finishing the fall trip 2011

i got up late to catch the 12:28 pm eurostar to paris...i walked over to paddington to find a taxi and arrived at st. pancras international where i caught the train...had a long walk to my coach which meant a short walk when i arrive at gare du nord and a quick walk to queue for a taxi...my seat mate was an l.s.e. student working in paris during the week and studying in london during the weekends.

when i arrived in paris at 1:30 pm, i asked the taxi driver to take me to my hotel, wait, and then take me to cent quatre, the old city mortuary, now an artist space...i had visited the space three years ago and wanted to see how much it had developed...the exhibit that dominated the space was leandro erlich's in perceptions which you can check out at this site:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBhe6gs1S78...

after walking around the space (it seemed that half the space was loaned out to comedie francaise),i walked over to rotonde de la villette, a toll house connected to the canal systems of paris...the rotonde was crowded with weekenders enjoying the final days of summer before the cooling weather of fall and then the dread of winter...as usual, the french use whatever open space they have to do some art display, this one fashions of a by-gone era of travel...

i caught the metro at stalingrad and headed back to reuilly-diderot and the hotel...i checked in and went up to my room...as it was still a bit early for dinner, i watched some french television...two poirot shows in french...how fitting for our little belgian detective...

i walked around the corner to bistrologue for dinner...i had a house red with my entrecote..it was well cooked, not the usual bloody french steak...of course, i had frites with the meal..when in london, it's fish and chips...in paris it's steak and fries...

day two in paris was market day...i have always had poilane as a must do on my list of paris adventures...today i was headed for this iconic (love that word) bread shop in the bonmarche area...i purchased a walnut bread, a brioche, and a sour dough...i was planning to lug all this back home...while there i asked if i could snap of picture of the famous bread chandelier which actually hangs in the workers's area...they said sure, so i took a picture, "ushing" all the workers out of my shot...thankfully i only had to chase one worker away...

from poilane, i walked over to la grand epicerie paris, the market attached to bonmarche...to call it a market is a bit of an understatement...there are rows and rows of canned goods, jams, cereals, a wine section with 80% french wines, take-out foods both hot and cold, a produce section, cheeses, and a bakery with breads and delicacies to die for...check out this site for a fun presentation of what la grade has: http://www.lagrandeepicerie.fr/#en-GB/coulisses/film

here is a rather glittery picture of the market...check out all the macaroons...in all sorts of flavors...

i was a bit hungry so i crossed the street to have my petit dejeuner at Le Weekend, probably the best croissant i had in recent memory...crispy on the outside, buttery on the inside...excellent...i crossed back to visit the miraculous medal chapel which is located amidst all this luxury...the body of st. catherine laboure is in a glass coffin on the right side of the altar...

feeling a bit holier, i headed for rue louise weiss which is the new gallery area of paris...but, alas, as all galleries in the city, the street and its galleries were closed...it is a place to revisit...

with the noon time feeding coming up, i headed for tube stop sentier and montorgeuil and les petit carreaux...i had lunch at comptoir du commerce, duck confit washed down with a cote de rhone troyes garcons...nice way to have lunch watching the pedestrians along the carreaux...

after a futile attempt to purchase a loaf of praluline bread, bread infused with pralines, (it seems the shop is related to art galleries, closed on mondays), i returned to the hotel and rewatched some old amazing race shows...what a great series and so worthy of its emmy awards...

i had dinner at wasabi, a korean-japanese restaurants, run by mrs. chung...i had the korean stew aka chige...the meal began with pan chan and then i burned my tummy with the wonderful kim chee stew...i didn't want the really hot stew because i was traveling back to london the next day...

i had a 1:04 pm departure back to london via eurostar but decided to get there a bit early, avoiding any last minute rushing...and i was glad i did as the front desk guy could not find me a cab in all of paris...so i took to the streets and finally got a guy at the end of his shift but willing to take me to gare du nord...i guess he saw the desperation in my eyes...i will be ever grateful to will for that bit of human kindness...

the trip back to london was uneventful except i had a four seater with a french gal (rather young) heading for work in london with minimum english skills, a l.s.e. graduate returning to london for work, and a black gal i dubbed black mary because she reminded me of my mother...no sooner had the train pulled away from the station then she started saying the rosary...she was warding off the evil spirits...i felt good...

once back in london, i headed for the elysee and an overnight stay...tonight would be my last night of indian food (a curry washed down with cobra beer) before i headed over to criterion theatre and hitchcock's 39 steps...i was a bit early so i walked from piccadilly toward leicester square and found m&m world...and they had the m&m candy acting very british, from crossing abbey road to catching a double decker...

the play was a marvelous spoof of the hitchcock movie with four characters playing the entire cast of the movie, actually two doing most of the double duty...i shared the space with drama students from esher college...they had all the questions the teachers kept reminding them to review as the play was being presented...good experience for these kids...the play was fun though a bit fast paced...comedy had to balance with the mystery...

i headed back to my basement room at the elysee, first time in the renovated area...the rooms are bigger and more modern...definitely a nice upgrade...thank you, dilep...

my return home via sfo was nice and pleasant...little turbulence...the barbecued chicken was a bit spicy so i scraped off the sauce, shredded the meat, and made a sandwich...and that was yummy...the movies were fine fare...mary poppins and one of the x-men...what was more entertaining were these four irish guys heading for vegas...omg...hangover part 3 irish style...but, because of the seating configuration, there was a young gal (well, maybe not that young) sitting with them...and they kept giving her oprah-like advice, dump him, get the ring...

the transfer in sfo went smoothly and the turkey-cranberry sandwich at boudin's was awesome...ran into my buddy james in the red carpet lounge...we locals are always on the go...

