like it.
Picasso Museu
Picasso was a misogynistic jerk, we all know that, but the man could paint. And draw and collage and pot, which is a welcome expansion of the usual, “Look at my naked cubist ladies!” museum repertoire. Barcelona was something of a hometown for Picasso, and the Picasso Museum been willed an excellent collection of his early and student work: drawings for larger works, small oil paintings on wood, notebooks full of pencil sketches and so on. Of course they have large, important works as well, but the most appealing part for me was seeing the early classical grounding that allowed for Picasso’s later evolution into groundbreaking styles. The artist in progress and so on. The museum is housed in a city castle, which makes for a charming but also somewhat disorganized and labyrinthine experience.
Montjuic and related activities
Barcelona, in case you haven’t noticed, is ringed by mountains which provides a handy opportunity to take funiculars up the sides of them or, if you’re deranged, bike up them. Montjuic is one of said mountains, the least suicidal one to bike, and home to, among other things, the Fundacio Joan Miro (a museum dedicated to, er, Miro), the imposing Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the Olympic stadium (built for the 1936 Olympics, used in 1992) and a warren of very lovely parks with, sometimes, views across the city. The funicular to the top is part of the metro system, so heading up and making an afternoon of it isn’t nearly as complicated as the map looks like it will be. Definitely hit the Miro, wander the gardens, skip the stadium, if you’re up for it take on the National Museum and then meander downhill via escalator, stairs and paths among the fountains and gardens that will land you in the Placa d’Espanya where you can check out…
The Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion is a “house” by Mies van der Rohe built of steel, glass and marble for the king’s reception at the 1929 World Exposition. They tore down the original, thought better of that bad decision and reconstructed it in the ’80s. If you have any interest in architecture or design, you have to go. It’s small and costs about $7 to get in, but it’s worth half an hour just to be inside those straight lines. We ended up here after a long, long day, happy to discover it was open until 8PM and intrigued that the brochure clearly labeled “English” was just as clearly written in French. I assume this was in keeping with one of van der Rohe’s less well-known utopian plans for future society. (Architectural info + bad photos here. Better photos here, especially here.)
What You Could Do (specialty)
These are some “if these are your kind of thing” recommendations.Formatgeria La Seu
The artisanal cheese movement has yet to catch on in Spain, so it’s a rarity to find a place so focused on and willing to discuss cheese. It’s not that Spaniards aren’t making cheese in huts on the sides of mountains and meadows, it’s that Spain isn’t flooded with the wine-pairing classes and Whole Foods’ marketing and retired bankers going into goat-rearing that America and France have. Formatgeria La Seu has been chipping away at that for several years now. The shop is central (if tiny), the proprietress is Scottish so you can ask questions freely, and the cheese is phenomenal. Follow her lead and buy whatever she tells you to: she knows whereof she speaks since she goes out into the countryside to find and collect the best cheeses herself. If you have a spare Saturday afternoon, you can even swing by and take a class. (Hours: 10-2, 5-8)
Get yourself some espadrilles
I know. I don’t wear ‘em either. But these are some kickin’ kicks. Handmade on the premises, the espadrilles at La Manual Alpargatera come in everything from the traditional flats to crimson gladiator wedges. I bought two pairs and love them like my future children. Who will also, presumably, provide little in the way of arch support.
Liquor
Some restaurants, especially the ones on the water that serve that day’s fresh catch, drop off bottles of clear liquor and shot glasses at your table after you’ve finished eating. Have some. It’s a digestif made out of fruit and gasoline. You’ll like it, especially if you’ve just had half a bottle of wine with dinner. In fact, you’ll like it so much that you’ll swing by the grocery the next day and buy a bottle for $7 to bring home with you. The stuff is terrible but highly addictive.
Vincon
Vincon is a design shop a few blocks north of Placa de Catalunya and worth a visit, if only to buy a few gifts and wish you had that much money to spend on a minimalist bassinet your baby’s going to outgrow in 20 minutes. The place is huge and offers everything from rubber handbags molded to look like roosting hens to high-end kitchenware to Pantone luggage.
Sant Felip Neri Square
Round behind Barcelona Cathedral in the Born neighborhood is a tiny square with a small café outside a wildly expensive hotel. There’s a lovely tree, a fountain, it’s off the beaten path and the café con leche is perfect. While you bask in the afternoon sun, you can think sad thoughts about the bullet holes in the church wall across from you. Location here.
What You Could Do
Tibidabo
We didn’t re-visit Tibidabo this time, but it’s worth a trip after you’ve been up Montjuic, that is, which is a nicer mountain. Tibidabo does have better views though, given that it’s much, much higher. Drive, if you have access to wheels, and you can stop at various points on the way up or down the hill to take photos. Otherwise, public transport will get you there and you can visit the highly impressive Temple de Sagrat Cor church, wander the park, sample the amusement rides which have inexplicably been installed next to the cathedral and generally take in the sun and altitude. (Panorama preview here.)
Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat
The History of the City Museum is not gripping and was, for me, a little tedious, but it does allow you to go underground and view excavated Roman ruins still laid out as they were found. Streets, laundries, wineries and so on lie under suspended pathways beneath modern Barcelona. If you - or your kid - are into archeology, you’ll like it here. (Their web site is spectacularly unhelpful. Check your guide book.)
Museu d’Art Contemporani & Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
What You Can Totally Miss
La Rambla
I think all the guide books are high when they recommend La Rambla as a must-see in Barcelona. It is distinctly an “avoid it if at all possible” on my list, crammed as it is with foreigners, pickpockets and the worst of the worst of tourist-pandering shops and restaurants. If you want the rambla experience (trees, cafes, shops), get off the subway at Placa de Catalunya and walk north on Passeig de Gràcia or Rambla Catalunya.
Corte Inglés
Again with the crack-smoking by the guide book editors, Corte Inglés, the biggest department store in Barcelona, is a mess. Yeah, it has a little bit of everything, but it also has mostly nothing. If you want the clothes, go to the shops themselves: Mexx, Kookai and Desigual all have stores elsewhere in the city with better selections than the sub-boutiques crammed into Corte Inglés. The whole Corte Inglés experience was like going to a pointless WalMart masquerading as a Macy’s. (One exception: the basement of the location in Placa de Catalunya has a comprehensive drugstore for buying only-sold-in-Europe products, and a fully stocked grocery store.)
Anything Olympics-related.
Unless, of course, you’re a future Olympian. In which case, you might have a word with them about using the track for a couple of laps.
Camper shoes
I don’t understand the appeal of Campers. They’re wide, unflattering and not even a little bit chic. I thought maybe I’d missed their point because I had only seen the styles they export to the United States. Turns out they export all their styles to the United States and they cost just as much in the city that spawned them as they do in the States. Still stumped.
My selection process below the district level is random. Since I’m not especially into food as a hobby, I don’t go out of my way to eat at well-reviewed places. If I’m already in the neighborhood or someone else has sorted it out, great. Otherwise, I wing it: concierge recommendations are fine, maybe a quick audit in a guide book, but otherwise, c’est la vie. Traveling with me would drive a gourmet nuts, I’m sure.
It surprised me then, when I was thinking about the best part of our recent trip to Barcelona, that the food we had was at the top of the list. We had some really excellent meals, hit some superb, small restaurants, and brought back more food than anything else. Go figure.
Fideuà
It’s pronounced fee-day-WAH. As in, “WAH-hoo!”
The short description is “paella with capellini instead of rice.” (For a longer, more poetic description, check out Traveler’s Lunchbox.) I’ve been to Barcelona four times before and managed to miss this local fisherman’s dish. And Lord, what have I been missing! It’s richer in flavor than any paella I’ve ever had and the noodles make my day. It’s got all the excellent paella features - shellfish, finned fish, crusty bits on the top and bottom - but with pasta, which, to my mind, is always better than rice.
The first and best one we had was at La Fonda in Porto Olimpico. Don’t get all squeamish about heading to a brightly lit restaurant on a pier that’s also home to several bars and nightclubs. Yes, this place will look like your worst nightmare, but as long as you stick with the fideuà, you’re golden.
They’ll try and sell you on their grilled seafood plates by bringing your prospective dinner - live lobsters, crayfish, etc. - by the table to look you in the eye before their demise. This freaks me out - I’ve never been able to cook a lobster - and the resulting plate o’ ocean ordered by a companion just was not that tasty, so I felt justified in my resistance.
R and I got fideuà for two (they make you your own pan) and it was massive, so go hungry or order conservatively. Call ahead for reservations to get a table in a good spot if you’re going during prime dinner hours (around 9:30). Showing up also works, but you might end up on the edges of the outdoor room.
Tapas
Of course, right? You can’t not have tapas in Spain and the restaurant options are endless, so where should you go?
Santa Maria, started and staffed by veterans of El Bulli, offers true small plates and all of them are either innovative or just plain better than what’s usually on offer. No patatas bravas or grilled chorizo for these guys, but what you get instead is super-flavored and interesting. I didn’t love everything we ordered - the Dracula dessert parfait with the equivalent of pop rocks crossed the line from “cool” into “unsuccessful” - but it doesn’t matter when they’re small plates. How bad can something that’s 3”x3” be? We just ordered more of what we loved. The mussels and the fried tuna sushi roll were standouts. I’d go back in a heartbeat.
The place is small, so going late, as we did, is a good bet, unless you have a party of six or more, in which case you can reserve. We only paid 70+ euros for five people at dinner, which seems extraordinarily inexpensive for a place like this.
More info in the Times Online’s review.
Incidentally, Santa Maria has a sister restaurant, Santa, around the corner where we saw Puyol, the Barcelona soccer star, having dinner with too many sexy ladies and too much gel in his curls to look classy and not trashy, but whatever. If you’ve just won the European Championships, I guess you can be forgiven some lapses in taste.
Taller Tapas on Calle de l’Argenteria in the Born district is the opposite end of the tapas spectrum: a small chain that serves conventional tapas in a high-traffic historic district. Good to know about if you’re visiting museums or churches in the area or shopping of an afternoon. Solid offerings, friendly service and recommended by locals. Make sure you try the ham croquettes.
Gràcia district
Be aware that the restaurants in Gràcia are tiny and gritty-hip. So don’t plan on breaking out your Jimmy Choo’s and a party of twelve. You’ll never get in and you’ll look idiotic while finding that out.
Bodega Manolo was the best and most interesting place we ate in Barcelona. Not because it was haute cuisine or super cool but because the food was innovative and unbelievably tasty without being remotely pretentious. Also, the place is ludicrously local, down to the highly restricted hours (9-11 Fri-Sun), the tiny size (seats maybe 30), and the waitress in jogging pants. The barrels of wine lining the side wall aren’t some version of country decor. They’re actually being stored there. As a city dweller in a too-small apartment, I can relate to that. I just wish this team worked in our kitchen.
Get everything on the appetizer menu to start. Seriously. Grilled asparagus, paper-thin ham with tomatoes, and, listen up, the potato chips in a pile of indeterminate gratin. I’m not kidding. It’s potato chips with peppers, onions, some kind of ungodly flavorful sauce and, of course, cheese. Don’t laugh. It’s my new favorite thing. I don’t care if you’re on a diet or leery of the chips thing. Order it. You’ll thank me.
Dinner itself was almost an afterthought. Their specialty is a bacalla (salted cod) dish which almost everyone ordered and liked. I got the lighter fish dish which was also wonderful and easier to eat after nine pounds of appetizers. R’s cousin (who weighs about as much as Keira Knightley) got foie gras and apples which was predictably hyper rich and necessarily shared around. I think that dish might be illegal in the States.
Dessert, for me, was the cheese plate, which, in a place like this, you get and you eat and you don’t ask questions. There’s no cheese card, no description of the origins and whether the little sheeps are grass-fed. This is not Whole Foods. This is Spain. It was excellent. I’ll leave it at that.
Bodega Manolo: no credit cards, dinner only, reservations a must
Torrent de les Flors, 101, Phone: 93-284 43 77
Thurs-Sat only, 9-11PM (you can stay later but the kitchen closes at 11)
I don’t know anyone who thinks of Spain and sushi in the same sentence, but if you’re in the mood, hit one of Kibuka’s two locations, both in Gràcia. Relatives (local) and our bartender at the hotel both recommended it and weren’t wrong.
Living in San Francisco, where sushi is plentiful and high-quality, I didn’t need to go to Spain to get a raw fish fix, but after days of noodles, ham and croquettes, cold fresh fish with rice was a welcome break. We ordered the usual array of special rolls - shrimp, salmon, tuna - and everything was quite good. Don’t expect a lot of original combos, but, definitely, if you’re overstuffed with carbs and meat from other Spanish meals or if you live somewhere where it’s tough to get good sushi, Kibuka’s your place.
Fair warning: get there by 9PM to make sure you get a table. They don’t take reservations and if you miss their first seating, you’ll wait until 11.
Note: Fideuà does not photograph well. Hence, that pretty photo above is from Socarrat, the relatively new paella bar in New York that I’m dying to visit. I hear it’s great, so if you can’t get to Barcelona, perhaps your maiden fideuà could be in Manhattan.
- Make a schedule for when you want to go where.
- Sit quietly for a few moments to prepare yourself for the coming disappointment.
- Sharpen your #2 pencil.
- Begin the math section.
First, you’ll have to account for the nine hour time difference and resulting dose of jet lag, so you have to make a cut at the beginning of the day to account for the time it will take you to wake up, realize how completely exhausted you still are, berate yourself for not feeling fit and getting up early on vacation so you can go do exciting things, and then stumble about looking for caffeine. (This step can be skipped if you are a naturally laid back person or have an inexplicably sunny disposition. For some reason, on this trip, for the first time, I was also able to skip this step, but it’s best to plan it into the schedule, just in case.)
