Lost in Provence

Hello from Ireland, where the hills were green and rolling and the beer was brown and flowing! We spent ten glorious days there with our best friends from Chicago, Ed and Cindy, plus his parents and her parents. There were four nights in Dublin, two in Athlone and one each in Bunratty, Kilarney and Kinsale.

We saw a lot for just ten days. St. Patrick's, Dublinia, the Dublin Writers' Museum (guess whose idea that was!) the Guinness brewery, the Jameson distillery, the Cliffs of Moher, All Wee Cave, the beach on the Dingle penninsula, Bunratty Castle, the Bram Stoker tour, the Gravedigger's Pub, The Locke Distillery, Bunratty Castle, Fork Park, Trallee Rose Garden, Conmacnoise and The Burren. And I'm sure I'm forgetting something. 

So, as you can see, Ed kept us on a tight but fun-filled schedule. He's the alpha wolf of this travel pack and always plans where we'll go and what we'll see. And since he has yet to have a bad idea, we'd follow him anywhere. Clever Ed rented a mini-bus with a driver to take us all over the country, avoiding the need to have a designated driver and providing us the opportunity to watch the countryside roll by while drinking beer and playing cards. He tried to incorporate a penalty shot of whiskey into our Euchre game, but it turned out that alcohol just improved my and Cindy's card-playing abilities. Cindy, let's Irish-up our card games from now on.

We heard some traditional Irish music, though it was harder to find than we thought it would be. The first pub advertising authentic Irish music was playing The Eagles. The second, Billy Joel. I can't remember what the music was at the third pub, but it wasn't traditional or Irish, and at this point I would have given them credit if it had been U2. We drank pints in Dublin's oldest pub, Ireland's oldest pub and Ireland's smallest pub. We also drank pints in several pubs that I thought should be nominated for Ireland's hottest pub (the Irish clearly prefer an all-in-one pub/sauna experience), but I don't know if that's a category they track. All and all, before the first weekend was out, the trip had turned into such a pub crawl that Ed Sr. quipped, "So far, we've seen more pubs than sunshine!" Ed Jr. replied, "You sound shocked and disappointed. I'm neither."

Ed's mother, Bunny, tracked down some Irish relatives and we spent a day visiting with them (including the museum her cousin owns and runs!), even getting our whole group invited for tea, which featured homemade scones and an apple pie that Ed didn't stop raving about the whole rest of the trip. We then spent what probably seemed like a greater part of the afternoon than it actually was trying to track down a woman who is supposedly the best friend of one of Bunny's friends in the States. I say "supposedly" because she was reputed to work at the post office in a town that turned out not to have a post office when we got there. Also, her name was Joan Cunningham. Joanie Cunningham? "Who's your friend, mom, the Fonz?" Ed asked. We never found her. Must have been some of that famous blarney we kept hearing about.

Other notable stops included the stunning Bunratty Castle and the sublime Kilarney Lake, which is hands-down the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life. And naturally, we visited the Guinness brewery. The tour is very cleverly arranged, taking you up floor by floor, each one encircling the pint-glass shaped space in the center of the building. The tour ends with a glass-windowed bar on the top floor that features 360 degree views of Dublin, but knowing their customer base, the Guinness people don't make you wait until the seventh floor for a beer. There's a tasting room on the third floor, which is brilliant, because you can only absorb about three floors' worth of information about Guinness before wanting to drink one pretty badly.

Johann installed me at a table in the corner of the tasting room and went to get us some free samples. Then he went back for seconds, but this time on the far left side of the bar. "Are these different than the ones at the other end?" He asked the bartender. "No," she replied. "I better verify that," he said, helping himself to two more glasses. When those were gone, he tried his original source again, but got a strange look as he grabbed two more. I tell you, there's nothing worse than judgmental free-sample bartenders.

We took a tour of the Jameson distillery, too, which I highly recommend. Ed was one of the lucky few chosen to do a taste-test with Jameson vs. Scotch and American whiskey, after which he received a diploma certifying him as a graduate of the Jameson whiskey-tasting school. When we went back to the distillery the second weekend, we enjoyed an evening featuring a four-course dinner and traditional Irish music and dancing. Ed took the tour again. I think he has a master's degree in whiskey tasting now.

There's so much more to say about Ireland, but I'm already packing our suitcases again. We're going to a family wedding in France's Champagne region and will be back next week with more stories and photos. Slainte!

