We are back in Mexico City after half a week away. On Wednesday we fly back to the States. Meanwhile, here are a few Mexico tidbits on a borrowed computer (thanks Linda!):
Smallish white poodles are 10 to a block around here (the Escandon neighborhood of Mexico City), falling on a scale of cleanliness anywhere from Brightly Fluffy to Crusty Mud Dreads. This morning we came across one with small pink bow hair clips fastened to its ears, and Val noticed that by god its toenails were painted a matching pearlescent pink. We got a good look because it was crouched in one spot, busily eating dog poop off the sidewalk. No humans observed in attendance.
My favorite candy bar so far is one called Deditos de Carlos V, which more or less translates as: "Cute little fingers of Charles the Fifth." It consists of narrow chocolate-dipped cookie bars.
In the evenings a haunting flutey whistle arises from the dark street seven storeys below. It's the call of the knife-sharpener, letting us know he's in the neighborhood. If I had any knives of my own here I would run down to see what he does. In the Merced market for lunch I had a quesadillota (like a big quesadilla, kind of) filled with squash blossoms and a kind of sweet black fungus that grows on corn. Dad and I saw a gleaming vermillion flycatcher perched on a bush in a backyard field in Cholula.
We spent most of Easter Week in Cholula. Cholula is a town we camped in when I was a kid, built in a wide, fertile valley around the foot of an enormous anomalous hill that turns out to be the biggest pyramid (by volume) in, I believe, the world. The conquistadors, in a successful effort of one-upsmanship, built a pretty gilded church on its top, supplanting the Cholultecans' religious buildings. The pyramid is too large to reasonably excavate -- not to mention much of the town is built on its earth-covered flanks -- but some of its stepped sides, plazas and altars have been exposed and can be toured. Also, in efforts to explore the pyramid's inner, concentric layers, archaeologists have bored more than SEVEN KILOMETERS of tunnels into the "hill"side, and some of these can be visited as well. Then you can climb paths to the church on top for a tremendous view of the surrounding countryside, all the way to the volcanoes (including the legendary Popocatepetl and Ixtacciwatl) bordering the valley.
We visited the museum, we examined the exavations, we climbed a bazillion stairs and admired the gilded church and extravagent view, and then on our way down down down the stairs we passed a vendor, an oldish woman with long braids tied together and an assortment of snacks spread out around her on the cobbled landing. Pistachios; peanuts coated in chili powder; corn nuts; that sort of thing. Val liked the tone of her pitch and detoured over to look. The vendor lifted up each plastic bag with its rolled top, throwing out the names enticingly: Sugared pecans... pistachios... chili nuts... camarones... Camarones caught my ear: it means shrimp. Shrimp? I looked in the bag. Land shrimp, maybe: they were grasshoppers. Beady eyed. Toasted. Red with chili powder. We bought a buck-fifty's worth and brought them back to the hotel where Val offered them to Dad. Without flinching he ate one. (Pronouncing it "not as salty or crunchy as the ones in Oaxaca, which I like better.") We've been carrying them around for days as I try to get myself to eat one, just to know. And to be able to say I did. So far the hand is willing but the mouth stays shut.
10 points and a camaron to those of you who read this far.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
Mexico City: The once-floating gardens of Xochimilco
A few more tidbits from Mexico City on Palm Sunday:
At lunch in a tarp-covered cafe Sunday we were approached by a stream of vendors selling the following items draped over their arms or carried in baskets: candy, flowers, pirated CD's, fruit, palm fronds woven into Catholic symbols, necklaces, bracelets, fake mustaches and metallic false eyelashes. I was only tempted by the false eyelashes, and this not because I foresaw a use for the product but because the vendor, a slight man perhaps in his 50's, made his pitch by the simple expedient of wearing three false mustaches at once and blinking at us to display a startling set of enormous, beetle-green eyelashes appended to his eyelids.
This happened in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of small houses set in tangled gardens built upon Aztec-constructed islands divided by lovely, narrow, polluted canals. We hired a flat-bottomed boat with a man to pole it, a canpoy to shade it, and small rush-bottomed chairs to sit upon around a narrow table three boards wide. It was just incredibly pleasant to glide along peering through thickets of undergrowth and crumbling masonry and back gardens and melon vines at the people playing badminton in their yards, and the lazy matted dogs curled up in dirt nests, and one giant birthday party featuring canopy tents and a small inflatable bouncy castle. We also saw one half-grown green heron sidling along the edge of an empty, half-submerged flat boat, and a lot of big shiny grackles.
