Under the Southern Cross

You just can't fathom how friendly and

helpful people are here. It all began when we arrived at the car rental agency to find John's driver's license had expired. The agents did their best for us, putting us

through to the Embassy in Wellington and the Consulate in Auckland, then when that failed, helping us with transport to the city center and where to go and what to do. Arriving at the hotel, the staff helped immensely with finding ways around being car-less, to the extent of making bus reservations for us to our next city, Rotorua.
Yesterday, after the messy morning, we had lunch in the village of Devonport and met up with a couple of opera singers who sing all over the world and run tours out of NZ. John tried kumara and pumpkin salad for lunch at the Makuta Restaurant, which was beautifully done. Kumara is a local sweet potato, and the pumpkins are unlike anything in North America. Ben had a lovely clam chowder but totally unlike a Boston version. The barista, Brian, made a Ben a cappuccino, with the suitable texturing and artistic top. The name of the restaurant derives from the medium-shaded wood of which the tables are made.

The weather is quite changeable. Right now, as we write this, it is pouring with rain, but the sun will come out in time for us to enjoy the day in downtown Auckland. It's just across the bay on a ferry, with fares provided by the hotel. They also run a van to take us places on the north shore, including Devonport where we lunched yesterday.

Nearly missed our connection in LA, but we made it by racing through the parking lot from Terminal 6 to Terminal 2 with less than an hour to get boarding passes, make the terminal transition, and go through security a second time. Flight to Enzed was uneventful, though long. United had screwed up. We were late leaving Washington, the pilot made up most of the time, and then we hung around on the plane for over 20 minutes waiting for a skyway to let us off! A lot of snorting passengers. Clearly the company needs better team management at LAX.

Being car-less, our itinerary has taken some changing, too. We will do everything by bus, though we will not make it to the Waitomo Caves and the glow-wrorms, all by Inter-city bus which should be really fun since John DOESN'T HAVE TO DRIVE! Ever -- till we get home!

Ben fine, though developing a bit of laryngitis. We managed about four to five hours sleep on the plane so last night we ordered Indian takeout from, get this: Bolliwood Indian Restaurant. It arrived about 7, and we enjoyed our paneer, our lamb curry and our pakura shrimp. We went a good way toward finishing a fruity Waipara Chardonnay and collapsed.

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.