slushy sentimentalism

I would have headed home Friday morning, but there were plenty of warnings to stay off the roads until the crews could push back the foot of snow that fell overnight in southern Wisconsin. I delayed my return, therefore, and daughters and I headed for the center of downtown Chicago – the Daley Plaza. [Daughters will be coming to Madison for their winter vacation late Saturday. Me, I need to get things ready for their arrival. More on that in my next post.]

Since my Chicago visit was to be a “one nighter” (later, after Christmas, we’ll return for a slightly longer spell in the city), I was dressed more for a long car ride than for a walk in city snow. You know how cities feel after a snowfall? Slushy and wet. You hope that there’ll be stretches where someone has cleared a path for you, but it’s not guaranteed.





Over time, the snow turns into mush. At the curb, icy lakes form and you have to dive right in. There’s no other way of getting from one block to the next.

Within minutes, my little black socks and the decorative but insignificant black boots and all ten toes are soaked. Swimming in shoe slush.

Not important. We’re downtown now and it is seasonally festive and colorful here. We make our way (past countless signs announcing the danger of falling icicles) to the Daley Plaza, where vendors have set up stalls in much the same way holiday market stalls have appeared in most towns and cities of Europe (and especially Germany).





Daughters eat hot dogs and potato pancakes and I slurp glühwein…










..which warms my insides but stops short of warming my toes.

We pass stall after stall with colorful crafts and we look up at the display of trees that borders the market.










… and because it is close by, we stroll over (did I say stroll? Slosh is a better choice here) to Macy’s. Daughters pause to admire the holiday windows.










If someone would have told me, when I was little that, for all of my adult life, I would be in some way connected to the city of Chicago I would have said – not possible. Too stodgy, sprawly, dangerous, brutal, cold, corrupt. But, things change, people change, cities change. As the cop shouts out happy holidays to the people whom she helps cross the crazy intersection, as the snow is pushed back by the sanitation workers, who also take a moment to throw snowballs at each other,





...as the El screeched and the taxi honks and the pigeons warm their dirty feathers…





… it strikes me that I may even like Chicago more than New York now (I have spent an equal number of years in both by now). Weird how you can open up to a place you just couldn’t wait to leave way back when. Or maybe that in the holiday season, sloshing through the wet puddles and underneath falling icicles with daughters, you get kind of sentimental about a place.






It was dark by the time I pulled up by Bascom Mall back in Madison. I walked into my office, took off my shoes and dripping socks and massaged my toes for a good many minutes.

from Chicago: sensual

This Land Is My Land

Driving down to Chicago (for an evening of food fantasies), I am thinking that the landscape is especially pretty in the hazy sunshine of the afternoon. I pull off the highway to take a photo or two. Oh! A deer? And another?





I have no telephoto lens, but surely I can get closer. The one is hoisting herself up to reach the leaves of the tree. It’s a pretty sight. I turn into a dealership in trailers and towing rigs. No, still not good enough. I follow a road from the dealership until I come to a sign that says private, no trespassing. I take an imperfect photo and start to head back in reverse.





An SUV is behind me now. A raging driver gets out. What do you think you’re doing? – she asks.
Taking a photo of the deer. Look! – I point to the two in the field.
Do you know that this is private property?
This road? Yes, when I saw the sign, I stopped and tried to head back. Now you’re in my way.
All of it is private! – she tells me. How rude of you to be here!

I thought about the days when we used to camp along river banks in Poland. The concept of “keep off” was one that I did not fully understand until I moved here. Of course, landowners have a right to keep people out. I get that. But dealership parking lots? I want to wage a legal argument here, but think maybe this is a waste of time, so I wait until she backs away, freeing me to leave.


All Is Bright

I am in Chicago now. It is evening, but still early for the food flight. Daughters (in Chicago at the moment) and I want to make good use of our time here and so we head to the Lincoln Park Zoo for their (free and beautiful) display of holiday lights.

Hello, holidays! I’d forgotten about you in my weeks away. But now, after three hours of radio holiday music and this walk, I am fully entranced and ensconced.















Especially enchanting are the trees that twinkle to the sounds of the Ukrainian Bell Carol.





But it is cold, out there by Lake Michigan. Ice sculptures, icy toes, chilly night.





After a while, I huddle with the creatures in the warm gift shop.






A Show of Food

And now for the spectacular food flight. As for any show, you need to prepare -- internally and externally.





I have written about the art of molecular gastronomy before, two years ago, when I first ate at Alinea in Chicago, and this past October, when I came down to watch a demonstration by Chef Achatz on the occasion of the publication of his new book. Alinea is not just a meal, it is an experience. You don’t go there to talk business or to catch up on news with friends, you go there as if you are going to a show, except that you also get to eat the presentation. In our case, we take the short flight, the tasting menu, which Achatz presents as a twelve (but really with extras thrown in) course sampling menu, ranging from bite-size morsels of potato, or parsnip, or candycane















… to more substantial plates – of bass draped in chamomile and celery, or crab with popcorn sauce, butter and curry, for example.