Greetings from the Côte d'Azur, where we spent a wonderful week with my parents. I'm afraid that I don't have a lot to report from this trip. We may have set a new world record for lolling about, but quite frankly, I'm feeling too lazy to submit our achievement to the Guinness book people. That sounds like an awful lot of work. I suppose it's only fitting that the world's laziest people would lack the ambition to claim the fame.

We stayed in the Mercure Thalassotherapie hotel, a gorgeous location on the port with an indoor and outdoor pool, spa, restaurant and private beach. We didn't do much sightseeing, but rather spent our time toes-up in the sea, lounging on the beach, lazing by the pool, lunching in the sun or taking walks along the port (inspiring some serious sailboat envy) to scout out potential restaurants at which to eat dinner. We also did a little shopping, which is always nice, and I even got treated to a massage and facial at the hotel's spa, spoiled thing that I am (my parents are so great).

Johann and I hosted a cocktail hour on our balcony overlooking the sea every night that featured Champagne, snacks and card games brought from home, including "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Card Game," which my mother won easily, being a devotee of Fox News's nightly "terror" segment. She knows how to handle a vehicle that has come into contact with a downed power line, how to respond to an asthma attack and how to tell if a shark is going to attack you. She's your girl in any kind of emergency.

Johann was better at outdoorsy scenarios, like avalanches, driving through volcanic ash and avoiding being swept out to sea; while my father knew how to detect signs that your hotel room is bugged, how to deal with an angry mob throwing a molotov cocktail into your car and how to avoid offending your hosts when invited to dinner in Zambia, resurfacing my childhood suspicion that the engineer thing is a cover for his real life as an international spy. As for me, I got this one right (pictured, the answer is A) plus the ones about how to hotwire a car and how to take a straight punch to the face. I'm not sure what to make of that, but quite frankly, I'm feeling too relaxed to be very concerned about it. It's just a game, not a Rorschach test, right?

We also played Gin, and it's worth noting that playing Gin while drinking Champagne does funny things to you. When it was my mother's turn to deal, she said, "You know, it's hard to count to five four times in a row." We all laughed like crazy. But then we all admitted that she was dead right. When counting started to get difficult, we knew it was time to stop drinking and go out to dinner.

Anyway, it was wonderful and we all returned to Cadenet feeling fantastic. Well, fantastic aside from the fact that I have the sense that I'm detoxing from all the rich food and cocktails. My body is coming down from all the seafood in creamy sauces and Bandol rosé and it's crashing hard. I wonder if taking a bath in the organic bath salts the spa gave me will help. Mineral water? Tea? Advil? I think I'll call my mother. She'll know.

By popular (sort of) demand, below is a self-portrait taken with my camera phone alongside the portrait I had drawn in Montmartre. As I said, I don't know who that girl is in the drawing, but she sure is pretty. And it's certainly not me. Still fun, though.

 

Ah, Paris. There really is nothing quite like Paris in the springtime. Our trip started well, with first class seats on the TGV. Johann has some mad skills when it comes to booking transportation and because he booked so far in advance, he managed to get round trip tickets in first class for only €80, which is about half of what we would have paid for coach if he had taken his time buying the tickets.

Our hotel was an old haunt, the place we stayed the first time we went to Paris together, eleven years ago. They'd renovated since then and it was more comfortable and attractive than last time, and not much more expensive. If you stay at the Hotel Devillas, make sure to ask for a room facing the courtyard, rather than one overlooking the noisy street, and as always, the quietest rooms are the ones far rom the elevator. We like this hotel because there are lots of restaurants nearby and the metro stop (St. Marcel) is just a half block from the front door of the hotel.

We went separate ways in the afternoon, as Johann insisted that the trip to the hall of records to search for old documents relating to his grandfather's activities in the French Resistance was a one-man job. And since I hate to be the second man on a one-man job, I went shopping. I went to the Marais because I had been told about a shop called "Thanksgiving" that sells American products not found anywhere else in France. Sure enough, It was wall-to-wall with barbeque sauce, Pop Tarts, Campbell's soup, Oreos, tabasco sauce, Kraft macaroni and chesse, and much, much more. I wished I had brought a larger suitcase.

Then I browsed the thrift stores on rue St. Paul, which were so unbelievably fabulous that I didn't stop smiling the entire time. Every corner of these shops was packed with crazy bits of nostalgia and there was one store that I wished I could just buy outright and take the whole thing home with me. Johann and I met up for drinks at a Scottish pub in the area and then went to a gorgeous Thai restaurant for dinner.