back home and ready for the next trip...don't know when but we are planning for a summer trip to southern africa....

cultural fall tour sept- oct 2011

i had tickets to south pacific in the barbican and found a family of sisters to watch my mother so i was off to london...i left on a morning flight on september 27 and got upgraded for the hnl-sfo leg...the breakfast was ono for an airline meal even though the scrambled eggs don't look it...the two advantages of a morning flight are the less waiting time in sfo and the arrival time in london, getting to the hotel in the mid-afternoon for check-in...

my first job in london was to upgrade my mobile so i can call home...then a quick dinner at garfunkel's...and then off to wyndham's for driving miss daisy...it was announced that ms. redgrave was indisposed for the evening's performance...i wasn't too upset as i had seen ms. redgrave give a very wooden performance in the tempest...her replacement, jenny lee, was wonderful..and the play itself brought out the strength of james earl jones and his bravura basso...another fun element of the production was my seatmate, a family from nebraska that run carnivals during the summer...in london for some recuperating time...maybe even looking up some carnival acts for 2012...ended up having an ale and the barista was a polish gal who had set up the fan (did i mention there was a heat wave in london) so it made her hair flow...very photo shoot...

i was staying at the ashley which is in dire need of some refurbishing and i think they've started...after breakfast i went in search of the american embassy and ronald reagan's statue...i FINALLY found grosvenor square with the help of a bus driver...i enjoyed grosvernor square with statues to eisenhower, fdr, and the american pilots who flew for the raf...found reagan's statude which was still being set up so i got a partial of the statue...i then found my friend in paddington and headed for soho and eventually for fortnum and mason's for lunch...i had a good duck confit for lunch...

i then headed for the old vic for the production of synge's playboy of the western world...it was a fun production and i can imagine how the irish got their dander up over this play...synge presents the irish as a nation of drunks with women who fancy a roll in the hay with the bad boy...so long as it had a folkloric element to it...the kid playing the playboy was a bit young...the innkeeper's daughter good...

i then headed to harrod's for some shopping of jams (i love the ginger jam) and some refreshments...then on to vaudeville theatre for a production of arthur miller's broken glass...very albee-esque...about a marriage that suffered from a lack of communication between a husband and wife...leading to her paralysis and his heart attack...his death frees her from the paralysis...sir anthony sher was great although his accent took time to get used to...and tara fitzgerald looked so fragile as the wife...on the way back to the hotel ran across a police scene, arresting some homeless attacking a chinese kid...

today is friday and i'm headed for kua aina, a franchisee of our own sandwich shop...i had the classic burger and thoroughly enjoyed it although the cole slaw left lots to be desired...i think this kind of store would do well in europe...it offers a great sandwich..a juicy burger, such an ono sandwich from the yanks...from here we headed for bill curly's and an indulgence of chocolate...this trip i enjoyed a caramel with sea salt, sesame, yuzu, and chuao truffles...such a great treat...

i then headed for trafalgar square...and what a series of photo ops...the square has a countdown clock to the 2012 olympics, a ship-in-the-bottle (nelson's hms victory) on the fourth plinth, and some dude adding to his portfolio by posing shirtless in front of the grass wall exhibit...did some shopping at waterstone's purchasing jon richardson's it's not me, it's you and some recyclable bags...got to use that classic put-down line when a customer asked where she could find the prophet...i asked the clerk if she were looking for the profits...the clerk caught on after a double take and said, brilliant...had to add the disclaimer that i stole it from some wag...

i finally got to trafalgar studios, one of my favorite venues in london...always can count of it for some edgy productions...so top girls turned out to be such a disappointment...it was very dated...and the plot line very predicatable...well, i guess not all the time...

my last day in london included a double bill of a play and an opera...i got a late start to the day as i was headed for barbican and the lincoln center's production of south pacific...

i began with lunch at searcy's...i enjoyed the beetroot salad with its radish confit...it was sweet and sour...and then the main dish of cod with a bed of mashed potatoes...the cod was excellent but the mashed a bit too mashed...this last comment is from a rice lover...i ended the meal with some time to kill with a cup of espresso and a glass of cointreau over ice...it is quite a lovely way to end a meal, sweet, light, and cold...

 i walked to the edge, the art gallery in the centre...the gallery was the exhibit space of junya ishigami's architecture as air...the structure comprises a single curved line of delicate a 4-meter row of columns that are only 0.9mm thick, seemingly floating unsupported in space...closer inspection reveals a fine network of near-invisible wires...i had to look very closely to see the filament...but, more importantly, to see the structure that ishigami created...

finally it was time to see south pacific and local gal loretta ables sayre as bloody mary...and she was so good she made me forget juanita hall who was the film bloody mary...loretta added a dark dimension to this war survivor who was willing to "sell" her daughter to an american sailor...and paulo szot, the basso playing the plantation owner, emile de becque, was superb...great voice and good acting...the production, now brit supported, was up to the task of keeping rogers and hammerstein very current...

i then headed for charing cross and eno's elixir of love...i walked past st. martin's-in-the-field parking area and it was cordoned off by crime tape...again, london seemed to be under police surveillance...in reaction to the earlier riots and in preparation for the 2012 olympics..i guess so...donizetti was at his best in writing this very frivolous opera buffo...but to place it in a midwestern diner (probably in the 1950's) added to the fancy...the tenor aria, una furtiva lagrima, sung in english by nemorino as played by ben johnson was a show stopper...such an italian sound with english phrasing...BRAVO...

i was headed back to the ashley...tomorrow i head to paris for two days and then back to london for a night and one more play...