It is a four hour show and the time flies! The staff, as always, helps move things along expertly and with humor and so the whole evening is a blockbuster success. A standing ovation!

I have cared about food – its role in daily life, in family life, in amorous pursuits, in the life of the planet – pretty much my entire adult years. A visit to Alinea is like a trip to the studios of the grand masters. This isn’t about art for your living room walls. It isn’t about piling on expensive imported ingredients. It’s about testing the boundaries of what is possible. In food, and therefore in life.

Filled and inspired, we leave after midnight, to be greeted by a taxi and snow.

for the love of food

It is indeed cold outside. The weather forecast tells me – snow. Up to a foot, overnight. Between work, holiday work, housework, other post-travel work and the weather, it makes little sense to head out, right?

But if you were asked to come down for a dinner and a show in Chicago (a three hour drive, in good weather), you wouldn’t say no, would you?

I didn’t say no. Especially since the dinner and show are all one. And so this afternoon I’ll be heading “south.” Navigating that evocatively worded “wintry mix” (Chicago hasn’t decided if it’ll settle for snow, sleet or a combination of the two). All for the love of gastronomic spectacles.

I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll fill in details then.

from France, one last time

I don’t even question it anymore. It rains, it will rain. The only unknown is how much. And will there be pauses.

There are few guests at the hotel now. With only three rooms per floor, le Grimaldi has always felt intimate. But now it feels positively ours. If we leave the tiny elevator on our sixth floor, it will be there in the morning when we take it down for breakfast.

The desk clerk fusses over our breakfast. Can I scramble you some eggs? Yes! Eggs, rolls, cheeses, breads, croissants. Tangerines. Sweet sweet tangerines. I work on my computer, Ed reads. And reaches for breakfast foods in a way that I never see back home. It’s that it’s free, sure, but also it is because breads, cheeses and eggs here are beastly good.

And then he naps.

I use this time to go out. Past the square with the discombobulated tree.





I'm itching to shop. Meaning, to try on things that I would like to wear. I know I am tempting myself. Still, between the acquisition of things and travel I’ll always pick travel. And so I shake my head to the clerk and retreat without anything. Except for a lipstick. A lipstick? – Ed asks back at the hotel. Can’t you buy the same thing at Walgreen’s?


In the early afternoon, we ignore the skies and head out for a hike. Past blocks of houses that combine the colors of Nice (orange houses, green shutters) and the colors of Provence (yellow houses, blue shutters).




Past houses and gardens that are all Nice (orange house, green shutters, orange tree, olive tree).




We make our way to the old port first – deeply atmospheric in this weather.





And now I want to eat lunch. At home, I never eat lunch, but when I travel, every meal is an opportunity to fall in love with new foods in new, locally colorful spaces. Ed is the opposite, of course. At home, he eats throughout the day. Here, except for breakfast, he resists regular meals. And so again I eat alone. Water, do you at least want water? I ask. No, nothing. He fiddles with my camera while I make very important food decisions.




The waitress asks me – he is a professional photographer?

I think that life is funny in this way: a guy, who is comfortably underdressed, wrinkled, unshaven, gruff, preoccupied, if, moreover, he is consuming nothing, or the wrong thing -- all those things cause him to be intriguing.

She is smiling at the man who is confidently snapping away. No, I say emphatically. The camera is mine. [And the endless, endless flights that earn me business lounges at foreign airports? Not his! He is the tag along, not me! I am the employed person who has work to do on her laptop, me, that one is me, not him. Sigh.]

I eat delicious slices of raw artichoke, with lettuce and slivers of cheese, all dressed in lemon juice and olive oil.





We continue our hike. Ed talks about details of the boats we see in the harbor. Some are monster boats – huge private vessels of the Onassis type. To me, they're an eyesore -- pompous and overbearing. But, the port has all sizes. From the monsters to the shrimpy ones – colorful and well tended.





And now we head up to the forest and the summit of Mont Boron. The air is moist but it is not raining. The wetness gives us a fresh, earthy smell. I want to tell Ed – there: even in Nice, there is quiet. See? You can find it up here, on the path up the Mont Boron: quiet.

The views are surprisingly majestic.





You would think visibility would be poor, what with the clouds, the rain, but it’s not. Hey, the Alps! I can even spot the Alps just north of us!





On the east side of the summit, we see the coast of Villefranche and Ed becomes wistful. Imagine sailing here, in this protected bay between Mont Boron and Cap Ferrat (a peninsula extending on the other side of Villefranche)!





I look at the sea, and at the port where ferry boats from Corsica come in. Imagine coming here in spring and heading out for a few weeks in Corsica!

This is it: right there on the summit of Mont Boron, we have before us the reason why we are only occasional in our traveling companionship: neither really likes what the other regards as sublime. I cannot sail. It makes me ill. Ed finds staying at b&b’s or inns boring. So boring in fact, that he squirms at the mention of any future travel.