Second, check the day of the week. If you are planning on going to any museums, they are usually closed on Mondays. Except when they’re closed on Tuesdays. Or Sundays. If they do open on Sunday, chances are they will close again by 2:30 which should be right about the time you’ve sorted out the jet lag/caffeine step and gotten some morning ham into you.
If you’re planning on doing any shopping, similar - but different - rules apply. Most small stores are closed on Sundays. Unless they’re not. In which case, they might take Monday off.
Third, remember that sometimes places are open late on a specific day. But since you don’t speak the language, you will not be able to tell which day that is ahead of time. If you are me (and do speak the language, but let’s keep that quiet for now), you see “21:30” listed as the closing time on Thursday and, in a feat of delusional optimism, believe that the Fundacio Miro closes at 21:30 every day. This will cause you to save up your visit for the end of the last day of the trip (a Tuesday), cycle to the funicular up Montjuic to arrive at the museum at 18:57 and be told by the Lurch-like guard that they actually close at 19:00. I recommend against this approach.
Let’s pause here while you reconfigure your entire schedule around days of the week and closing hours.
Done? Good.
Go get your eraser and some comfortable walking shoes.
Even though you know about it and maybe even have envied it from afar as you droop forward over your keyboard every afternoon around 1:00PM, you have forgotten to factor in siesta. Depending on the store, museum, person or activity, siesta will extend for a few hours anytime between 1:00 and 5:30. It’s a safe bet that it will be at least 2:00 - 4:30.
Reconcile yourself to the fact that, despite your misconception that you have planned carefully, you will often arrive at your destination on the correct day, before evening closing time, and face a shuttered edifice. This will be because the nice people have gone home to take a nap. You should probably go and do the same. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
This page has links to the access hours for some of major attractions in Barcelona. Good luck!
It’s an odd thing, the being back. It’s grey summer in San Francisco, for one, and not sunny and 72, which was the uniform forecast for every one of my ten days in Spain. Ah, San Francisco, you frigid bastard. At least the two places share a certain seasonal predictability.
The oddity is exacerbated by the full 26 hours it took to get from Barcelona to San Francisco. That seems excessive in this day and age, no? Shouldn’t there be some kind of teleportation available? Or at least a slide of some sort, maybe one of those tube slides that ends in a big swimming pool of multicolored balls. An Ikea/Chuck E. Cheese type re-entry would take the edge off the jet lag, I’d think.
Here’s the oddest thing about being back: aside from the surreal exhaustion, I’m not all that upset to be home.
And by “home” I don’t mean “in San Francisco” but “back in my apartment hanging about with R and my writing at an ungodly 5AM.” (Even after eight years I can’t bring myself to call California home. Me and the west coast are an unfortunate mismatch, like lasagna and motor oil. They both have their place but it’s probably not together.)
Re-entry used to leave me unhappy and ragged, and included the occasional crying jag on the plane or the day before in some pretty park over a light lunch. (I don’t recommend that last as a way to end your time on holiday. I can say with authority that the summery appeal of ripe cantaloupe with slivers of prosciutto is significantly undermined when one of you is sniffling about the meaning of life into her napkin.)
Partly, I was the same as everyone else: leaving vacation behind for early morning commutes and dentist appointments is no pleasure. But my displeasure was magnified because I was coming back to San Francisco, a city I can’t seem to like, and because I was returning to a series of jobs that held no permanent grip on my interest.
Flying into SFO felt like I was being suffocated: I’d moved to a place where I couldn’t take any air into my lungs without taking everything I’d never aspired to with it. Like the belief that you’re entitled to have your own garage when you live in a city, that being laid back is a virtue, that BART’s nine stations in the city limits count as a subway system, that it’s OK for a driver to stop dead in traffic when she’s missed her turn, that a city without at least one world class theater counts as having a significant cultural profile, that garlic ice cream is not an affront to garlic and ice cream. And on and on and on.
I felt like I’d accidentally moved to a small town, with all its silent bourgeois expectations and pressures, after swearing I’d never live in one again. It made me not a little ill.
Now it’s different. To a large extent, I’ve given up on San Francisco. It is what it is. It’s always going to be provincial and think that it’s not, and I’m never going to love its hippie soul or its yuppie reality. That’s OK. As long as I can write here and be with R, everything’s all right.
The writing makes the material, surprising difference. When I lived in New York and wasn’t writing for a living, at least I was where I felt I belonged and was supported by a striving environment. Not so here. When I was part of the Silicon Valley machine, I was afraid that the sheer volume of days spent in a city so uninterested in what makes me who I am, so unlike who I am, pretending to be someone I am not, might actually add up to my being someone I am not.
Now that I’m writing, that anxiety has dissipated. I’m here at my desk in the unwelcome grey, surrounded by unopened mail, illegally imported cheese, and customs forms fixated on swine flu, and I’m not devastated. In fact, I’m glad to be back and writing. Excellent news all around, yeah?
(Especially about the cheese. Because that could have meant jail time. Which would have meant limited access to cheese. And nobody wins there.)
Turns out, not so much.
For starters, my version of the plan involved acquiring a bike. Bikes and scooters are my new thing for international travel, a private version of public transportation. It’s still technically public transportation since I’m, er, in public and transporting myself.
I had planned on renting a bike but R has family here and his super-cool aunt ordered me up a residents-only Bicing pass. Bicing is like Zipcar for bikes only you don’t have to return the bike to the station where you picked it up and you pay by the year not the hour. Also, inexplicably, there is no hard “c” sound in “Bicing” like there is in “car”.
Here’s how that went:
Assessment Phase.
I think the nearest Bicing rack is a schlep. I look out the window of our hotel room. There’s a rack downstairs. Excellent. Smooth start.
Acquisition Phase.
I do not read instructions. I prefer to be an idiot, often in public, while trying hard to look nonchalant and in the know. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.
In keeping with that plan, I go outside and try to insert my Bicing card into various parts of the bicycle to release it from the rack. I can confirm that it is possible to slide a card between the light and the light fixture. Naturally, this does not release the bike, but I’m just letting you know in case you need somewhere to store a single business card while you’re biking.
I watch a guy drop off his bike and stare intently at the rack for a second before he leaves. I follow his lead and stare intently at the rack. My laser vision does not kick in and release the bike.
I go back into the hotel, back into the elevator, back into our room, reconnect my laptop to the internet and try to read the “how to release your stupid bike from the stupid rack” instructions on the Bicing site. The site comes up in Catalan. I stare intently at the screen. My laser vision does not burn a hole in the screen or translate it into English.
I go to Wikipedia because I am a genius. So is Wikipedia which explains how you have to use your card at the pole at the end of the rack. I didn’t see a pole but am open to the possibility that I am blind, so I go back outside and have a bike in my possession in under 10 seconds.
(The instructions say that staring is necessary to determine if the bike has locked back into the rack when you return it. So much for laser vision.)
Riding Phase.
The bikes weigh a ton and many of them are in some kind of disrepair, but I’m on my way and console myself for all the trouble by telling myself that even though I have blonde hair and hips I look like a Spaniard.
Navigating Phase.
Having no sense of direction is a significant barrier to getting anywhere.
Also a barrier: the total lack of bike lanes along my chosen route. That route turns out to be pretty much a freeway, so I weave my way across the city, making ever possible wrong turn. It takes me an hour and a half to make a trip that should take about 20 minutes.
Drop-Off Phase
When I drop off my bike to go into the grocery store, I cannot get it to lock into the rack. The bike appears to now be mine permanently. I try my nonchalance thing again, turning away for a second like I don’t care. Sadly, that doesn’t turn the “I’m locked” light on. I try my stare again. No luck. I ask a girl who comes to return her bike. The system has flaws, she says. We try the fourth slot. It works. I run off to Carrefour.
Soup Phase.
Carrefour has no Knorr soups. Let’s not get into my disappointment.
I buy hairspray and chocolate instead.
Return Phase.
I pick up a different bike for the return trip, load up my stuff, bike three feet and realize the bike has no brakes. I consider suicide by bike. Instead, I return to the rack, unload, redock the bike, release a different bike, load up and start on my revised route home.
Turns out my revised route is all one-way streets going the other way. I keep going anyway because variables are the enemy.
Closure.
Two and a half hours to go about four miles on a bike. On the up side, I have chocolate and am not dead.
PS
R has a card too so we decide to bike to our dinner date. We go to the Bicing rack which has four bikes locked to it. My card releases a bike. R swipes his card. The screen says, “No bikes are available. Your next nearest Bicing stations is at blah blah blah.” We look at the bikes locked three feet away. We look back at the screen. Bikes. Screen. Bikes. Screen. I decide that the Bicing system is trying to make me insane. I walk away. I think I can hear diabolical laughter behind me.
There is clothing strewn on every surface in the living room and bedroom. Dresses, swimsuits, a pile of clean laundry, gym clothes, scarves, flip flops. Who knows? There might even be a puppy or a scrumptious dinner under one of the heaps. That would be sweet. Much sweeter than packing for Spain, I can tell you that much. Hell, a dull book would be sweeter than this packing job.
Here’s what happened. On my last trip, I packed like a drunk toddler. I took nothing long-sleeved, nearly overlooked pants entirely and ended up with 150 T-shirts, 40 pounds of magazines and some tall boots to go with the 85-degree weather on the east coast.
It wasn’t my best effort.
So now I’m making up for it by packing for every single event that could even remotely happen during the ten days we’ll be in Barcelona. Bull fight? Covered. Dinner at the beach? Check. Jamón shopping? Yes. Staring cluelessly at natives trying to explain the metro? I have an outfit specifically for that. (It definitely involves a belt and might include, if things go sideways, a tiara.) Clubs? Done. Sulking in the hotel? Ole!
I’m telling you, there is no eventuality I have overlooked. Do you know how I know? Because I am taking everything I own. It’s the only way to know for sure that you’ll have everything you need. Except for mobility, that is, but that’s a small price to pay for security, don’t you think? Yes. It is.
Unrelated, does anyone have the phone number of a sherpa willing to work internationally?
- I’ve checked with American Airlines’ web site and sure enough, as long as I pay the $100 fee, I can bring a javelin to Spain. That’s a relief. I was worried that I wouldn’t have anything to do at the Olympic stadium. Now I just need to find a javelin emporium and someone who can teach me how to throw one in under a week and I’m all set.
Mind you, my javelin can’t weigh more than 70 lbs. or they won’t accept it. This is very generous of them since women’s regulation javelins clock in at 1.32 lbs. I’m assuming that that that means I can bring 53 of them. (Of course, I’d bundle them up like firewood and wrap them in bubble wrap to make one single 70-lb. javelin. I’m not an idiot.)
If I had 53 on-hand, I could give three of them as hostess gifts to R’s godmother and her daughters, whom we’ll be seeing while we’re there, and still have 50 to lose in the outfield. Perfect. - My antlers will cost another $100 to bring along. I’m not sure I’ll need antlers while I’m there, but you never know. Our hotel room might be too drab to tolerate and there’s nothing like a good set of branching antlers to liven up corporate digs.
I wonder if Javelins ‘R’ Us also carries taxidermy.
- The Encyclopedia Britannica in 32 volumes is a must-have on the road. I think Spain has electricity and internet access, but you can’t be too careful when you’re dealing with mission-critical information, so better safe than sorry. What would I do if someone asked me about the half-life of strontium or the primary exports of the Niger Delta and I was Wikipedia-less? I’d look like a fool, that’s what. The American reputation abroad is damaged enough after the Bush years. I don’t need to add to that national burden just because I couldn’t be bothered to be prepared.
- Fresh eggs are a luxury of the modern world that soften the blow of hangovers and jetlag. I care enough about my own comfort abroad to make sure that I have a nice soft-boiled one waiting for me at breakfast every morning.
Don’t worry: I’ll pack them carefully. Ten eggs, one for each day, wrapped carefully in a clean shirt, stuffed gently inside a shoe or boot in my suitcase and handed over to conscientious professional baggage carriers should do the trick.
- As I understand it, in countries with suspicious water supplies, you can’t drink tap water nor can you have their ice, which is, of course, made from the tap water. I have no reason to believe that Spain has issues with water-borne illnesses, but really, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything, right? So safety first: I’m taking ice with me. Two large bags should be plenty and shouldn’t weigh more than, say, 20 lbs., which, happily is exactly the carry-on weight limit on international flights. Since it’s a solid and not a liquid, it shouldn’t be a problem to take it on the plane with me.
I love it when a plan comes together. This is going so smoothly already, I can’t imagine how anything could possibly go wrong.
I think I’m worn out from other recent trips and all the wedding planning pressure on top of the career change. Can I go into the hospital for “exhaustion” like celebrities do? Or is that really a euphemism for coke addiction? In which case, I guess not. Maybe I could get addicted to coke to get me through all this and then I’d be justified in taking a nice long break at one of those pretty rehab facilities. Not a good idea, you say? Drugs are not the answer? Well, that just seems narrow minded re: how to get a nice rest. *sigh*
I’m trying to kickstart my enthusiasm by spending swaths of time reading up on the city on-line and off. So far here’s what I’ve come up with:
- Ham. Jamón ibérico to be precise. At about $75/lb. I’m thinking setting up an import/export venture might be a good way to finance my writing career. Also, it would give some structure to my time in Spain. I’m working on a way to rebuild my suitcase to accommodate a lining of cured ham.
