The Gabster

The Fixer

19 Jun 07 @ 11:34 AM  category » travel

So, I spelled it wrong. It's Denni, not Denny. Mea culpa, and apologies, Denni!

Here's his truck in action. I think this was taken at midnight.

Iceland...

16 Jun 07 @ 02:30 PM  category » travel

I took a short weekend trip to Iceland last weekend. While it is a country with few people and no trees, the scenery is rather spectacular - black volcanic sand, green moss and purple heather, with glaciers looming on the horizon.

We tooled around on the south coast, went off-roading and snowmobiling on a glacier, and I of course took a spell in the Blue Lagoon.

Here's an old USN plane crashed in the middle of nowhere on a beach...

and here's Denny, best described as a "fixer", who makes sure people get the gear they need up somewhere in the back of beyond on shoots, with his full service kitchen which sits on top of an old Russian army truck, which can go *anywhere*...and his simply enormous amphibious tank which was used in the Tomb Raider movie...

 

 

At a spot where the North American and European tectonic plates meet, there is a sandy channel between the walls of the two plates, which are drifting apart at something like 6cm a year or something (don't quote me on that!). So it was highly amusing to see, drawn out

on the sand below "The Bridge Between Two Continents", a big heart with the words "Jesus Still (Loves) You". Gotta love those creationists making their position clear wherever and whenever they can!

Iceland is famous for trolls too...

 

 

And here's the Blue Lagoon, which is really very blue indeed...

  Iceland - Flickr Pix

Griffith Observatory, LA

23 Feb 07 @ 10:33 AM  category » travel

Hiked up to the observatory last weekend with Alex and Nic. LA is really growing on me...

Los Angeles trip

Always Mull

29 Dec 06 @ 10:10 AM  category » travel

Mull is beautiful, even when it is drizzling. I always forget that there is no cell phone reception in our part of the island, and we have no internet so it really is getting away from it all. Though if you are willing to climb Craig Ben the mobile kicks in about half an hour up the hill.

We tried to make it to the top this year (two hours up, one and a half down) but the mist closed in and we found ourselves in total whiteout about 1/2 way up. Since coming down is so slippery and treacherous anyway and there are plenty of small cliffs it is very easy to miss, trying to do that in a whiteout is sheer madness. With just ten minutes of whiteout or so we still came down too far right and had to scrabble a bit. Always the way on Craig Ben.

But god I love it there. So many old memories - I learned to swim in Loch Uisg (at the bottom of the garden) when my grandpa took off my water wings and told me to swim to him - and then proceeded to keep swimming away from me into the middle of the loch as I, realising I was further out than in, tried to reach him in panic. He just laughed, but it worked. He taught me to fish there too. But because I wasn't prepared to gut the fish, I wasn't allowed to eat my first catch and had to watch in grim lipped resentment as everyone else at dinner ate delicious trout that was MINE! Damn, I was stubborn, but I had principles. And ahhh, the days when a bunch of us - Nicky and Sarah and Toby and Alex and Sally and me - would be lying on the roofrack of the Land Rover, holding on for dear life as we screamed at Richard to "drive faster, drive faster!" on the winding roads along Kinlochspelve. And we actually asked him to go faster over the humpbacked bridge...I can almost feel the bruises now. The fabulous fun of folly. And Richard stealing oysters from the loch bed for New Year's Eve...I realised this trip, as I saw Sarah and Sal and Toby, all sprogged up now, that I have some of my oldest and best memories with these people, whom I hardly ever see any more.

Now I live abroad it is brought more sharply into focus. This place is my family home. And god how I love it, even in the rain.

Craig Ben, Mull - pix

Wedding, Israeli-style

28 Oct 06 @ 05:13 PM  category » travel

My niece Sunny's wedding in Israel was quite fabulous. The Henna party - a Yemenite tradition marking the departure of the bride from the family home, was a riot of color, wild dancing and laughters. The wedding itself, an all day and all night affair held in the gorgeous garden of the groom's father, was spectacular, and hilarious. The swimming pool had been half covered over to make a dance floor. But by 10pm the vibes were so good that someone jumped into the swimming pool - and within seconds there were thirty odd fully clothed people - including the bride and groom and both of their fathers - in the swimming pool! We then continued to dance ourselves dry until the wee hours.

And if you are lucky enough to be called Sunny - which is a fitting name for her if ever there was one, this is a girl that is never without a smile on her face - then of course your anthem is going to be "Sunny" by Boney M.

All in all, a glorious week, made even more special by getting to spend time with 5 Darbyshire sisters and assortd nieces and nephews. A revelation and a delight. And quite simply one of the most joyful, colorful and damn fun weddings I have ever been to.

Sunny and Itai's wedding - pix

San Remo and Triora

04 Sep 06 @ 06:35 PM  category » travel

From Budapest to Italy, for a few days with my sister in San Remo, where the highlight was hiking up in the mountains near Triora. Quite stunning.

Italy pix

Budapest mark 2

21 Aug 06 @ 06:31 PM  category » travel

It's August, and for the Gawker crew, that means back to Budapest. This time, there were more than a dozen Gawkerites over there. And the city just gets cooler each day.

However, the cab drivers don't seem to know where Partizan is. This bar is on a pretty deserted bit of land on a promontory a few miles out of the center of Budapest, on a dark country road. Left by the cabbie in the middle of the road in the dead of night, saying "yes, yes, here", I had to call Nick for directions. "If you can see the goats, you're in the right place", he said. Indeed, there were goats all around us.

The Sziget music festival was, as ever, fabulous. Pity I didn't take any pix there. The few I took are here.

Long live Barnonia!

15 Aug 06 @ 06:21 PM  category » travel

Back by excessive wheedling and begging, Barnonia 2006 - long awaited since the last Barnonia in 2001 - was held on a gorgeous weekend in August in East Hampton, courtesy of the Ryan Brothers.

It was, as ever, Barnfabulous. Huge thanks to Oliver, Max and Sara Kate for organising a party the likes of which the Hamptons don't usually see.

Everyone has to participate. Shayne, Bruce and Daniel sweated profusely in digging the fire pit.  Candace and I delicately arranged wood on top - and hey presto, we had our own Andy Goldsworthy to be proud of!

Barnonia 2006 pix

Lovely LA

09 Feb 06 @ 08:05 PM  category » travel

After blue skies in SF, I got pink skies in LA. This was the view from my bedroom window in LA, overlooking downtown at sunrise (there were no curtains unfortunately, so I had no choice about my au naturel wake-up call). The place I stayed, on Kings Rd just off Sunset, was perfectly located and totally charming. Lots of dogs, and actors and writers and producers and directors, all wandering in and out. It's a very different life style from NYC. The morning constitutional involved taking the dogs up Runyan Canyon for a steep and energetic hike. Runyan Canyon is literally dog heaven!

A few days catching up with friends, doing some work...and then the Grammys Warner Music Group party, to top off a fab West coast trip. Problem with the party, though, was that the guests were either music execs in suits, or young, super trendy, ripped-clothes-wearing, long-assymetric hair-cut bearing, all-blend-into-one-for me young chaps from the hottest new bands and Grammy nominees of the moment. And I realised that I must now be officially old because I didn't know all the bands and thus couldn't hold a decent conversation with the guitarist from Death Cab for Cutie, or the drummer from the Killers, or whoever it was. And so I found it easier to talk to the suits. Aiiiee, that's a sad bad sign.

Sailling in the BVI

07 Dec 05 @ 09:48 AM  category » travel

Just back from a week's sailing in the BVI with Phoebe and the girls. More to come shortly, but here are the pix.

Canada Pix

04 Oct 05 @ 07:26 PM  category » travel

Despite fears that my digital camera had wiped the lot, I have managed to recover my Canada pix.

Completely gorgeous, up there in the 1000 Islands on the Lawrence river last weekend. Thanks, Bruce!

Canada pix

Pix from Dave and Justine's wedding

27 Sep 05 @ 08:19 PM  category » travel

Gotta love the dancing blur. We were having a good time.

More pix from Alex Lisowski on Flickr.

More Budapest Pix

20 Sep 05 @ 12:22 PM  category » travel

Great set of photos of Budapest, from Ildiko.

