Pittsburgh...

We arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon, making a stop for lunch at the Thai Place near the Waterworks shopping center in Fox Chapel. Hadn't realized it, but USAirways lists this as one of the top ten Thai restaurants in the country. We had a lovely pad thai and think that USAirways is on the mark. Very good service and very good food. Highly recommend it.

The trip to Pittsburgh was one of those days when the weather was perfect. Chilly but not cold, bright sunshine showing the intense green of spring and the beauty of the redbud and the dogwood along the roadways.

We will return to Washington on Sunday after our time with family and friends here in Pittsburgh. Our next trip is later in May.

Rivers and Gorges

This part of West Virginia is gouged with gorges. The countryside folds into canyons that would make Arizona proud, though their sides are covered with relatively new growth forest. The New River is magnificent. We can understand why brother Andrew feels it is great place for rafting and getting away from it all. We went all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, to where boats are launched, down winding roads, some gravel only. Then we had lunch at the Hawks Nest Lodge, and Ben found his XXX-skim cappucino at Blue Smoke in Ansted. Tonight we look forward to a good dinner and tomorrow back to the bosom of friends and family in Pittsburgh before we return to Washington.

Dinner was at a Turkish owned restaurant, Razans. There was nothing on the menu that would indicate at Turkish woman owned it. However the salads were good and we had for company a German couple who were visiting the inn at the same time as us.

The Smokies, TVA-land and now West Virginia

Dinner on Saturday night was the equal of the night before. Our wine, though, a Raptor Ridge Pinot Noir from the Russian River was a gem. We thoroughly enjoyed it. John's dinner included the specialty prawns, and a veal chop parmegianno, grilled. Ben's meal was halibut,with a she crab soup starter. Wonderful, finished off with sorbets.

Sunday we got into the car, wine included, and headed north to the Smokies. First stop was the bilingual Cherokee Indian Reservationto find wedding presents for this summer's upcoming fetes. Great fun looking over baskets, cherokee handiworks. In the end we picked up some wonderful cheeseboards as gifts which were designed by a local Cherokee who is now very old and not expected to be producing them much longer. They will become treasures, we hope.
The Great Smoky National Park is normally very very busy. The main roadway through the park climbs up through various climates ending at 6000 feet before descending into Tennessee on the north side. The vistas throughout change as the foliage changes from deep spring at the bottom to almost late winter on the peaks. The vistas of the blue haze of the mountains are as good as any seen on east coast mountains.We stopped and clambered around waterfalls, looked at early spring blooms and then arrived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a tourist town which we quickly left. Our inn, the Mountain View Inn in Dandridge about 20 miles away provided lakeside views with the Smokies in the distance. Lovely and restful.<

Along the way, we stopped for coffee at the Strange Brews coffee house and Internet cafe, where the owner has nearly been put out of business by the seven month closing on the local interstate 40 due to a landslide. Fortunately the road reopened on Monday. Very 1960s-1970s hippie, tied died, but still good coffee and a change to check email.

We had a pizza at one of the local restaurants and headed off to sleep. Yesterday morning it began to rain as we left Dandridge, but we stopped to look at one of the Tennessee Valley Authority's 1940s dams that create Lake Douglas.The dam began to release waters while we were there which provided us with a small show. It really is amazing how quickly the water level downstream rises as the dam opens some of its outlets.

Then to the road. We made two stops along the way to West Virgina. One in Bristol, which straddles the Tennessee-Virginia line, running down the middle of the main street, and the second in Marion, Virginia where we stopped for lunch.

Our coffee in Bristol (what else would we stop for?) was very good at the Manna Bagel and Coffee restaurant. I enjoyed my latte, Ben his XXX, in a tin ceiling store reviatlized into a coffee shop. After a little antiquing, we headed off again.