Alternatively, I could work on importing the actual pigs, but I’m thinking they’re probably bigger than a carry-on. Also, noisy. And unaccustomed to travel. So that’s definitely a fallback position.
- Solidifying my dislike for Gaudi. Everyone likes Gaudi now except me, so I feel that I need to make a strong stand. Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with: 128 years to build a church? Seriously? That is clearly a man without a plan. Your average pyramid was built in 30 years. Is this really gonna be better than 42 pyramids? Really?
All that disorganization just rubs me the wrong way. Also, the tile work is lost on me. Just because it’s 1000 times bigger than my sixth grade craft project doesn’t mean it’s 1000 times better. That’s all I’m saying.
(Please don’t get all worked up about this the way you do when I say I hate jazz: I can respect the effort without enjoying the output, so leave me alone already.)
- Acquisition of Kleenex and cup-of-soup. You haven’t had cup-of-soup until you’ve had European Knorr Cup-of-Soup. I lived on the stuff when I was a student in Switzerland and, layering on years of carting boxes of it back from all over Europe, I’m like a sommelier of dried soup. It’s a small market. Maybe as small as just me, but I can’t tear myself away. I love that powdery goodness.
European Kleenex travel packs are square, not rectangular like the American ones. And I’m not ashamed to be seen with the nice patterns on them. That’s all I’m looking for in a Kleenex pack, really: square, non-annoying.
- Renting a bike. I’ve never been in Barcelona when it hasn’t been 153 degrees outside, so a bike has never been a practical option. An air conditioned hamster ball was more in order, but I’ve been stuck with the Metro until they get around to my brilliant hamster ball idea. It’s supposed to be a balmy 72 degrees the entire time I’m there, according to Weather.com, so I should be good to go. Actually, past ten days out, Weather.com is listing 72 as the permanent temperature in Barcelona. Which might mean they have no clue what the temperature will be but they’re going out on a non-controversial limb with a soothing 72. No one’s going to object to 72, least of all me on my shiny, shiny bike.
If you’re into being told what to do, if you have a short attention span, or if you just love blunt directives with no explanations, this “You’ll Just Have to Take My Word For It” Guide is for you.
Enjoy.
Where to Stay
For: Vegas haters, fakery haters, plastic and plaster haters, luxury likers, people looking for a resort (as defined outside Vegas).
On-site worth seeing/doing: Cirque du Soleil’s “O”, the botanical gardens, the art gallery, the Chihuly glass lobby ceiling, the fountains out front.
For: People looking for a resort as defined within Vegas, serial fine diners, people who like enormous plaster umbrellas.
On-site worth seeing/doing: Boulud restaurants, Cirque du Soleil’s Le Reve.
For: People who like excellent suite apartments, people who do not plan on leaving their suite apartments except for brunch, people who like bathrobes.
On-site worth seeing/doing: Brunch at Simon. Nothing else.
For: Fans of wild cats, baby dolphins, and tropical fish.
On-site worth seeing/doing: The Secret Garden, the lobby fish tank, Chihuly glass in the baccarat lounge.
What You Should Do (daytime)
- Go to the Bellagio. See the fountain shows out front (every 1/2 hr after noon), gape at the Chihuly ceiling in the lobby, visit the botanical garden next to the lobby, hit the art gallery if you’re into that, and book a ticket to “O”.
- Visit the Liberace Museum. Buy as many trinkets as you can, snicker behind your fan and ask a lot of questions. It’s like time travel back to before irony.
- See The Secret Garden. It sounds like porn or saccharine kiddie entertainment, but it’s not. It’s cool.
What You Should Do (nighttime)
- See a Cirque show, preferably Mystère, KÀ or “O”.
- Eat dinner someplace nice. Le Cirque (Bellagio), Boulud (Wynn) or any of the other big-name places in The Strip’s behemoth resorts.
What to Avoid
- Caesar’s Palace and related shopping mall. (Hell on a Triscuit drenched in mayonnaise and Mafia chic.)
- The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. (Bad lighting, mini sharks.)
- Large black pyramids. (Luxor horror.)
- The Hoover Dam. (Not worth the drive time.)
Have a nice trip, kids!
Overview
We had an educational conversation with a bartender at the Wynn who let us in on the hotel-casino rating system. The reviewers look at the rooms, the casino, the entertainment options (theaters, restaurants, activities), and the configuration and rate it all together.
So if your rooms rule but you have no restaurants, you’re screwed. If you have an Iron Chef but no pool, same. It gets a little odd in the finer combinations though: he says the Wynn got five diamonds and the Bellagio only four because the distance from the garage to the casino at Bellagio is too far to be considered “accessible”. He’s wrong - they’re both 5-diamond resorts - but I can still appreciate the annoying specificity of the rating system.
I used a variation of that combo rating system to come up with my recommendations and no complex math was needed. My highest rating went to one place, the Bellagio, and it amounts to, “I like it.” Everyplace else made me a little sick to my stomach and made me wish I had a crock pot or my college diploma or something equally solid to ward off the Vegas schtick.
Pretty much anyone who’s going for a weekend trip and is under 70 is going to gravitate to the massive hotel/casinos on The Strip (actual address: Las Vegas Blvd). If you’re a Vegas regular, are not risk-averse or are leathery and 100 years old, you might head to the old-school places like The Golden Nugget or the Sahara, but that isn’t part of my Vegas 101 curriculum.
Where to Stay
Keep you itinerary in mind when picking a place to stay. The distances in Vegas are not massive but they’re substantial and can be a pain to schlep from one giant casino to another at night. When we’ve gone for events, we’ve stayed with our group: it’s more convenient to be able to stumble back to your room at 3AM than get in a cab. But it’s also meant that we’ve ended up staying at not-great places like the Rio because that’s where the group all found space. Consider the expense-to-convenience-to-comfort ratios when you make your pick.
The Bellagio
If you can swing it, stay at the Bellagio. It’s the most human of all the places we visited. Yes, it’s got the same over-the-top Vegas vibe as everyplace else, but it’s excess isn’t completely tacky: the place is palatial for real. Added bonus: the color scheme does not make you want to run screaming out of the room(s).The pool area looks like a garden and not a jungle, which is a nice break from the Vegas palms. The corridors aren’t crammed with drunken idiots. The cafes where you’ll end up eating your in-between meals are just as overpriced as everywhere else but the food, unlike everywhere else, is quite good. (Palio was a favorite. Try the panini.)
If you’d like more serious food, you can go all the way up the scale to Vegas’ outpost of the New York premier, 5-star restaurant, Le Cirque, and it’s sister restaurant Circo. For entertainment, Cirque du Soleil’s “O” is installed in its own permanent theater on-site and is worth the price of admission. The water theme takes center stage (literally), so it’s not Cirque’s most mind-bending, pure circus show in Vegas, but it’s still impressive, a pleasure to watch and completely entertaining. If you’re on the fence about circus, this is a great show to win you over.
The Bellagio is also home to the most amazing ceiling anywhere. Well, maybe not anywhere - there’s still the Sistine Chapel - but it’s a thing of beauty. Dale Chihuly installed a few thousand of his glass “flowers” in a space above the lobby and it’s astonishing. Also, Bellagio has it’s own art gallery (with proper world-class exhbitions, not velvet Elvises), an unexpectedly charming and intense botanical gardens (just off the lobby) and the famous Bellagio fountains.
All in all, Bellagio is the full resort package. You’ll like it there. And if you’re not into the Vegas thing, this is the place to insulate yourself from it.
Palms Place
Second choice - purely for the rooms, mind you - would be where we stayed this trip: Palms Place. It’s the new tower at the Palms and the rooms are luxurious without the usual Vegas garbage color schemes and accents: huge floor space, killer bathrooms with overhead showers and jacuzzi tubs, a small kitchen, great beds and, unbelievably, an understated dark wood, taupe, cream and palm green décor that is a pleasant antidote to the rest of Vegas.Unfortunately, “the rest of Vegas” starts the minute you get out of the elevator at the Palms, so Palms Place is only a good choice if you’re going to stay put and luxury it up on-site (not even across the corridor to the original Palms, which is terrible) or immediately leave the premesis when you leave your room.
The brunch at Simon on the sixth floor of Palms Place is a marvel. The restaurant overlooks the swanky modern pool area, it’s sunny, the servers are in hipster PJs and the menu is a combination of a la carte (the corn-flake encrusted French toast and the dessert plate cannot be missed) and a staffed buffet featuring fruit, sticky rice sushi, wheatgrass shots and other eclectic and tasty delights. It’s worth a trip off The Strip just for the brunch.
There’s no shopping here, if you were looking for that. Except the gift shops, where I bought a Palms Place bathrobe. It’s the one I’ve been hunting for it and I love it like I would love a pet. Since I don’t have a pet, this bathrobe’s getting all the love.
While we’re on the subject of the Palms, a couple more notes:
- Don’t get sucked in by The Playboy Club on-site at the Palms: you pay an arm and a leg to get a table with bottle service and your bunny will pour your first round and then disappear. That’s it. Only go if you have money to burn or are into the retro leave-something-to-the-imagination bunny thing. There’s no striptease or anything racy, so don’t get all worked up. Bunnies on the job. Done.
- Paul Oakenfold has a not-so-resident residence at the club here (Rain), but getting in is a nightmare and you’ll be in line with the rest of the Vegas crowd (read: drunken pretenders). If I were you, I’d get my club fix in LA or New York and focus on comp’d drinks in the casinos.
- Speaking of the casino, the Palms’ is more than usually depressing. The crowd is a worst-of-both-worlds combo of frat boys and oldsters, and my soul shriveled for a moment every time I walked through.
Wynn Las Vegas
The Wynn Las Vegas is next in in line. It’s new and Vegas does new well. It’s also, um, what’s the word? Adult, I guess. Vegas version. Meaning no giant plastic cups of frozen drinks or dealers who look like they’re out on parole . I hear the rooms are good, albeit not the lap of luxury, and Nora Ephron at least is a fan of the breakfast buffet, so that must mean something. The food at the Wynn has a stellar reputation. Daniel Boulud is on-site and the Wynn has a wider than usual range of high-end dining options, so if you’re a foodie, the Wynn might be your first choice after all.(If you’re following the links to the Wynn site, back me up here: doesn’t Steve Wynn’s voice sound a little like the guy from Men’s Wearhouse? “You’re gonna like the way you look.” Right?)
The water theme has followed Wynn from the Bellagio (which he built and used to own). Cirque du Soleil’s Le Rêve is in residence and the Wynn’s answer to the Bellagio fountains can be found outside the Parasol Down bar: a series of 12 multimedia shows projected on a wall of water and into a pool every half hour in the evenings. Rounding out the entertainment options at the Wynn is Danny Gans. I know: I’ve never heard of him either. He’s listed as, “the epitome of Las Vegas entertainment” and the write-up pegs him as a modern-day Rich Little. Which sounds annoying. Unless you’re 93. Which maybe you are. In which case, enjoy.
Overall, I was disappointed in the Wynn. Judging by the gold exterior and Steve Wynn’s reputation, I was hoping for someplace sleek, someplace a step up from the Bellagio even. No such luck. Same garish flavor, albeit more expensive garish, as most of the places on The Strip, but its still a cut above as a whole package.
Mirage
The Mirage rounds out the list and barely made the cut. It won me over with it’s baby dolphin + baby leopard combo. I’m not kidding: they have both. At once. Sadly, they’re not housed in the same enclosure, but they’re within 20 yards of each other and we can live in hope, can’t we?The Mirage is home to The Secret Garden, where the tiger that ate half of Siegfried and Roy lives. It’s a dolphin research facility / big cat habitat. Don’t ask me what those two have to do with each other, besides tickle the plastic-surgery-addled imaginations of Señors Siegfried and Roy, but somehow it worked out. Both zoo-y attractions are straightforward and appealing and well worth visiting. It’s just dolphins and cats. And a couple of very shaggy, dim-looking llamas who have the look of mice kept next to the python tank.
The Mirage’s thing is being jungle-y, so there are plants and waterfalls and the like all over the place, including around the pool. It’s a little claustrophobic at times, but plants are not made of plastic or plaster, like everything else in Vegas, so I’m fine with feeling a little cramped by them. Behind the reception desk in the lobby is a massive tropical fish tank that is just waiting for a villiain with a machine gun to come by but until then, you can stand and stare.
You don’t need to make a special trip for it, but if you’re at the Mirage, you should swing by the high-limit lounge and baccarat tables at the back edge of the casino and check out more Chihuly glass. Make sure you go in and have a look at the trippy ceiling above the bar but, word to the wise: avoid hallucinogenic drugs before your visit.
The evening entertainment options at the Mirage aren’t outstanding. They’ve got the required Cirque du Soliel act, but it’s Love, a musical show based on Beatles songs, so don’t get your circus-y hopes up. On the other hand, if you’re a Beatles fanatic and not looking for bendy wonders, this might be your bag. The other title act is another sanitized one for the kids and elders: Terry Fator, the ventriloquist and winner of America’s Got Talent. If you can’t trust Jerry Springer and David Hasselfoff’s opinions, whose can you trust?
Things You Should Do
Cirque du Soleil. I know tickets are pricey, but shop around a bit and get to at least one of the shows: seeing them in a theater built for the purpose is very different from seeing them on tour. Mystère at Treasure Island (or TI as they prefer to be known) and KÀ are at the top of the pure circus list and “O” is right there behind them for spectacle. (Love and Zumanity can be missed.)