Ildiko's Budapest Pix

Hotel de Vigniamont

18 Sep 05 @ 02:13 PM  category » travel

If you happen to be wandering through southern France and decide to pass through the town of Pezenas, I highly recommend trying to stay at the Hotel de Vigniamont.

This charming 5-room guesthouse is run by the delightful Tracey McVeigh and her husband Rob. Both English, they spent the last decade running a bar and a restaurant in San Jose, California, before deciding they needed a change of scenery and a new challenge. So they moved to Pezenas and bought a dilapidated old town house which they lovingly restored over eight months to open the hotel last summer.

The rooms are charming, the roof terrace delightful, the breakfasts delicious and the prices reasonable. But much more than this, Tracey's warmth and hospitality is unparalleled - from offering a glass of wine and snacks on the terrace when I arrived, to booking tables for lunch at the town's best restaurant, to booking taxis for 3am to bring us back from the wedding, and even going so far as to lay on breakfast for our friends who weren't even staying at the hotel, because they'd got up too late to have breakfast at their own hotel.

Szimpla the best

16 Sep 05 @ 01:08 PM  category » travel

On our last night in Budapest we ended up at the original Szimpla kert, Kis Szimpla (kert means "ruin garden"), one of the city's favourite courtyard bars (small and quiet by comparison to its rocking new location). In the middle of our studied downing of palinka the heavens opened in a torrential downpour and we were forced to all huddle up under the covered bar.

Thus I started doodling idly in Antony's notebook. And now he's scanned it and sent it back to me (click to enlarge).

The English Countryside...

30 Aug 05 @ 12:17 PM  category » travel

...around London is mostly overrun by motorways, dual carriageways and ugly new towns, it seems. But hidden away amongst all of this concrete and steel are a few twisty windy steep overgrown country roads just perfect for speeding along on a fine old Ducati. Which is what I did yesterday, in the glorious sunshine with a friend. We stopped for a late lunch on the river at Cookham, and visited the small but charming Stanley Spencer gallery. It was warm enough for a tshirt, and thoroughly delightful to feel the wind in my hair (ok, that's not literal, I was wearing the most headache-creating helmet imaginable. Note to self: My, my dear, what a big head you have).

The English countryside is so pretty: rolling hills and a particular shade of green that I just don't remember anywhere else. Certainly not in the US, where the greens are darker and more coniferous and the golds and reds are deeper, or it is completely dead and brown for half the year. Why is it that the open countryside of a particular country is so instinctively recognisable? I can't say why, but it was so obviously English, rather than French, or Italian, and I am pretty sure there are plenty of common indigenous plant and tree species so it isn't just about that. Maybe it is just familiarity. But I haven't been to the English countryside in years.

At one point I thought I was a character in an Ian McEwan novel and kept expecting a balloon to come floating into view across the summer fields.

Budapest Bathing

22 Aug 05 @ 11:05 AM  category » travel

Well, the Hungarians like their thermal baths. There are more spas in Budapest than I can imagine exist in the whole of the rest of Eastern Europe.

The Szechenyi Baths are huge and sprawling. Something like 5 outdoor pools and at least 10 different hot pools of very specific and varying temperatures (from 34 C to 38 C) and hotter-than-imaginable saunas and cold, cold plunge pools. No question all of this is good for the constitution.

The Gellert Baths are the most famous, but also the most crowded.

The Lukacs Baths are definitely the most utilitarian, popular with older Hungarians and less overrun by tourists. But even with Nick around, who speaks Hungarian, we got hopelessly lost and confused. They have the most archaic system imaginable for getting in and getting around.

First you buy a ticket which is pretty expensive (for a whole day, essentially) and get a swipe card. You have to hand in your ticket to an attendant, and swipe the card through a turnstile to enter the changing rooms. When you are ready to put your clothes in a locker, an attendant locks it for you and gives you a tag - but it isn't the locker number on the tag, it is some random number which you have to remember when you want to get him to open the door for you later. Then you wander through a maze of corridors until somehow you find your way out to the pools. On the return journey, you discover that the showers are nowhere near the lockers, but of course you left your towel and shampoo in the locker...so you trudge upstairs, get the attendant to open the locker, get him to close it again, go downstairs and all the way to the other end of the corridor, have a shower, trudge back again etc etc. And then, when you leave, you need to get your paper ticket back, and then swipe your card - and it gives you a refund if you have been there less than a specified period of time.

I went back a few days later to arrange a massage. Without Nick in tow, all I could get was a vehemently shaken head and a repeated "full". Trying to ask about how to reserve for a later date proved impossible. Funny to be in a country where they don't seem to care too much about taking your money. 

So, until you have the system down pat, these places are definitely not easy for a quick swim. But lovely for an afternoon of lounging and steaming and plunging under a bright blue sky surrounded by canary yellow buildings. And playing chess on the waterproof board, if you are at Szechenyi.

Konyari Vineyards

18 Aug 05 @ 11:40 AM  category » travel

We just got back from a small road trip up to Lake Balaton, where we stayed in the very charming and highly recommended Kali Art Inn.

Daniel Konyari, a friend of Attila's and one of Hungary's up and coming young winemakers, also took us on a tour of his family's delightful vineyard. The wines were a delicious post-prandial treat, after a quite perfectly sumptuous feast of goulash and veal and other tasty treats, sitting up on a terrace looking out over the vineyards towards the lake.

On our way back to the city, we stopped at a communist-era hotel on Lake Balaton for lunch. It was very odd - a quite monstrous greying concrete tower block of apartments with really ugly interior furnishing, all in the most beautiful setting by the lake, but with one lovely building in the midst of it all. Tear down the concrete, I say - but there is historical value in it, I suppose.

Sziget Music Festival

14 Aug 05 @ 11:26 AM  category » travel

Last night we went to the Sziget Music Festival, the week-long equivalent of Glastonbury held on an island in the middle of the Danube. With lots of young French hippies with blond dreadlocks, and tents galore sprawled all over the place, I definitely felt old. But we listened to some great music, most notably the fabulous Hungarian band Besh o Drom which played wonderful, eerie, jazzy gypsy music. And we danced to African beats, and wandered the various tents for samplings of house and techno music, and ate langos (a sort of savoury dougnut-like thing with cheese or sour cream) and fabulous sausages. And drank too many palinka shots. We ended up at 4am lounging in hammocks in a VIP area that Ildiko managed to slip us all into.

Budapest Pix

12 Aug 05 @ 05:59 AM  category » travel

Some not so flattering pictures from the party last night, hosted by Peter and Lili. Eric D'Amato of Pestiside was very generous with the Tokaj, yum.

Budapest

10 Aug 05 @ 10:08 AM  category » travel

Am now in Budapest, after a lovely quiet weekend in London, indulging in a spot of tennis, a spot of shopping (buying a flat screen monitor for my mother's birthday - my, how times have changed), a few nice parties. Oh, I do love London.

Budapest is much prettier than I imagined. Our apartment, just off the Buda bank of the Danube by Margareta Island, is a loft-like affair with huge sunny windows and a roof terrace. For the first few days this week it was actually rather chilly, decidedly not per expectations, and we'd relocate sharpish off the roof when the raindrops started to splish onto our latpop screens.

But today is a different day. Gorgeous, sunny, glittering, this is more like it.

Trasierra

17 Jul 05 @ 03:45 PM  category » travel

I want to stay here one day. Looks absolutely gorgeous.

Trasierra.

The final sundown

21 May 05 @ 09:57 PM  category » travel

Arriving back in Tehran in the late afternoon on Saturday, Farhaad drove us right around the very outskirts of the city to get to the park in Nia Varan in the very north of the city (we had approached from the south). It took over an hour and a half to get round, and that was apparently quicker than going through the center of town. And boy, the pollution! Yuck, it was ugly. Much worse than many major cities I've been in - worse than Delhi, worse even than Mexico City.

Anyway, we got to Nia Varan and Mamad immediately sped off up a path as the light faded. We hurried after him, not sure what the rush was all about. But when we'd climbed almost to the top of the park, to reach a tea-house just as the sun's rays were finally fading away, to see this view of the whole city laid out beneath us: well, once again, any faint grumbles melted away again in awe at Mamad's ability to perfectly judge what we'd enjoy. So, the final words of my trip diary are these:

Thank you, Mohammad!

