Christmas, and now on to the Antipodes

Christmas was relatively low key this year. We had a small round of parties, lots of fun, but not too tiring. The tree went up and came down early. The lights and the antique ornaments looked lovely. We are probably the only couple who use feather boas in place of beads around the tree, although there are a few Mardi Gras beads brought back from New Orleans, the place where we also bought the boas.

The highlight was the arrival of family: daughter Anne and husband Eric who spent a lovely three days with us. We cooked John's speciality for Christmas Eve, lasagne verde, a green lasagne, filled with prosciutto, parmesan, and béchamel sauce and a ragù made of broth, carrots, celery and spices. It's a medieval kind of recipe, probably written down in Bologna or Milano before the arrival of the tomato from the Americas changed Italian cuisine so completely in the 16th century. We started the meal with sautéed cherry tomatoes and peashoots. There were braised carrots with the lasagne and rainbow cake for dessert. We also munched on Thai holy basil cookies, with a passionfruit glaze.

We also did another speciality for Christmas, a goose, this time unstuffed but served with a dressing of a mixture of prunes, leeks and fennel. Roast potatoes as required by friend Mike, of course, and a plum pudding drenched in cognac and lighted for dessert. English custard to go with. We had started with brie from Normandy and a pâté de cerf (venison) et airelles (huckleberries) de Bretagne, acquired during a visit to Penvenan in Britanny. The wine was a Château Fleur Cardinale St Émilion Grand Cru 2004, which lived up to its label.

Then, after it was all over, we began packing. We leave for three weeks four days in New Zealand and Australia on January 2. The blog, of course, will keep you up to date on our travels. We arrive in Auckland on January 4 and will spend a few days on the north island before heading to the south island for wine tasting and train trips along the coast and over the Southern Alps. We are looking forward to learning more about Maori culture and enjoying what is supposed to be one of the "nicest" countries to visit in the world.

We will spend 11 days in New Zealand and then head off to visit friends in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, spending another 11 days in Australia before coming back to the States. This is our fourth trip to Australia but our first to New Zealand beyond Auckland airport, where John once changed planes.

Happy New Year

A Relatively Quiet Fall

It’s time to write up our Fall adventures. We have been home most of the time since the last I wrote, but have been busy with theater, friends and of course Thanskgiving.

Our only travel was a trip up to Craryville, New York, Arlington, Massachusetts and Bristol, Rhode Island to see friends, leaf-peep, and visit Anne and Eric in their new home. We did not do much in the way of restauranting, nor museums.

Our only significant “museum” experience was a day-trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts where we had thought to see the Whaling Museum but instead spent a couple of hours in the old Seaman’s Chapel, where Herman Melville had germinated ideas for Moby Dick. We finished off that day with lunch at Antonio’s, a Portuguese restaurant, which served magnificent quahogs on the half shelf to Ben and fresh grilled sardines to friend Elaine and me. A lovely lunch.

We quickly headed home at the end of this trip, and since then have been doing theater, and Opera Lafayette here in Washington. Among the shows: The Boy Detective Fails and The Hollow at Signature, both new pieces that we enjoyed; Side by Side by Sondheim, also at Signature, an art show at Longview Gallery with pieces by Amy Genser, which was worth a visit, and the show of Unbuilt Washington at the National Building Museum. That showed some of the monstrosities that were never built in Washington and how public pressure had saved our Capitol Hill neighborhood from freeway construction and avenues of offices.

Now on the Christmas.

Summer 2011

Now that summer is over--at least the days are getting shorter even if the temperatures are not cooling--we can look back on a rather enjoyable period.

We had our lovely trip to Columbus and Pittsburgh, which is written earlier. Since then we have done several small trips. We did a run up to Massachusetts to see our daughter and son-in-law's new home in Arlington, and a stop by in the Taconic Mountains to visit with friends Andy and Dave at their place with its view of many mountain ranges in the Taconics in upstate New York.

Our first trip in June, to the wedding of friends Kathy and Arnie, at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, was also a lovely trip. We stopped in Staunton, Virginia, on the way down for lunch--an old railroad and college town, home of Mary Washington College. We followed the railroad through the valleys to West Virginia, where the wedding was held atop a grand mountain. We found coffee worth drinking at a local coffee shop, the Wild Bean, in Lewisburg, West Virginia, where we stayed...all very necessary to Ben, of course.

