from Nice: colors

So this is Nice. My Pierrerue of 07. What a difference.

Last June, I shut myself away from everything in the little village of Pierrerue, in the Languedoc. So little was it, that I had to hike for several miles to reach a grocer or a café.

This year, a friendly stranger at a chance meeting in La Rochelle said – you should go to Nice. And so this is where I am. To work, to think, and to look at colors. This is Matisse and Chagall land. An old city of constant sunshine and soft cream buildings. At least that’s my image of the place.

My train pulls into Nice in the evening. Last stop on a run through France’s Riviera – Cannes, Antibes, ticked off, minutes apart.



Antibes train station


I am here for a week and the small hotel is a lovely old thing. So… Nice-like. The garret room has a tiny balcony where I can sit with a glass of rosé late at night. At least that is what I think I am expected to do, for I find a chilled bottle in the room, waiting for me after dinner, along with fruit pates.



in the shadows of the evening, a balcony with a view


I had taken a quick walk to the shore – a half dozen blocks away. Nice at dusk. Is Nice nice? First impressions, first sightings. You tell me. I wanted a complicated French city – one with character. Nice looks to be just that.



evening beaches




evening cream




evening balcony


Dinner? I was directed to a cheap Provencal restaurant around the corner. Oh, it was the usual wonderful local fare. Baby artichoke salad, grilled fish, strawberry napoleon. And rosé. The colors. I am here for the colors. I think that part will be easy.



baby artichokes with shaved parmesan



fish over Provencal veggies



strawberry napoleon

from Paris: departures

Goodbyes, separations, departures, transitions -- I dislike all of them.

My daughter flies home on Wednesday and the only nice thing about it is that she will be rejoining others, who have been waiting patiently for her return.

Tuesday was spent on strolling, admiring (Paris. Foods. Stores. Architecture. Obviously.) and photo taking.

None of the photos are of the usual stuff. They are of faces rather than places. One is now on the sidebar of Ocean, the other – here you are, this is us, eating lunch.





She boards a plane, I board a train. Nine hours later she’ll be in Chicago, seven hours later, I’ll be in Nice. She’s got work to do, I’ve got work to do.

She wont post, but I will. From Nice.

from Paris: crossings

So there’s a left bank and a right bank. You know that. Basically, unless I’m giving a city tour or showing off how the right bank Tuileries Gardens are inferior to the left bank Luxembourg Gardens, I rarely venture over there.

But on this day, for a number of reasons, we crossed the river and spent several hours trying to get into the rhythm of that side of town.

I hardly used my camera (the little one; I am permanently mad at the malfunction of the big one). The Champs Elysees, which I had heard were people friendly again, seemed as soulless as ever. The stores as expensive, the cafés – pandering to some different species. I even saw men wearing ties and suits – a rare event back home, on the left side.

So there you have it, one photo of the crossing, one photo of a couple taking in (and I mean really taking in) the Louvre Pyramid, one of a young woman – perhaps longing to return to the left? And then it’s back to the safe spaces and places on the cool side of town, where we sustained ourselves with a lunch, a quick visit to a bookstore and soon after, with a dinner and then all was right (in the sense that it was left) with the world.

from Paris: breaks

A Sunday in Paris. A break from routine. And a broken camera.

We picnic at the Jardin Luxembourg. It’s cool still, but a Sunday in the park is beyond beautiful.

Food stores and markets stay open all morning, even as the rest of Paris shuts down for le week-end. So we shop. Cheese, baguette, tomatoes, berries, tarts. Spread on a bench with care.





A Frenchman pauses and tells us bon appétit! In travel, there is no pairing that is more approachable, more inviting of friendliness than the mother--grown-daughter combination. It’s as if it conjures up every good mother-child imagine out there. Good love. Strong bonds. Happy thoughts. It’s okay that my lover fails me. I, too, have a little one back home. Let me think about the summer ahead, building sandcastles and eating baguette sandwiches in the open air. My child is waiting for me. Life is good.

There are many small groups doing just this: pulling chairs close together to eat baguettes and salads.