Once we left the backwater canals of tranquility and entered the main drag we also encountered boat after boat after boat, each painted in gaudy carnival day-glo colors and named after a woman (Lupita, Valeri, Elizabeta). Some were rented, as ours was, by a single group or family for an afternoon's outing (one carried a blue banner saying "Felicitaciones Abuelita Maria" - Congratulations, Grandma Maria); others were collective conveyances with benches along both sides filled with anyone who cared to slide slowly from one end of Xochi to another. (We took a collective boat back from lunch.) Being poled, the boats moved at approximately one-third walking speed. Quite often four or five would knock past each other simultaneously, filling the canal and actually sliding their sides together -- it was advisable to keep elbows in.
The passenger boats were courted by smaller vendors' boats hawking beer and soft drinks (kept cold in small buckets of ice), baskets of roses, woven palm fronds (it being Palm Sunday), wind-up toys, corn on the cob and elote cooked over a brazier of coals in the bottom of the boat, and more. There were also marimba and mariachi boats, and if you decided to hire them their boat would grapple alongside yours and ride along beside you while the band in full regalia stood and played you dancing tunes.
It was all just marvelous, and absolutely worth the hour and a half commute by subway and bus. (The Mexico City subway is clean and pleasant and easy to navigate, and is often the subject of rhapsody by my sister Abby.)
After boating all day, a group of us visited the church back in the part of town that's on solid ground, arriving in time for the Palm Sunday mass. We watched the bells being rung by a man in a suit pulling a very long bell cord, admired the fanciful woven palm leaf offerings one could purchase along the sidewalk out front (in the shape of crucifixes, plaited flowers, tall feathery spires, intricate globes, and more, all giving off a sweet spicy grassy smell), and paid 30 pesos apiece to use the WC outside the church where the two functional toilets were flushed by dunking a bucket in a barrel of water and pouring it down the loo. (We learned long ago to carry hand sanitizer in the backpack.) We then emerged into the street to find ourselves walking into a whirling mass of masked dancers accompanied by a band, dancing down the street in a sort of twirling, weaving procession and led by two women with baskets scattering rose petals in their path. The dancers wore bright costumes, tall fringed hats with insignia ranging from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Micky Mouse, and mesh masks made to look like dark men with pointy beards. There was also a huddled group under an enormous green umbrella in between the dancers and the musicians. A woman in this group held a small wooden casket under her arm, and while she didn't appear to be the nexus of this group I wondered if she might be carrying some sacred icon or relic to the church - I know that's often the reason for a procession on a holy day.
My cousin, who had arrived at 2:30 a.m. the night before from New York, was tired, so we squashed ourselves (and I do mean squashed) into a taxi for the return trip to our apartment, driving by the UNAM (University) on the way which afforded us a glimpse of the buildings covered in murals. (We also saw some Diego Rivera murals downtown at the National Palace and in an old market -- bulging, opinionated, communisit, vivid, amazing scenes.)
Lastly, I think I should mention that on my first day in the apartment I was attacked by a cheese. It was a sharp cheese. Upon being removed from the refrigerator cheese drawer it made a desperate leap from its plastic wrapper and plunged through the air to embed its pointy end in my foot. I was laughed at until (well, to be honest, also after) it was revealed that my toe was actually bleeding from a small indentation.
Happy Passover!
At lunch in a tarp-covered cafe Sunday we were approached by a stream of vendors selling the following items draped over their arms or carried in baskets: candy, flowers, pirated CD's, fruit, palm fronds woven into Catholic symbols, necklaces, bracelets, fake mustaches and metallic false eyelashes. I was only tempted by the false eyelashes, and this not because I foresaw a use for the product but because the vendor, a slight man perhaps in his 50's, made his pitch by the simple expedient of wearing three false mustaches at once and blinking at us to display a startling set of enormous, beetle-green eyelashes appended to his eyelids.
This happened in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of small houses set in tangled gardens built upon Aztec-constructed islands divided by lovely, narrow, polluted canals. We hired a flat-bottomed boat with a man to pole it, a canpoy to shade it, and small rush-bottomed chairs to sit upon around a narrow table three boards wide. It was just incredibly pleasant to glide along peering through thickets of undergrowth and crumbling masonry and back gardens and melon vines at the people playing badminton in their yards, and the lazy matted dogs curled up in dirt nests, and one giant birthday party featuring canopy tents and a small inflatable bouncy castle. We also saw one half-grown green heron sidling along the edge of an empty, half-submerged flat boat, and a lot of big shiny grackles.
Once we left the backwater canals of tranquility and entered the main drag we also encountered boat after boat after boat, each painted in gaudy carnival day-glo colors and named after a woman (Lupita, Valeri, Elizabeta). Some were rented, as ours was, by a single group or family for an afternoon's outing (one carried a blue banner saying "Felicitaciones Abuelita Maria" - Congratulations, Grandma Maria); others were collective conveyances with benches along both sides filled with anyone who cared to slide slowly from one end of Xochi to another. (We took a collective boat back from lunch.) Being poled, the boats moved at approximately one-third walking speed. Quite often four or five would knock past each other simultaneously, filling the canal and actually sliding their sides together -- it was advisable to keep elbows in.