The next day, we headed for Montmartre, where we visited Sacre Coeur and browsed the art in the square. I even got my portrait drawn, which is a tradition, and many Paris visitors cherish their drawings as a favorite memory of their visit to the city of light. It seems that it's also a tradition for the artists to flatter the hell out of you with their drawings, since what I ended up with was not a portrait of me, but rather a very pretty woman with vaguely the same hairstyle as me. We had lunch at a tiny little family-run restaurant there and then went to the Dali museum and took a look at Montmartre's vineyard. Following that, we went to the Museum of Montmartre, which was disappointingly filled with a Jean Marais exhibit, leaving only one room of the permanent collection on display. Oh, well. This just gives us a reason to go back.

Then we headed over to St. Germain and had a little treat at La Durée, the world-famous fancy-sweet shop. I ordered the Ispahron, which is a strawberry macaroon filled with lychee cherries and rose cream surrounded by a ring of raspberries and topped with a rose petal. Need I even say that it was divine? Then we had a drink at a restaurant with a view of the infamous Café de Flore, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir used to write. Why not a drink at Café de Flore? Apparently, if famous people used to hang out at your café, you can charge whatever you want for a drink. And eighteen euros for two beers was just not going to happen. Please.

Then we took a tour of the Seine on the Bateaubus, which is one of Paris's lesser known gems, in my opinion. It's a combination of a tour and a water taxi, with stops at Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre... It's everywhere you want to be. And for a flat rate, you can hop on and off again as many times as you want in a day and spend the same amount as you would have for metro tickets.

Saturday was slightly less magical, as we got rained on and schlepped all over town only to find that two of the museums we had planned to visit that day were unceremoniously closed due to changing collections. Seems that that's information that might have been useful on their web sites. Anyway, the Picasso museum was open as planned and we used the bad weather as an excuse to duck into Galleries Lafayette and do a little shopping afterward. And as a gesture of kindness toward the man who had brought me to Paris, I didn't even buy anything for myself.

The following morning we snuck in a visit to the free museum in the Petit Palais, an impressive collection including sculptures, paintings and objets d'art. We had a quick lunch at the museum's café, then headed back to our hotel, where we wrote out postcards over coffee at the café next door before hopping a taxi back to the train station. On the way home, we started making our to-do list for next spring's trip to Paris.

I broke another one of my policies recently. You see, I have a strict policy against buying bottled water. Why? First of all, the expense is ridiculous. The cost of one American's average daily bottled water consumption over the course of a year could supply an entire Kenyan family with drinking water for TEN years. The United Nations estimates that if given just 1/6th of the money spent on bottled water for one year, $15 billion, they could cut in half the number of people in the world without access to clean water.

And then there's this: Bottles used to package water take more than 1,000 years to bio-degrade and if incinerated, they produce toxic fumes. It's estimated that more than 80% of all single-use water bottles used in the U.S. aren't recycled and simply become trash. Additionally, it takes more than 1.5 million barrels of oil to meet the demand of U.S. water bottle manufacturing. And that doesn't even count the fossil fuel and emissions costs of greenhouse gases needed to transport the final product to market.

So Evian may be as pure and crisp as an alpine stream, but to me it tastes like waste and greed.

Right about now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, I've been to your house and there was all kinds of bottled water in the fridge." Nope. That was tap water in an Evian bottle. Gotcha! So now you're probably thinking, "Well, why did you have the Evian bottles in the first place, then, little miss smarty-pants?" Well, when you live in a country where the power lines are still quaintly strung from poles instead of buried safely underground, trees tend to fall on the lines during storms and your power gets cut. You'd be surprised how often this happens, actually. Anyway, when the power gets cut, the water pump no longer works and you can find yourself without water for up to two days. So it's a good idea to have some emergency water on hand for washing, brushing your teeth, not dehydrating, etc. And when the bottles are empty, we fill them up with tap water and use them to bring water to the gym, to the beach and on picnics and such.

Anyway, as you can see, I have strong feelings on the water issue and was disappointed in myself for buying eight bottles of it the other day. Why did I do it? I'm a little ashamed to say. Psychiatrists say that 90 percent of human behavior is motivated by sex, but I don't find that to be the case. I'd say that the majority of my behavior is driven by:

1. A desire to be liked (just by some people, not everyone)

2. A desire to be left alone (again, just by some people, not everyone)

3. Advertising

4. Guilt

5. Spite

My bottled water purchases fell into that last category.