The Greenbrier is quite grand, putting it mildly. It was the site of the huge Cold War underground facility built for the Congress and the President in times of attack on Washington. The bunker, if you can describe a facility this large that way, is now used for conferences.

We returned along the Blue Ridge Parkway, built along the ridge of the mountains south of Charlottesville, and stopped for a lunch on the main mall in downtown Charlottesville--Sips Wine Bar. The old mall is fine sitting outside watching the world go by, but unfortunately no wine to go with the lovely German sausage platter and Greek salad we had. This was followed by good coffee at Escafe, also on the Main Street Mall.

In July, we enjoyed our visit to Massachusetts, eating at one particularly good Indian restaurant in Arlington, the Punjab (such an original name) on Massachusetts Avenue in the center of town. John particularly enjoyed his goat chops, and set about finding goat in Washington--a treat he turned into goat osso buco when he found whole goat leg at one of the local markets and had it cut correctly. We also had a good visit in this old railroad suburb of Boston, stopping by a colonial home turned into the local museum, and searching out the best coffees. We did not find one in Arlington, but ventured to Anne's old stomping grounds for coffee in Somerville, not far from the Tufts University campus.

Our first night in Arlington led us to walk down the parkway connecting the town with neighboring Somerville and Davis Square. It was rail line turned to trail. We enjoyed the walk immensely as summer was not hot there, and had dinner at a local Italian restaurant in Davis Square, at Pizzeria Posto, a lovely with Anne and her theater buddy Christine. The restaurant, if loud, is still a place to enjoy good wine and good food.

We then headed West and passing over the Connecticut River into the mountains, taking a two lane road from the river, leaving the Mass Pike, to Great Barrington, that passed through some quaint areas and gorgeous hills. Great Barrington provided a good coffee, though the place was full of tourists. Another 20 miles into New York State to Craryville where our friends live, amid their rural vistas.

Coming home we decided to take the long and scenic route. This took us along Route 209 from the Hudson to the Delaware, following to a certain extent, the route of the old Delaware Hudson canal. Designed in part by the Roebling who also designed the Brooklyn Bridge, this was one of the few canals in the United States to actually make some money. It did this by transporting anthracite coal from the Scranton area of Pennsylvania across the Catskills to the Hudson where it was shipped downriver to New York City--from the 1830s to about 1900. The canal is abandoned now, but several of the old locks are visible and full of water (at least until the floods of Hurricanes Irene and Lee this summer.) Finding out about this canal was another serendipity, much like the discovery of Denison, Ohio on our trip in May.

We had two trips to the beach. The first to Rehoboth to see friend Tom and enjoy time on the sand watching the young hunks...with John completely covered with a huge hat to keep of the sun, and Ben smothered in SPF 100 lotion. Nevertheless the water was lovely, though chilly at first entrance. The undertow was fierce, too.

We had a lovely visit with old friends Kevin and Tim, and a good pre-evening drink at Aqua, on its deck.

Our second trip, the week after Labor Day, was to Asbury Park to see Pat and Michael. The beach was closed but we had a walk along the old boardwalk, which had mostly survived the winds of Hurricane Irene.

Part of our long weekend was to venture into Princeton, a place neither John nor Ben had visited in decades. We loved having coffee at Small World coffee shop on Witherspoon St. and moseying around Princeton campus. Unlike Brown or Harvard, Princeton is more of a piece, with many buildings in similar architecture. Not lacking in space, like urban campuses, the university has been able to position buildings more esthetically. We enjoyed listening to the Princeton Band, which is noted for not being very good but playing with gusto, and playing such instruments as wet-floor signs!

Dinner at Mediterra was early before the theater, but the food was outstanding, Ben had bronzino and a soup, while John had grilled octopus and pork osso buco.

Our visit completed we enjoyed a night of theater, seeing a professional, not student, review of Lorenz Hart's songs, "Ten cents a dance" at the university theater. Nice enough, but not worth going to Broadway.

All in all, a very good summer.



.

Old friends, Family and Frank Lloyd Wright

After the rousing success of Sunday night at L'Antibes, we rose and had a small breakfast knowing that we would eat later in the morning with John's old friend from Boys Choir and Boy Scouts in Barrington, RI. John had not seen Tom since they headed to different schools in the early 1960s, but he did have an old picture that brought some smiles from Tom and his wife Lynn, both professors of Classics at Ohio University in Athens. Our lunch at Two Fish on High Street in Columbus was not notable for the food, but the conversation was full and filling as we reminisced about what we have both done in the past 50 or so years. Both Lynn and Tom spend lots of time in Greece, Turkey and Italy, as well as a recent visit to Egypt on their archeological travels. Fascinating and good to reconnect.