The Liberace Museum. This is an awesome thing. Go. If you don’t have a car, they have a shuttle. The museum’s two buildings bookend a mostly empty strip mall. One has the cars and pianos, the other has the outfits and accessories, and you have to go to both. Even if you’re not into Liberace or his brand of schtick, you have to be impressed by a Rolls Royce covered in tiny mirrors and pants with actual 14-karat gold braid. Also impressive: that a completely gay entertainer could be such a massive hit in red, spangled hot pants before anyone was out. Be warned: the staff loves this guy, so no smart alecky remarks.
The Bellagio fountains. Shows are every half hour from noon (on the weekends, 3PM weekdays) and are very, very worth it. They last about five minutes. Just head over to the front of the Bellagio on The Strip and wait. The music (waltzes, not techno) alone is an oasis in your day of knock-offs and liquor, and the fountains themselves are beautiful.
The Bellagio art galleries. As with any small museum, it all depends on your interest in their focus, but real art is a welcome change from the artificiality of everything else surrounding you.
The Chihuly ceiling in the Bellagio lobby and the adjacent Bellagio Botanical Gardens. Actual art. Actual nature. Both amazing and lovely.
Things You Could Do
Eat. If you’re a foodie, you’re going to love Vegas. You will also put on several pounds, but twil not be seen in you there, trust me. Pick your chef of choice, confirm his cuisine of choice in Vegas (Lagasse, for instance, runs a steakhouse here, not a New Orleans joint) and have at it.
Be warned that the smaller, “cheaper” restaurants scattered throughout the resorts are often overpriced and equally often not very good. You can end up spending a lot of money eating mediocre food, so plan ahead. My recommendation? Bite the bullet on really good dinners at a pretty high price and eat granola bars and fruit the rest of the day. Except on Sunday, when you should spring for brunch too. If you have a car, hit Blueberry Hill diners for the pancakes to start your day.
Shopping. Bellagio is the least obnxious but also most expensive. The Forum Shops at Caesars are a nightmare. The Venetian shops are in the middle. Vegas shopping is mostly chain stores, so if you live near a city, you’re not going to see anything new here. If you live in the middle of nowhere, go wild.
Places You Could Stay
Four of my ten targets are on the “OK” list. You won’t be unhappy at any of these places, but their charms are restricted to specifics.
MGM Grand
The MGM is fine, but it’s huge. Seriously huge. Bring your walking shoes huge. The average rooms are not memorable in either direction. Same for the casino. They do have a (free) lion habitat - MGM, get it? - that has bad-ass lions who roam around instead of lying around, they have KÀ, which is one of the two Cirque shows on The Strip that you should see, and they have Joel Robuchon as their requisite celebrity chef. Ultimately though, the place is too damn big to feel like anything but a strip mall melted onto a casino.Mandalay Bay
I know it’s tricky to build a huge place that doesn’t feel like a cavern, and I wish Mandalay Bay had learned that trick. Since they didn’t, you might want to stay elsewhere. Unless you’re going to spend most of your time at the pool, in which case, maybe this is the place for you. Their pool complex is truly impressive and a see/be seen must if you’ve got the body for it. They even have a stage anchored in the middle of one fo the wading pools, which made the Go-Go’s concert I went to there much more suspensful than it would’ve been otherwise. Risk of electrocution definitely amps up the vibe. Chef Alan Ducasse runs Mix, if you need a culinary fix, and if you’re into Disney, their headline show is The Lion King.Skip the Shark Reef Aquarium (dark, badly designed aquarium) and go to The Secret Garden at the Mirage instead.
The House of Blues has a private club/restaurant called The Foundation Room that is posh and amazing. If you can get in. There are ways to get around the members-only policy, especially if you’re staying at the resort. Give it a shot: it’s worth it for the views and the Buddha Bar-meets-opium den decor.
The Venetian
Maybe the recession isn’t the time to a visit a place that prides itself on its indoor shopping mall. I was OK with the Venetian the last time I was in Vegas, but on closer inspection it feels like a knock-off of the Bellagio. It’s trying but it’s not quite there. And that indoor canal thing is creepy. I spent the entire time thinking, “Why don’t these people just go to Venice already if they want it so bad?” Of course I know why they don’t all just go to Venice - money, the language, American imperialism, yada yada yada. Unfortunately, the effort to import it left me with a slimy, amusement park taste in my mouth that’s not compatible with the luxury feel they were going for at The Venetian.Also not in keeping with the classy vibe are their current headliners, David Spade and Wayne Brady (who can be forgiven for that talk show because he killed on Whose Line Is It Anyway?). But I’m OK with those guys because they can compete outside the city limits, which can’t be said about a lot of the performers here. Blue Man Group is their resident theater troupe.
If you’re into celebrity dining, The Venetian takes the cake for sheer volume: they’ve got frozen foods (Wolfgang Puck) to French Laundry (Thomas Keller) with a steakhouse (Emeril Lagasse) and an Iron Chef (Mario Batali) in the middle. They’ve also cornered the celebrity spa market by opening a branch of Canyon Ranch on the fourth floor that’s open to non-guests.
Planet Hollywood
Planet Hollywood was my wild card, replacing New York, New York on the original itinerary and the only non-resort on the list. It stood out as having a uniformly younger clientele and an edgier (read: stripper) focus, as evidenced by the the pole dancers in the casino’s Pleasure Pit, their hosting of the Miss USA pageant, and their “sophisticated, ultra-hot” nightclub show with Mel B (the Spice Girl). PH has a few restaurants and a pool, but is primarily a hotel-casino and doesn’t bill itself as a full resort. I wouldn’t mind staying there just because it’s a little more normal and younger, but it’s not going to be the full-on Vegas resort experience.By the way, did you know that Miss USA is the one who goes to the Miss Universe pageant, not Miss America? Huh. I have nowhere to file that information, but adding to the global store of my knowledge is always a good thing, don’t you think?
Places Not to Stay
Caesar’s Palace
Holy God. If there was one place we went where I almost had an attack I hated it so much, it was Caesar’s. Celine Dion, Bette Midler and Cher? Kill me now. The dealers wear gold chains over open shirt collars, for Pete’s sake. The ceilings are low, the décor looks like gigantism caught up with Party City and the much-touted Forum Shops at Caesar’s made me physically uncomfortable. (I’m not saying they don’t have Dior and Harry Winston and all the other high-end stores they list on their site. They do. But all the stores in between are Whores ‘R Us. Basically you’re in a mini Mall of America and you won’t be able to forget it. If you want diamonds and Chanel, go to the Bellagio. Otherwise, shop at your local mall before you go and you’ll be all set.)Luxor
I seriously do not know why anyone would ever go here. I think they might’ve been trying to corner the guy market with their brown carpets and black pyramid, but the place is godawful. If you were even considering it, keep in mind that Carrot Top and Criss Angel are their idea of a rocking good time. I’m getting a little bit nauseated just thinking back on being there, so let’s move on.Lower-end places. “Low-end” in Vegas is not good. Trust me. You’ll want to drink yourself to death. (A bartender told me that suicides in Las Vegas are common and kept under tight wraps by the tourism board.)
- In the words of one of our bartenders, “Circus Circus is a dump.” I don’t like anyone tarnishing the reputation of the circus, but I wouldn’t stake my money and my weekend on that objection.
- New York, New York has a rollercoaster and it is, er, New York (ish), but by all acounts there’s not a lot to do there. Plus, I don’t like people ripping off New York.
- Rio. We stayed there a while ago and ick. Just a big Motel 6, if memory serves.
Things You Shouldn’t Do
- Hoover Dam. Just don’t. Unless you have to drive that route anyway or you’re an engineer, in which case, be my guest. It should be no more than a little over an hour to get out to the dam, have a look and get back on the road to Vegas, but, in reality, it took us two and a half hours to get there, an hour and a half of which was spent on the last 8-mile stretch before the dam in single-lane traffic. Profoundly frustrating and not worth it.
- Set foot in Caesar’s or The Luxor.
- The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. I’m an aquarium person. I love them and I give them a lot of latitude if they throw me a seahorse or two, but this one is not worth the $17 entrance fee or the 150-mile schlep from the entrance. There was no visible effort put into the design and it feels like the kind of thing they tacked on to make the casino kid-friendly. It’s dark. There’s no curation: barely any descriptions of what you’re looking at. The maze of tunnels keeps bringing you back to the same tanks. The diversity and density in the tanks is poor. It’s not educational for kids and it’s not interesting for adults. The thrill of having a 3-foot shark swim above you in a tunnel wears off after a minute - when you realize you were hoping for a 10-foot shark - and you’ll be ready to leave. Hit The Secret Garden (at The Mirage) instead, or even the Lion Habitat at the MGM Grand.
Getting Around
Things are not close together. What you need is a bike, but that’s not going to happen since a.) you will never find one, and b.) in the impossible event that you do find one, you will be instantly killed in traffic.
If you’re considering walking from the Wynn (north end of The Strip) to Mandalay Bay (south end) to see the sites, you will not be fit for human contact at the end of your day. If you’re on foot, assume that you’ll last for about four hours and call it a day by settling onto a stool at a table, a game or a bar. It’s hot, it’s dry and there are a lot of people, all of which try the patience of your normal, sober person. If you’re not sober, you have a better shot, but in that case, you may as well limit your itinerary anyway ‘cause you won’t be able to see straight.
Your options are cabs, shuttles or your feet, all of which will cost either your wallet or your patience. If you’re going for an event, staying at the place where the event’s taking place and only plan on one outing for a show, you’re fine.
If you’ll be there for a day or two and you’re a do-er not content with spending your day hungover in bed (like me), just bite the bullet and rent a car. Parking is free at all the resorts, you’ll be able to skip the massive taxi queue at the airport and, most importantly, you’ll feel like you’re not trapped on The Strip and can make multiple round trips to the Liberace Museum. Or the grocery store for snacks, fruit and water at normal prices. Or a diner where lunch is half-decent and doesn’t cost $50.
The plan, for those of you who don’t remember, was to hit 10 casinos for 10 minutes each. The plan was to get into the lobby, get through the casino, catalog the highlights and get out.
“What were you thinking?” you’re asking. “That’s not possible.”
You’re right, but, for the record, here’s what I was thinking:
- I’ve been to Vegas and the place left me cold, ‘cause I don’t gamble and my kitsch-appreciation ducts get clogged. (Is it really true kitsch if it cost a hundred million dollars? Isn’t that just bad taste?)
- Maybe forcing myself to hang out there was part of my problem. I’m from New York. I’ve got a need for speed. Hanging out is not my thing. Maybe if I tear through everything, I won’t want to crawl out of my skin by hour five.
- Most of the hotel/casinos are pretty similar, so wouldn’t 10 minutes and a look at the carpeting give you a pretty good read on what the place was like and if you’d ever want to stay there?
- There have gotta be other people like me who could use some guidance when they end up there.
Naturally, the plan went out the window after ten minutes in the first place. You can’t get through one of these places in ten minutes. They’re too big and too confusing (all roads lead to the casino floor/labyrinth). Plus, you will definitely need to drink regularly. I don’t know if it’s the artificiality or latent tendencies towards alcoholism or just the profusion on bars, but liquor is the bride of Vegas and there’s no avoiding it.
Enter the revised plan. Cardinal Rule stays: Move as fast as possible.
- Get to the lobby.
- Get a map.
- Take a look at the carpeting + get a book of matches. (Packaging can tell you a lot about a place.)
- Canvas the events, restaurants and whatever features they want to highlight.
- Get a drink, as needed.
- Get out.
So what follows is the result of the revised plan with a bunch of additional advice. Enjoy!
(For the intro to this series on disaster prep, click here.)
Remember that disaster preparedness is playing the odds and reaching compromises. You are never going to establish a plan and policies that will keep you 100% safe from disaster and its effects. Know that up front. This is about spending a reasonable amount of time and money doing practical things to protect you, your honies and your stuff. Trust me: you don’t want to live with the guilt of knowing that a weekend trip to Home Depot to get a couple of smoke alarms could have saved your family. That said, you probably aren’t going to drop $2000 on an executive parachute to get you out of your office building either. Unless you have a spare $2000 in which case you should send it to me. It’s none of your business if I spend it on an executive parachute of my own.
Personal Disasters - limited to you and your property
Fires
For the record, in a fire, you can’t take anything. Ever. Period. Don’t try. Fires move so fast that even when you think you have time, you don’t. You have 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get out and erring on the side of 30 seconds could save your life. If you want to save anything, plan ahead and get a fireproof safe or keep valuables (like photos and computer back-ups) off-site. (Not that that location is guaranteed not to burn to the ground too. That’s how I think. Welcome to the inside of my head.)
• For starters, get a smoke detector. This would seem self-evident, but it’s not. Tons of homes don’t have them. Incredibly, my grandmother’s didn’t.
• Second, get at least one fire extinguisher so you’re prepared to put out small fires, like on the stove. There are four different kinds - A, B, C, and D - which are designed for four different types of fire (wood, grease, electrical and chemical). Long story short, you can get one rated for ABC that should cover all your bases.
• Make a plan. We have so many exit points in our apartment that it’s like some kind of circus clown set-up. We have more doors and windows than we do wall space. Most places don’t, so spend ten minutes figuring out how you’d get out of any given room in your home, keeping in mind that the fire might be on the other side of your first-choice door. Then spend another ten minutes methodically practicing and committing to memory how to operate that exit. I’m not kidding: smoke is profoundly disorienting. You may not remember, in the smoky panic, which way to turn that window latch or bolt lock that you’ve sorted out in daylight 1000 times, so learn it now.
