Saturday Departure

The time's coming. We've got our tickets, we've got lodging set in Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Trogir, and we've got a basic plan.

Man am I looking forward to this.

Croatia!

Tickets in hand. We're headed to Croatia, via Amsterdam, at the end of March.

We'll spend a night in Amsterdam on the way over, then 10 days in Croatia, mostly in Dubrovnik and Hvar, and another 3 days in Amsterdam at the end.

We'll be taking lots of pictures.

Long Weekend in Portland

For Memorial Day weekend, to celebrate Cathy's graduation from graduate school, we're headed to Portland, OR, for 5 days of food and urban wandering. Check back for pictures and reports.

Guanajuato City, Guanajuato, Hotel San Diego

Yesterday, Friday, late in the afternoon, Derek, Lupita, Tomas, Cathy, and I headed out from San Miguel, me and the wife saying goodbye to the city for the time being, and headed out to Guanajuato City. It was about an hour and a half drive across the arid rolling plains and hills and over the San Rafael (??) mountains into Guanajuato City.

The skies darkened along the way, so we didn't get to see our entry into the city, but the change in terrain was dramatic as we climbed to this former (or still) mining town. The city sits in a bowl of sorts, surrounded by ridge and peak, and to enter you drive through a series of tunnels, rather than surmount a pass and descend in. A very cool drive in.

We got a room at the Hotel San Diego, right on the Plaza de Union, one of the city's main squares. That night we walked out and had dinner in a restaurant on the square, me having chicken-chipotle something and Cathy having the specialty enchiladas of the region with carrots and potatoes. Very good.

We walked around the old city's cobbled streets after dinner, looking around and taking it in. It was quite lively, apparently a hotspot for students on this night.

This morning we started with coffee and huevos at a small place called La Truca, I think. Then we hit the pavers to take in the city.

We visited the museum of the house of Diego Rivera, his old residence now preserved as a museum and gallery. Many paintings and photos lined the walls, but the highlight was surely the mural on the main room of the top floor recounting the history of Mexico. This was one of those paintings that you could stare at for hours, and not just because of its size.

We left there and went to an indoor market in the former train station. Then we had a small lunch and a couple beers, walked around some more, had some ice cream, and went to the funicular. We rode this glass elevator up to the highpoint of the city where we got a fantastic view of the town and surrounding hillsides.

From there we headed back to the Plaza de Union and hit a restaurant for some tacos and beer. We'd cap this great afternoon with a nap before dinner. And what a dinner--I had a creamy poblano soup that was perhaps the tastiest thing I'd had this whole trip.

Derek and I would go out this night for a few beers, and stay out too late as usual. My 2am bedtime didn't mesh so well with my 4:30 departure for the airport, but what else is there to do on a plane but sleep?

All in all a fantastic, relaxing, very nice vacation. Great food, wonderful people, and a pace that I could adapt to pretty easily. It'll be hard to give up taking a nap every afternoon.

San Miguel, Casita

1.16.08

Once again I sit and enjoy the view of San Miguel from the rooftop patio of 59 Correo. I just can't get enough of this spot. A cold Modelo, a notebook, and the setting sun make for a fine transition to evening.

Yesterday, Tuesday, Cathy and I went to the big market, El Mercado de Martes, to wander and shop and eat. And boy did we. This place had everything, from acres of clothes and shoes to mounds of dried and fresh chiles to dubious electronics to stall after stall of fresh-made street food. That was the big attraction for me--though I did leave with a pair of black boots, a red cowboy shirt, and a couple molcajetes.

But mostly we ate. Sopes con picadillo, potatoes, and carrots; tacos de bistec in flour tortillas; tacos al pastor with cilantro, pineapple, and onion on fresh corn tortillas; aguas frescas; fresh salsas on every table; and that was only what we were able to get to.