We headed out in the rain mid-afternoon to Springfield, Ohio, to visit the Westcott House, Frank Lloyd Wright's only prairie style house in Ohio. It's not overwhelming, but it has been well-restored and it is a fine example of the low roof line, low ceiling, Japanese style home he built across the mid-west in the early years of this century. We were pleased to take the tour.

That evening we enjoyed our last dinner at Level, a gay restaurant around the corner from our Bnb in Columbus, and packed up ready to leave the following morning. On Monday we spent the morning looking for coffee in all the small towns we had missed across Ohio to the West Virginia border. Most of the small towns are depressed, with little to recommend them after the coal mines closed and whatever industry they had departed. The small town centers are often boarded up except for a few offices around the local court house or county office. We can report that there are no other coffee shops on the roads we traveled that could provide us with cappucino. Even Steubenville on the Ohio river couldn't help.

But we enjoyed our sushi and sashimi lunch at the Osaka in Greentree near Pittsburgh with Ben's cousin Joyce, and the afternoon with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson at their home in Bethel Park. We did manage a good coffee on the way to their place.


Our final destination, Monday, was our friend Jack and Dave's house in Bethel Park, and a good evening of conversation, discussion of Dave's developing business and dinner at Bistro 19 on Washington Road in Mt. Lebanon. This was John's second visit to Bistro 19, which he enjoyed both times. The food is very eclectic and well prepared. The wine list is fun and not very expensive. Food ranged from sauerkraut and chorizo soup to grilled salmon, so the range is quite extensive. All of it rated highly from four trenchermen.

Tuesday, once again in the pouring rain, we drove to Kentuck Knob, another Frank Lloyd Wright home owned by Lord and Lady Palumbo of the UK. They bought it a few years ago from friends of Edgar Kauffman who had built nearby Fallingwater. The home is a 50s period piece from Wright's architecture, once again low-slung, but now incorporating the hexagons for which he was very famous. It is on a superb natural site, once able to command views in many directions through the Appalachians, but now surrounded by second growth forest and very private. The Palumbos keep their art collection in the house. The proceeds from the tours go to maintain the property. Worth a visit. This is a view from the low roof deck, and the main entrance.


Home sweet home: We now await the opening night of Stephen Sondheim's Follies at Kennedy Center on Saturday.

Columbus, the Wexner and L'Antibes

Today was our day for exploring Columbus before our birthday dinner with Terry and her friends at L'Antibes. This is a restaurant where we have dined before and we expected a superb dinner for all eight of us. Five of her friends joined us for the repast.

Our goal today was the Wexner Museum at Ohio State University where there were three exhibits that we enjoyed with a docent. It was a very small tour of just three and the docent, looking at works by Louise Bourgeois and Hans Bellmer, a contemporary pair for some of their lives in Paris, Bourgeois was a dada sculptor, while Bellmer, a German, who spent much of his life in France, was an influential part of modern art. We also watch several "claymation" pieces done by Nathalie Djurberg, a Dutch artist who joins with Hans Berg, a composer, to produce very disturbing plasticene claymation videos. The pieces we saw were strident attacks on colonialism, fashion and the Roman Catholic Church. The third show by Pipilotti Rist, a Dutch video producer. This third piece was much more "enjoyable" from the sense of actual beauty than pieces by the other three artists.

We got to the museum on the local no 2 COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority) bus up High Street, on which there are no discounts for the over 65 crowd. Surprisingly, though, the busses on this route run every ten minutes during the day and are generally full.



We walked back from Ohio State to the Short North, lunch at the Happy Greek on spanakopita and falafel, and had our afternoon coffee at Mojoe Cafe.

Dinner was a rousing success. Even those who "don't know" or "don't enjoy" French food seemed totally satisfied with the dishes they ate. From halibut, grouper, and beef filet mignon, three of us ventured to sweetbreads (John included for the second time in a week), to two halibuts and a grouper, beef steak and all downed with a couple of bottles of lovely vouvray and then a Cotes Du Rhode gigondas it was a lovely meal. Terry's cake from Yum Yum Bakery was good for a sugarless cake, but not really to our taste. All in all, L'Antibes with its foie gras, lovely salads and a lobster starter for Ben was a fine place to celebrate a 60th. Congratulations to Terry.