It is a Sunday of roller blading again, as the skaters take over the city's boulevards. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I am, as before, enormously moved by this communal torrent of speeding humanity. My camera, however, decides right at this moment to mangle its insides. I don’t know this yet, but the speeding skater will be the last photo that will survive this day.





And it is unfortunate, because we spend a considerable amount of time studying (with me photographing) the wonders of the new Orangerie, the Right Bank parks and the Louvre buildings.

At the hotel, the transfer of photos to the computer fails after the first dozen or so. Corrupt images. What does that even mean? True, I have my second small camera, but suddenly I am distrustful of them all.

It has taken me years to learn to let go of frustration when technology stops functioning. When all emails get permanently erased. When the Internet sends weird error messages. When the computer does funny things that I do not understand. When precious photos get wiped off the camera and do not survive the transfer.

Things. Even cyberspace words and images are just things. It's a theft of sorts. Stored memories, wiped out. Eh! Just things.

Obviously I am writing hours later. Anger? What anger? I am in Paris.

In the evening, we pick a place that I found in a magazine here. It is one of the few that attempts a French rendition of Molecular Gastronomy. We visit the website and contemplate the various dishes and flavors and aromas.

And here’s the further strangeness to this day: we find the restaurant (easy enough), we sit down and we are handed menus. Conventional to the core! What happened to molecular gastronomy???





I dare not ask. It will be forever one of those unresolved mysteries. Something that should have been there and was not.

Broken images, missing flavors. Forget it, it's Paris. Enduring Paris. The love that lasts.

from Paris: repeats

I know some would disagree, but for me, Paris is the best walking city and the best sitting city in the world. In addition to holding the title (in my book) for being the best for eating, shopping and art museums. Some like it for nightlife, but after participating fully in three of the above (the more active three at that), I can’t say that I have much stamina for anything after midnight. And we finished our last bite of dessert after midnight.

I admit that I am unimaginative in my approach to this place. I am here often enough that I have developed my favorites and I rarely stray. For example, it is a sad morning that does not begin with breakfast here:



Café les Editeurs


And an unusual visit that does not include lunch here:



Café la Varenne: poaced egg on ratatouille


And lately, I have been smitten with Ze Kitchen Gallerie, which is supremely modern and clever and has a wonderful view of the kitchen where a stunning chef will catch your eye if you stare long enough.



glancing over



you're not photographing me, are you?
no...



such talent...


Okay, so it was a day of reruns. There’s more. Rare is the trip that doesn’t include a stop at Bon Marche, the left bank store that still manages to cater mostly to left bankers (with far more substantial bank accounts than my own, bust still, I have bought more suitcases there than I want to admit, including this time, since a favorite issued its last breath and died).

And I think I have never been here without walking the hour or so, through the back streets, to the Eiffel Tower.

The Tower itself is not the draw, but the walk past the great Place des Invalides, the left bank shops, markets, quite streets is.



Saturday exuberance



typical here, less so at American markets


Or maybe the Tower has a small magnetic power as well. After all, I always do take photos of it. Because you and I may forget that in the early summer it looks like this:





Finally, I have taken to bypassing pastry shops. But on this day, we were looking at a display in one and a Frenchman paused to say this: you know, if you eat one a day you wont regret it. Even two a day. French people lose weight when they eat them.

Not that we needed convincing.

from Paris: on the many ways water presents itself

I knew it would be wet here, in Paris. And cool. But really, it’s neither very much. Just a little to remind me that the first days of summer in Paris can be a quirky mix of sun and cloud and oftentimes they require a sweater.

By the time we lug our two suitcases and the huge carpet bag with the Turkish rug up to our teeny tiny room it is very late. We need food.

This is the moment to try the small restaurant that Gault Millau (still my favorite food resource for France) likes so much. Why? Because it’s around the corner and it is a transition – a link to our last days in Turkey. (It’s called, aptly, La Mediterranee.)

And we pick tuna and gambas and sea bream but you can’t fool me. We are not in Turkey, we are in France. Take a look and count the ways in which this is so:

















For dessert I choose my most evocative of childhood berries – the fraises de bois that are so beloved here, on this side of the ocean and hardly ever make an appearance in the States.