Come lunch time we left the interstate for the town of Marion. Marion is like most small towns around here, with an "historic" downtown of mostly 1910-1930 buildings surrounded by urban suburban strip sprawl. In the downtown we found Handsome Molly's Bistro, run by a couple who also run a local Lutheran camp and moved there from Arizona. The food was excellent: I had a Cuban-style pannini and a salad, Ben had a veggie pannini He enjoyed another XXX-dry skim cappucino. We ended up talking with the owners for about 40 minutes before coming the Fayetteville in West Virginia.

Here we are comfortable in the Morris Harvey Bed and Breakfast, enjoying a good yoghurt brek with fresh strawberries, and are now off to the New and Gauley Rivers and the Kanawha Falls.

Last night was a high point of the trip when we met our friend Arnie's girl friend, Kathy. Even though they have been dating for nearly a year we had not had the pleasure of meeting her. Good tapas style food, fun and conversation at the Sedona Grille on Rt 16 in Fayetteville.

Mountains, Flowers and a Huge House

Saturday, April 24

The view over the southern Blue Ridge from our suite window is magnificent. We were upgraded, provided with chocolates and champagne, and then dined on local rabbit and lobster for the mains, preceded by soft shell crabs, local chevre, and risotto. Washed down with a very good Biltmore estate pinot noir made with Russian River grapes. We also tasted their Biltmore Chardonnay, from North Carolina grapes, and a reserve sauvignon blanc.

It was a fitting dinner to a day full of activity. We left Charlotte about 10:30 with goodbyes to our friend, then on to Asheville. We stopped along the way at the Lake James Cellars Winery and tasted some North Carolina wines. We bought a shiraz, though most of the wines were ordinary. We did not like their chambourcin, nor their pinot.

We lunched at a mediocre noodle house on Pack Square in downtown Asheville, which is a pretty enough city of hills, but more a university town than a bit emporium. Then to the Biltmore.

This place is special. Not only is it the home of a branch of the robber baron Vanderbilts, but it surrounded by gardens designed for Olmstead and ablaze with tulips and azaleas at the moment. No wonder the place is famous for its gardens. We visit the house today.
Very strangely we were walking along one of the walks taking pictures when a guy in an HRC hat sid he'd take our picture. Turns out he is an Episcopal priest and a good friend of our friend at Virginia Theological Seminary! Small world.

On Saturday, after a huge breakfast, we headed off to the biggest house in the entire country, opened by George Vanderbilt, younger brother to Cornelius and William Vanderbilt, of Breakers and Marble House fame in Newport, respectively. His house beat his brothers. It's far bigger and at one time he owned land in these here hills that was larger than Rhode Island, or Luxembourg!

We took the behind the scenes tour first which showed us how the house was electrified in 1895 when it was built with DC generators, huge steam boilers for heat, and telephones for the staff but not for the guests or owners! Great fun moseying around the coal stokers' work rooms. Then we took the self-guided audio tour of the whole house, over two hours but worth every minute. A superb audio program describing every major room and what life was like in it. The views from the bedrooms are wonderful though the poor bachelor men got stuck in cramped quarters away from the more elegant rooms for the married guests. We had a good long look at the servants quarters and the kitchens including refrigerators from the 1890s. No air conditioning, though and the house was said to be both too warm in the summer and too cold in the winter! But with over 200 rooms,many of them palatial, it would be hard to heat anyway.

We lunched on the estate grounds, lamb and zucchini pizza and a brown ale. I am sleepy!

A fine dinner expected tonight then off to the Great Smokes, in the pouring rain tomorrow.

Charlotte and close friends

April 22, 2010

Charlotte

We have returned to North Carloina. Today is friends day. Ben visited an old law firm friend, while John went to see his “auntie”, a close friend of his mother's who is in a nursing home. The drive up from Columbia is flat and boring, 90 miles of freeway and trees. Charlotte is a vibrant business center but the drive out to Matthews where John went this afternoon shows how the recession has hit stores and auto dealers, many are closed up along the main road.

We are in the Westin, a large, comfortable convention hotel where our friend David is the convention manager. We have stayed here before and enjoyed it.