Pittsburgh, Columbus and the in-between bits

Pittsburgh came and went very quickly and we enjoyed virtually every minute of the trip. From arrival Tuesday evening through departure yesterday morning (Friday), we visited, toured and walked throughout the city. We even rode for free on the bus system, for John over 65s go for free just by showing a Medicare card, and for Ben a very reduced rate. So instead of forking out $6.75 each to move around town, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided us with convenient travel for $1.60—and this included traveling the East Busway downtown, stopping at our cousin's restaurant in East Liberty on the way home and then completing our trip to Edgewood.

Dinner Tuesday night celebrated two birthdays—Ben's 59th and Tom's 57th. We enjoyed dining at the Brasserie 33 on Ellsworth Avenue for the fete. This restaurant has had several incarnations, but seems to be quite successful in its latest. The Maitre D serves as the wine list; there is nothing printed, so he works with you to pick the best wine for the meal.

Since we were having fish, beef, sweetbreads and shellfish he recommended pinot noir from Burgundy. Ben tasted, Tom tasted, John tasted, John tasted. This John opted for the pinot but was overruled when a Loire Cabernet Franc arrived and became the choice after tasting a third wine, a Cotes-du-Rhone. When I remarked later to the Maitre D that I would have chosen the pinot, I was whisked a glass of it. I am sure it didn't hurt that my entire conversation was conducted in French, but it was a lovely touch.

The portions are huge, but the spicing was excellent and the presentation lovely. An appetizer of white anchovies was exquisite, and sweet breads, available both as appetizer or as a main were soft and lovely, just done perfectly, and smothered in sauce. Mashed potatoes with a cheese netting and a roasted tomato made a lovely plate.

Ben's starter of oysters was superb, followed by a bouillabaise that was complete from mussels to salmon and scallops to whitefish. His bowl was quite empty when he finished.

Tom enjoyed a boeuf bourgignon and potato leek soup, which we joked was warm vichysoisse. John had poached salmon with a seafood sauce and began with a fine mixed green salad.

We rolled back to their house.

Wednesday was visit friends and family day. Ben spent the morning with his law-school chum and John went for a ride around the city.
In the 31 years since John first moved there the place has changed dramatically. No longer a manufacturing center, downtown is sprouting as an educational, finance and health care centert. The US Steel Building is now topped as UPMC, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the Gulf, Koppers, Equibank, and Mellon towers are now offices for numerous companies and law firmsinstead of corporate headquarters. No streetcars on the streets anymore; those are underground. And many older buildings are part of Point Park University now. New condos along the rivers make a completely changed scene. Even the PNC building has a living wall.







Our evening was with cousins Kathy and Cary who have moved into Shadyside from the North Hills. Salmon with another lovely pinot noir, this time from California, and good conversation with Ben's cousins (Cary's folks), Ruth Ann and Gene about everything from politics to religion. A grand evening spent on their back verandah overlooking their formal garden. Finished off with a lovely bourbon. The following Thursday morning was a bit slow.


Thursday we took the bus downtown to lunch with our old friend Bob at Elements in Gateway 4. I had expected this to be a fairly ordinary businsess lunch place, but instead my chef's salad was superb. No guacamole, said the waiter, but since there were white anchovies available, I got a substitute. They made the salad of prosciutto, fresh mozzarella and good lettuce even better. Ben and Bob enjoyed mini-pizzas and an excellent chicken soup slightly reddened with a tomato mix.



The conversation of course was excellent. Bob does significant PR in Pittsburgh and had been a good friend for years when John was at WPXI in the early 80s. We get in touch from time to time and it is like picking up a conversation from yesterday rather than five or six years!

We stopped by cousin Cary's new restaurant venture, the Mad Mex on Highland, just across from another of his establishment, the Casbah. Mad Mex is fun. Very much for a younger crowd but at mid-afternoon had plenty of multi-generational patrons. John had one of the place's margaritas, Ben and iced coffee.

Dinner, of lovely porkchops and conversation at home in Edgewood with Tom and John and thence to bed.

Thursday we headed off for Columbus. It's about 200 miles and can be done in just over three hours, but we took Ben's sister Terry's route through Cadiz, Dennison and Coshocton instead of I-70 for the run and enjoyed it. We had done part of this before, so we were tracking known trails for half of it, but the other half had new experiences.