The passenger boats were courted by smaller vendors' boats hawking beer and soft drinks (kept cold in small buckets of ice), baskets of roses, woven palm fronds (it being Palm Sunday), wind-up toys, corn on the cob and elote cooked over a brazier of coals in the bottom of the boat, and more. There were also marimba and mariachi boats, and if you decided to hire them their boat would grapple alongside yours and ride along beside you while the band in full regalia stood and played you dancing tunes.
It was all just marvelous, and absolutely worth the hour and a half commute by subway and bus. (The Mexico City subway is clean and pleasant and easy to navigate, and is often the subject of rhapsody by my sister Abby.)
After boating all day, a group of us visited the church back in the part of town that's on solid ground, arriving in time for the Palm Sunday mass. We watched the bells being rung by a man in a suit pulling a very long bell cord, admired the fanciful woven palm leaf offerings one could purchase along the sidewalk out front (in the shape of crucifixes, plaited flowers, tall feathery spires, intricate globes, and more, all giving off a sweet spicy grassy smell), and paid 30 pesos apiece to use the WC outside the church where the two functional toilets were flushed by dunking a bucket in a barrel of water and pouring it down the loo. (We learned long ago to carry hand sanitizer in the backpack.) We then emerged into the street to find ourselves walking into a whirling mass of masked dancers accompanied by a band, dancing down the street in a sort of twirling, weaving procession and led by two women with baskets scattering rose petals in their path. The dancers wore bright costumes, tall fringed hats with insignia ranging from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Micky Mouse, and mesh masks made to look like dark men with pointy beards. There was also a huddled group under an enormous green umbrella in between the dancers and the musicians. A woman in this group held a small wooden casket under her arm, and while she didn't appear to be the nexus of this group I wondered if she might be carrying some sacred icon or relic to the church - I know that's often the reason for a procession on a holy day.
My cousin, who had arrived at 2:30 a.m. the night before from New York, was tired, so we squashed ourselves (and I do mean squashed) into a taxi for the return trip to our apartment, driving by the UNAM (University) on the way which afforded us a glimpse of the buildings covered in murals. (We also saw some Diego Rivera murals downtown at the National Palace and in an old market -- bulging, opinionated, communisit, vivid, amazing scenes.)
Lastly, I think I should mention that on my first day in the apartment I was attacked by a cheese. It was a sharp cheese. Upon being removed from the refrigerator cheese drawer it made a desperate leap from its plastic wrapper and plunged through the air to embed its pointy end in my foot. I was laughed at until (well, to be honest, also after) it was revealed that my toe was actually bleeding from a small indentation.
Happy Passover!
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Mexico City
It's Day Three in Mexico City.
I'm sitting in my shorts and tank top in Dad and Linda's rented penthouse apartment, listening to the birds chatter among the cactuses on the patio and the traffic surge 7 storeys below. We have just eaten pancakes with cajeta (goat-milk caramel) and fresh mango, and we are awaiting the advent of Uncle John, Aunt Pat, and cousin Victoria so we can embark on a family trip to Xochimilco, the remains of the Aztec floating gardens. Apparently this will mean renting a boat and gliding amongst the other Palm Sunday merrymakers, purchasing ice cream from floating vendors and listening to the strains of passing mariachi bands.
And to think five days ago I was in a staff meeting.
Snapshots so far:
The apartment comes with a housekeeper/maid, Margarita, who takes public transit two hours each way twice a week to tidy the apartment, do the tentants' (our!!) laundry, and arrange things aesthetically as she sees fit, including hiding shoes one may have carelessly left in plain sight. She also brought us a plate of homemade potato patties, something like Mexican knishes, just out of the goodness of her heart (and possibly out of a conviction that we will starve to death from eating weird non-Mexican rabbit food).
Being approached under the purple flowering trees in front of the glorious museum of anthropology by a small flock of English students: "Do you speak English? Is okay talk to us five minutes? To practice English - it is our exam." (Furtive glancing around.) "Over there is the teacher, she keeps big eye on us!" We of course complied and spent a pleasant five minutes answering such probing questions as "What is your favorite color? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite food in the City? What is your religion?" After each of the five students had earnestly presented a few questions and noted our answers in their notebooks, they presented us with "a small gift for thank you" of tiny wooden tourist spoons and eensy ceramic pots filled with 17 lentils apiece and anointed with an orange sticker proclaiming "Mexico City." The second group of students, who approached us three minutes later, awarded us with large strawberry lollipops. Val and I amused ourselves at intervals in the museum concocting more interesting practice questions: "What is your favorite abstraction? Who was your favorite Marxist? What was your best experience with orthodontia?"