- If you don’t have enough reasonable exits, think about getting an emergency ladder. If you’re above the first floor, that is. If you’re on the first floor and you think you need an emergency ladder, go get a cup of coffee - decaffeinated - and pull yourself together.
• Do not plan on taking anything. You will need your hands to get out, so they can’t be carrying things. If you haven’t moved your valuables into a fire safe or someplace else entirely before the fire, leave it. (Think about overcoming the instinct to collect things now.)
• Do not stop to call 911. You don’t have time. Saving your stuff is not worth your life. Call 911 once you’re out.
• Never, ever move into a space where there’s fire unless you will die if you don’t. If you open a door into a space - a room, an enclosed porch - you will feed the fire oxygen and it will grow instantly. Always choose the exit furthest from the fire, even if it’s not your instinctive choice.
• Before you open any door, feel it with the back of your hand to see if it’s hot. If it is, back away. If it’s not, go for it. And please, please, please use the back of your hand when you feel the door - searing the skin off your palm is a terrible handicap in your escape and afterwards.
• Remember the mantras from elementary school. If you’re on fire, stop, drop and roll. Don’t run - that makes it worse. And stay low. If there’s any breathable air in the space, it’s near the floor.
Plane Crash
• Read the safety brochure. Every time. Exit doors are different on different planes and you don’t want to be the jerk trying to push a door out that should be pulled in.
• Check for your closest exit, including the one in front of you in business or first class or behind you in coach. Count the rows to that door. Always. Make it a habit. Same rules apply as in a fire: you need to know how to get out before something happens because once it does, everything recognizable will be unrecognizable.
• Do not plan on taking your luggage with you. That carry-on that barely fits into the overhead bin and annoys everyone waiting behind you in the aisle? You brought that in case the airline loses your other bag and “lose” does not include “incinerates in midair.” Again, if you’re worried about what you brought, a.) don’t bring anything you’d be sorry to be without (your ten favorite pairs of earrings , your really expensive, irreplaceable velour jumpsuit), and b.) make damn sure that you understand if your personal insurance policy covers travel disasters.
- Related, if you’re interested, you can check out airlines’ coverage policies. Stunning. They cover almost nothing. So make sure you’ve got some kind of travel insurance if you’re worried. Best case for your stuff: your personal policy, not your credit card’s policy, since that will cover you in any location - plane, rental car, hotel, park bench. (Credit cards’ will cover what you bought on them only.)
• Here’s my plan: if I’ve got some time while the plane’s going down, I’m taking out my ID and some cash and putting them in my pocket. Also, if you’re one of those weirdoes who pads around the plane in your socks, this would be a good time to put on your shoes. I also plan on making cell phone calls, since that whole line about cell phones interfering with the plane’s operation will be pretty much moot.
Next Up: General Disasters - you and your city are affected as a whole
Big new reason to live in New York? Because there’s the Hudson to land your plane in. Within four minutes, the passengers were all out of the plane and boarding the cutters. Four minutes. That’s staggering.
On the other side of it, four minutes to a crashed airplane passenger in freezing water is a long time.
I’ve been sorting out a disaster plan since I was in college. My roommate and I used to sit around in the summer evenings discussing the layout of the apartment and what we could manage to take depending on where the fire started. My Rollerblades made the cut every time, including in the scenario where I was asleep naked and had to make a choice between clothing and skates.
I’ve spent a lot of time putting together a multi-scenario emergency plan. So much time, in fact, that it’s still not done. Ironic, isn’t it? To save you from the same fate, I’m posting my round-up below. While writing this, it’s become apparent that I have an almost ludicrous amount of info in my head, so I’m going to post it in segments. Also, disclaimer, this is, of course, my information, not everything there is to say on the subject or even the official last word.
Most of what I’ve read is a jumble of too-detailed information for your average citizen or too-general info for your slightly paranoid neurotic (me). Those sites have lists of what to do, what not to do, what you should buy, and so on. Usually those lists are separated by type of disaster and include both “think about this” items and “you need to actually go do something about this” items, so after running through each checklist separately, possibly including making 17 trips out of the house to collect different things, you walk away with a vague sense that you’ve forgotten at least one key piece of the preparedness puzzle. Which is not the comforting result you’d like from the exercise.
So I’ve tried to do that work for you. First, read through everything. Don’t do anything. Just read. Osmose. At the end, there’s a section of checklists and things to do (in order) that cover prep for all the disasters I’ve listed. Hopefully, this will eliminate for you all the doubling back and circling I’ve done.
Next Up: Personal Disasters - limited to you and your property
Some friends of mine were in Paris in the fall - both for the first time - and I put together a list of things to do / things not to do on a first pass through the French capital. Another set of friends is headed there next month, so instead of continuing to mail this around, I thought I’d clean it up and post it for general consumption. Bon voyage tout le monde!!
First thing you do, go to any kiosk, newstand or little shop and buy a copy of Paris Practique. It’s a little booklet - 4.5” x 7” - with a navy cover. It’s a comprehensive, easy to read map of all the arrondissements (districts or regions) of Paris. It is the only map you will need and it is essential for getting around. Has all the metro stops, major landmarks, etc.
General advice: don’t try to do everything. You won’t get to it and you’ll exhaust yourself trying.
Also, pack your most streamlined and elegant clothing. Take cashmere. Take scarves. Wear beautiful shoes. Do not take fanny packs. (Actually, that’s good advice for all destinations. Come to think of it, take this opportunity to throw away anything you own that resembles a fanny pack.) Do not take trendy American clothes. Do not plan for complicated hairstyles. Do not rush while you are there and, if you do, pretend you do not perspire. It is likely that even if you follow this advice you will feel frumpy. Settle into it, buy clothes like their clothes and accessories like theirs and console yourself that once you’re back stateside you will definitely look better than everyone else here.
Hotels
If you are booking a room with a double/full/queen bed, it’s worth it to confirm that it is actually a double bed and not two single beds locked together. The latter is extremely common in Europe and can make for uncomfortable nights if you’re sleeping with someone.
Also, for summer visitors, confirm that they have air-conditioning if you’re not happy in the heat. Paris can be New York-level stifling in mid-summer and a lot of boutique hotels have no AC.
When we are in Paris, we stay at Hotel Sainte Beuve in the 6th. It is small, on a quiet street, the breakfasts are ungodly good and the rooms actually have some character. Most importantly, it is near everything…well, the things we like anyway. And it’s not ludicrously expensive. It’s blocks from the Jardin du Luxembourg and pretty much right behind St. Sulpice. You can walk to the river and its bridges and excellent people-watching intersections and the neighborhood is interesting and eclectic.
They have a sister hotel which is a little lower on the scale and a tiny bit weirder but we’ve stayed there too and been perfectly happy - Hotel le Saint Gregoire also in the 6th.
Beyond that, I have no accommodations recommendations except to say, it sucks staying in the business districts or by the monuments in the 1st or 3rd. Lots of very expensive shops, lots of grey buildings and street life at a minimum. Stay on the Left Bank if at all possible.
Things Not To Be Missed
The Musee d’Orsay. This is one my favorite museums in the entire world. It is a beautiful space and of course, there’s the contents. Go. Don’t miss it. I’d miss the Louvre before I’d miss d’Orsay.
A recent discovery: the Musee Jacquemart Andre. It’s a private house, so you don’t see it - or I haven’t - in any of the guide books. It rocks. The couple who lived there was wildly rich and were excellent collectors. The house itself is stunning and the collection ranges from paintings to personal items, sculpture to musical instruments. It’s like the Parisian version of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston or The Frick in New York. Plus, when we were there, their rotating gallery had this incredible photography collection from Paris Match of painters, writers, rock stars, film stars and anyone else important they’d taken pictures of in the last 40 years. The place is downright entertaining. Plus, their restaurant is excellent - but don’t plan on getting a seat for lunch at lunchtime. Go early, see the house and eat early. The place is overrun at noon with chic Parisian businesswomen.
The Musee Rodin. Go on a sunny day - the garden is fantastic. I love Rodin and I love this museum. It’s out of the way - annoyingly far really - but worth the trip. It rules. You must go. Have lunch in the garden - bring your own, even, since the cafeteria is small and expensive.
I haven’t been here, so I have no business recommending it, but I mean to go there as soon as possible, so I think that counts. If I’m mistaken, please do correct me after you go. Sainte Chapelle. Lovely church near Notre Dame (see below). And if you think it has anything to do with the Comedy Central show, don’t bother with a visit.
Other Things To See
The Louvre. Naturally. Long lines, long waits and the Mona Lisa is much smaller than you’d think. That said, it’s the Louvre. Standing on line for museums is the worst part about going. My advice would be to talk to your hotel concierge and get a museum pass - it lets you into all the big ones over a specific period of days and passholders can use accelerated queues at the museums, which is a timesaver worth paying for even if you don’t use the full value of the pass.
The Musee du quai Branly is new and controversial - opened last year to love it/hate it reviews. The building is bad ass and very peculiar. The collection is anthropological Asia/Africa. It’s been a huge source of conversation and the wait may be ungodly but the design is pretty out there. NYTimes review here.
Jardin du Luxembourg. Lovely. Huge. Usually has cool exhibits. Always has aloof French kids and games and lawns, etc. Good place to relax.
The Centre Pompidou is cool to walk by - you should see it, but don’t kill yourselves to get there. It’s weird, ‘70’s cool, very benchmark but not a lot to do.
Notre Dame. Chances are you’ll walk over the Ile at some point anyway if you’re staying on the Left Bank. It’s a church and a big one. ‘Nuf said.
Eiffel Tower. I’m on the fence. If you’re there in the winter and they’ve flooded that one floor where you can iceskate, go. You will be super-cool. If not, I was fine with it at a distance unless you’re into looking at feats of engineering up close. It is the Eiffel Tower though…
Arc de Triomphe / Champs Elysee. The Champs Elysee is b*llshit. It’s all Chanel and McDonalds. Don’t bother. If you are set on going to the Arc, go. It’s impressive. Just make note that it is in the middle of a massive traffic circle and can be accessed by tunnels (safe, meant for human use) or by running through the traffic (not safe, nearly deadly, not recommended except for jackasses…like myself.)
Le Grande Arche in La Defense. The modern version of the Arc de Triomphe. If you like that sort of thing. More here. Part of Mitterand’s grand works project. It’s a hike to get there but it is definitely huge, modern and meaningful. The long esplanade running up to it has all kinds of huge artworks on either side as well. Really, the only thing to see in that part of town as far as I could tell. Don’t go on a gray day.
Things That Can Totally Be Missed
Versailles. It’s far, it’s packed, a lot of it is under construction and the rest of it has been mostly stripped of everything that’s not actually attached to the building - sold off to pay to keep the place open, so you don’t get the full impact of the place even if you do go. You’re basically looking at walls and ceilings with 9000 other people.
If you insist on going, go absolutely, totally without fail first thing
in the morning on a weekday. And allow for 15 minutes’ walk after the
train arrival time to actually get to the gate. Be at the gate first. No dawdling over your croissants that morning. Also, make sure you sort out the fountain schedule - it’s impressive to see them up and running but they only do it a few times a day. And I’d recommend visiting the Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette’s fake farm. It’s a distance from the palace, so plan accordingly. But seriously, allow me to say again, it’s not worth it. I know people say it is, but they’re wrong. (R totally disagrees with me on this, as does my father, so take it with a grain of salt. If you’re determined to go, save it for a trip when you can go for the whole day, pack a large suitcase of patience, and plan only relaxing things for that evening. Also make sure I am not with you.)
Unless you’re a Jim Morrison fan or a Balzac fanatic, Pere Lachaise can be skipped. It’s cool as cemeteries go, but seriously: it’s a cemetery. You’re on vacation. Pull yourself together.
Sacre Coeur. I shouldn’t say this, but I think you can strike this unless you’re in the neighborhood already or want to hang out in the bohemian ‘hood. It’s beautiful and it’s a hike of a walk if you’re into that sort of thing, but it’s far to get there from a central hotel and unless you’re interested in checking out the surrounding neighborhood, it’s one schlep too many. (If you’re in town for a while, do go - it’s just far for a brief visit.)
Les Halles. Total, total waste. I don’t know why any guide writes about this. It’s basically a really nasty underground mall. It was a unique idea when they did it but it’s a bomb. Don’t bother.
Stores
If you buy anything big (over 175 euros total - doesn’t have to be on a single item), make sure you get your tax-free documents with your receipts. You’ll need to have your passport with you to get them. Worth it: 14% back or some such. The process seems daunting but isn’t. The store will give you the paperwork, you fill it out (or they will - budget an extra 5 minutes at checkout). When you get to the airport or train station, find the customs window - the check-in desk can point you in the right direction. You submit your forms and receipts, show them your passport, they stamp various things and they’ll usually just credit your account within a month. Fifteen minutes for substantial refund if you’re a shopper. General explanation/restrictions here.
Herve Chapelier. My first shopping stop in Paris. Their flagship is in the 6th at 1 bis rue du Vieux Colombier. (All Paris locations here.) The prices are literally half of what they are in the US because of import taxes and the bags are lightweight and virtually indestructible. I have everything from a pencil case up to a huge heavy canvas carry-on and I love them all. Buy buy buy!!! If you were to bring me a gift for all my excellent advice, this is where you should get it!
Gilbert Jeune in Place St. Michel is my favorite, favorite, favorite paper store in the entire world. I buy tablets there by the dozens. If you want French books or stationery supplies, this place is your place.