Unless we had lived in Ohio we would never have known that Dennison, now a sleepy village of 3000 was once a huge railroad center with over 3000 employees alone in the valley. What is now a grassy field held foundries, shunting yards, round houses and coaling shutes for over 35 scheduled trains per day. During WW1 it was a major passenger center and canteen site for soldiers heading off to Europe.

We had stopped in Dennison for coffee after our first attempt at a diner on the shores of Lake Tappan proved fruitless. The diner served ordinary coffee but also catered to bikers, fishermen and hunters, even offering holster repairs! Tappan Lake, a dammed reservoir, nestles in the eastern Ohio hills and is very pretty with its little pontoon boats and the winding road along its shore.

In Dennison we found Ruth Ann's Holy Grounds Coffee in the rectory of the old Presbyterian church in the village's old downtown.



She had never heard, of course, of Ben's highly special extra-dry skim textured cappucino, and much to the amusement of several women enjoying their coffee and sandwiches asked Ben if he'd like to make it. “You are joking?” she said. Of course not, so we explained and she began to make it while we talked with the lunchers about our trips. Two were teachers at the local middle school and lots of fun to chat with. Unfortuntately, Ruth Ann's espresso machine conked out as she was making Ben's second shot, so it will be off to Cleveland for repairs. Ben's capuccino standards can be costly and dangerous. We enjoyed what she made though, and will put Holy Grounds Coffee in Dennison on our list of coffee centers in the country—like Lasso Coffee in Gothenburg, Nebraska.

We arrived in the Short North to our BnB late in the afternoon, rested a bit and then headed off to Terry's for dinner—magret of duck, fresh asparagus, orange ginger rice, apricot mousse for dessert, and steamed mussels to start. What a lovely finish to a full day.

Weddings and birthdays

This Spring has been busy with birthdays and weddings. Our friend Moira married her long-time beau Jerome at Thorpewood in Thurmont, MD,up in the Catoctin Mountains about an hour and half outside Washington. A former neighbor married them in a ceremony that pointedly noted that two people can get married, rather just a hetero couple. Needless to say we were not the only same sex couple at the wedding, but by far the oldest! The wedding site was a grand success despite the pouring rain that occurred during the reception. Dancing in a beautiful wooden hall in the middle of a thunderstorm can be quite a trip. Congratulations to Moira and Jerome.

We are in the midst of celebrating a series of birthdays. Ben's birthday makes him one year shy of 60. So we are enjoying the celebration with a performance of "Art" at Signature theater and a birthday breakfast to follow of asparagus (in season of course), eggs, Eastern Shore smoked turkey bacon, unique available at Market Poultry in Washington's Eastern Market, and toast. We have seen Art before at Kennedy Center, several years ago, and expect it to be equally as interesting as the previous performane. Then Tuesday we depart for Pittsburgh to see friends Tom and John and celebrate Tom's birthday. At the end of the week we go to Columbus for sister Terry's birthday.

We are not only using French restaurants in both cities for dinners but are doing an architectural trip with visits to Frank Lloyd Wright's Westcott House in Springfield, Ohio, and Kentuck Knob in Pennsylvania near Fallingwater (not one of John's favorite's, even though it is world famous). The restaurants are Brasserie 33 in Pittsburgh, where we hope it will be warm enough to dine al fresco in Shadyside, and L'Antibes in Columbus' Short North.

We will also visit with friends and family in both cities, and do a walking tour of the Wexner Museum at Ohio State.

Wines, Parties, Concerts and Conversations

Wednesday, March 16. Atherton, California

We have been dilatory in our work! We have not written our blog for several days. We should repent our ways, but we can report that we have been enjoying ourselves so immensely that this has not been possible.

First, we thoroughly enjoyed our days in San Simeon. Our wine tasting was profitable in that we tasted 20 wines in two days and enjoyed most of them. We started with five at the Rusack Winery near Los Olivos, suggested by Ben's cousin Karen. The winery makes an excellent pinot noir, one bottle of which we used to start the gift for our Atherton hosts, Peter and Jane. We tasted a a few others at Rusack, enjoying their chardonnay as well. From there we sought lunch in Los Olivos and found a good coffee shop for the XXX dry skim cappuccino with a textured design. The Panino bakery there did good sandwiches, John's being similar to an Italian hoagie. Los Olivos is one of the little California agricultural towns that would have vanished had the wine industry not come along and gone touristy. It's a pretty little village just off the main road, with a dusty 19th century main street and some older but redone buildings for atmosphere. MiniQuaint has been active.