Aha, the family is at the door!
More to come.
I'm sitting in my shorts and tank top in Dad and Linda's rented penthouse apartment, listening to the birds chatter among the cactuses on the patio and the traffic surge 7 storeys below. We have just eaten pancakes with cajeta (goat-milk caramel) and fresh mango, and we are awaiting the advent of Uncle John, Aunt Pat, and cousin Victoria so we can embark on a family trip to Xochimilco, the remains of the Aztec floating gardens. Apparently this will mean renting a boat and gliding amongst the other Palm Sunday merrymakers, purchasing ice cream from floating vendors and listening to the strains of passing mariachi bands.
And to think five days ago I was in a staff meeting.
Snapshots so far:
The apartment comes with a housekeeper/maid, Margarita, who takes public transit two hours each way twice a week to tidy the apartment, do the tentants' (our!!) laundry, and arrange things aesthetically as she sees fit, including hiding shoes one may have carelessly left in plain sight. She also brought us a plate of homemade potato patties, something like Mexican knishes, just out of the goodness of her heart (and possibly out of a conviction that we will starve to death from eating weird non-Mexican rabbit food).
Being approached under the purple flowering trees in front of the glorious museum of anthropology by a small flock of English students: "Do you speak English? Is okay talk to us five minutes? To practice English - it is our exam." (Furtive glancing around.) "Over there is the teacher, she keeps big eye on us!" We of course complied and spent a pleasant five minutes answering such probing questions as "What is your favorite color? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite food in the City? What is your religion?" After each of the five students had earnestly presented a few questions and noted our answers in their notebooks, they presented us with "a small gift for thank you" of tiny wooden tourist spoons and eensy ceramic pots filled with 17 lentils apiece and anointed with an orange sticker proclaiming "Mexico City." The second group of students, who approached us three minutes later, awarded us with large strawberry lollipops. Val and I amused ourselves at intervals in the museum concocting more interesting practice questions: "What is your favorite abstraction? Who was your favorite Marxist? What was your best experience with orthodontia?"
Aha, the family is at the door!
More to come.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
hot goat with misellary
Several people would like to know what “hot goat with misellary” could possibly mean, and while I can’t promise great illumination on that score, still, here is the relevant story of Valerie’s birthday in Provence.
Valerie’s birthday was March 30, a blustery day of sudden sunshine and dark scudding clouds. During our time in France, the Euro was worth between $1.23and $1.28, so we couldn’t actually afford to eat; but for Val’s birthday, Dadand Linda offered to take us out for a real French meal. We put on our cleanest clothes and drove off to Fontaine de Vaucluse. I loved driving around in Provence. There was always a view, and always a hidden something tucked away behind the next curve—a mas (enormous old farm house), a town, a sudden sheer cliff, a field of yellow flowers. The country roads are narrow, and they curve around the humps of hills and then wriggle through the narrow valleys that divide them, up and down and over and through, so your vantage-point is constantly changing. From the crests of the hills you can see from one mountain range clear to the next. Forests of scrub oak slope away to one side of the road, and on the other, lavender shrubs bristle in silvery rows, like regiments of dormant hedgehogs (big ones) in the rocky, early-spring fields.
Fontaine de Vaucluse, a village nestled into the crevices where several hills meet, is well-known for being the site of the spring that is the source of the River Sorgue. You can follow a nice path up the ravine, the startling green water rushing alongside in a rocky river, until you come to this enormous deep green pool welling up out of a huge limestone cave curved like a clamshell. The high-water mark was waaaay up there above our heads. The pool was still, though, and the springs must have been running under our feet to feed the river a bit farther down. They said sometimes it was like that; but that other times the water would come rushing right up out of this very cave pool. (Standing with the French tourists at the lip of the pool, well below the “Danger—no trespassing” signs at the end of the path, I could only trust that they had the inside scoop on the spring’s moods and habits.) The wind picked up to a dramatic sideways drag and we took shelter in the museum built around the old paper mill. We observed how the water wheel turned a big log bristling with significant bumps like the bumps on a player piano’s inner rod; the bumps tripped three sets of wooden mallets that took it in turn to pummel cotton, linen, and something I couldn’t translate into the pulp that paper was made from.