Dinner at the hotel's Ember restaurant gave the chance to the chef to show off his stuff. The whole meal was very very good and esthetically beautiful. We started with a flatbread with various veggies and three cheeses to go with the gin and vodka, then on to the menu for the mains. Scallops with leaks and foraged mushrooms for me, steak for David and a piece of halibut for Ben. To go with: an Oregon pinot noir, Domaine Serene. We even enjoyed dessert, Ben and David with blueberry cobbler, and I several beignets with lovely zabaglione and raspberry jam.

Much family conversation. Although John and David are not blood relations they go back far enough to be almost cousins.

The Owl and the Turtles

April 21,2010

Today was upscale. Not only did we say yoo-hoo to the most beautiful owl we have ever seen (sorry Captain--our owl on the bed) and had dinner at a wonderful restaurant, we ate the best BBQ so far of the trip, at a definitely friendly but country BBQ restaurant near Gadsden.

Let's start at the beginning. I had a luxe southern brek, biscuits with creamed sausage gravy, scrambled eggs (damn the cholesterol), sausage patties and hash, while Ben had yoghurt. Then we nipped into the car for the 40 minute run to one of the quietest national parks we've ever seen, the Congaree National Park.

No admission center, no payment, just a lovely walk in the swamp. And it is some swamp. Cyprus trees 300 feet high, waters teaming with turtles, and a three mile long boardwalk through it all. Our owl, a barred owl, was perched on a tree, perhaps looking for lunch, but mainly pruning him/herself. Our turtles were swimming in a lake formed when the Congaree River changed course. Huge turtles. Some water snakes too. The trees are magnificent, the park boardwalk, elevated about one to four feet off the swamp floor, gives you a chance to see all the variety of swamp life as it revitalizes itself. It's a lovely place, which I had thought it might not be.

Then to lunch at the Big T Bar-B-Que, a small restaurant, of no charm, but the friendliest people making wonderful pulled barbecue sandwiches and fries, though the cole slaw was definitely local style. Finely chopped and sweet. $10 for it all!

Back into Columbia. Ben went off in search of his coffee, which he found to his satisfaction at the Immaculate Consumption coffee shop near the Capitol, half a mile from the hotel, while I napped.

Dinner, well, dinner was outstanding at a restaurant called Momo's Bistro on Devine, which has a chef who studied at Johnson and Wales University. His dishes were superb.

As a starter, though, we had a wine tasting with a rep from Alexander Valley Vineyards in California with a chardonnary (nice, but not outstanding), a cab (nicer), a zin (good) and a Rhone style combination which was superb. Then to dinner.

Ben decided he wanted an iodine fix so managed crab cakes as an appetizer and soft shells as a main. I opted for the house signature dish, a pork shank, done as osso buco, though not cut into pieces, with squid stuffed with Israeli couscous and chorizo as a starter. We had a lovely Oregon pinot noir, from Benton Winery in Willamette Valley. No dessert. A memorable meal.

Tomorrow we will leave Columbia. It's not a destination I would have chosen had we not had two free days, but we did enjoy our days here eating and being toursts. Congaree National Park is lovely and worth a visit. The State House is a trip. The University could never claim architectural prominence, but it is not an unpleasant environment. The local museum was fun with its basket show that's coming to the Smithsonian, and the restaurants we visited were worth it.

And so to Charlotte.

South Carolina: Off to Where the Civil War Bega

We left Durham about 9 and headed south on route 1 missing route 40 and 95 for the trip south. Route 1 is a freeway for about 50 miles and then turns into four lanes divided and then into a gently rolling two-laner with little towns, and slowing speed limits. As you cross the pahnee wuhds of North Carolina, you glimpse the gorgeous golf courses centered around Pinehurst and realize what a boon they are to the local economy, otherwise dependent on the pines in them thar woods.

There are dramatic visuals of poverty and wealth. Manufactured housing is scattered along the roadside, old pickup trucks, and sketchy gardens, with magnificent stretches of pines and side roads leading to the large houses. Each of the towns has well-designated good sections and badsections, generally on each side of the "downtown"---though those centers are generally vacant storefronts done in by the local Walmarts, I should guess.