After the market we took a cab down to the botanical garden, or the Charco, to walk among the cacti. This is an impressive place, partly for the size and array of the cacti and succulents that cover the grounds, and partly due to the fact that they were able to protect this much space. Development is rampant in the surrounding area, and the reservoir itself is apparently the recipient of much unfiltered sewage from said developments, but the hillsides are still gorgeous and the body of water still host to hundreds or even thousands of migratory water birds.


Tonight Cathy and I head out for a big fancy dinner. We intend to go to some Spanish restaurant, Gastronomica or some such, but we end up instead at a French Bistro where we have an oustanding meal. She has the fillet, which is huge and perfectly cooked, with steamed spinach and vegetables and potatoes. I have chicken crepes gratin, baked in a clay dish to cheese-crispy perfection, a French version of chicken and dumplings that I fall in love with.

San Miguel, El Jardin again

1.14.08

Espresso (expresso!) recharge after a day of pounding the cobbles. We walked up up and up through the Callejon de Churro, up to the top for a view down the other side. Stone stairway upon stone stairway, the route would up past one grand hacienda after another. That's where the richies live. The views are stunning up there.

Before the climb began, we wandered through El Parque de Benito Juarez, part of it half demolished and under construction, the rest impeccably groomed and maintained, a riot of green even in the non-growing December season. I could only imagine what the place would be like in the middle of the spring or summer, all hacienda walls crawling with flowered vines and hovered over by hummingbirds. Under cloudy skies and with the gentlest of breeze blowing, it was a most pleasant stroll, a great way to kill a day.

That's the theme here: spending the time. We are agenda free, schedule less. We aim to relax, and that's just what we do. We wake when we feel like it, often with the scratching at the casita door by Emma the half-cataracted cocker spaniel. She comes in and hangs out while I make a cup of coffee and read a story by Dave Eggers or Michael Chabon and Cathy finishes off her sleep.

Then we go out for coffee and maybe some breakfast. We look at art, we look at churches, we sit on benches and watch people. We eat delicious Mexican food and we hang out. Around 4 or so I take a nap. Every day. Then we hit the roof for bubbly pink wine or beer and sunset. This is a routine I could live with.

At the top of the hill, off the sidewalk and back on the road, we stopped at a little storefront offering Tortas y Jugas. After much deliberation, C had the quesadillas and I the torta Argentina, a bolillo with chorizo, queso, y milanesa, a pounded and pan-cooked pork loin, I believe. Not so sure, but that's what it tasted like. Delicious. Absolutely delicious.

Then, of course, it was back to the casita for a nap. And so on.

San Miguel, El Jardin

1.11.08

The overnight travel was long. Gruelling in the way that medium-tough tasks can be when you're too tired to be efficient or all there. LAX is a nightmare of a place, huge lines, rude people, an all but total lack of signage. Terrible. But we got through and out and had an uneventful flight to Leon. I had a row of 3 seats to myself, and Cathy got stuck by a window inside a giant of a mom and her sneezy son who slept all over her.

The shuttle into San Miguel was also easy. My first ever experience of someone waiting outside the gate in an airport holding a sign with my name on it. It took us all the way to the hacienda on Correo in San Miguel. High wooden double doors press up against the narrow sidewalk lining the cobblestone street. Katie, the intern for our friend Derek's company, opened the huge wooden gate to us and led us inside. Hacienda indeed.

Inside the gate, an arched entryway holds the small Renault of the absent owners. Narrow double wooden doors on the left lead into the main house. Straight back, a bricked path between the house and the wall opposite, covered in planters whose donkey eared cedum cascade to the ground, leads through a beautiful lush garden, past a small man-made pond, to an open area of the courtyard, fronting the casita. It's a two-story structure with an iron spiral staircase leading to a set of double doors on the second floor.

Upstairs, inside, the quarters are small, simple, and immaculate. Floor and ceiling are tiled and bricked, the ceiling occasionally giving way to a thick carved glass brick serving as skylight. Bedroom, kitchen/dining area, bathroom. We'd be comfortable there for the week.