The birthday lunch back in the village was extravagantly French. Val had: some kind of shrimps baked in a fancy cheese casserole, followed by fillets of a little red fishy, all laid out in a fan design on her plate and drizzled with sauce of a complementary yellow, garnished with a fancy molded cheesy vegetable thing, a broiled herbed tomato, and something else I can’t remember, and adorned with a small flaky pinecone of baked crust of no discernable purpose other than aesthetic balance on the plate. I had: a divine fresh green salad with toasted crumbs of hazelnuts in vinaigrette topped with a little round pastry filled with baked goat cheese, giving an overall effect of Oscar the Grouch in a small flaky beret. This was followed by slices of duck in orange sauce, again arranged in an artistic fan, garnished with a little cookie-cutter stack of superb scalloped potatoes au gratin (they looked like butter cookies in sauce), snow peas slightly caramelized in an herby/oniony sauce, and a grilled herbed tomato of my own. We were nearly dead by dessert, but managed to consume (among the four of us) pear sorbet and vanilla ice cream (I hardly need point out they were homemade); a slab of crumbly white nougat (looked like feta cheese but tasted nuttyand delicious) in warm raspberry sauce; an isle flotante (floating island) involving some kind of buoyant custard block in a wine glass filled with some sweet liquid; and a crème broulee to die for. I began to see why Peter Mayle writes entire books that consist largely of lists of things he got to eat and you didn’t.
Speaking of foods eaten and not eaten, it was in Fontaine de Vaucluse that we did not eat (here it is) “Hot goat with misellary.” We did, however, see it listed as an entrée in a neighboring restaurant. The French from which this unlikely phrase was squeezed was “Chevre chaud sur son lit de salade,” which I would perhaps translate as “Baked goat cheese (is there a word for goat meat?) on a bed of greens,” “misellary” presumably being some sort of salad green. This same restaurant offered “Pave de Saumon sauce pecheur,” rendered in English as your favorite and mine: “Salmon’s cobdestore with fisherman’s sauce.” Also “Tosted broock’s lamb,” from “Brochette d’agneau grillee,” a.k.a. grilled lamb chop. I shouldn’t laugh, however. I’m sure my own efforts to communicate provided plenty of linguistic merriment to many a tactful Provencal soul.
I’m still having fun writing these things, so I trust you don’t mind if a few more France journal entries trail your way over the next week or so. The jet-lag is at last wearing off, although I’m still getting up abnormally early (for me). This morning before work we even had time to visit the rhody gardens,where I was chased by a big, mean, scary gander with a long snaky neck and a chip on his nonexistent shoulder. I am happy to report that I survived without nips, no thanks to Val, who was paralyzed with laughter and unable (and un-inclined, I might add) to come to my aid.
Valerie’s birthday was March 30, a blustery day of sudden sunshine and dark scudding clouds. During our time in France, the Euro was worth between $1.23and $1.28, so we couldn’t actually afford to eat; but for Val’s birthday, Dadand Linda offered to take us out for a real French meal. We put on our cleanest clothes and drove off to Fontaine de Vaucluse. I loved driving around in Provence. There was always a view, and always a hidden something tucked away behind the next curve—a mas (enormous old farm house), a town, a sudden sheer cliff, a field of yellow flowers. The country roads are narrow, and they curve around the humps of hills and then wriggle through the narrow valleys that divide them, up and down and over and through, so your vantage-point is constantly changing. From the crests of the hills you can see from one mountain range clear to the next. Forests of scrub oak slope away to one side of the road, and on the other, lavender shrubs bristle in silvery rows, like regiments of dormant hedgehogs (big ones) in the rocky, early-spring fields.
Fontaine de Vaucluse, a village nestled into the crevices where several hills meet, is well-known for being the site of the spring that is the source of the River Sorgue. You can follow a nice path up the ravine, the startling green water rushing alongside in a rocky river, until you come to this enormous deep green pool welling up out of a huge limestone cave curved like a clamshell. The high-water mark was waaaay up there above our heads. The pool was still, though, and the springs must have been running under our feet to feed the river a bit farther down. They said sometimes it was like that; but that other times the water would come rushing right up out of this very cave pool. (Standing with the French tourists at the lip of the pool, well below the “Danger—no trespassing” signs at the end of the path, I could only trust that they had the inside scoop on the spring’s moods and habits.) The wind picked up to a dramatic sideways drag and we took shelter in the museum built around the old paper mill. We observed how the water wheel turned a big log bristling with significant bumps like the bumps on a player piano’s inner rod; the bumps tripped three sets of wooden mallets that took it in turn to pummel cotton, linen, and something I couldn’t translate into the pulp that paper was made from.