We hike down Mont Boron. It is our last hike here, along the coast of the Mediterranean and I no longer feel the lightness that should be mine on this descent.





We pause near a small school. Children noises. I miss children, my children, even though they’re not children anymore. We smile as we look at the notices posted on the board by the gate. School lunches for the week. I remember arguing with schools back home about what kids should have for school lunch. They wont eat it if it’s healthy was the common response. I’ll not translate this school’s menu for you, but I’ll tell you this much: it’s healthy.






And again we are by the port: first one side...





...then the other. It's dusk and the lights are coming on. Port lights, holiday lights.





We walk along the shore, back to Nice, centre ville...










…and return to our hotel. Not for long though. We have an early dinner at a very unassuming, very atmospheric Nicoise restaurant. The food is simple but good: salads with chickpeas and onion, fried zucchini (both vegetable and flower), stuffed sardines. The waitress gives us a homemade orange liqueur. To Nice. To return trips. To dinners where someone else cooks with imagination and with zest. To all of it.






In the morning, we leave while it’s still dark to catch the local bus to the airport. And for the first time on this trip, I get wet from standing in the rain.





Did I oversell travel in early December? No, not at all. But there is the inevitable long return. And in December weather, only the patient and the hearty will not be bothered. Nice has rain. Flight is delayed. In Paris, the fog is dense. That we land on the runway is amazing. Not surprisingly, the flight to Chicago is delayed. In Chicago, there is a snowstorm. We circle the airport for hours. Finally we do land and there is the applause of relief as we touch a completely snow-covered runway. The bus to Madison? Running hours behind schedule. It eventually does come, but the three hour ride becomes a five hour ride and it is well past midnight when pull in at the Union. Where the cab we called is … delayed. All that waiting, much of it in bad weather. Nothing chills you more than waiting for a cab in the freezing night after 24 continuous hours of travel.

I’d do it again tomorrow.

from France: come to Nice!

Listen, if the city of Nice has 300 sunny days per year (so counted in, for example 2005) and if most of the rainy days are in October and November, only a handful (of days where there is no sun at all) remain for the rest of the year. And I’ve had them all! So your chances are overwhelming that you will experience that fantastic deep blue of a Cote d’Azur sky.

In our last four days in Nice, we had none of it.

(Even the sea, typically so blue it hurts, had a vast spread of brown from where the river gushed silt into it -- see photo below.)

But, undeterred, on our last day here, we set out on the great Nice hike in the park above the old harbor.



I wont write more about the day as we have a bus to catch and then a flight and another and then a bus again and one hopes that at the end of it all we’ll be in Madison. From there, I’ll post a summary of our final quirky, splendid, seasonally appropriate, and still unusual day in Nice.

A bientot!

from France: droplets and photos

We’re on our last two days in Europe. It rains, we go out, it pauses, resumes, pauses.

We ignore it.

Let me do things differently in this post. Let me put up a few photos from the day and describe these for you. Nothing more, just a fistful of images:



The market in Nice is a six-day-a-week event. I have been curious how they handle winter. And now I see that they pretty much ignore it.










We leave the market for a few minutes. I'm curious -- how is the Mediterranean reacting to all this added rain?










That's a very agitated sea. We watch for a while, but the wind is strong. We retreat back to the market.





It's still raining, but there isn't much force to it. All this time, Ed walks without an umbrella. Why, I ask. That's girlie stuff, he tells me. Fact is, many men here are indeed into umbrella avoidance. Instead, they wear hats. The rain bounces off the rim and they (basically) stay dry.















So, what's an everpresent item at a Nice market? Especially on Sunday?




Roses! To take to you Sunday meal hosts.


Another detour away from the market: this time to Old Nice.





...with old habits, old foods, old pots.... etc.





So now I am getting hungry. In the marketplace we come across a place that totally draws me in by its display of meringues. I love large meringues! Large usually means that they retain some softness inside.





But I'm thinking I should have something healthy first. Ed? Ed's not hungry. Ed dozes while I eat.





We're done with the market. Ed's rested, I'm satiated. We walk back to the sea. It's loud!





Ed records the retreat of the waves on his cell phone. Imagine what it's like to hear water retreating over a beach of pebbles clashing against one another...





We walk along, mesmerized by the sounds, the many colors of the water. We're not the only ones.





Oh, you've spotted the trees? They are selling them in exactly the same spot where I used to go to the beach a couple of Julys ago.




The tree stands are much like the ones I remember from my childhood in Poland. We watch people pile on trees onto their small cars.

And now the rain has let up again. We walk through the Christmas market on the Square and Ed asks if maybe maybe we could do his very favorite food for dinner...





I cannot say no... The guy loves the bread and cheese here too much. And so we make our way back, pausing at a store so that I can take care of some holiday purchases...





...finally to retire to the quiet warmth of our attic room at the Grimaldi, where on a towel, we spread out dinner.