The countryside generally undulates, its being piedmont, and is often pretty but never grand. The homes are often surrounded by banks of flowering azaleas and some dogwood. Spring flowers, though, are all gone. There are some pretty lupines along the road.

We stopped in a tiny crossroads of a town for lunch, Sonny's in McBee,SC. Sonny's, according to the waitress, had been owned by a clown collector--much as we collect hedgehogs. But he had filled the walls of his restaurant with clown dolls, circus posters, pictures, cartoons, and masques. Clearly the sign outside got our interest because we backtracked to lunch there. A fine diner lunch: a sub with ham, pepperoni and salami for John and a grilled chicken salad for Ben. $13, Not bad. A place obviously frequented by a wide variety of townsfolk from the real estate ladies to the plumbers mates. As we were leaving a state forester pulled up in her SUV to pick up her sandwich. Very thick Carolina accents made it even more charmin'.


We spent the afternoon exploring Columbia. Yes, we found a coffee shop with acceptable cappucino for Ben, called the Immaculate Consumption, on Sumter Street. My latte was fine.

Then to the State Capitol for a tour along with two full classes of third graders doing their South Carolina history trip.Fun to watch them. Bright kids with bright questions. The Capitol is a fine old building.completed in 1906 after various misfortunes, including being blasted by Sherman's cannonballs during the Civil War when he burned Columbia. Of course there are statues everywhere, including Strom Thurmond. A fine guide who is still learning her craft. Not quite the guide we had in Montgomery three years ago. But she's mebbe 25, and he was certainly 65. The State honors its black citizens as well as whites. The African American memorial was quite moving, including the stowage formation for the slave ships.

We walked back through the University of South Carolina campus, through the famed Horseshoe of buildings that make up their version of Harvard yard.The architecture is not grand, mostly Georgian, but the plantings are beautiful and there is an air of a fine university about the place. At the museum we saw a show on African American baskets and had the pleasure of meeting a basketeer. She's the daughter or grand daughter of the old ladies who used to make baskets on the main street in Charleston where we visited 22 years ago. I am going to see if I have any scannable pictures from our visit of her ancestors when we get home.

We had a glass of cava on the Inn at USC's verandah, listening in on some prosecutors' discussion of the Goldman Sachs derivatives case, which Ben is following with some interest.

We decided that we wanted something light for dinner, so examined the guidebooks in the hotel (The Inn at USC is a very good hotel). The Vista Congaree area of downtown about ten minutes walk hosts two oyster bars. We set out to find them. Raining a bit, but not unpleasantly cold, we found the Oyster Bar Columbia. As we were looking over the menu, a local woman recommended it highly, saying her husband had had the scallops and she the shrimp. With a recommendation like that, how could we refuse to enter.

The OBC is a bit of a physical dump, a long circular bar with several shuckers and servers behind it, but the food was superb. Turns out that our server was a construction equipment salesman by day working nights as a shucker. He knew his job.

The oysters come from Galveston Bay and were huge. About three inches (7 cm) long and juicy. Not quite so delicate a taste as French belon oysters from Brittany, but very very good. We followed a dozen of them with gumbo, excellent, and then some shrimp and scallops with some steamed veggies. A wonderful meal, washed down with a couple of Stiner Texas bock beers.

North Carolina, here we are!

Monday,19 April 2010

Durham, the city that cigarettes built! Now with the old warehouses turned into condos, offices and restaurants, and a major university, and as the City of Medicine, where 20% of the population works in the field, it's living down the image of tobacco.

It's not very large, but it's got interest. We had lunch at the Amelia Cafe in Brightleaf (how's that for tobacco images?) Place, and sat outside in a rather cute little brick warehouse area. The sandwich for me was huge, lots of boiled ham, a bit of salami, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise for an "Italian" sandwich, with Ranch dressing on my caesar's salad to accompany. Ben had a turkey and cheese crepe. He should have had a sandwich. Heavy. His cappuchino was disappointing. But, the conversation with a local Scouse photog who was shooting pastries at the cafe for its website livened up the lunch. As did the little girl, hamming for him as he took photos.