The birthday lunch back in the village was extravagantly French. Val had: some kind of shrimps baked in a fancy cheese casserole, followed by fillets of a little red fishy, all laid out in a fan design on her plate and drizzled with sauce of a complementary yellow, garnished with a fancy molded cheesy vegetable thing, a broiled herbed tomato, and something else I can’t remember, and adorned with a small flaky pinecone of baked crust of no discernable purpose other than aesthetic balance on the plate. I had: a divine fresh green salad with toasted crumbs of hazelnuts in vinaigrette topped with a little round pastry filled with baked goat cheese, giving an overall effect of Oscar the Grouch in a small flaky beret. This was followed by slices of duck in orange sauce, again arranged in an artistic fan, garnished with a little cookie-cutter stack of superb scalloped potatoes au gratin (they looked like butter cookies in sauce), snow peas slightly caramelized in an herby/oniony sauce, and a grilled herbed tomato of my own. We were nearly dead by dessert, but managed to consume (among the four of us) pear sorbet and vanilla ice cream (I hardly need point out they were homemade); a slab of crumbly white nougat (looked like feta cheese but tasted nuttyand delicious) in warm raspberry sauce; an isle flotante (floating island) involving some kind of buoyant custard block in a wine glass filled with some sweet liquid; and a crème broulee to die for. I began to see why Peter Mayle writes entire books that consist largely of lists of things he got to eat and you didn’t.
Speaking of foods eaten and not eaten, it was in Fontaine de Vaucluse that we did not eat (here it is) “Hot goat with misellary.” We did, however, see it listed as an entrée in a neighboring restaurant. The French from which this unlikely phrase was squeezed was “Chevre chaud sur son lit de salade,” which I would perhaps translate as “Baked goat cheese (is there a word for goat meat?) on a bed of greens,” “misellary” presumably being some sort of salad green. This same restaurant offered “Pave de Saumon sauce pecheur,” rendered in English as your favorite and mine: “Salmon’s cobdestore with fisherman’s sauce.” Also “Tosted broock’s lamb,” from “Brochette d’agneau grillee,” a.k.a. grilled lamb chop. I shouldn’t laugh, however. I’m sure my own efforts to communicate provided plenty of linguistic merriment to many a tactful Provencal soul.
I’m still having fun writing these things, so I trust you don’t mind if a few more France journal entries trail your way over the next week or so. The jet-lag is at last wearing off, although I’m still getting up abnormally early (for me). This morning before work we even had time to visit the rhody gardens,where I was chased by a big, mean, scary gander with a long snaky neck and a chip on his nonexistent shoulder. I am happy to report that I survived without nips, no thanks to Val, who was paralyzed with laughter and unable (and un-inclined, I might add) to come to my aid.
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
a quick bonjour from Provence
Bonjour all!
Actually, bon soir for us, so I'm off to bed soon. Just wanted to send signs of life and assure you that we are still having a fantastic time in Provence, especially now that the weather is giving the occasional nod toward spring.
Val and I have returned to Saignon after 5 days roaming south-central Provence in a tiny white globular rental car-- I called it the Ford Egg. In the last few days we have encountered Roman aqueducts, fleets of flamingoes, and French lesbians, and eaten a great deal of cheese, bread, and olive tapenade. Most days we go hiking for several hours, through increasingly flower-bedecked mountain forests, ravines full of caves, and ruins ranging from prehistoric through Roman and medieval on up to the last century.
I hope to post details soon. Tomorrow we will take in the sights in Avignon, including the popes' palace. I hope everyone is well.
Saturday, April 3, 2004
having fun fun fun in provence
wow; french keyboards qre even zeirder
see zhqt i mean?
just a quick note to say we are t the market in uzes, the sun is shining, we saw flamingoes yesterday (yes!), we,ve found the b and b of our dreams
off to buy carrots``
love to all
see zhqt i mean?
just a quick note to say we are t the market in uzes, the sun is shining, we saw flamingoes yesterday (yes!), we,ve found the b and b of our dreams
off to buy carrots``
love to all
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Siena and environs
Tomorrow we take off in a rented car for 5 days to explore the regions west of Avignon, the Camargue, and then north of Arles, and then we’ll return to this beautiful village of Saignon (which, if I haven’t yet explained, is just a few kilometers—up—from Apt, in Provence).
I don’t seem to have found time to explain what we’ve been up to lately, but if you’d like to follow along on a map, here’s a not-so-brief summary of our peregrinations before arriving in Provence on the 25th.