So now I know I am in Europe and not in North America or Asia.

And if I need further proof, I need only stroll down to the banks of the waters that run through this city. Nothing about them says Bosphorus. Everything about them says Paris.

from Istanbul, Turkey: coming home

No, not to Madison. Not yet.

It’s just that returning to Istanbul felt like coming home. (And returning later today to Paris will stir up those sentiments all over again.)

The familiar. The welcome from people who know you.


We leave Bodrum late. One last breath of hot air up there on the hill and then off, along the shore of this rocky peninsula, where the waters are the color of fairytale seas.

Zipping past olive groves...



... I am reminded of the drive in from the airport, just three days ago: curious then about the town that everyone here loves to remember fondly. Bodrum? I’ve been there! I plan on going back soon. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?


A short flight and then a long, very long drive from the airport to our little hotel on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Rush hour traffic frustrates even the seasoned cabbie. When it just moves too slowly, the taksi driver will bullishly forge toward oncoming traffic, up through detours, on the sidewalk – anywhere that will move them, us, forward.

And then we are home, at the Sumahan.

Welcome! You have your room again, the same one.

With chocolates and fruits and four windows looking out onto the dark waters of the Bosphorus.

And the distant mosques of Sultanahmet.





And the curving Asian shoreline, which for one more night is our home.





We eat dinner downstairs. Our favorite head waiter is there and he takes charge of our food and wine for the night.











He lives just a little ways away. Two daughters – one wanting to be a doctor, the other – an artist at heart.
He asks my little one (only she’s not so little anymore… sigh…) if she is studying still.
Yes, three more years.
In Istanbul?
No, no, back home.
So you are leaving Istanbul? That is so sad.

Yes, it’s sad to leave a home even if that home was only yours for a week. No more ferry schedules to take note of, no more lights on the bridge to admire.





No more fresh sea bass, daily, no more olives and cucumbers for breakfast.

The last sunrise over the Bosphorus, witnessed from the four windows of our room.





Orphan Pamuk writes about the Bosphorus brilliantly, lovingly, sadly. Istanbul for me has meant a daily intimate encounter with this wide stretch of water. Saying good bye to the city is saying goodbye to the boats that ply up and down, across and back. And to the muted sounds that travel across – mosque chants, pleasure-boat music. No traffic sounds. Only ferry motors and waves slapping the shore. It makes the city a dreamy place, far away, exotic.


One last coffee by the water, one last look out the window. Home to the Bosphorus, now home to the professed love of my life, Paris. You tell your children when they’re little– I love you the same amount only differently. Are cities like children? Or are they like lovers? I’m not sure.

from Bodrum, Turkey: stones and soap

So this is Turkey.

Or is it?

What’s at the core of this place? Where is the real Turkey?

Ocean is all about impressions and in places such as Istanbul and Bodrum (and I'm warning, my impressions are only about these two), I am enchanted: here is a country that wants to fix itself. You feel the energy of progress. After a century of decline, you sense that all those millions out on the streets of Istanbul have had enough of wallowing. Move forward. Embrace secularism (for the most part), respect tradition, accept change.

As my Istanbullus seatmate on the flight here said – it’s all rather colorful, isn’t it?

In the morning I insist on going to a beach. I am no windsurfer, beach toad, or rubber raft paddler, but my God, we are on the Aegean coast. Let’s put our toes in the Aegean.

We get a ride to Bitez, a village further up the coast. A small cove, a stretch of sand – it’s a beach alright. And there are people and there are chairs and umbrellas and it’s all pretty, in a clumped together sort of way.





But wait, where am I, in France? Women, bronzing their breasts? In Turkey? I'm worrying whether I have crossed the line by wearing tank tops (it is so hot right now!) and before me, I have a row of voluptuously undulating female forms, exposed for the world to see?

We walk along the water's edge. On the surface, the shore is all tidy and indeed, the waters are clear and the beach is neat. But look closely under the water. Paper. Plastic. The spoils of a vacationing people.