You see, we once had a houseguest who made a comment about how few brands of bottled water there were in France. We told him that, on the contrary, the number of different brands of French bottled water was nearly overwhelming and that the bottled water aisle at the grocery store takes up more room than any other section except for wine. He must not have believed us, though, because he mentioned our nation's sad lack of brand name water several more times over the course of his visit.

So, with another visit from this friend coming up, we decided that, as a joke, we'd buy a bunch of bottled water in a bunch of different brands, and present each bottle as if it were wine. This St. Georges eau de source was bottled in Corsica and has a clear, watery taste with topnotes of total nothingness. Can I pour you a glass? We thought this gag would illustrate France's dominance in the bottled water industry (spite) and also get a laugh out of our friend. And we sort of had to buy some bottled water for the guy anyway, since he doesn't trust tap water and we try to do all we can to make our guests feel at home, even when it means having to break a policy. 

But his trip got canceled at the last minute, so now we're stuck with a bunch of bottled water that doesn't even taste as good as the stuff from our tap (which is from a well fed by a subterranean spring). So here's what I'm going to do: Because the water/wine comparison isn't really all that far-fetched and because each brand of water really does have its own distinctive taste, I'm going to taste-test each one (as the occasion to open a bottle presents itself) and write a review of it here on my blog. I'm also going to multiply the total cost of this water by five and donate the amount to The Water Project, a charity dedicated to bringing clean water to developing nations (see behavior motivation #4).

Want to do the same? Click here: www.thewaterproject.org

  

Hello, friends! I just wanted to make you aware of this French Internet scam that has been making the rounds and even showing up in the mailboxes of non-French-speakers. For those of you who aren't fluent in French, I have translated the e-mail below. Sure, it's not a word-for-word translation, but sometimes you have to read between the lines of these things:

THE ENGLISH VERSION:

Dear client,
It looks like there may have been some fraudulent activity on your Crédit Mutuel card. Please get out your card and click on the link below, where we will ask you to identify yourself and then take your card number and go on a shopping spree here in Nigeria, as much as such a thing is possible in Nigeria, where there's no Saks Fifth Avenue outlet store, no Pottery Barn, not even a Dairy Queen, due to the inadequate national infrastructure provided by our corrupt leaders.
 
However, Nigeria has one of the highest population growth and fertility rates in the world, and according to what the Pope has been saying while he's here on the continent, we all need to stop using condoms or we will go to hell, which we have heard is even worse than Lagos. I shudder to think.
 
So, you see, we really need your money to support our growing families while we focus on plotting to overthrow the existing government by rigging the next election and putting someone in office who will finally bring the Dairy Queen franchise to our country. I hope your credit limit is high enough for that. It's really hot here, and I'm just dying for a Snickers Blizzard.
 
Love and kisses,
Crédit Mutuel

 

THE FRENCH VERSION:

Bonjour cher client,
Le departement thechnique du Crédit Mutuel a enregistre des cas d’utilisation potentiellement frauduleuse de votre carte des cle personel. Pour votre sécurité votre compte a était bloqué. Nous nous excusons pour la gêne occasionnelle.

Pour réactiver votre compte suivre les instruction suivante
 
1. Munissez vous de votre carte des cle personel
2. Identifier vous ici.
3. Suivez les instruction sur la page

Votre compte a été bloqué. Il continuera а être bloqué tant que ces condition ne sont pas rempli.

Cordialement
le Crédit Mutuel

Yesterday we spent one of those glorious afternoons having brunch in the sun that is the the stuff of dreams: Good friends, lovely food, beautifully-behaved children and weather that we'd been pining for all these long, chilly months. It was golden, shining perfection. And with the 13-bedroom mansion and expertly tended grounds that our friends are caretakers for as a backdrop, the whole scene was straight out of a Slim Aarons photograph.

Our brunch started with Champagne and featured quiche, fougasse (flat bread with either chevre or ham), fruit salad, coffee cake, banana bread and my sister's sort-of-secret recipe for "party potatoes." We also enjoyed some Obama blend coffee that Liz had been sent from the States. It tasted like hope and change. Delicious.

 

 

After lunch, Wil somehow found the energy to play with the kids on the trampoline and was rewarded for his fortitude by all three children ganging up on him and bouncing the poor man senseless. Undaunted, he next piled them into the rowboat and took them for a little tour of the pond (though I noticed that he made them do all the rowing). I'm not sure who had more fun, those on the island throwing the plastic duck decoys for the dog to retrieve, or the dog himself. Or maybe it was the rest of us laughing hysterically and taking pictures on the shore.