After Venice we trained and bused our way to Siena, bypassing Florence because we were city’ed out. Someday I’ll have to come back to see Florence. Siena is a beautiful town, even on cold gray days, which these were. The grand old houses tower several stories overhead; their imposing front doors (like those in Venice, fronted by mammoth and grimacing doorknockers) open right onto the twisty, tilted old streets—there isn’t anything like a front yard or even a stoop. Thus the general feeling, at least in the heart of the old town where all the famous things are, is of being surrounded by stone. The buildings are all the same tawny gray color of the rock and stucco, and often tinged with the sooty gray that comes from car exhaust. (Only locals are allowed to drive on the inner city streets. The streets are medievally narrow and angled, basically looking to me like pedestrian passages, but local cars share the path with walkers, appearing abruptly from arched doorways and around sharp corners, and people scoot up against the walls or into shop doorways to let them pass, without breaking stride. I was surprised not to find anyone smooshed against the walls, like Flat Stanley.) It was pretty cold—I wore all my layers, including hat and scarf (same as in Venice). People had just begun putting out a few potted geraniums and cyclamen on their deep windowsills, so there were occasional spots of pink and red and green.
One day we took a bus to the nearby town of San Gimignano (‘jiminyano”), a medieval walled hilltop town famous for its towers. Everybody who was anybody in the middle ages in S. Gimignano built themselves a tower. (Or, more probably, made someone else build them a tower.) They served as defensive lookouts, of course, but could any town really need 73 towers for defense? That’s how many the guidebook claimed they had at their peak of the mine-is-bigger tower race. I don’t think they even have 73 houses in town. Now they are down to something like 14 towers, still giving the place a fetching bristly look. The main thing I will remember from San Gimignano is the look on Val’s face when we walked into the church and came face to fresco with the outstandingly kinky 14th century depiction of the Last Judgment. Each of the Seven Deadlies is portrayed on the church wall in all the forbidding perversity the artist could muster. Demons cavort with naked and miserable sinners, even seeming to feed the poor dears nothing but Italian panini (dry sandwiches) at a little round table. It was shortly after S. Gimignano that our binoculars went missing, but at least we made good use of them there.
We also had our first really notably scrumptious Italian meal in Siena. We arrived on a Sunday, when everything, but everything, is shut down, so our meal prospects were dismal that night. But on Monday we ate in a little, cave-like restaurant called Castelvechhio (old castle) and had super veggie spreads on toast, and risotto, and, um, other delightful things it turns out I can't remember.
Before leaving Siena we made sure to admire the ins and outs of the Duomo, the cathedral, which has famously striped towers like monuments in homage to Pippi Longstocking’s socks. It also has jaw-dropping scenes in inlaid marble all over the floor, more black-and-white striped marble columns, and marble of all colors generally in liberal supply. Best of all was the library, a small room with fantastically detailed medieval frescoes still in Crayola colors, and enormous parchment choral books with illuminations replete with miniature flowering beasts and ravening trees and other whimsical whatnot. I wanted to lie on the floor the better to gape at the ceiling frescoes but would have been trampled by the fleet of German tourists briskly circling the room.
From Siena we planned to take the train to Pisa and thence to Cinque Terra on the coast. But it turns out that when the man at the ticket window crosses his arms with his hands on his shoulders and shakes vigorously, he is not telling you that you w ill be cold while waiting for the train on a stone bench in the Italian hail (although you will be). What he is telling you, in a presumably international gesture you may never have needed to know, is that the trains are on strike. But they are only on strike until 15.37 (3:37). Really? Yes, it is an itty-bitty strike, a little appetizer (as it turned out a couple days later) just making the point that they could wreak some serious havoc if they chose. It was ten minutes to one and we already had our backpacks and picnic lunches with us, so there wasn’t much for it but to sit on the cold bench by the train tracks, huddle together, listen to the occasional unintelligible Vogon announcement over the loudspeaker, nibble pannini, and wait until 3:37, when the strike ended on schedule and we were able to catch a train to Pisa.
We were only in Pisa the one evening, so although we knew the monuments were closed, we took the stinky diesel-fumey city bus to the famous Duomo and observed the leaning tower in the dark. Yep, it leans. Very peculiar. I was sorry we didn’t get to climb it. I really liked the baptistey, an enormous domey building festooned top to bottom with colonnades of columns (just like the church and tower) and looking somewhat like a very fussy, lacey tea cozy, or maybe a summer bonnet. We spent the night in a women’s (Catholic) hostel with very firm beds and lots of jams and Nutella at breakfast.
The next morning we caught a train to the southernmost town of the Cinque Terra (5 villages), Riomaggioro. I’ll have to tell you about these pretty little towns next time, and about the lemon trees and the campo santo in the castle....
Missing spring weather but otherwise having a fantastic time hiking the gorgeous countryside around Apt and Saignon...
I don’t seem to have found time to explain what we’ve been up to lately, but if you’d like to follow along on a map, here’s a not-so-brief summary of our peregrinations before arriving in Provence on the 25th.