Day 8: Abyaneh

20 May 05 @ 06:45 PM  category » travel

In many ways, I think this was one of my favourite days in terms of sights,
despite spending much of it in the van. We left Isfahan at 7am, with a rainbow from the fountain in the river to accentuate our departure. We stopped at some idyllic little villages along the way to Abyaneh,  and from there to Tehran.

By contrast to such idylls. on the desert road to Abyaneh, we passed the nuclear facility that is the cause of so much political intrigue these days. The compound doesn't look very extensive from the outside - that's because a lot of the buildings are underground. There are hillocks surrounding the property, though, with tanks and surface-to-air missiles pointing up ready to go. Mamad did tell us on no account to even think about taking any photographs, or we'd be stopped and all sorts of trouble would begin.

After a few dusty desert van hours, we arrived in Abyaneh a quaint, red-stone village nestled in the hills that is the world that time forgot. The village doesn't allow outsiders to buy property there, and the young folk have all long since fled to Tehran, just a few hours away, so there is a ghostly atmosphere, no shops (that I saw), no lighting or neon.

It was unusually quiet when we got there, even for Abyaneh, and despite being a Saturday (prime excursion day from Tehran). We soon discovered that a villager had recently died and the burial was that morning, so that explained the distinct absence of life.

Mamad, as ever displaying the knack of getting us somewhere just before the hordes descended, led us on a meandering wander through the hilly crooked streets, until we saw a bus load of schoolkids arrive in the main square. At that point, we hiked up to the hill opposite to get a view over the village from up high wooden doors -  where the shepherds huts were. We saw small openings in the hillsides, not big enough for a human to walk through, and asked Mamad what these were for. Apparently they are sheep huts, where the sheep are kept in the winter when it is bitterly cold.

The women of Abyaneh are also more colorful than most in Iran. Their local dress involves chadors of brightly printed fabric, which makes all of the sumptuous colours in this tiny village simply swirl together gloriously like an ice-cream sundae. Quite charming.

And the little boys loved it when we got back to the van and played football with them in the square. Farhaad, as usual, provided the tea and biscuits.

Day 7: More Isfahan

19 May 05 @ 10:58 PM  category » travel

Tom, fearing a day of nothing but more mosques, decided to duck out of the morning's activities and join us at lunchtime. Emily, Mamad and I thus went on our merry way to visit the Jameh Mosque, the Chetel Sotun palace and the Hasht Behesht Palace, and stop for tea before finding Tom at lunchtime.

That afternoon, Mamad had a surprise in store for us. After a quick visit to a dovecote, where we ran around inside trying not to get covered in pigeon shit, we drove to the outskirts of Isfahan where first we watched mad motorcyclists ride over a rickety old wooden bridge that couldn't have been more than two or three feet wide, then walked the bridge ourselves. Farhaad and Mamad loved this bridge and Farhaad, possibly with pent-up left-over excitement from the night before, kept giggling and jumping up and down on the bridge to make it undulate as I was trying to cross it which was very disconcerting.

Once we had tired of this play, we drove off, and then stopped a few miles further on, on the edge of the river where, miraculously, Farhaad summoned water for tea and Mamad brought out the divine biscuits, along with the figs and pastries, that had accompanied our every tea stop on our long desert drives. And so we had a picnic on the banks of the river with all the other local families. Now I understood why there were tents for sale everywhere in the towns (for the ladies to hang out in); now I understood where families went on a weekend. It was delightful, and we all had a snooze in the sunshine.

When we got back to Isfahan, we walked along the river, stopping at various
tea-houses along the way. Under the arches of the Chubi bridge (a romantic spot for teenagers, apparently - just look at these arches!), we heard music. Drawing near, we joined a crowd watching a bunch of men dancing to live music.

Mamad told us that dancing is illegal, and only "rhythmic movements" - like the actions in the Gymnasium, or special dances, are allowed. No modern club music, that's for sure. So yes, these men could have been arrested for dancing under the bridge, but apparently the Isfahan police do turn a blind eye. Not, apparently, to crimes of fashion. There is genuinely a fashion police in Isfahan - and they are very strict about what you wear. Doesn't seem to stop the young girls there though - I saw several whose scarves could only be described as barely on, and their bottom-covering coats as barely there.

Oh, and we made a quick stop at the "best nougat shop in Iran" (according to Mamad), where we soon became addicted to the Dime-bar-like, pistachioed, biscuity thing called Mozzafari. I bought 3 boxes, and I can't bring myself to give the stuff away, it is so damn good.

Day 6: Isfahan

18 May 05 @ 08:28 PM  category » travel

A day of mosques, tea, wandering, mosques, tea and wandering. We started in Imam Square (Naqsh-e-Jahan Sq), probably the most memorable locale in Iran for a tourist, seeing as it houses some of the most spectacular buildings in the Islamic world.

The Imam Mosque, built by Shah Abbas I, dominates the square. it took 30
years to build. When the Shah wanted it hurried up, his architect said no. He was banned for a while, or rather, ran away to hide from the Shah's wrath, but was then brought back to finish the job. There are some amazing architectural curios about the place: for instance, in the main sanctuary, the dome is double layered, and the hollow space creates the echos you hear when you stamp your foot on a marble paving stone in the center. You can hear several echoes - apparently humans can detect 12 - but apparently scientists have measured 49 echoes in total.

On the eastern side of the square is Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque. By contrast to the blue tiled majesty of all of the other mosques we had seen so far, this one charms with cream and gold coloured tiles. And up at the top of the inner dome you see the iridescent shimmer of what turns out to be a peacock tail - the inner dome has holes to let in the light to form the tail image.

The Ali Quapu palace is on the opposite side of the square and its highlight is the terrace with 18 wooden columsn that overlooks the square. There we saw an old man carvinig out the inside of one of the columns; as part of a major restoration project, they are hollowing out the wooden trunks and filling the core with steel.

For a break from mosque-hunting, Mamad took us to a hidden away gem of a teahouse far down narrow windy alleys in the bazaar. The Azadegan Teahouse is clearly for locals mostly, unless you are very lucky like us. It's not in any guide book, and Mamad had himself discovered it only recently. Every available inch of wall and ceiling space is covered with photographs, paintings, glass, ceramics, masks, swords and other curios; you name it, it's up there somewhere. Apparently there is even a signed photograph of Hitler too, but despite looking, Mamad says he has never found it.

Then Mamad took us to a proper carpet dealer, since Tom wanted to buy a carpet. We spent hours there while the rather slick owner told us why not to ever buy a Turkish carpet ("the knots fall out!") and why his carpets were a really good deal. It was quite overwhelming - he must have pulled out and shown us thirty or forty carpets. Of course, we all immediately spotted and wanted the best in the shop; Emily's favourite was apparently "priceless" and "not for sale". Tom was stubborn and offered to pay 1/3 of the asking price for a particular one, and Ali was very hurt that we didn't actually buy anything. But it was a useful experience.

In the afternoon, we went to the Chetel Sotun palace and marvelled at the mammoth frescoes; then we wandered into the Grand Bazaar, bought bags of pistachios - oh, and 3 carpets. Yes, as we wandered through the maze of lanes looking halfheartedly at various wares, we passed a tiny carpet seller's shop that couldn't have been more than six feet by eight feet big. But hanging on the walls were two really lovely looking carpets. So we went in, and sat down. And instead of the hard sell we'd had from Ali, we had a lovely young chap asking what we wanted to know. And all three of us found a carpet we liked, at prices we liked. Maybe they weren't as good quality as the ones Ali was peddling, but as the old cliche goes, if you are happy with the price, you were not screwed, even if someone else could have got it cheaper.

So, after much haggling and negotiation - with the father who had by now appeared to finish the deal - and various calculations of conversions into Qatari reals, or Abu Dhabi something ort others (Iranians can't take US dollar credit card, so they have to work through the Gulf States) we decided to pool our cash and pay with greenbacks. So I went off with the son to take the carpets to our hotel to collect the cash, while the others went to sit on a roof overlooking the square and sip more tea.