Muji. I love me some Muji. The first one I went to was in Paris even though they’re a Japanese chain. They only have neutral colors and they make everything out of them. Cashmere, T-shirts, bookbags, armchairs, pencils and the most satisfying Type A travel containers you could ever hope for. There are two separate stores on the same street by St. Sulpice - one has clothes, the other stationery. (Muji recently opened an outpost in New York, but the one in Paris is still bigger and better. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort. The one in SoHo is nice too. Don’t get offended.)
The sheltered arcades have been on my list for a while. Cool and photo-worthy. I haven’t made it there yet, but I will.
E. Dehillerin. Arguably, the best cooking supply store in the world. The inspiration for my current employer’s (Williams-Sonoma) founder. Remember the measuring items are metric. A good write-up (and a good food blog) here.
Le Bon Marche. Ultra-hip, beautiful store. Gorgeous. Expensive. They sell EVERYTHING, including chocolates.
Galeries Lafayette. If you want French clothes and don’t want to pay Bon Marche prices, go to Lafayette. It’s like Bloomingdales. I generally come home with something cool and angular. The one on Hausmann is the mother ship with the largest selection but it’s also the most crowded, so avoid lunchtime and post-5PM when the locals flood in.
The markets: flea, food and otherwise. This page is your friend.
Eating
Best sorbet in the entire world: Berthillon. I kid you not. The main shop is on the Ile Saint Louis (the other island in the Seine that doesn’t have Notre Dame on it). You should go and walk around the Ile anyway: it is some of the most expensive real estate in the world and it is completely charming and wonderful. And then have some more sorbet. It is obscenely expensive and worth it. It’s on the menu at a lot of restaurants in the city, but the flagship is the one with ALL the flavors.
Best bakery. Ever. Get the almond croissants. J. C. Gaulupeau, 12 Rue Mabillon in the 6th. (This place and Herve’s flagship are both among the tiny streets in Paris Practique grid L17 on the 6th pages.)
Laduree macaroons. I thought for years that macaroons were those coconut blob cookies. I am a stupid American in some respects. But I am justly punished by having missed out on the French version for most of my life. Make up for it here.
NYTimes rates the best steaks frites in Paris.
Any crepe place. I have limited recommendations because we eat wherever we end up and it’s usually good. Enjoy the carbs - they’re worth it. And the ham. And the yogurt.
Long-time pal and sometime roommate Lyndsey joined us on our galivant across Costa Rica. She brought with her Mike, a Londoner and general man-about-town. The two of them took a cab, as you do, from the airport to the hotel and had a conversation with their driver which stuck with us.
L&M: Pleasant, conversational. Is Christmas very big down here?
Cab driver: Not for me.
I feel like a tiny jerk about it, but I find this hilarious. I don’t know if it was the too-much-information factor or the solemn portent of Mike’s tone as he said, “Not for me,” with his chin down, his eyebrows up and a British downbeat on the last word as if promising worse, but there it is. It also turns out that, “Not for me,” is a surprisingly versatile punchline in conversation. It lends that extra something to a chat, that little suffering-as-lifestyle-choice, don’t-ask quality that is so attractive in strangers.
To get back to the issue at hand though, “Why?” you might ask, “What was his issue? Why does this poor hilarious man have such a glum take on our happy holiday?” Good question. Let’s continue.
L&M: Why?
Cab driver: My lady left.
L: For where?
Cab driver: For another person.
I can’t help it. I find it additionally hilarious that a.) he was left for a “person,” gender unspecified, formality and mystery implied, and b.) Lyndsey completely missed his meaning.
I want to find this man, write down everything he says for as long as I can take it - probably in the range of ten minutes - go get a drink and use his material forever.
Well, I’m back. And I forgot my towel. Can you believe it? After that last entry, I actually forgot to pack my towel. We had to buy towels in Costa Rica. They are so terrible, they will burn your eyes. They feature wildly offensive colors and warped fonts and fishes. Fortunately, they do not feature dolphins copulating in mid-air, as the wall hanging at our first hotel did. Small mercies, gratitude, etc..
I’m posting the trip notes on the dates to which they apply, so you can either read backwards or visit the December page, scroll to the bottom and read up. I know backdating is frowned upon and bad, but I can’t see how else to organize it and know that you will forgive me and have forgotten all about it when you come back in a few months to plan your own trip and want all the entries in some kind of order.
Enjoy the warm weather vicariously. I’ve only been back for a couple of days but I’m rapidly forgetting what early sunrises, warm ocean water and sandy beaches feel like. It is Christmas though, so I’m trying to amp up my bad weather reveling skills and get down with the rain/snow thing.
For the record, I hate lizards. Not small lizards. Just big lizards. Big, sharp-nailed iguana lizards who bounce their heads when they’re coming onto their pointy lizard girlfriends. They pop up in odd places - on patios near breakfast, on tree branches near lunch, in my personal space - with bits of their tail missing, looking poised for a sprint to the death and carrying enough extra skin that they could easily expand to twice or three times their current size and bag a couple of Tahitian wives and buy their own island and…oh no wait: that’s Marlon Brando. I take it back about the wives. But I still hate lizards.
So why did we rent a car in Costa Rica? Because those people are silly and we are not. Because I have a packing problem, a broken rib, all of Costa Rica’s leetle, tiny airlines have a weight restriction of 25 lbs./person and my rolling suitcase weighs 12.5 lbs. empty. Because I just got SCUBA certified and bought all the snorkel gear for my very own and I’ll be damned if I am going to go to Costa Rica and not dive (stupid rib) AND not snorkel with my very own and apparently quite heavy snorkel gear.
But mainly because those people are silly.
My physical therapist is not silly. She goes to Costa Rica every year for two weeks to surf, is a very reasonable person and gets a car every time.
The main thing to remember is, “Don’t be stupid.” Don’t get a car in the rainy season (spring - autumn) and expect to drive on small roads. Make sure you get a 4WD vehicle no matter where you’re going. And, as my grandmother says, don’t get smart and go right up to the edge of things.
We got a mid-sized SUV and it worked out great: even though we didn’t need all the space, we were glad to have the extra weight when crossing “streams.” (I put that in quotes because they were as wide as rivers, just shallow…ish.) The natives drive around in the Acme version of Camrys, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I assume they either a.) replace the struts and shocks every Thursday, or b.) have grown their own set internal to their bodies.
The main roads are in generally excellent condition. The other roads are in terrible, terrible condition, but they are all passable, with a little courage, and they are all well-marked. In fact, the roads in the middle of nowhere are better marked than anything in the cities, where there’s apparently a hate on against street signs.
If the map you bought at the halfway decent travel store (we got this one) has a road on it, there’s a road there. If it looks like a path, it might be, but you can still drive on it. The only thing inaccurate about the maps, actually, is that some of the dashed line roads (the worst designation) are in better shape than the roads marked by solid lines. Well-kept secrets, I guess.
No one thinks Tamarindo is a good idea anymore. It used to be a quintessential lazy Costa Rican beach town offering mindblowing sunsets and excellent surfing but, like many tiny treasures on an accessible route, it has become over-popular and unpleasant. Mind you, it’s not a total disaster: we’re comparing it to a pretty tasty list of destinations. I’d still go there over, say, anywhere in Florida.
I’ve heard tell of criminal goings-on - prostitutes and drugs - but saw no evidence of either, so if they are in fact there, they’re not intrusive. In contrast, the potholes are just as bad, if not far worse than has been reported. You will not be able to drive above five mph on any of the roads in town and I would never subject anything less than a four-wheel-drive to the bone-shattering experience. That’s saying something since we have since driven the length of the Nicoya Penninsula on side roads which could better be described as footpaths. Tamarindo’s roads are appalling even by Costa Rican standards.
We stayed at Casa Sueca, just outside the center. It’s not an unwalkable distance, but, given the dust and lack of scenery, it’s far enough that you’ll want some kind of vehicle to get around. (You can walk from the hotel to town via the beach, but it’s a hike.) They offer rooms with kitchens; it’s clean, friendly, spacious, just across the road from beach access and run by Americans. This last is not necessarily a plus to me but it did mean free wireless access and efficiency in making last-minute arrangements for seeing nesting turtles and circumventing the three-day ban on liquor that surrounds each national election.*
Why did we go, given it’s bad reputation? Because I am a turtle fanatic, that’s why, and Tamarindo is the only place you can see nesting turtles in December, so back off.
*Elections happen twice a year and the ban is publicized nowhere on any web site or guide book that I came across. If you’re the “lie in a beach chair and sip rum drinks” type, plan ahead. For seventy-two hours - from Friday at midnight to Monday at midnight - no establishment, bodega or restaurant or beach stand, is allowed to serve liquor of any kind. Some hotels and restaurants will give you a bottle of wine or an illicit daiquiri, but don’t count on it. Either book your trip for the following week or arrive in time to stock up on rum and blenders on Friday.
Sidebar: Friends we were meeting stayed at Capitain Suizo just a few doors up the street. Despite it’s ridiculous name, Suizo is a very nice hotel. $200/night nice but they do offer a more comprehensive experience than the largely DIY Casa Sueca where luxuries were limited to a coffeemaker in the room. The hotel faces the ocean, has the requisite cushioned teak beach chairs and drink service by the pool. Their breakfast buffet is excellent - try the fresh, soft brown bread with your fruit and coffee - and accompanied by iguanas and enormous, cheeky, sugar-packet stealing birds.
Travel Edition: Against: Costa Rica: San Jose
I would like to second all the guidebooks I have read about Costa Rica and say, for the record, that San Jose is a total hole and not worth visiting even for ten minutes. There. I’ve done it. Now let’s move on.
Because you will be forced to stay in San Jose (see above) upon your arrival in Costa Rica, I will recommend the Orqueidas Inn as a solid introduction to your Central American experience.
A couple of preliminary notes. First, it is not close to the airport. It’s not far, but it is at least twenty minutes out of town, forty, if, like us, you rented a car and are going to by two hand-drawn maps to get there. If you’re used to rolling out of the Hyatt and onto the moving sidewalk into the terminal, this place is not for you. If, however, you’d like to get a taste of the rainforest right away, Orqueidas Inn is a sturdy bet.
Second, you must be tenacious to secure a room here. While they are listed on Hotels.com, the site will show no room availability even when there is availability. This would seem counter-productive for them but I choose to think of it as a filtering method they employ to secure only the most competitive and determined lodgers, such as myself.
They also have a web site. Before ascertaining whether there is a room for you, you will be asked to submit a credit card on a non-secure form. You will send them the form without your credit card number, web-savvy and safety-conscious as you are, and substitute a note explaining your discomfort. They do not care about your feelings and you will receive no reply. It turns out that you will also receive no reply if you do include your credit card, so don’t be hurt but press on. After you send them two or three emails and make four phone calls, only one of which will be picked up, you may have yourself a deal. This is a good introduction for you to Costa Rican service and road maintenance. There is no ill will and the neglect is not intentional, but only those with patience will be rewarded.
The Orqueidas has a bar and restaurant (get the coconut shrimp) which serve until 10PM, gated parking (essential in Costa Rica’s cities), rooms with air conditioning and hot showers (something which, if not specified, may not be the case), a serviceable pool and almost American prices. Don’t expect to get Central American deals here, but you can get a room for $75 or a little more and it will look out on jungle trees and make you feel like you’re already in the jungle. The staff is exclusively male and talkative. They’ll set up tours for you if you like and you can catch a van to just about anywhere in the country from here. Just ask at the desk or when you finally get someone on the phone to make your reservation.
Do NOT try the house drink, the Marilyn Kiss, which is a vile mix of Cointreau, grenadine and some terrible, low-grade gasoline mixed in a martini glass laced with salt. Go for the caipirinha, a typical Costa Rican drink made of smashed bits of lime, sugar cane and whatever else they had lying around. It’s like a dark mojito and is very tasty. Their margaritas are also good: I usually hate them but ordered one by accident and enjoyed it.
“Let us be the first to welcome you to Costa Rica.” This is completely unfair. No one, including my boyfriend sitting twelve inches away, has had a chance to welcome me. As soon as the wheels come down and I unclench, American Airlines is on the intercom, pre-empting other welcomes. Again. American Airlines welcomes me to nearly everyplace I go. They’re a very welcoming bunch.
On the one hand, there’s a comforting familiarity to this since I am, at best, a crabby flier and, at worst, a catatonic, break-down-in-tears-because-they’ve-run-out-of-chicken/ginger ale/snack packs flier. On the other hand, like seeing the golden arches, it is also slightly distressing that everywhere in the world is becoming slightly similar.
Just once, I would like to hear the instructions about flotation devices and oxygen in a language I cannot understand. I get the basics - seatbelts just don’t present the challenge they used to - and the ones I’ve never quite grasped are apparently useless anyway, just something to keep us feeling secure before an emergency and busy during one.
If I could hear those words in Taiwanese, say, it would give me that first-time-all-over-again feeling or at least raise my blood pressure a little as I panicked for an instant wondering if there were something I’d missed, something new, something different, some new bracing position they suggest I assume, some new contraption that would unexpectedly drop from the ceiling, like a fire extinguisher or a sock puppet. That’s all I’m asking. Before I take off or after I land, something a little shiny and new, a little excitement. You know what I’m saying.
At this very last instant, I am about to pack my towel, so you know I really mean it about the leaving town. If you don’t know what I mean, please click here and get yourself to a bookstore to round out your expensive education with a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy. If you saw the movie and hated it, take heart: the book is as better than the movie as going to Costa Rica is better than packing for it.)