After Venice we trained and bused our way to Siena, bypassing Florence because we were city’ed out. Someday I’ll have to come back to see Florence. Siena is a beautiful town, even on cold gray days, which these were. The grand old houses tower several stories overhead; their imposing front doors (like those in Venice, fronted by mammoth and grimacing doorknockers) open right onto the twisty, tilted old streets—there isn’t anything like a front yard or even a stoop. Thus the general feeling, at least in the heart of the old town where all the famous things are, is of being surrounded by stone. The buildings are all the same tawny gray color of the rock and stucco, and often tinged with the sooty gray that comes from car exhaust. (Only locals are allowed to drive on the inner city streets. The streets are medievally narrow and angled, basically looking to me like pedestrian passages, but local cars share the path with walkers, appearing abruptly from arched doorways and around sharp corners, and people scoot up against the walls or into shop doorways to let them pass, without breaking stride. I was surprised not to find anyone smooshed against the walls, like Flat Stanley.) It was pretty cold—I wore all my layers, including hat and scarf (same as in Venice). People had just begun putting out a few potted geraniums and cyclamen on their deep windowsills, so there were occasional spots of pink and red and green.
One day we took a bus to the nearby town of San Gimignano (‘jiminyano”), a medieval walled hilltop town famous for its towers. Everybody who was anybody in the middle ages in S. Gimignano built themselves a tower. (Or, more probably, made someone else build them a tower.) They served as defensive lookouts, of course, but could any town really need 73 towers for defense? That’s how many the guidebook claimed they had at their peak of the mine-is-bigger tower race. I don’t think they even have 73 houses in town. Now they are down to something like 14 towers, still giving the place a fetching bristly look. The main thing I will remember from San Gimignano is the look on Val’s face when we walked into the church and came face to fresco with the outstandingly kinky 14th century depiction of the Last Judgment. Each of the Seven Deadlies is portrayed on the church wall in all the forbidding perversity the artist could muster. Demons cavort with naked and miserable sinners, even seeming to feed the poor dears nothing but Italian panini (dry sandwiches) at a little round table. It was shortly after S. Gimignano that our binoculars went missing, but at least we made good use of them there.
We also had our first really notably scrumptious Italian meal in Siena. We arrived on a Sunday, when everything, but everything, is shut down, so our meal prospects were dismal that night. But on Monday we ate in a little, cave-like restaurant called Castelvechhio (old castle) and had super veggie spreads on toast, and risotto, and, um, other delightful things it turns out I can't remember.
Before leaving Siena we made sure to admire the ins and outs of the Duomo, the cathedral, which has famously striped towers like monuments in homage to Pippi Longstocking’s socks. It also has jaw-dropping scenes in inlaid marble all over the floor, more black-and-white striped marble columns, and marble of all colors generally in liberal supply. Best of all was the library, a small room with fantastically detailed medieval frescoes still in Crayola colors, and enormous parchment choral books with illuminations replete with miniature flowering beasts and ravening trees and other whimsical whatnot. I wanted to lie on the floor the better to gape at the ceiling frescoes but would have been trampled by the fleet of German tourists briskly circling the room.
From Siena we planned to take the train to Pisa and thence to Cinque Terra on the coast. But it turns out that when the man at the ticket window crosses his arms with his hands on his shoulders and shakes vigorously, he is not telling you that you w ill be cold while waiting for the train on a stone bench in the Italian hail (although you will be). What he is telling you, in a presumably international gesture you may never have needed to know, is that the trains are on strike. But they are only on strike until 15.37 (3:37). Really? Yes, it is an itty-bitty strike, a little appetizer (as it turned out a couple days later) just making the point that they could wreak some serious havoc if they chose. It was ten minutes to one and we already had our backpacks and picnic lunches with us, so there wasn’t much for it but to sit on the cold bench by the train tracks, huddle together, listen to the occasional unintelligible Vogon announcement over the loudspeaker, nibble pannini, and wait until 3:37, when the strike ended on schedule and we were able to catch a train to Pisa.
We were only in Pisa the one evening, so although we knew the monuments were closed, we took the stinky diesel-fumey city bus to the famous Duomo and observed the leaning tower in the dark. Yep, it leans. Very peculiar. I was sorry we didn’t get to climb it. I really liked the baptistey, an enormous domey building festooned top to bottom with colonnades of columns (just like the church and tower) and looking somewhat like a very fussy, lacey tea cozy, or maybe a summer bonnet. We spent the night in a women’s (Catholic) hostel with very firm beds and lots of jams and Nutella at breakfast.
The next morning we caught a train to the southernmost town of the Cinque Terra (5 villages), Riomaggioro. I’ll have to tell you about these pretty little towns next time, and about the lemon trees and the campo santo in the castle....
Missing spring weather but otherwise having a fantastic time hiking the gorgeous countryside around Apt and Saignon...
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