Near Cambria we stayed at our old favorite, the San Simeon Pines where John had first stayed forty years ago in 1969, and we had had three previous nights there. It overlooks the ocean on a bluff and is a beautfiul place to watch the sun go down. It's also close to Cambria for the restaurants and San Simeon State Park for the Hearst Castle. It was also evacuated the day we were there because of the tsunami threat from the huge Japanese earthquake. There was noticeable wave activity as we stood on a higher bluff watching the Pacific, but there was no recognizable tsunami near us. Twenty miles south in Morro Bay, though, the waters were funneled nto the small harbor and did significant damage, as they did further north in Santa Cruz. All of California is abuzz about tsunamis and the affects on nuclear power plants.

We dined at Indigo Moon, Cambria the first night where we tasted another four wines—two reds and two whites. The whites were a sauvignon blanc in the style of the Loire or New Zealand and a moursanne Rhone style that was not to our taste. We also had two reds, one a mix of zinfandel and syrah and the other a Rhone style mix. Excellent. Coupled with the food, the restaurant was a star, made even better by the babbly friendly waitress.

Friday last week was William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon Castle day. We did the upstairs tour of Wm and Marion Davies's scandalously adjacent bedrooms,
and the kitchen as well as his library. The place is overwhelming in its colossal bad taste. There are tons, literally, of wonderful art, but when combined it becomes a castle full of kitsch. Perhaps this is what he wanted, but it is artistically magnificent and gross at the same time. Of course the view is wonderful.

We went back for the evening tour, which included volunteers moving around period 1930s dress acting as if they were guests of the newspaper baron and his actress mistress. Marion Davies was supposed to be sweet, lovable, and though not intellectually bright, very rich through her investments in Palm Springs land. Visitors included Cary Grant, Churchill, the Calvin Coolidges, and David Niven. Katherine Hepburn was invited, declined and was never asked back! At night, with the lights, the place takes on more of a sophisticated look.

Dinner in Cambria at Robyn's---a good meal of local food with another four wines. This time there was another chardonnay, a sauvignon blanc, a pinot and a Rhone mix. All lovely. In the afternoon we had visited a wine shop and tasted another five there, two of which we bought.

Unfortnately we are not carrying wines back to Washington, but we can order them.

We drove north on Saturday along the corniche. Not only is much of the road under construction, some of it has literally crashed into the sea. Just two days after our wheels drove us along the edge, the road was closed due to landslides. I wonder what it feels like to be in a car falling down the 100s of feet of Big Sur on to the Pacific Beach? We will not find out.

Saturday we lunched at Nepenthe after walking the trails at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park which is a cliff paradise overlooking the blue Pacific, a beach with its own waterfall, and the far distant whales spouting off. Very idyllic.

We arrived in Atherton to a very full schedule of events on Saturday. Our hosts Jane and Peter laid on a busy few days. Saturday we dressed up for a dinner of the American Liver Foundation at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Jane had acquired a table in honor of a friend of her's who was being given an award so friends gathered and enjoyed each others' company. The food was dreadful—not at all what one would expect of the magnificent hotel but the speeches on scientific discovery and drugs challenged our intellect in some new ways and made the evening a lot of fun. Of course a table full of interesting people from all over the world helped too.

Sunday afternoon we heard a concert at Stanford of members of the Adler music program that leads singers into the San Francisco Opera. Lovely Russian music, gorgeous voices. Peter is on the Opera's board so it was wonderful to go hear some of the new talent. We followed this with dinner at Abysnthe near the Civic Center in San Francisco and a concert by Yefim Bronfman, a world renowned pianist, who played Haydn, Schumann and 12 Chopin etudes. We have never heard them all before. He was called back for two encores.

On Monday we went to the California Museum of Science in Golden Gate Park where we enjoyed the living roof, the rain forest, full of butterflies, and the planetarium show of what's needed for the beginning of life both here on earth and on other planets and moons both in and out of the solar system. We lunched with friend Ruth at the Boulangerie at Cole and Parnassus in the Haight and then had dinner with her and godson John and his wife Noriko at Chez Papa on Potrero Hill. An excellent red burgundy to go with fine food at this gem of a French restaurant.

Tuesday Jane and Peter invited friends from the Canal Cruise last fall to a tasting menu that they had bought at a fund raising auction given by a firm that has catered events at their home. Melons is the name of the firm. We went to South San Francisco to the firm's kitchens and dined on delicacies like beet meringue, pate de fois, crème fraiche, roast salmon, and roast beef. Wines to go with included champagne from Napa, chardonnay, petite syrah, pinot noir and Portuguese port. A fabulous evening with friends Peggy and Chris, and Gigi and Ed.