After a nap, I grabbed a Modelo and headed for the roof of the main house. Derek would arrive soon and I needed to let him in. The view up top was amazing, looking out over the rolling terrain of other rooftops of the city. Like this one, most have some sort of patio and seating and garden on the roof. In the distance, beyond the numerous church domes and spores, the city gives way to arid plans and then to hills jutting up from the valley floor. The bright colors of the buildings sit in contrast to the hazy, cloud-streaked sky and the dim hills beyond.

It's nice to be somewhere again. It's been too long since I last left the US, and even though I've not gone too far, it feels good to be gone.

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico

We had this opportunity. Our friend Derek was to be house-sitting for one Richard Haas, at 59 Correo, in San Miguel de Allende. The house, or hacienda--or, more accurately, Haascienda, as the address plate reads--has in the back of its garden a casita, and the top floor was offered to us for a vacation residence.

We accepted.

So, on January 11th, we flew out of Boise on an evening flight for LAX. We'd spend 4 hours there before catching an overnighter to Leon, in the state of Guanajuato. From there, an hour and a half shuttle ride would bring us to the casita, where we'd spend a relaxing week away from winter.

LAX is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Unruly, disorganized, loud, rude, filled with an endless series of the longest lines imaginable, it amazes me that this place doesn't just fall in on itself. It took us a while to get through, but we did, and eventually we made it to Mexico.

We've got loads of pictures, and they'll be up soon, along with the rest of the account of this trip. It was a pretty fantastic place, and we had a great time. More later.

NYC October 07

Tuesday, 10.10.07

Our last day in the city. It was hard to believe it was already time to go home.

After coffee we walked through Inwood and to the Cloisters, the medieval arm of the Met, where Michael worked as the librarian. It was a lovely walk, as the scenery changed quickly from the Little-Dominican-area of Inwood to a wooded park and on to thick wooded hills and a quiet, leafy walk uphill to the Cloisters. The building was gorgeous, castle-style, built early in the century.

Inside, Michael showed us the library, which is a wonderful, quiet, oak-paneled room filled with volumes of books aligned neatly under high ceilings. Talk about a great place to spend your days.

We walked the grounds then, looking first at the art and pieces of architecture, then moving on to the Unicorn Tapestries, probably the most famous works in the place. They were impressive, more for their age than anything, and I have to admit they made me feel sad. They depict a typical human reaction to the strange or fantastic: Hunt it down and kill it.

After that we made our way out to the gardens, which were beautifully laid out and kept.

From there we made our way back up the hill toward H&Ms apartment. In lieu of a great neighborhood deli, we found ourselves back at Grandpa's, where C got manicotti and I got a slice of pepperoni and a sausage roll. Mmmmm-MM! Great food.

We bought some flowers for the apartment and went back up to pack. Then it was off to the airport and so long to NYC. As it ended up, we would be spending the night in Denver as we sat on the tarmac at Laguardia for about 3.5 hours before being allowed to take off. But that's another (unpleasant) story.

As for NYC, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and can't wait to go back, but I have to admit it made me feel no small amount of regret. I can still see the application packet from NYU that I filled out for grad school before being offered an assistantship and teaching job at Eastern Illinois U, which would pay for my school and get me good experience, but would also keep me confined to the cornfields and culture of central Illinois. I know: Regrets do me no good. But I felt them, and still feel them, about missing my chance to spend some of my formative years in this amazing place.

But I'll be back.

NYC October 07

Monday, 10.9.07

After some days of fairly nonstop activity and interaction, a body--and a mind--need a break. So on Monday I made it a point to haul myself out of bed early, get a cup of coffee made, and grab a seat at the table with a good book to chill out and enjoy the silence. So I did, enjoying the stillness and aloneness with a view out the window onto 207th St.