We want to hike along the coast, toward the next village and the more secluded waterfront. It’s a nice little walk, up the hill, past rocky coves where young men bathe (always, there are 100 men for every woman out and about),





…and then the road ends in some private driveway and you can go nowhere at all. Find me a path! Don’t make me take the highway!

And this is so very real about Turkey: it’s a tough place to walk in. Yes, you can share a road with the cars, the dolmus, the motorbikes. But it’s no fun. It’s me against them and who wants this battle anyway?

So there’s the traffic issue. And will everyone please put out their cigarettes issue.

But how can you not smile at the pretty vines and flowers covering the simple homes...





...and at the calf, nipping at its itchy leg in the small shade of an olive tree?





And is there a friendlier, warmer people on earth?

Oh, such a conflicted nation! The Turkey of many faces. Humiliation and pride, all rolled into one. The feeling of poverty and the desire for success. Trash and litter under the rug, but such a clean rug for you to walk on!

Turkey is at a crossroads and I have great empathy for people and nations that are at crossroads, for the obvious reasons of my own past and my own shaky movements forward (always on the verge of a topple).


We go back to Bodrum and we pay our respects to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

It’s rare that ancient history moves me. Three times in my young adulthood I had visited the Acropolis and three times all I could take from it were the crowds and the heat and the dust. And did I mention the crowds?

The Mausoleum moved me no end.

Imagine this: a taxi lets us out before a gate – as if to a private residence, on a side street of Bodrum. Where is it? I ask. My daughter nudges me. Here’s the small sign. It’s here, across the narrow street.

We pass a ticket window. A woman sits there, waiting, peering out at us, the sole visitors. A man goes in and out of the house – the caretaker? The guard? Her husband? Otherwise, there is no one around.

We knew that the Mausoleum had been destroyed by earthquakes, by pirates looting tombs, by careless excavations. We knew that there would be only the foundation, with a scattering of columns, stones and friezes.

So why is it that it feels so very real?

Across the street, the chant is starting at the mosque. It’s a sad wail and this is a sad place. Great beauty destroyed.





None of it is cordoned off. We walk between ruins of greatness. We touch it, we stare at it, we imagine the earthquake that caused the chariot to tumble to the ground.









Once the most beautiful of all beautiful structures..




..now broken, scattered. And yet – and this is no exaggeration – to be here is to feel more than a thousand years of history rush past you, from the laying of the first stone, through the tremors that brought it all down and the destruction that continued for centuries after -- all in one sitting.


We leave as we would leave a stately residence – through a gate, out onto the street. A laundromat across the street, with racks of clothes, drying outside. Yet another courtyard and another, with vines giving shade over a rickety table. Men sitting on wooden chairs, talking quietly. Cats – the cats of Bodrum, moving around places where there is food.

We come to the harbor where the Bodrum gulets sway against each other. Made of wood, cut after a new moon, because cutting it at any other time would invite worms. We read this, but we don’t know if it’s a folk wisdom or if it is the way of boats and timbers and things that sail.





An ice cream break. When your head gets too full of history and the heat pounds on you from all sides, it’s time for an ice
cream break. I pick "black mulberry" and "bramble."




The sweet juices of Turkish berries.

Revived, we begin the climb back to our hillside white haven, the one with an infinity pool where waters spill out and become one with the hill and stone.

A long pause follows in the cool, quiet waters up here, where the scent of jasmine and honey is strong.


In the evening, we pick a place to eat that is outside of Bodrum. We are given plate after plate of zesty salads and roasted eggplant, followed by pungent meats steeped in garlic, wrapped in pita, with mounds of creamy yogurt for dipping.

And such great baklava.

And Turkish delight with our espresso.





We wait for our ride home. Near the door, there is a display of soaps, locally made. I am dazzled by their fragrance – olives and mint and thyme. For the first time in Bodrum, I want to buy.

The waiter smiles. No, we can’t take your money. Why not? He nods to the corner where the owner sits with his friends. The owner tells me that you should have these. His gift for you.

This is Turkey. Where you go to sleep remembering only the good foods and good smells, the sun on your back, the black mulberry icecream and the gift of soap.

This afternoon we fly back to Istanbul and tomorrow, back to France.