Oh, and I had some curry-like spice powder forcibly shoved up my nose - by the spice seller who proffered me a shovel full of spice to smell and then promptly pushed the shovel up my nose as I bent near (that must the be oldest joke in the baazar book).

Dinner that night was in a lovely and rather fancy Isfahani restaurant where we ate the signature Iranian dish called fesen-jan, chicken in a dark red sweet sauce made from pomegranates that tasted rather like the mexican chocolate-based mole. Too sweet for my tastes, but the evening was memorable for the sudden relaxation of our driver Farhaad into a state of quite hilarious excitement, as he told us a selection of dirty Iranian jokes. They would lose a lot in the telling here, but I suspect we'll all remember the boy and the bicycle for a while to come. We were laughing so much by the end, that, as Tom commented, despite wishing for a cold beer at the end of a hot day, we realised that one really doesn't need alcohol at all to have a hilarious time.

Day 5: Yazd

16 May 05 @ 07:33 PM  category » travel

Ah, 'twas a day of mosques. Emily was in heaven, the Jameh Mosque being the source of her idyll, and quite right too. With minarets towering 48m over the exquisitely tield entrance portal, it is quite superb. But enough about mosques, let the pictures speak for themselves.

From the mosque, we went to the Ateshkadeh, the Fire Temple housing the Sacred Eternal Flame, which is said to have been burning since about AD 470, kept alive despite several moves to Ardakahan in 1174, to Yazd in 1474 and to its present site in 1940.

Next came the Water Museum, which described the ancient engineering of the qanats, or water channels, that the Iranians have used for over 2000 years to bring water down from the mountains under the pressure of gravity through underground channels. Excavated on a slope from the mountain source to the collection point in town, often as many as 60 miles away, there are apparently 50,000 of them still in use in Iran.

This was a great photo on the wall of the museum. Click on the image to enlarge it: it says

"Sometimes people should bring water from reservoirs to appreciate the value of welfare". 

After lunch we wandered over to the Bagh-e Doulat Abad, a summer
residence of a local ruler, set amid charming gardens and famous for having, at over 33m high, the tallest badgir in town.  As Tom noted, our "badger" was "bad English humour at the expense of a beautiful Farsi word". And boy, were the schoolgirls persistent here. Twenty or more photos this time before we managed to escape; but even then, one particularly cheeky one decided to have some fun with me as I began my ascent up very high steps to the veranda on the second floor. Every time I took a step up, she would push to go in front of me; every time I stopped and stood aside to let her go first, she would step down and do the same, mimicking me and giggling hysterically. Must have gone on about five times before Mohammad, spotting us from above, shouted something in Farsi and she ran off laughing. God knows what he said!

Leaving Yazd, we stopped at the restored caravanserai at Na'in for lunch and a step inside the ice-house, a huge domed structure that they used to store ice in from winter to last through till summer.

A bit later on, we stopped for Emily to take a picture of an old fort, and, upon crossing the road to get back into the van, were horrified to see the door of the VW van coming flying off. But no car had hit the van. Poor Farhaad was beside himself with concern that we would be angry; on the contrary, we found it all rather amusing, and immediately put big old Tom to work holding the door up while Farhaad fixed it back into its sliding housings. Luckily, it wasn't badly damaged - a piece of plastic had just broken off, which was meant to prevent the door from sliding off altogether when opened, so the door just came  off its runners - and we were on our way again quite quickly. But I think Farhaad was worried because this was his first job with Mohammad's tour company and obviously he wanted to make a good impression. I think he's going to be OK, though. Mohammad likes him - he just made it clear that by next time Farhaad might need a van upgrade, or to rent a better van.

And thus, after a long and dusty, tiring drive, we arrived in Isafahan. We had just enough energy to go and sit in the sumptious gardens of the 5-star Abasi hotel and eat some Aash-e-Resteh, a delicious pureed vegetable soup made of beans, with crispy fried onions, mint raisins and yoghurt on top. And then we fell into bed.

Day 4: Yazd

15 May 05 @ 06:49 PM  category » travel

We headed off early - yet again, no sleeping in on this trip! - for Yazd. Stopping along the way at Abarqu - the Iranian's version of the middle of Midwestern nowhere (I think they call it Buttfuck, Idaho, here), we saw what's probably the oldest cyprus tree in the world (4000+ years old).

And we stopped at a couple of ruined caravanserai along the way. Shah Abbas I ordered 999 of them to be built along the main roads of Iran to promote trade along the Silk Route. Most are now deserted, some have been turned into hotels, or bazaars etc. This one was eerily wonderful.

We also stopped at a tower in the middle of the desert, but I can't remember its name or what it was for. We did see an Iranian couple up there, though - and the woman was *not* wearing her headscarf! So we promptly took ours off too - we were literally in the middle of nowhere - and this is the only picture of us sans headgear on the whole trip...the couple were on their honeymoon from Tehran, and she laughed when she saw Emily and I whip our scarves off. The wind, the breeze - how lovely that was!

Arriving in Yazd mid-afternoon, we climbed up to the top of the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence on a hill outside the town. Up to here, the high priest would carry the bodies of the dead, where he would lay them out in the tower to be picked clean by vultures. The Zoroastrians belive that burying the dead pollutes the ground, and burning them pollutes the air, hence the vulture approach; however, this practice was banned some decades ago and now they have to bury their dead.

At the bottom of the towers we met an old man, Sharyaar, and his donkey Susu, who have looked after the place together for the last 27 years.

Next, Mohammad took us to the Zurkaneh (Gynasium. literally "House of Strength"), where we watched a range of men from young to old and fit to fat perform some weird and wonderful feats of strength which comprised everything from seeming yoga moves to spinning on one foot to push ups to wild twirling of heavy batons, all to a heavy drum beat and the accompanying wailing of the leader signing Hafez lyrics. I wasn't convinced on first walking in there that I could bear to watch for two hours, but it turned out to be quite mesmerising. More...

Coming out of the Zurkaneh, we were accosted by a small boy who insisted on taking us to watch his father blow glass. Several windy streets, deserted courtyards and meandering staircases, we found his father in the basement of a building, indeed ready and waiting to show us how to blow a delicate glass swan. The problem was, he couldn't get it to stand up straight. But since he had a cast on his arm I imagine his mobility had something to do with that.  Emerging into another alleyway, we passed a small shop where a man appeared to be pounding a yellow slab of crystal. On closer inspection it turned out to be crystallized sugar, and he smilingly beckoned us in to watch him at work. My god, it was as hot as a furnace in there - well, there was cloying smell of sugar permeated the air. The crystals were huge, and beautiful - that comes from 3 days of cooling after the sugar is boiled with eggs in a huge vat of water - and apparently good for settling bad stomachs, of back a furnace in there - and the sweet slightly pain. Tasted pretty good too.

Our final effort of the day was to climb to the top of the facade of the Amir Chakhmaq Complex, which is used during the rituals to commemorate the death of Imam Hossein, for the sunset. The views from the top over the city are stunning, especially at sunset, and you get a clear view of the badgirs (pronounced bad-gear, but affectionately referrred to by us as the badgers), which are amazing windtowers that catch the breeze and direct the air downwards over cool water to act like air-conditioning for the rooms below. Damn effective they are too.

We wrapped up the day sipping tea to the tinkling of water in the fountain on huge platform beds in the delightful courtyard of the Malek-o-Tojjar hotel, a Qajar-era home buried deep in the heart of the bazaar.

Day 3: Pasardargae and Persepolis

14 May 05 @ 06:29 PM  category » travel

Pasagardae

On Monday morning we got up early and headed off to Pasargardae, a city started by Cyrus the Great in 546 BC. Rather neglected after Persepolis was built by Darius I 50 km away, the main structure there is the Tomb of Cyrus.

Apparently Alexander the Great was upset at seeing how Pasargardae had fallen into disrepair and ordered the restoration of the tomb when he saw it. The rest of the ruins on the site are pretty scant, but there are two plinths with inscriptions reading "I am Cyrus the Great, the Achaemenian King".