Wednesday, we drove into the city with the thought of going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which unfortunately was closed, so we took the ancient F trolley up to the Castro, walked around and came home to pack. Wednesday night we ate lots of tapas with Peter with a Spanish white verdejo at a local Spanish restaurant and on Thursday boarded a mid-morning flight back to Washington.

What a great time.

Tsumanis and Palaces

Imagine waking to the sound of the local sheriff announcing that you must evacuate your cozy motel room, forego breakfast and head to higher ground. That was the start of the day. Seems a 7.9 earthquake in Japan had caused a massive tsumani that was heading straight for the California coast by way of Hawaii. Not knowing how high the wave would rise, the constabulary moved us out of the way. We sat on a knoll overlooking the ocean with nary a tsumani in sight for about an hour. Fortunately it was a lovely day.

Our drive up yesterday was rather pleasant with no heavy traffic. Of course we had the lovely romantic walk along the cliffs amidst the pines and ice plant as the sun sank into the Pacific.








We tasted a number of lovely local wines over the day, though the Eberly mix of Zin and Tempranillo stood out, as did a couple of chardonnays. We will likely try more tonight at Robin's Restaurant when John promises to eat one of his favorite dishes, pork osso buco.

Saturday morning, off to the north along the coast on route 1.

Hills, Mountains, Friends and Relations

I suppose we've been too busy to add to the blog since Sunday, but it's true. Of course, we have not had internet access from our laptop either, but that could have been solved. Let's just say we've been busy.

We came to Los Angeles to see friends and family, and that is what we've done. Our hosts, Tim and Denny, whom we have known now for 18 years, have been their normal excellent company at their Richard Neutra house on Mt Olympus in the Hollywood Hills. One is a psychologist, the other an emergency room physician, and lead busy lives. The conversation, of course, flows without end or pause, from politics to business to retirement to whatever.

We managed visits with cousins Behney and Elyse, including their two daughters and four grandchildren, in Westlake near 1000 Oaks, Barbara and Steve at Greenblatts Deli on Sunset, Bill from days with Senator McIntyre, and the hills and the ocean.

Los Angeles' weather has been perfect. Today is in the mid 80s. There has been no rain to dampen our spirits. The food has been definitely up to spec. The first night, Monday, we went to one of the local gay bistros, Basix on Santa Monica. Excellent turkey meatloaf and endive-spinach salad. The wine, a Rhone style from Paso Robles, was excellent. Monday morning we went to the Getty Villa for a tour of the reconstruction of a Herculaneum villa with an excellent docent.
Then we lunched at Moonshadows on the PCH in Malibu, eating a cobb salad for John and tuna tartare for Ben, followed by dinner of home-made tortillas at Behney and Elyse's with their daughters, Laurie and Michelle and their grandchildren. A long lovely afternoon.

Tuesday, after cappucino with Ben's old classmate Tom and his husband Juan, we headed downtown to see the Disney Music Center. We had had a late lunch at Soot Bull Jeeep, our first time with Korean style barbecued large marinated squid and freshly sliced tongue. Just excellent, cooked on an open grille in the center of the table, and served with several different types of kim chee and salads. The Gehry designed Music Center is an extravagant group of circles and planes intersecting to create his signature style. Completely different from the disappointing Roman Catholic cathedral which reminded John of an overgrown Baptist church in its rugged simplicity.

Add dinner to complete the day at Cafe La Boheme with old friend Bill last night—excellent lobster crepe and a lovely caesar's salad and more Rhone style red. Despite being in the middle of West Hollywood the restaurant was surprisingly straight. Lunch today of excellent pastrami for John and lox for Ben with cousin Barbara and Steve on Sunset Boulevard, served by waitress Emily, shiksa number 1. John of course is shagutz number 1.

We finished the day with dinner at Pace half way up Laurel Canyon, a lovely little Italian restaurant where John had pizza and Ben had pasta. It's also a place to ogle the stars who come there to eat. Denny was our star-gazer and found Zach Braff for us...he was the lead resident doctor in Scrubs. Fun. Can we promise a congressman or two when they come to DC. Thursday it's off north to San Simeon.

Palm Springs in Spring

Saturday, March 5.