It is quarter past five in the morning, we leave in twenty minutes, and so, in the nick of time, National Blog Posting Month comes to a close. I will be posting as often as possible from Costa Rica and, if my plan for rainforest-based connectivity doesn’t pan out, stay tuned for large sets of posts all at once as I pass through towns seeking bug spray and turtles.
“Why,” you may ask, “why, Emma, have your recent posts been so sparse, so undernourished, so, as my grandmother would say, spakely?” Why because we are leaving for Costa Rica on Thursday! Yes, the Christmas season this year will be preceded by a jaunt to Central America. Nothing so relaxing as complicated travel right before the holidays, let me tell you what.
There is delight in our eyes at the prospect of beaches and rainforests, I cannot deny it, but it is hardly visible beneath the glisten of panic that has accompanied this long weekend of packing and reserving and printing of itineraries and worry about potholes and rain. Oh, and Christmas. Right. That holiday for which it will already be too late to order presents that have any chance of arriving in time for the blessed day if we wait to send for them until we get back from warmer climes. That holiday of cheer which requires a tree (gotten) and lights (gotten and determined to be broken and unfixable and which must now be replaced with better ones which will also break mysteriously while lying in a box for eleven months out of twelve) and ornaments (disorganized, mostly not broken because, thank God, we have no cat to tear them from the limbs of the tree because it thinks it’s being amusing or predatory or because it has come up with other wrong-headed cat thoeries).
Yes, to sum up, we are very close to the end of our ropes at the very beginning of this season. Thank God for beaches and fruity drinks and let us all pray that there will be no showing of unflattering photographs upon our return and much laughter at the memory of how stressed we once were, back before Costa Rica, laughter about how it is all behind us and only bliss lies ahead. Yes, we will giggle and chortle…as we madly water plants, wrap and re-ship gifts, say a brief ‘hello’ to our tree and pack for our departure for Christmas in Switzerland a mere ten days after our return.
Omigod. I have to go lie down.
Everything is closed on Sundays unless you get up at the crack of dawn and go to the farmer’s market before it shuts down in the late morning. If you miss the market, you are screwed: there will be no more activities available for the rest of the day. You can console yourself with an Orangina at a cafe until about 2PM but then you’re done for the day. Go home. Give it up. You won’t be able to get groceries or anything else until tomorrow, or, if you’re in the middle of nowhere, Tuesday.
A word to the wise: get your vacationing ass out of bed on Saturday and take care of everything you’ll need for the next couple of days. Gas up your car, collect your baguettes and go buy that handbag today ‘cause tomorrow you’ll be out of luck. Oh - also make sure that your boat/yourself are parked someplace pleasant to enjoy the closure of the entire country, preferrably by the water with bikes and books.
(Or you can go to Versailles. In the rain. You and everyone else who’s been left with no plans for Sunday. I knew there was a reason I’d never gone to Versailles on previous trips.)
*Note: I fully approve of a 5-6-day workweek, especially for the working classes. We’re just used to something different here, so plan to adjust accordingly.
I have come to Switzerland to meet my boyfriend’s extended family. His mother is the eldest of six, nearly all of their collective offspring living in and around Zurich, meaning, they’re all here. By odd coincidence unconnected to my boyfriend, I lived in Switzerland, first as a student and then as a ‘non-resident worker’ which describes well the draconian conditions of the job I had at the sinister train station cafe does not cover the glamour of living abroad and frequenting hyper-hip clubs until five in the morning (when I had to be back at work). Unexpectedly, I also learned the language.
One of Switzerland?s quirks is its German. The Swiss, being a stubborn bunch (and lovable, I hasten to stress), held onto the original German language when the rest of the German world decided one century long ago to standardize on what we now know as High German (or Hochdeutsch). As invariably happens with languages, the two - high German and Swiss dialect - have grown ever farther apart and Swiss German is no longer meaningfully comprehensible to any other German. It is also not a written language, despite the quaint efforts of a handful of misguided authors. All of this is very handy for the Swiss, not just in that they can discuss those around them pretty much anywhere else in the world without fear of being understood but also because it reinforces their apartness, their clarity of history, currency and business, unpolluted by immigrants, wars and foreign or even general influence.
This is not to say that Switzerland is a tiny Brigadoon, floating apart in the center of Europe. It is very much part of Europe and recognizably so, but, like Europe?s other countries of any size, it has elusive but distinct national characteristics of which the language is likely the most prominent example. It;s not an easy language and there’s really no official way to learn it. The process is additionally complicated by the regional dialects which vary both by accent and their employment of entirely different words for the same items. Also, everyone speaks high German (the language of the educational system) and nearly everyone speaks English, further obliterating in foreigners any need or desire to learn dialect. Needless to say, learning it is a daunting and usually fruitless enterprise. Not learning it however leaves a subtle gap between you and assimilation.
How then did I, a young unassimilated student, happen to pick up Swiss German when, say, my boyfriend’s father has not yet picked it up after 40 years of marriage to his Swiss wife? I worked with children. I had no idea that taking that babysitting job for three small Swiss girls would result in such a long-lasting advantage. The three-year-old, the only verbal one of the three, spoke only dialect and French. I spoke no French, so dialect it was. It has been commonly noted that children are without fear. It is less common to note that they lack shame, which provides a great platform for learning things from them. So there we are: I speak Swiss German and, fourteen years later, find myself in Switzerland with my Swiss boyfriend, speaking this uncommon language with his multitude of relatives. How very handy and, apparently, impressive. I am the Christmas novelty. Fear me. I am the Nutcracker.
This has now become a retrospective report on the travels: we lost most internet accessibility in Edinburgh with the move to a B&B and lost all online access in Barcelona and France. So here it is: the closing round of the trip, catalogued in retrospect, with all that hidsight has to offer.
First, Edinburgh the Beautiful. Contrary to expectations, the weather was great. Until Monday. But we’ll get to that. Saturday was the beginning of How Many Shows Can You See in a Day? and the Search for the Box. These two activities rolled out in parallel, the former a happy challenge the latter a fierce one.
The answer to HMSCYSIAD is “infinity” provided the variable for energy and ability to get from one end of a steep city to the other is also “infinity”. Our answer ended up being more like “2”, except on Monday when it was “3” when we also saw the Tattoo which hardly counts because I got tickets weeks ahead and we might not have gone if I hadn’t because I was soaking wet (rain on Monday - see forecast below) and my legs were shaking because of the SFTB and over-exertion. The bagpipers of the Tattoo have no sympathy for crybabies though, so the show went on.
More to come…
After the botched birthday night, we discovered a new “feature” of our Horrible Hotel: 10 AM checkout, no exceptions. Our plane left at 3 PM. Sweet. Wisely, we forewent any other thoughts of London success (for this trip anyway) and just went for a long coffee and chat. Amazingly, Gatwick’s Easyjet people have also managed to construct an inter-connected series of tunnels very similar to Glasgow’s but with only half the real estate. Gatwick’s superior security made me re-think my assessment that Easyjet is just out to get me. Perhaps they’re ramping up some massively complex psychological scheme to foil terrorists. For example, if you had bombs in your shoes, walking eleven miles on flammable carpeting would likely ignite the explosives. You know, from the friction. You’d never make it with a bomb either - carrying all that weight all that distance would take the spunk right out of you.
Edinburgh was a sunny, cool relief. (London had seemed like a glamorous good idea, but we have re-assessed and decided that the fewer the destinations, the better the vacation.) Our bed and breakfast is a bit out of the way but it’s manned by a very practical and non-intrusive hostess, a prime selling point. We schlepped off to the city center immediately to catch the beginnings of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and some dinner. I’d ordered the catalog but, with 1500 un-reviewed listings, I had no idea what tickets to pre-order, so we’re winging it, which is working out well.
After a long hunt, we tracked down a great restaurant and had our best dinner yet (also a great wine - Whistling Duck Shiraz and Cabernet) and staggered back up the hill to forge through the hordes of people in the streets at 11 PM following the opening night of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. About 6 weeks ago, we snagged the last 2 tickets to Monday’s performance, so we stopped for a few minutes to gloat. All in all, a nice return to Scotland.
London was a steambath and the Birthday Gods had clearly taken the evening off, as everything that could go wrong did. We did have a pleasant morning/mid-day though. First thing, powering around at high speeds with my iPod, I tracked down my annual Levis fix and availed myself of the usual bag of Muji container goodies. (I wear my black tech pants for these errands. This leaves both hands free for complex maneuvering but, with British currency mostly being coinage and all my usual bag gear transferred to my multiple pockets, I am remarkably lumpy and weird looking. And, I imagine, heavy. I haven’t lifted myself recently, so I can’t prove this last. Perhaps I’ll ask Easyjet if I can just hop on next time we’re at the airport. “Now let’s see how much I weigh without the hairdryer in my backpocket. Now let’s try it with the hamster. Now with the gun.”)
In the afternoon, R. and I trekked off to Churchill’s War Cabinet Rooms which were excellently detailed and affecting. You’d think that these underground small spaces would trump Easyjet any day, but I’m fine as long as there’s an available exit not manned by some perky horror with a blond braid and an orange jacket who’s out for my luggage ruin. In the weird absence of any of Churchill’s own books, we decided that the appropriate memento would be a poster of Churchill looking fierce underwritten with the huge line DESERVE VICTORY! I’ll take my encouragement where I can get it.
I will spare readers the gory details of the evening out on the town. Suffice it to say that the restaurant was located all the way across London from the hotel, that it lay on a street which shares its name with four other streets, that the staff themselves could not locate it on a map, that it had changed its name recently, that the staff was useless, that the food was only all right and that it was about 1000, say it with me, UN-AIRCONDITIONED degrees. (When will Europeans realize that we have the technology to address temperature irregularities? They don’t have to elect Bush or make any other concessions to America to get it: we’ll let them have it for free. In fact, if they ask nicely, I will personally send them a prototype model from which they can construct their very own and manufacture others for their profit.)
We hate Easyjet. They suck. There is no limit to their sucking. Their suckage is monumental. First of all, they have no right angles. Apparently, all the big airlines appropriated all the right angles before Easyjet got there. Or Easyjet had theirs taken away for SUCKING.
Let’s start at the beginning. No sleep. Then 90 minutes on the train to and from Edinburgh for 20 minutes in Edinburgh to drop off a piece of luggage we saw no point in taking to London. This was my cagey plan that would, supposedly, deliver us from Easyjet’s Nazi luggage tactics. Then I went and dropped off laundry in a totally grim area of the city and had lunch at a place where everything tasted and smelled like it had been flown in from hell `specially. (What nut came up with Mango Spice salad dressing? It’s a f#$ing fruit, for Pete’s sake, not a piece of cajun meat ready for the rubbin’.) Then I rushed back, packed and grabbed a cab to go meet the bastards at Easyjet. So I was in a good mood when I got there. And we all know how much I love flying.
They “made an exception” for us by not charging us our first-born for checking my CARRY-ON bag (which they claimed was too large for them, despite the fact that other people were carrying on their living room furnishings in paper bags). There was much frantic re-sorting to remove from this bag everything spillable and valuable before they took it away to join the bag that they informed us could have been a carry-on, the fact of which they informed us of AFTER they sent it through.
Then they tried to confuse me (when I tried to get up to speed on the cost to weight ratio of our bags) by insisting on using the word “pounds” to refer to the cost while I was using it to refer to the weight. After I’d gone cross-eyed, they sent us on the death march of about 7 miles of un-air-conditioned corridors, passageways, terminals and tarmac that separates the devil-spawn check-in people from the evil minions of Satan who man the planes themselves. This is so that when you actually finally completely lose it, you can only take half the staff down with you and the rest will remain to complete the mission.
Being now both blind and disoriented, they sprang it on me that it’s free-for-all seating. (The first time I took Southwest, I cried right there in the terminal.) How expensive can it possibly be to stick little labels on the rows? At this point, I took a Xanax. Heroic R. did get us seats together but, unfortunately, they were not seats but BUCKETS thinly disguised by polyester. I couldn’t really get up to check on this theory because I would have had to bend my knees slightly, which is not permitted by the available space.
Once in London, we discovered that our recommended hotel did not in fact have a lift or normally spaced floors, so we carried all our bags up four flights of - SURPRISE! - un-air-conditioned stairs. (I am well aware of what a diva I sound like, but, with respect to heat and space, I am a difficult case, being both claustrophobic and, history has shown, susceptible to heat stroke. London in August in a heat wave is not my best environment. I could do snakes probably. Or ninjas. Or mud. But not heat. Or small spaces.) Rough day, needless to say.
The weather’s turned nasty again - overcast all around. “Discouraging” is the right word, I think. It’s not bright or dark, not raining but also not not raining. I think the sunny afternoons have been an exception. R. took the morning off so we could see Mackintosh’s House for an Art Lover which lies outside the city and was closed during our Saturday Day of Mackintosh.