The school just outside the entrance to the ruins has this sign outside...
(click on the images to see a bigger version)

Naqsh-e-Rostam and Naqsh-e-Rajab

The necropoli (rock tombs) here were impressive, to say the least, towering in rock cliffs some 60 feet off the ground. They are believed to be the tombs of Darius I, Artaxerxes I, Xerves I and Darius II.

Persepolis

Persepolis is quite magnificent. Started under Darius I (the Great) in about 518 BC, and built out over 150 years, it is the greatest surviving set of ruins of ancient Near Eastern civilisations, and its scale and grandeur is magnificent. It burned down when Alexander the Great visited in 330BC because, despite being made mostly of stone, the roof had wooden timbers and when the fire raged these burned, melting the iron clamps that held the columns in place.

From the Grand Stairway through the Palace of 100 Columns, the white stone glowed in the bright sunlight against a perfect blue sky. The Apadana Staircase depicts scenes of the arrival of the delegations that came from 23 countries in the Near East and the reliefs are in immaculate condition. We climbed up to one of the tombs on the hill above the main site to get the view (sadly ruined by a huge protective roof structure over the Apadance staircase), where we were again accosted by schoolchildren; this time boys, I took their picture and then then jostled and hustled to get close to see the image on my digital camera. And when I asked Mamad what the crooked finger symbol they were all doing meant, he told me it meant something like "I adore and respect you" so that's a nice gesture to add to the repertoire.

When we left the site, there were literally dozens of young girls and boys hanging outside the entrance, and a number of oldeer Iranian women, and we were immediately surrounded. One woman asked Mamad if her daughter could talk to us; Emily, ever fabulous at conversations of this sort, got into her stride and soon the young girls was telling us that she was in a rollerblading competition and other stuff. Her mother was there on a visit for a group of retired teachers, and soon she was talking about her wonderful, tall, handsome son. Mamad later teased Emily that she was trying to set her up with his son.

As for the ruins themselves, there is too much to write about here, and there is plenty of good history about the site elsewhere on the web.

When we got back to Shiraz, we stopped for a quick mosque fix. We waited in the courtyard (Friday prayers were in session) for a friend of Mamad's to come and deliver something. The Achaemenean Warrior, Mamad called him. And when he showed up. it was clear why. With thick black curly hair, cut in the ancient style, an impressive hooked Persian nose and piercing eyes, he looked like Victor Mature and wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Samson and Delilah or some such saga. Turns out he *is* an actor, and was delivering a CD of photos to Mamad. When we saw them later we laughed - Shiraz does indeed have its very own real, live, walking, talking Achaemenean warrior! I must get some of the pictures from Mamad...

The mosque itself isn't particularly old, but was spectacular for being covered from top to toe in elaborate mirrorwork which reflected the light into thousands of shafts of prismatic light. It was dazzling - I couldn't help but think it would make for an excellent dance floor!

Day 2: Shiraz

13 May 05 @ 07:44 PM  category » travel

Arriving in Shiraz, we had a quick breakfast and headed out again for the start of the Mosque Madness. Beautiful though they are, the sheer size and quantity of them made it quite hard to keep in mind all the different tile styles and carvings from the various dynastic eras…anyway, first stop was the 19th century Nasir-Ol-Molk Mosque, unusual for its use of bright pinks (rather than mostly blue) in the tilework, and the depiction of European style houses on the tiles. Here, Mohammad gave us a quick lesson on the "squinch".

A squinch (I think the term is derived from "square inch" but god knows why) is "a form of construction used for filling in the upper angles of a square room so as to form a proper base to receive an octagonal or spherical dome". Most Persian mosques are built with a coutyard, four iwans (towers), and  a large dome. The room below the dome is square: the squinch is the mechanism by which the corners of the square walls are built across to form an octagonal shape, on which the dome is then built.

The construction of the squinch was typically hidden by exquisitely complicated pennantives (stalactites). Now, we're pretty hot on pennantives, us lot.

From there to the Bagh-e-Naranjestan - the Governor's Residence during the Qajar era - complete with its painted wooden ceilings and more European scenes in the bedrooms, extravagant mirror work in the reception rooms, and luscious gardens. Oh yes, the precious Persian garden of lore is alive and kicking today.

More gardens next. Bagh-e-Eram (Garden of Paradise) gardens were a cool and breezy delight in the heat. We were soon surrounded by a bunch of black clad giggling schoolgirls, who wanted to take our picture and talk to us in broken English, and who laughed and pointed at Tom saying “tall” over and over while giggling behind their hands. We soon discovered that saying yes to a girl with a camera in fact means standing there idiotically as fifteen other girls then run over with their cameras poised for a click too. By the end of the week we were ruthless and would walk away after the fourth or fifth picture. Damn it, we had mosques to see!

Delicious lunch at the Sateer kebab house – we are now connoisseurs of the myriad of forms a kebab can take - a quick mosque or two to settle the stomach, and then a trip to the Shiraz Bazaar-e-Vakil, where we wandered along windy old streets under lofty barrel vaulted ceilings, surrounded by the smell of spices and the flash of colored fabrics. Maybe they are similar the world over, but I do still love the character of a bustling bazaar.

Mohammad bought us cups of the local “ice-cream”, which was quite the strangest thing I’ve tasted for a while. It’s basically frozen vermicelli soaked in lime juice, with lots of sugar. Very tart and very sweet together; definitely an acquired taste. As we sat on a bench outside the shop, an old couple came to sit down opposite us. Emily, smiling beatifically as only she can, told the old woman that she was beautiful (translated, as always, by Mohammad), upon which the old man snorted gently and basically said “She’s beautiful? You can have her!”

We also found in the bazaar an old man making huge round metal trays out of the panels of old cars. He beat the metal flat and then heated and mouldied it over a large circular plinth. When we asked him what they were for, he told us they were fruit trays for weddings. I couldn't imagine that these huge objects would be needed very often, but in fact we saw how they might be put to use a few days later in Isfahan when we stumbled across an extremely lavish wedding taking place at the Abasi Hotel. After seeing the flower arrangements, some of which stood fifteen feet tall, I could definitely imagine these huge fruit trays lying around the wedding parlour.

From here we popped into to the Regent's Mosque which stands at the entrance to the bazaar, famed for it's 14-step minbar (pulpit) made of a solid block of marble from Azerbaijan.

At the end of the afternoon we went to the Aramgah-e-Hafez to visit Hafez’s tomb (1324-1389). The Iranians believe that every home should have two items: the Quran, and a book of Hafez's poetry.

Shamseddin Mohammad (Hafez is a name given to those who memorize the Quran by heart; Hafez is said to have done this in fourteen different ways) is probably the best-loved of the Iranian poets, and his phrases are part of everyday speech. He's the Iranian Shakepeare, but a lot more ancient. In the West, we all know Omar Khayamm better because of Edward Fitzgerald's excellent translations; the best Hafez translations are by Gertrude Bell. The Iranians are no philistines; poetry seems to be a national passion, and everyone can quote from Hafez. He was a mystic Sufi and many of his poems are obscure and ambiguous, which means people can interpret them in a variety of ways. Many Iranians, apparently, consult Hafez for daily decision-making by randomly opening a book of his poetry and seeing what the oracle suggests. He was also unusual in that he was a great believer in wine, women and song. Mohammad told us an Iranian joke about a man who goes to visit the tomb to ask which of six sisters he should choose for his wife. He opens the book of poetry and in the poem he falls on, Hafez talks of having six wives…

[Artist: Okhovat Pour Jafar, a miniaturist in Isfahan]

I just found this rather long but interesting article on why it is so hard to translate Hafez properly.

I was accosted at I climbed the steps to his tomb by a man holding a tiny baby. With his large family in attendance, he thrust the tiny bundle into my arms and beamed at me, nodding vigorously. I clutched the baby, hoping I wouldn’t drop it, and the family gathered round for the obligatory photo. We then stopped for tea in the garden where we spotted a dervish, and Mohammad charmed him into letting him take a photo (apparently a rare occurence; I saw him subsequently shoo away two other Iranians).