The fun continuted: Our hostess loaded her two boys, Hugo and Emerson, and her two houseguests, Wil and Liz, into their classic Deux Chevaux and drove the gang down the road to inspect Patrick's beehives (in addition to caretaking, Patrick makes the sweetest honey in Provence). Johann and Patrick went tromping through the woods up past the tennis court in search of wild olive trees, while little Celeste and I took a walk in the woods ourselves, with my tiny tour guide showing me her favorite places, including the tree she likes to sit in because she feels like she's in the palm of its hand.

Please check out the rest of the pictures of this perfect day that is the reason we all love living here. They're at right under "Photos."

It may be a little hard to see, given that the lettering is black on black (though what else would you expect from such an insolent item of clothing?) but this French child is wearing a hoodie that says "Fuck the rules." This kid, who was EIGHT YEARS OLD, posed for the photo with the permission of his parents, who seemed amused by the fact that English-speakers found the boy's sweatshirt shocking enough to take a photo of.

While I've seen enough of this sort of thing not to actually be shocked by it anymore, I'm still bewildered by the phenomenon. I mean, I understand that the parents don't really understand exactly what the shirt says and are just looking for something that zips up and will keep the kid's head dry if it rains a little, but what about the manufacturers? The existence of this garment means that at a children's clothing company somewhere, some executives got together and brainstormed ideas for a new line of sportswear for under-tens. And THIS is what they came up with! It makes you wonder what kind of ideas got rejected for being too inappropriate.

Anyway, here is my message to those clothing company execs: Encouraging lawlessness amongst a demographic whose rules include single-digit bedtimes, candy restrictions and limits on the amount of time spent playing video games may seem harmless enough, but today's primary school rebels are tomorrow's teen shoplifters. And what will happen to your profits then? Remember, when it comes to anarchy, you must be this tall to ride that ride.

One thing that French people who have visited the States always remark on is the food. "The portions are enormous." They say. "No wonder obesity is such a problem!" They cry. And I'll admit it, they have a point. The last time I was home I went out to dinner with my family and every one of us ordered a steak that was so huge it took up the entire plate, making it necessary for the baked potato with butter and sour cream that came with it to be served on a separate dish. We may have even chosen onion rings as our choice of "vegetable." So I get it. Really, I do.*

But here's the thing, France. You're not entirely blameless when it comes to ridiculously indulgent and calorific meals. The pictures shown here were taken at the grocery store, where one is seriously hard-pressed to find anything in the cereal aisle that doesn't have chocolate in it. A good three-fourths of the cereal has chocolate in it. Maybe even more than that. And I'm not just talking about chocolate flavored stuff, like Cocoa Puffs or Count Chocula or something. No, there are actual chunks of chocolate, lots of it, in most of these cereals. Pour yourself a bowl of whatever cereal you normally eat and then throw ten or so Mars Bars in there and you'll get the general idea.

And it's clear from the packaging that this cereal isn't all for children, which would be a sad but plausible excuse for such sugar-saturated breakfast food. Look at that picture of Cruesli. And Country Crisp! Even Baby Boomer favorite All Bran is chock-full of chocolate. Don't even get me started on Trésor, which would seem like a product for kids in that it's hard to imagine anyone else eating a "cereal" that is essentially liquid chocolate with a thin layer of something crunchy over it, but as anyone who ate cereal as a kid knows, the lack of a manic cartoon animal mascot on the box clearly identifies it as "big people food."

In a way, identifying this dietary weakness of the French, who somehow manage to eat so well and stay so thin, makes me feel better about myself. These chic, svelte people who sometimes look down their noses at American cuisine are secretly shoveling in bowls full of granola peppered with dark chocolate and cappuccino-flavored candy every morning. The only difference is that they're hiding their shame from the world by choosing to eat badly at breakfast and in the privacy of their own kitchens rather than out in public like us Americans. Well, I'm on to you, France. Next I'll discover how you manage to do this and stay so fit.  

 

 

 

* I gained five pounds during that three-week trip. But I'm still going back to that restaurant immediately the next time I'm in town.

Here are a few random pictures from my trip to the grocery store yesterday. Yes, that's lingeré there. What can I say? It's France. But do me a favor... Scroll down to the picture of the boxes of "Zoop's" cookies. Start at the bottom. The cookies with the picture of a lion on the box have a lion on them. The cookies with the picture of a pirate on the box have a pirate on them. The cookies with the picture of a kid and his big red school bag have a picture of...? What IS that?