When everyone else got up about an hour later, we tore into the chocolate bobka and had more coffee and fruit. We were headed to the Museum of Modern Art for a quick tour of their greater paintings. With a $20 admission, the only reason we could make a quick tour of it was because both Heidi and Michael work for the Met, which meant we got in free. Woohoo! Therefore we could skip to the 5th and 6th floors, breeze around the Pollacks and the Picassos, the Miros and Monets, the Klimts and the deKoonings, spending two hours before bolting for lunch without feeling bad.

It was a great rush tour, too, filling me with that unbelieving awe I feel at the Chicago Art Institute, being in the presence of such masterworks as you see so often that you become desensitized to their actual physical existence.

So, from there we were making our way toward the West Village, and we came upon the Columbus Day Parade on the way to the subway. I watched while Cathy ran into a store to shop for boots.

When we got to the West Village, we walked around for a while looking for our next meal when we came across the Crumpler store. We went in, Cathy bought a bag, and then we headed across the block to an Italian joint for a snack. We got mussels in a fennel cream sauce with a salad of prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, and arugula, with a glass of white wine each.

Next up, Bleeker Street Records. Unfortunately, the only really remarkable thing about the store was the gargantuanly fat cat they had patrolling the aisles. I think I blew my wad at Other Music a couple days previous, so I actually left without buying anything. More shopping led us to a coffee shop where we got a raspberry mousse and a couple coffees. We walked some more, shopped some more, and walked some more.


Eventually we made our way to a Thai place for dinner, and here we'd have the first bad meal of our trip. Bland Chineseish food passing itself off as Thai was the order of the day at and it's not worth saying more than that.

We'd intended to see some jazz this night, but a lackluster lineups at the joints in the East Village, a sold-out door at the Vanguard, and tired tired feet won out, and we hit the subway to make our way home.

NYC October 07

Sunday, 10.8.07

Finding our way home from Randall's Island late on Saturday night took a toll. So we were slow to rise come Sunday morning. We were slated to meet Cathy's friend Christina, who she's known since high school, and her husband Thomas, at Barney Greengrass' deli on the upper west side.

They were waiting on the sidewalk when we arrived, and it was only a minute before we got our table. Chris is a violinist who plays in a pretty amazing array of Broadway productions and other gigs of note (she was trying out for the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show a couple days after we saw her) and Thomas is owner of the Gitterman Gallery on East 75th. I'd never met either of them before, and to be honest I didn't know what to expect.

Immediately, though, any apprehension or anxiety was laid to rest. Wonderful people they are, of course, and we had a really nice time and an amazing breakfast. I had the everything bagel with sturgeon, which was out of this world, and I got to taste Cathy's salmon and eggs which were also fantastic. We even got to grab a chocolate bobka for Heidi, as it's her favorite.

After breakfast we walked around the neighborhood with C and T, into Central Park for a stroll around the grounds. What a stunning place. You hear about Central Park and what an amazing feat of greenspace preservation it is, but until you leave the noise and motion of the streets and disappear into the inner reaches of the park you just can't really understand what it means to have this park in the middle of this city. The 6-mile bike path, all the winding trails, The Rambles, Strawberry Fields, the contour and trees and rocks and endless little enclaves where you can truly find peace and quiet make up one of the most impressive parks I've seen.

We may not have seen the Statue of Liberty on this trip, but we did see the Dakota Building, an icon in its own right. And though I'm no big Beatles or Lennon fan, it was a pretty powerful thing to see that place and the tribute to the man right across the street in the park.

From the Park we went to pay a visit to Thomas' gallery, which was a lovely space on East 75th St. Besides having two bright and airy rooms for exhibits, as well as open hallways and small adjacent spaces for hanging photos, the building had a beautiful garden-courtyard out back, an asset that in this city I would imagine is pretty valuable.