Ancient Carvings and Lots of Bling

10 May 05 @ 10:26 PM  category » travel

National Musuem

Our first cultural stop of the trip was the National Museum of Iran, where we came across John Curtis - curator of Middle East antiquities at the British Museum - and his team discussing the packaging of a rather large stone column. They’d just finished deciding on the items to be sent to London for a Persian Antiquities collection at the BM in August. The museum is small and there isn’t much in the way of descriptions, even in Farsi, let alone English, but we had the trusty Mohammad at our side to inform us.

Salt Man, from the 3rd or 4th century AD, was probably the most curious of the exhibits. He's well preserved: being buried in salt will do that for you.

From ancient carvings to glowing glass and turquoise tile at the Ceramics Museum.   

After a simple lunch of kebabs and rice, we headed to the National Jewels Museum, passing on the way the old US Embassy. Now called the “US Den of Espionage”, and occupied by a militia group defending the current regime, it isn’t open to the public, and it’s made pretty clear who the enemy is there: almost all of the outer walls of the complex are covered in violent war murals and vehemently anti-American slogans.

The Jewel Museum

Home to all the opulence and riches renounced by the mullahs, housed deep underground in a vault of the national Melli Bank, the Jewel Musuem holds treasures beyond imagining. Though it was attacked during the revolution, the raiders never got inside. That wasn't so surprising once I saw the two foot thick steel door of the vault. 

You aren’t allowed to take pictures, and words can’t really do justice to what you see there. The largest uncut diamond in the world? Yes, that’s the pink Darya-ye Nur (Sea of Light). The Kuh-e-nur (Kohinoor to us British lingo-manglers) diamond in the Tower of London was originally also in this collection during the reign of the Safavid shahs who decorated their capital Esfahan with booty collected on their travels. Wars were fought over these two diamonds – on an Afghani invasion of Iran in the 18th century the Kuh-e-Nur and Darya-e-Nur were stolen and sent to India. The next Iranian shah, Nader Shah Asfar, sent an army to get it back, simple diplomatic persuasion not proving successful. The collection was later plundered again and somehow the Kohinoor ended up in London.

Besides that, the jeweled plates, and crowns, and swords and clothing…well, I’m not much one for fancy jewels but it was all quite breathtaking. My favourite piece by far was a pearl and teardrop diamond necklace that was simply exquisite in the intricacies of its metal work. Made me want to get all dressed up in some huge gown and a pompadour hairdo for a ball. Tom was partial to the last Shah’s fancy crown. And well, the Peacock Throne is gaudy as hell but still spectacular.

We also saw here the first indications of Mohammad “the fixer” Rostami at work. He disappeared off when we entered, and returned moments later with an extremely distinguished silver haired gentleman called Qahremani Qajar, who proceeded to guide us around each exhibit. Turns out he is the head curator of jewels, and doesn’t usually act as a guide, but Mohammad had worked his charm on him. He is an old noble (the Qajar period featured a lot in the rest of our tour) who didn’t like the extragavance of the old Shah, whose taste he clearly did not approve of. But of course I can’t remember all the special details he told us about each piece, as since then my brain has just been filled to the brim with ancient stories.

From glittering jewels to a treasure hunt of a different nature: for Tom’s personal history. We drove – or rather, our driver Reza negotiated the madness that is Tehran driving - up to the north east of the city in search of the house where Tom and his family had lived 30 odd years ago when his father was stationed in Tehran in the 1970s. After several stops for questioning of locals about renamed neighbourhoods and the like, we narrowed the search down to a particular street. We all got out of the van and followed Tom down the street as he tried to recognize his surroundings. We knew we were roughly in the right place when once Tom recognized the corner shop he bought sweets at as a five year old. But as we walked around, up this alley and down that one, no flicker of recognition of a particular house came to him. Eventually Fixer Rostami stepped in again. He started asking old people on the street if they remembered an English family living there 30 years ago. The second man he asked, did. It turned out that Tom’s old house had been torn down and a new, luxury set of apartments had gone up in its place. And the next person Mohammad spoke to was the owner of the corner shop, who’d been there for nearly forty years. So we found the spot, and we got some footage of Tom on his quest for viewing by his family back home in Wiltshire.

We then tried to visit the White and Green Palaces of the late Shah, but we got there too late to go inside, and instead just sat in the gardens and had the first of many many cups of tea as the sun set.

Our first, and probably only, linguistic misunderstanding followed. Being exhausted, and wanting an early night, we said we only wanted something fast for supper, rather than a big fancy meal. So Mohammad took us at our word, and took us to a fast food joint. So now I know what the Iranian equivalent of Mickey D’s is – and believe me, it may be neon and tacky in presentation, but the food’s better. The chicken burger is real chicken, for a start.

Quite a day, all told. And a 6am start to come in the morning to catch a flight to Shiraz.

An early bedtime, under the cicrumstances, was blissful.

Day 1: Tehran

01 May 05 @ 10:15 PM  category » travel

I woke up from a red-eye doze on the plane to hear our captain do the usual spiel about beginning our descent etc. I got up, still in my ordinary t-shirt, and made my way to the loo to change into a long sleeved shirt. I did get several pointed looks from the Iranians I passed along the way; I suspect they were wondering if I was actually going to do something about my attire.

Once we landed, Emily donned her full length Iranian “dressing gown” – the one she’d been given by a friend at work in London who’d recommended that we be very conservative. I looked at Emily, and thought “hell, if that’s what we need, I’m in trouble”. My shirt was long, a shalwar kameez top in effect, but it wasn’t ankle length like Emily’s. I put my scarf on, and my mac over the top, just in case, and proceeded to simmer gently as we stepped off the plane into the Iranian sunshine.

While we stood in the immigration line, I observed the women around me. They sported outfits of all kinds – full length black chadors, three-quarter length coats, shorter shirts. I felt a wave of relief. Emily took one look too and realized it was time for her to get a new look, something a little less full-on than her mega-coat. You just don’t know until you get there.

When we emerged through immigration and customs, we found our guide Mohammad waiting for us. It took one look at his grinning face, and one sentence from him in flawless English, for us to realize that we had been very lucky and had probably been given the ideal guide…

Once we’d checked into the hotel and dropped our bags off, we negotiated with Mohammad – keenly enthusiastic to get going on the day’s activities – to be granted an hour’s quick lie down to refresh ourselves. Didn’t last long. And then the whirlwind began…

Click here to see all the trip photos [view slide show for full size pix]

So I ran off to Iran

29 Apr 05 @ 11:07 AM  category » travel

I'm just about to pack up and head off to the airport to fly to Iran. The next week will be fascinating; the only thing I'm not looking forward to is being covered head to toe in the heat. Silly pictures of me in a burqa no doubt will be coming shortly...

Wireless Free in Gay Paree...

23 Apr 05 @ 12:45 PM  category » travel

Arrived in Paris this morning. My JFK-LHR flight was delayed: we missed our take-off slot by 5 minutes courtesy of two non-show passengers, and so had to wait an hour for another slot. That left me about 45 minutes at Heathrow to clear immigration, get my bag, get over to Terminal 2 and catch my Paris flight, which was booked separately. It looked impossible - but luckily things in London can be really smooth and I made it almost easily.

Paris was supposed to be rainy today but instead the sky was blue and the sun shone brightly. I wandered around the Luxembourg gardens, watching two Frenchman play tennis in jeans and white button down shirts; I walked along the river by the Ile de France, and then I was chatted up walking along the street by a guy who turned out to be a war photographer who spends most of his time in Iraq. And is Lebanese...and has spent time in Iran. What are the chances of that set of coincidences occurring on a random meeting?

And now, having returned to my hotel room and imagining hellish attempts to get online with dial up, I find that there's a wireless network in range - and it is damn fast. Oh, the joy!

The lengths one won't let others go to...

13 Feb 05 @ 10:38 PM  category » travel

The Knee Defender stops the rude person in front of you from pushing their airline seat back on top of you. Harsh, but useful. Also, Seat Guru tells you what the good seats are on a particular airline.
[Both via Daily Candy]

Barcelona Daze

18 Aug 04 @ 09:45 AM  category » travel

Barcelona Daze
I've wandered the maze of streets in the Raval and the Barrio Gotico, sat for hours in cafes on Rambla Catalunya (luckily some of them have wireless which makes working very pleasant), tried probably every form of tapas available, even taken the funicular to the top of Tdibidabo (nice view, shame about the tourists. Oops, that's shame on me too).