We drove around Duke, before getting to an appointment at the medical center, pretty enough, and then afterwards had a run around the University of North Carolina. Where Duke is pretentious in it's Gothic architecture, UNC accepts the red brick of Georgian colonial buildings and comes across as a more human campus. Both excellent schools of course.

We took off to a local casual dining restaurant for dinner. The Backyard BBQ Pit on route 55, near Research Triangle Park. Formica tables, booths, no license (I got a beer from the local Food Lion), but the dinner was quite good. Ben had a deep friend flounder and hushpuppies to accompany his okra, while I pigged out on half a sow with sweet cole slaw and Brunswich Stew,a sort of vegetable concoction. Very tasty, but quite sweet. The place closed at 8 having sold out of all its pulled barbecue and all its ribs. I can see why, it was excellent. North Carolinians do tend to like things sweet, though.

The drive down was uneventful. Virginia's roads are dreadful, they need a massive investment of funds, which may or may not be the reason the State Troopers are out with their radar every 10 miles or so. Lots of pulled over cars. North Carolina, on the other hand, has superb roads, a driver's delight, except at rush hour, when the freeways are worse than the Beltway.

Tomorrow it's off to South Carolina.

Preparations

We are in the midst of packing and getting ready for our trip. Our destination on Monday will be Durham, North Carolina. From there we go south to Columbia, where we'll stay on the campus of the University of South Carolina, and visit the Congaree National Park.

Winter!

It's now April 2010 and we only made one trip in the past few months, to Columbus during the incredibly cold weather of January. So called that the windshield washers froze in the mountains and didn't defrost for four days. We had a fine visit with Ben's sister.

Since then we have had visitors from all over the country and done lots of theater, entertaining, and enjoying life. We had the pleasure of seeing a friend dance in a ballet, enjoy new friends from Florida, see our friend Elaine before she headed off on another of her world cruises. Along the way we dealt with three feet of snow in one storm, and another slightly smaller blast. That closed up the alley and left us without car transport for more than a week. Not a problem, we closed the door and enjoyed it.

We enjoyed and recommend several restaurants from the last few months:

Veranda at 11th and P NW. Very pleasant on two occasions. The food is very good, the crowd quite pretty and young. We enjoyed both fish and meat dishes there. I do not recommend the bartender's gibsons. I shall stick with beer or wine next visit.

Corduroy, 9th Street, NW near the Convention Center. Exquisit restaurant specializing in American food. From the oysters to the pork bellies, just wonderful. We enjoyed our evening there with our friends Mike and Lamar. Expensive but worth every penny. Even quiet enough to hear people talk!

Cacao on Massachusetts Ave NE between 3rd and 4th. Owners took over Two Quails and have updated the menu. Fine brunches twice with friends John and Jon from NOLA, Elaine from RI and their family here. I particularly enjoy the hamburgers with the frites, Ben the eggwhite omelette.

Zest Bistro, 8th Street SE across from the Marine Barracks: Good fun in a funky, loud atmosphere. Nice wine list, good food from the open kitchen. Noisy but we will go there again.

Theater was also big on our list: We enjoyed Sweeney Todd at Signature, a dark rendition of the opera, Armide by Gluck at Kennedy Center to celebrate, magnificently, the fifteenth anniversary of Opera Lafayette, a local ballet group at Atlas Theater, and I Am My Own Wife, at Signature.

The highlight of Spring was the enactment into law of same sex marriage for DC. Finally after 28 years together, we were able to get married:

Now we are preparing for our "honeymoon," a trip to North and South Carolina, with stops at Congaree National Park and Great Smokies National Park, two days of being pampered at the Biltmore in Asheville, a couple of nights in West Virginia at the New Gorge and then a few days in Pittsburgh seeing family and friends. Reports will begin soon.