Eduardo and I are discussing the relative merits of sweet martinis compared to real martinis made with gin and dry vermouth. Fortunately we do not have to drink something made with vodka, blue curaçao, pineapple juice and soda made for a visiting middle-ager to this shangri-la in the desert.

We arrived last night at our friend Lamar's after a day long flight across the country aboard a packed United plane and then three hours of rush-hour Angeleno traffic to the dark hills of southern California. His home is wonderfully decorated with a collection of antiques from his folks' homes in Texas, then resident in his home in Woodley Park, Washington, with touches of his late love George. Eduardo adds the touch of elegance, making drinks one enjoys and allowing the use of his computer when mine refused to connect to the local network.

Life here seems to revolve around visits with friends and trips to rather nice restaurants. Last night about 9 we rolled into Wangs in the Desert, a Chinese restaurant where we happily killed two bottles of Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay (one each) ordered to match first a collection of pork, vegetable and seafood dim sum dumplings and then the dishes we ordered: beef with bok choy, twice cooked pork with smoked dried to-fu, kung-pao shrimp, and chicken with a garlic sauce. We went through it all and closed the restaurant. A lovely evening.

Arising this morning, we headed off to Shermans Kosher-style deli for a fish breakfast of bagels, coffee, juice and herrings. We introduced Lamar and Eduardo to gefilte fish (not peppery enough, but good). The lox smoked salmon was low-salt which made for a good taste and the egg-white omelette met every expectation. The decaf coffee was excellent and the waitress had a lovely wry wit to go with it.

From there it was off to the Indian Canyons in the Agua Caliente Reservation. The mile long Andreas Canyon walk was gentle, but not excessively easy. The green-ness of the site is not what you expect in the desert, but at this time of year after a wet winter, the California hills are more green than brown (read golden). The small flowers are in bloom in the crevices of the massively upthrusting rock formations and the occasional cactus present their yellow and magenta flowers. In the distance, the snow-capped mountains made for an afternoon of views.

We finished up mid-day with lunch at Spencers, with salads and beer...though Ben was more into his extra dry cappucino. Lamar and I headed for Stella Artois and Corona respectively. Eduardo enjoyed his asparagus soup and an ordinary Caesar's salad--chopped too finely, but with fried blackened shrimp, which tended to make up for fine chopping. Ben enjoyed his portobello sandwich and the same soup, while Lamar scarfed down his blackened ahi tuna salad and I my Asian chicken salad. We all helped Eduardo finish his sherbets--mango, lemon and raspberry.

Along the way we stopped by to see Gary and Bob whom we had not seen since a trip to Paris many years ago.

Fortunately shorts will be in order in this casual town. And even at dinner. We ate at Tropicale Restaurant, a recently reopened restaurant on the main strip. Regrettably we can only give the place a C+. While the ambient sound level was fine--we could hear each other--the courses were generally mediocre. While Eduardo was very satisfied with his goal cheese pizza, Ben and Lamar were disappointed with their dry halibut steaks, and I found my Moroccan meatball appetizer a bit industrial. We felt that most of the dishes could have been produced anywhere. Costco's might have been better; there was not a taste of lamb left. My pizza, chicken and maple syrup, which I chose because I thought it might be an interesting taste, not for a great love of maple, was ordinary. Bob seemed to enjoy his meatball piazza, and Gary made a good effort to eat an entirely overwhelming Cobb salad and some sauteed collard greens. The wine Ben chose, an unoaked Iron Horse chardonnay, was also disappointing.

All in all the company made up for it, but Tropicale does not get a recommendation.

We passed by the local Indian casino on the way home. It's not as impressive as the grand Morongo Casino we passed on the way from LA--no tower with lights flashing for its nightly specials--but it showed how much of the lands around here are owned by Indian tribes. We hope they make money from them.

Fall and Winter

It was quite a long winter for us. On our return from England, I had two major procedures in hospital and a long recuperation from a massive e-coli infection that only responded to one antibiotic. However, by Chanukah and Christmas the household was relatively back to normal and we began to think about our next trip.

We have decided to spend a couple of weeks in California beginning on March 4, visiting with family and friends and doing a few things we haven't done before. We'll do two tours at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon we have not yet done, visit at some Central Coast wineries. We scratched the surface years ago there but the scene has changed a lot. We'll also get a chance to visit the new LA County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. If there is a good show at the Getty we will do that too.

We'll probably start posting by the time we get to Palm Springs and then continue up the Coast.