After we took our leave of C and T, we walked on and did some shopping before stopping for coffee and a crepe at the Follow Me Cafe. Then, more shopping, before heading back toward the park for a rendezvous with Heidi and Michael and Harlan and Kristin at Strawberry Fields. We had a bit of a doughnut picnic, as H and M had paid a visit to the Donut Plant and were thoughtful enough to share their bounty with us.

After the picnic we headed toward the Columbia University area to find some dinner. We followed H&Ms recommendation and went to a small Ethiopian place near campus called Massawa, and the food was outstanding. This was my first restaurant experience with Ethiopian food, and it didn't disappoint. We shared a platter full of different items, all vegetarian, from lentils to sweet potatoes to all manner of other stuff, scooped up with pieces of spongy bread torn from one of the many rolls of it that came with dinner. No utensils. Great meal.

Cathy and I walked back through campus toward the subway, where we caught a train back up to Inwood for the night. On the way back to the apartment from the stop, we noticed a big gathering of guys outside the window of an open shop. Suddenly they erupted into yelling and movement, and what I thought was the start of a fight turned out to be a bunch of guys watching the Yankees try to pull one out against the Indians. No such luck, as we'd later find out, but it was entertaining to see groups of people gathered outside every window with a tv going the whole way home.

When we got back to the apartment, H&M were still up, so they put out a spread of cheese and pickles and salami and chocolate and bread and opened made some cocktails and we talked for a whole longer before retiring for the night. Quite the full and accomplished day.

NYC October 07

Saturday, 10.6.07

This was the day we'd planned around. The reason we'd booked the trip. Out on Randall's Island, a rock and roll show to beat all rock and roll shows would occupy us from afternoon til late in the night. The Arcade Fire headlined, with LCD Soundsystem, Blonde Redhead, Les Savy Fav, and Wild Light supporting.

The day started a bit slowly, as we took our time getting out of bed and going. Soon enough we were on the subway to Harlem, this time the 1, as the A shut down at midnight Friday for a weekend of maintenance. We'd planned to meet up with Harlan and Kristin (friends from Austin) and Cara and Jesper (friends from Boise now in Portland, Maine) at the M
&G Diner on 125th at Broadway. We'd heard this was a no-frills soul-food diner that Bill Clinton called one of his favorites, and we were excited.

The joint looked just like I thought it would: long and narrow, a formica counter running the distance, a jukebox on the near wall next to a table crammed into the window corner, chocolate cake on the counter, grease in the air. The staff, all middle-aged black women, were in scrubs. We grabbed seats at the counter and waited for the others to arrive. Harlan and Kristin got there first, and as both are vegetarians to differing degrees, this place didn't exactly excite them. She had milk, he had chocolate cake. Sheezus.

Cathy and I, on the other hand, went after it: Chicken and waffles, coffee for me and coke for her. Hell yeah. And man, the food was as good as the help was surly. Not 10 words passed between us and the waitresses, but that chicken, perfectly tender and juicy inside with a thin and crispy skin, and that waffle, all big and fat and fluffy and golden brown slightly hinting at cinnamon when you bit into it. Pure heaven.

Cara and Jesper showed up as we finished, and we all strolled down 125th St. toward the river and the Triborough Bridge. It was a long walk, weaving slowly along the sidewalk through the pedestrians and tourists and locals with their folding tables hawking incense and sandals and t-shirts and music and philosophy and anything else you might think of.

Harlan got his when a black man with long braids, dressed as some sort of space commander, flanked by three men dressed similarly, who had been conducting a nonstop stream of urgent and belligerent preaching about something, pointed into Harlan's face and announced that the white man was a bum and a vagabond.

Guess he told your ass, I said.

We walked on.

Many blocks later, we found the intersection we were after, and shortly we were on a bus headed over to the island. We were early, and that meant we had to wait around on the grass before standing and rushing to the front to wait packed together and standing, while other people who arrived later just strolled right in, but hey, we were early.

The show, though, would soon erase whatever we endured to get to it. Jump on over to the Range Life and read all about it.