The House was stunning. It was built in the 1990’s based on drawings Mackintosh submitted to a design competition in 1900. In itself, that’s impressive, both of Mackintosh for rendering such a complete design (without resorting to actual architectural diagrams) and for the architect who decided it needed to be built 90 years later and was able to construct a real structure from non-architectural diagrams. The house is a complete experience - Mackintosh surrounds you in every detail. Mackintosh and his under-attributed wife Margaret Macdonald designed wall insets in pewter, fireplaces, the glass in the patio doors, wall hangings, the piano in the music room, wall tiling, chandeliers, light fixtures, carpeting and every other little thing. The rooms in the house, as at his own (see Saturday’s blog), are either entirely dark or entirely light, heavy paneling and dark brown furniture or cream paint and white furniture. It’s odd and surprising that the dark rooms aren’t in the end oppressive - you’d expect them to close in you. My personal favorite were the grasso panels in the dining room. The process is extremely cool: layers of plaster-like grasso create the background material, the drawing is traced on, covered with icing-like lines of more grasso into which are set semi-precious stones while it’s still wet. Then colors are washed onto this 3-D panel, to fill in the drawings, and it’s burnished with an agate stone to shine it up. How do people come up with this stuff? Apparently, the Egyptians thought of it. You’ve got to think that they had some time on their hands.
Today is a down day - much writing and some reading and feeling vaguely ill. Perhaps it’s the sudden reintroduction of caffeine to my system, or the jet lag or the recovery from long-term sleep deprivation. Or the French yogurt. We are eating very late: it’s light til 10 PM here (we’re closer to the Arctic Circle than Moscow), so we keep being startled that it’s 9:30 and we’re just thinking of dinner. Good practice for our brief time in Spain coming up next week.
I was almost killed by a Mercedes yesterday, as I was the last time I was here. As I approach intersections, I check both directions about four times because you never know where the car will be coming from. Half the streets are one way, but I’ve got to cover the wrong-side traffic issue AND the turning into the wrong-lane traffic issue on the one-ways. I do not manage this as well as you might think. I check and then I go and then I check again instinctively - this time the wrong direction - as one does when in mid-crossing. Good luck. With the near-death and the getting lost, you’d think I’d stay in the hotel more, but I press forward.
Spent six hours in a cafe? writing, joined up with R. and, after a rough day, he braved haggis at a nice pub we found. It was so finely ground and so not served in the actual sheep’s stomach in which it is traditionally cooked - as the waiter noted, “It’s cooked in a plastic dish.” - that it was actually very tasty and looked remarkably like grainy meatloaf. R.’s braver than I am in matters culinary and we love him for it.
On my own again and sinking slightly into that subtle but evident hotel discouragement (impersonal room, a little too much time alone) that creeps on after a few days, I took off for the country, namely the Burrell Collection and Pollock House. The Burrell Collection is one of Glasgow’s gems, if not its outright main attraction.
Like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (my favorite museum) and the Frick in New York, the Burrell is a personal collection of art and artifacts. I generally like these collections because they have a flair and inconsistency that is refreshing and lacking at traditional museums. Such was the case here: a bunch of armor (cool), a ton of Chinese ceramics (not my bag), tapestries to burn, a lot of stained glass, some falconry equipment (huh?), a heap of Degas, a Whistler or two, a couple of Rodin’s sculptures, and some Egyptian cats. Burrell apparently had distinct tastes and was notoriously frugal, so the collection is comprised of a.) things he liked, and b.) things he could get at a bargain. It’s quite an organizing principle.
I didn’t like the building itself, which looks like a monster warehouse made of yellow wood and brick and glass. There was a 20-year gap between the donation of the collection to Glasgow and its opening because Burrell had stipulated that the collection have a rural home. When Glasgow finally came up with a site, they chose this building design because, quoting roughly, “It was designed around the objects and not as a building unto itself.” What the hell?? This seems silly to me. I think they should have held out for Gehry and gotten a design that doesn’t look like your average lumber storage depot.
The building does do the items justice, they’re right there, but I would have preferred either the original setting - as at the ISG or Frick - where you get a comprehensive sense of the things/person/collection as a whole, or something interesting in its own right. (They did reconstruct a few of Burrell’s rooms to meet some of this desire but, in that setting, they look dark and not a little bizarre.)
I saw only the gardens of the Pollock House, not the collection, because the Scottish Trust charges an arm and a leg to get into a floor of paintings, I was tired, and there was no wall for me to scale to break in so what’s the fun in that? The formal gardens were beautiful - I don’t know what they feed that grass but it’s crazy-fine. They’ve cultivated an all-yellow labyrinth garden which provides a great exhaustion exercise for holiday-ing kids hopped up on tea and cakes.
I got lost again on my way back. Someone should really send me a compass before I get hurt.
I’d like to say here, for the record, that I love tea (the concept and the reality), but English food (original and imported) is really just the blandest stuff on earth. Fortunately, they have plenty of croissants and French yogurt to cover me. I have also noted the absence of organic fruit, or fruit at all really, and bottled water. Huh. Something nice about California. Who would have thought??
Day 4 Glasgow
The idyllic Radisson experience continues with excellent pastries and coffee at breakfast, overseen by a Maistridge impersonator. His greeting - “Good morning. Your name?” - is high-pitched and begs for a “Bitte?” at the end of it. (See The Imposters). In keeping with this, when I wake up or glance out the window, I have a reflex to think of this as Germany. This is odd, since clearly its not Germany and I’m not speaking German. Perhaps its the salespeople, who all look really grim. Unlike my experience in Germany however, the Scottish are friendly in conversation, but I’m seeing a lot more people than I’m talking to, arent I? Hence the impression.
At any rate, we raced off on a whirlwind Mackintosh tour, hitting the Willow Tearoom which has mediocre food and service but which is a very decent example of Mackintosh’s work. Excessively tall chairs, a lot of pink and vertical lines. (If you’re the only Mackintosh tearoom still standing, you can pretty much get away with Wonder Bread, I guess. I kid you not.) Mackintosh’s School of Art was closed off during a tour but what we could see on the outside and in the foyer was even better than the Tearoom.
From there, my life of English crime picked up where it left off years ago when Carl and I climbed a castle wall to avoid paying exorbitant entrance fees at an historic site. R. and I felt that we had to scale two fences, erected no doubt to keep people just such as ourselves out (or “in” as the case was). We were running late for the Mackintosh House, and it turns out that Scottish parks have one entrance only, which would explain how nice they are. Walk about as much as you like, but don’t try to get anywhere.
The House was very soothing, many dove greys and creams and, upstairs, light. I’m not a huge fan of that school of design (Wright, the craftsmen of the early century), but, as at Falling Water, I have to admit that when you’re inside the completed vision, its consistency is impressive and, in a geometrical way, lovely.
I was also struck by how imperfect well-made, handmade objects are. Part of the pre-fab, Ikea generation that passed through the chilly 80’s with its Wall St. lofts, I am aware that my implanted instinct for clean edges, perfect seams and machine-like perfection runs in contradiction to my deeper desire for sturdy, substantial, and unique design. (Wright and Le Corbusier’s houses leak like bastards, as I understand it. That would drive me nutty…but I’d still like to have one, in case you ever come across one you’d like to get for me.)
Day 3 was a triumph of luxury over crappy orange sofas and substance over fluff. After sorting through the options, we booked a room at the Radisson, across town from the scary shower. (I failed to note in yesterday’s litany that there is no temperature control on Scary Shower, so it is susceptible to toilets and sinks everywhere in the hotel. This added a nice hot potato gaming aspect to the experience. Also, SS’s drain cover, directly in the center of the Designated Showering Circle Area, is pressure sensitive, so about every minute and a half, when you accidentally step on it, you have to re-set the lever on the wall so that the midget doesn’t drown.)
The Radisson is one of the nicest hotels at which I have ever stayed. It’s mostly pewter grey and crimson in the lobby, which gives it a subtlety and class lacking in our previous accomodation. (Turquoise was big over there.) Our room is on the top floor - 6th - and has a full-wall-of-windows view of an old building that looks like it’s out of Harry Potter. Most importantly, the Radisson has wireless and there are no tacky 1960’s used sofas anywhere. Aside from the luxuries, the coolest thing in the hotel is the electrical system. Right above the light switches is a slot for the room key. This turns on all the fuses. When you leave, presumably taking your room key from this convenient storage slot, the lights all go out 2 minutes later. Cool. (Except when you are in the shower. Which is how I found out about this.)
What pisses me off, looking back on the awful Novotel, is that they charge about $18 less than the Radisson for about 75% less stuff. The Novotel is like what this comedian said about Motel 6: “Their motto is, `You’re outside. We’re inside. Want to come in?’” The Radisson, on the other hand, has everything and then some: fridge, safe, cool soaps, great bed, swivel TV, view, yummy breakfast, neat-o lobby, interesting drapes, and no cartoons anywhere. I guess you get to charge whatever the market will bear, but I am definitely reserving a teeny grudge slot that will prompt a full background check on hotels prior to future arrivals. Never assume that the awesome places are too expensive.
The new location did cause me to get massively lost on the way home tonight - I saw the entire Merchant City due to an incredibly incomplete map and a total absence of a sense of direction. Somebody should really have stopped me when I walked by for the ninth time.
On the fluff note, I would just like to say that whatever you read about Glasgow being equal to Edinburgh, the new cultural hub of Europe, blah blah blah is total garbage. Not having been to Edinburgh in almost 15 years, I thought, reading all the happy Glasgow hype, that I might have forgotten what it was like. Nope. I took the train over today. Edinburgh is drop-dead beautiful. It’s green and old. Glasgow is not. Mind you, Glasgow has its own charms and I’m delighted to be here - we’re off to Makintosh on Saturday and I can’t wait - but the over-statement seems unnecessary. Let’s just be honest: Edinburgh is the hottie of Scottish cities.
I just showered. I was trying to think, as I strode towards said shower desperate for the bathroom, how I would characterize my first full day in Glasgow. I thought over the details. It was an all right day, a day of logistics and small frustrations and a lot of redundant walking. No big wins, no big losses. I settled on “great” with some irony.
For one, I wasn’t at my job, the job that is so ludicrous it’s beyond hating. So that’s a big plus. In addition, I’m away and in Europe. That can’t be bad, America being where it is (tiring election, ridiculous president) and Europe being Europe. There are also no Republicans here, as far as I can tell - it’s a relief not to be confronted with Bush every day.
Now let’s run through the day. The hotel, ready room and semi-Scandinavian light fixtures notwithstanding, is not cool - literally and otherwise. It has no air conditioning, which in Glasgow’s overcast and muggy summer, is not good. It also has no internet connection, save, ahem, an extra phone jack. I know this sounds American and spoiled, but they are charging $170 a night, for God’s sake and this is a business hotel, not a quaint Scottish bed and breakfast. It’s version of a business center is 2 monitors in the lobby next to two huge cartoon drawings of some kind of conglomerate animal - you know, for the kids - where you can pay �5/hour for internet access. This is a dealbreaker for the boyfriend, as he does actually have work to get done. His dealbreaker is great for me because those animals annoy me.
It’s really the shower that kills me though. Come to that, it might - blood has been drawn, but more on that later. It’s one of those single plastic piece showers and it’s shaped like a normal bathub at the back (albeit narrower and shorter) but then balloons to a round shape up front instead of continuing the oval.
The shower curtain only encircles the round part. I can only assume that this is so that one midget may bathe privately in the back while someone else takes an equally private shower. Of course, one might argue that the midget’s privacy will be undermined by bathing in the shower water of the other person, but at least, like Adam before him, he need not be ashamed of his nakedness. Well, as long as there’s pre-arranged timing of bathing anyway.
In a stroke of blindness, the shower curtain is fixed to the rod at the side wall of the shower, meaning that the only way to reach for anything at the back of the tub, where the storage ledges are, is to actually open the curtain on the room side, so that all the water may then spray onto the floor. All in all, it’s really ingeniously exactly NOT what it should be.
(The aforementioned blood came into play when I made the huge error of trying to shave my legs in this fabric-enclosed space. I should know better, from experience in box showers over the years, but I got cocky. After all, I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years with a square shower and I didn’t die.)
The dangerous shower was preceded by the usual details of a new city: ridiculous converter plugs (we’ve moved on to a 2-converter system which seems to work - nothing’s blown up yet, at any rate), annoying wireless at cafes, looking for a new hotel, a return to deep caffeine and sugar after months of decaf and Splenda, and the annual search for massively over-priced European Levis.
All in all, it’s coming together nicely.
Day 1 - Glasgow
Today was a good start to the vacation. For the first time in 14 years, courtesy of my boyfriend’s new membership in some kind of elite flying club-type-entity, we were bumped up to Business Class. Since there is no First Class, as far as I can tell, unless there is some sort of throne strapped to the nose of the plane which is invisible to the eye of a lowly coach-er, let’s just go ahead and call it First Class. We got our own DVD players and about 9 courses of food, which they didn’t finish serving until about 6AM destination time. Unfortunately, all the rich food made me ill, but what better location to be ill in? I also watched a whole movie and used all the available recliner buttons several times each. This meant I got about an hour of sleep in the recliner chair, but who’s counting? At least I took full advantage of the amenities. It’s an interesting thing about luxury that increasingly it is associated with not doing anything. This runs counter to all of my habits but, presumably, I could learn.
Second arrival stroke of luck: the hotel room was ready and we did not have to power through that unpleasant first day in Europe where you leave your bags in the lobby until check-in at 3PM. So we slept and showered and had a nice evening hunting the deserted streets for dinner and drinks. I had a kilo of mussels. For your reference, this is too many mussels.
We are here for a biotech conference. This sucks for the boyfriend, to some degree, as he has to get up early. It does not suck for him entirely though, as the conference is a good one. It certainly does not suck for me, as I have a week to tweedle around southern Scotland with my laptop and decide what I want to do next.
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On "To The Mean Lady in the Bathroom",
em commented: What a lovely sentiment and so kindly worded. I, too, have been on the receiving end of such nonsense - though in a som... (continues)