I've been totally lazy about art galleries and Gaudi buildings, simply because standing in a queue in the heat of the day for 45 minutes to get into Gaudi's La Pedrera apartment building isn't my idea of fun. I saw some weird and some wonderful short films in an outside courtyard at the cultural centre, and I've swum the length of Barceloneta (well, maybe not the whole length but I swallowed enough water in the choppy waves to feel as though I'd turned into a fish).

So all in all a low-key, live-the-Barcelona-life-but-don't-worry-about-getting-the-t-shirt, couple of weeks. But the best of it all? Climbing up and up and up the narrow staircase inside La Sagrada Familia's towers. It brought back memories of roof-climbing at college: the world looks very different from the top of Ely Cathedral or Trinity Library. Ahh, such days are past, but the sudden surge of naughty impulse lives on: I wanted to stow myself away at closing time behind one of the many piles of stone scattered across the inner chambers of this never-to-be-completed masterpiece and wait for the silence and moonlight. That would be a Barcelona memory to cherish. But I'm old and square now, and don't think a Spanish jail would suit me.

Ibiza Rocks

09 Aug 04 @ 02:09 PM  category » travel

I'm now melting in hot and sultry Barcelona, but no complaints after a spectacular week in Ibiza. Our lighthouse oasis was the spot to hang out. Lazing on the pontoon all day, cocktails at sunset, dancing all night - rinse, repeat - such things are idylls made of. Running with a splendid crowd, we partied hard, but in inimitable style.

Woman of the match without question goes to Jo for organising the shindig - and for managing to dance the night completely away on 5 out of 7 nights. Plans for a reunion trip next year are already being mooted. Running into old friends in Space was just the icing on the cake...where else can you go on holiday and have 30 people turn up for a barbecue who all know each other?

Jazz Festing in New Orleans

05 May 04 @ 09:02 AM  category » travel

Had my JF induction last week. I was the JF virgin - most of the others in the party had been for years and years in a row. It was Bryce's 18th Jazz Fest!! Big thanks to Elita and Bryce, Stucky and Whitney - and The Colonel - for making it such a fab trip. It rained, but that was a blessing in a way - the heat and humidity of NO is apparently hellish at Jazz Fest. In fact, it was only the second time in Jazz Fest history that they had to cancel a day because of rain...

Saw so many great acts - Hugh Masekela, Smokey Robinson, Wyclef Jean, Dianne Reeves, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Santana, The Funky Meters, The Iguanas, The Steve Miller Band, The Soul Rebels - but without question, the most magical musical moment was dancing in the rain at the very first act we saw: Joss Stone. Some people may achieve greatness in time, and some people may be marketed into greatness, but some stars are just born stars and you can see it, hear it, in every fibre of their being. She was fabulous - she's 17, for god's sake, and English - and yet she sings soul like Aretha Franklin. A mind-blowing performance from someone not yet tainted by too much fame and adulation - still a sweet and charming ingenue with a great body, and a to-die-for voice.

Every man in the crowd wanted her. Every woman in the crowd wanted to be her. You could feel the electricity of people remembering their dreams.

Sunny in San Francisco

28 Apr 04 @ 01:28 PM  category » travel

Just got in to SF from London. It's a bloody heatwave here! SF isn't supposed to be like this in April...two days in a row we went to the beach. Gorgeous.

Chilean Wine Country

11 Jan 04 @ 12:30 PM  category » travel

Here are the pix of the winery I visited in the Colchagua Valley.

Los Maquis

Chile Pix

11 Jan 04 @ 11:04 AM  category » travel

Putting together my photo galleries was a pleasant distraction from the soggy task in hand yesterday.  Here's a brief recounting of the trip: I will let the pictures speak a few hundred words.

Pix

Torres del Paine
The Circuit in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, in Patagonia, Chile, is a 7-8 day hike over about 130km through some of the most varied and stunning terrain on earth. It must count as one of the world's great hikes. Winding around the Paine Massif, the route takes you through river valleys in the shadow of jagged snowy peaks, through swampy bogs and over a blisteringly cold and windy mountain pass, down the side of an enormous glacier, along the sides of milky green lakes, up glaciated valleys and to the foot of the Torres del Paine, 3 magnificent and otherwordly spikes of granite towering out of the landscape.

Day 1: Las Torres to Seron. Panic within 5 minutes of starting - that our packs really were too heavy - had Alex and I unpacking on the path and ruthlessly removing things which Alex ran back down to leave in the refugio until we returned. Most delightful discoveries: coming down the valley, looking at what seemed like a sprinkling of snow carpeting the valley floor to find that instead the "snow" was huge daisies in endless meadows, enough to make a daisy chain to encircle the earth; eating chorizo and cheese lying in a daisy field with newly met Brian, Amanda and Dave.

Day 2: Seron to Dickson. A leisurely stroll in the park for a few hours along the river valley with good company and sunny weather. Orchids and sweetpeas surrounded by jagged snowy peaks: turn a corner and there is a glacier in the middle distance, spilling over the rock.  Much merriment along the way, and Pisco Sours to welcome us at Refugio Dickson (in my view the most charming of the Refugios).

Day 3: Dickson to Los Perros.  Another relatively easy day to get us all relaxed for the Big Day tomorrow. More lakes and glaciers and flowers and...you get the picture.

Day 4: Los Perros to Refugio Grey over Paso John Garner.  We were a little worried about our Mega-Day since every map or guidebook had a different time estimate for the two-stop leg. The best was 9 hours, the worst 12. 12 hours carrying a full pack didn't sound like any fun at all. And the weather - always changeable and most likely wet and windy at least once a day in T del P - is notoriously always bad on top of the pass. So we left with some trepidation very early at 8am. Amanda and Brian, bless their thick woolen Kevlar-impregnated socks, decided to come with us instead of lie in bed and do the Pass in a more leisurely fashion. Good move, we say! 

The day started with The Bog, which, seemingly endless, was deceiving at best and downright rude at times. It caught us all (gaiters are a good idea) but none more than Alex: at one point she was hanging perilously from a slender branch, almost a twig, with a look of horror on her face as she tried desperately to regain her balance before the branch broke.  And another time we turned to see her wrapped around another tree - she'd gone one way but her backpack insisted on taking a different route. And so the Swamp Monkey was born.

The Pass came next. Alex had to draft behind Brian - without his presence to shield her, she would have blown away. Boy was it windy, and cold. But luckily not wet. We were in fact, remarkably blessed with the weather throughout our trip. The whole point of the Pass (besides it being an unavoidable part of the route if you want to do the whole Circuit rather than the "W"), is that when you get over it you are faced with a quite mind-blowing view of an enormous sprawling glacier. The Campo de Hielo Patagonico Sur is the third largest ice cap in the world (after Antarctica and Iceland) and Glacier Grey is the largest of the glaciers at the southern end of the field. Not really a place to stop and admire the view for long, we quickly got off the top and wound our way down through a vertiginous forest to the shores of Glacier Grey (do glaciers have shores? sides, then).  The views around every corner were whistle-worthy, and the sound of ice shearing off...well, it's hard to imagine a block of ice the size of a large building detaching itself and plunging into icy waters of the lake, but if you can't see it, you can definitely hear it. 

We polished off the last few hours to Grey in spanking time, probably fuelled by the excitement of having made it over the pass without too much misery, and the prospect of a warm fire, some Piscos and a rendezvous with various folks just a few hours hence. Brian and Amanda inevitably came too, instead of stopping at the campground just after the pass. It wasn't particularly inviting or hospitable and we'd got there by 1pm: the lure of the good things in store at Grey made it an uneven competition.

Day 5: Ice Hiking on Glacier Grey, then Grey to Refugio Pehoe. Ice hiking on the glacier was quite surreal. Roped together, cramponed up with ice ax in hand, we trudged around on a great big lump of ice, climbed walls, went inside the bluest of blue caves and holes etc and drank hot soup gratefully as our fingers turned slowly numb with the cold (note: wool gloves not sufficient for ice-hiking). When we returned across the lake in a souped-up steel hulled Zodiac, we passed a new iceberg so large and new and bluer than Peter O'Toole's eyes that I find it inconceivable that we did not hear it shear off. There was so much noise of rushing water inside the glacier itself that I guess that drowned it out. 

Day 6: Pehoe to Los Cuernos via Valley Frances. New Year's Eve. Just 3 of us by now - Kate'n'Phil and Piran had left this morning to go back to Puerto Natales for New Year - we wandered along the edge of Lake Skottsberg and up the Valley Frances to the lookout point opposite the Glacier Frances, where I sat transfixed for a while watching for an avalanche. I could hear them, but they must have been on the other side of the mountain, for all I could see were little dribbles of snow falling off cliffs. Perhaps my perspective might have been a little bit out...we said good bye to Alejo at the bottom of the Valley and continued on to Los Cuernos with Meike and Till.  Los Cuernos is the other lovely Refugio where an enormous New Year's feast was set up for those weary hikers that landed there.  We played Spoons and drank Pisco and Gato Negro (sshhhh) and laughed and all slept like logs.  I intended to go for a traditional New Year's swim in the morning but since it was pissing with rain my enthusiasm waned very quickly.

Day 7: Los Cuernos to Las Torres.A nice easy day along Lago Nordenskjold to end the backpack-carrying part of the Circuit. Oh, the excitement of taking off my pack at Las Torres and knowing I wouldn't have to carry it over a long distance again for, oh...at least a few months! We treated ourselves to New Year celebratory massages at the spa at the Hosteria Las Torres. Aaaaah, I can safely say I have never enjoyed a massage more in my entire life (and from me, that's saying a lot). I was almost comatose when it was over. 

Day 8: Las Torres.We got up super early (no rest when Alex is around!) to climb up to the base of the Torres before lunch so we could come back and ride in the afternoon.  The weather, sadly, wasn't sunny and glorious like it had been the afternoon before (torrential rain and grey skies in the morning at Los Cuernos, 4 hours away, bears absolutely no relation to the sunny blue skies and heat at Las Torres that afternoon) and I think there was a tiny bit of regret that we hadn't taken the chance to hike the Torres when the weather was perfect - but frankly, the massage was so perfect, and so appreciated, that I wouldn't have missed it for a bit of blue sky. Luckily, it didn't rain on us and we did get to see pretty much all of the Torres, only the very top of the middle tower still shrouded in swirling mist as we stood below them.

Riding, sadly, was a bust: a misunderstanding meant that what we had thought was a four hour ride over meadows - with the prospect of galloping rather than trekking - was only a four hour ride because they thought we wanted to go to Seron with our packs and be left there: to get there and back was an eight hour ride and since it was already 4pm that wasn't going to work. Shame, but c'est la vie.

And that, in a nutshell, was Our Circuit. I'd be writing a book if I went into any more detail, but to those of you who were there, thanks for your great company and for making it such a fabulous trip. Stunning, other-worldly and redolent of epic tales - I oft conjured The Lord of the Rings or The Princess Bride - it's a magical place.

After T del P it was off to Puntas Arenas, with a morning laughing at penguins with a penchant for playfully patently philosophically pondering and preposterously prancing and preening whilst picturesquely and photogenically paddling in Patagonia...adorable but very very bizarre to watch, and then back to Santiago for some heat and some wine.

Torres del Paine

09 Jan 04 @ 08:08 PM  category » adventure | travel

It's going to take a little while to collect all the photos together, crop and size them and make a decent gallery. I started this evening but got put off by the enormity of the task, and so will make it my weekend project instead.  So here's just one favourite shot of the blue blue ice...

Colchagua Valley

06 Jan 04 @ 11:45 PM  category » travel

Lots to come on Torres del Paine, but for now let me rave for a second or two about the beautiful Colchagua valley. 

I spent my last couple of days in Chile as the guest of one Ricardo R., a Chilean winemaker who took me to a couple of wineries in both the Macul and Colchagua regions. I am now checking email from Ricardo's newly-built winery, looking out at mountains in the far distance in every direction and rows upon rows of vines in the near distance. As we drove around the property this morning, there was a thud and the sound of something rolling around of the roof of the Jeep. Ricardo turned to me. "Ever driven through an avocado orchard before?" he said.

Ricardo's uncle breeds German Shepherds, and his wife's family breeds English racehorses. His family grows pears, avocados, grapes, apricots, sunflowers and corn on the farm. There's a rambling old estancia with tile floors and old black and white photographs on the wall of his ancestors. It's idyllic, albeit a little hot for me. It's a nice life down there in Chile. And the wine is fabulous too.

A Chile Christmas

25 Dec 03 @ 03:16 PM  category » travel

Just got off the boat from Puerto Montt.  It wasn't a fancy cruise and it didn't take us through glacier fields (as I had somehow imagined) - in fact it was remarkably like the ferry boat to Mull which I take every Christmas Eve anyway, and that, coupled with the scenery's very strong resemblance to the Scottish Highlands, made for a slightly surreal feeling that everything was really quite normal.  But the ferry to Mull doesn't rock and roll in the open sea for 12 hours and leave 75% of the passengers feeling green around the gills. That was Tuesday night - although I suspect the early excitement of being aboard on Monday, which clearly encouraged the imbibing of Pisco Sours (the local Chilean drink, rather like a Margarita) contributed to that general feeling of greenness so evident on Tuesday.

Playing chess on a giant board painted out on the deck was fun, but my opponent and I had to call it a draw when everyone else had gone inside and we really couldn't kid ourselves any more that we weren't (a) soaking wet from the driving rain and (b) slowly developing frostbite in our fingers.

Does this make it sound dreadful? Not at all. By day, reading books, playing a lot of cards and Perudo, meeting new and interesting people from all over the world, at almost the end of the (habitable) world, and by night getting tipsy on Pisco and, on Christmas Eve - two days in, once everyone has lost their inhibitions - dancing to cheesy 80s music, all on a ferry boat in Patagonia somewhere in the middle of nowhere - or nowhere in the middle of anywhere - well, that's a fine, fun and fabulous way to spend Christmas Eve.

One more night of play tonight and then the hard work begins.  I feel the need for some punishing Puritanism after the last few days of doing nothing but eating, drinking and making merry.  Bring on the icy Patagonian winds and the many turbulent rivers to cross...

El Senor de Anillos

21 Dec 03 @ 04:26 PM  category » poetry | travel

Well, I am in Santiago. Middle of summer, gloriously sunny. And what did I do on my first night in Chile?  See The Return of the King, of course.  I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to see it until January, true - and had even contemplated a midnight showing the night before I left New York.  But I needn't have worried - there's an even bigger fan than me looking out for me, and that's my sister Alex. She bought tickets for us because "a good movie does wonders for jet lag, you know".  Of course it does. Too long, too cheesy at the end, but still, it had to be done. the Chilenos love it too - cinema totally packed at 11pm and whoops and cheers at all the expected bits.

We spent the weekend on the coast - primarily to visit Pablo Neruda's house on the cliff at La Isla Negra. My favourite poet, a man of many contradictions, and an obsessive collector - all of which made for an interesting place full of intriguing stories.  An added twist to our day involved an extremely heavily pregnant Chilean woman with her American husband and his parents, who were touring at the same time as us. It turned out she is Neruda's great-niece and her baby was due that day. She said she was hoping the poet's spirit would bring on the baby since she was very bored of carrying it any longer!

We also went riding along the beach at sunset. Yeah, yeah, very cheesy and the horses were...well, they were beach horses, but it was still beautiful. We'll get real horses in Patagonia...

Got to go, catch a plane and head south to the snows.  God knows when I'll be near a computer again.

New York, New York

14 Nov 03 @ 01:47 PM  category » new york | travel

Well, I've finally arrived - again. Last week actually. I call it my Groundhog Year - it is almost to the day a year ago that I first moved here, started off by living with Nick, hung around SoHo, etc. etc.  This time I'm staying.

Sheer busy-ness (or business) and laziness and everything being in a whirl have precluded my writing anything on my blog for - wow - 2 months. Really that long? How time flies.  So, since Bass Lake, I've:

- Been to Mexico. 
Hacienda Mahakua  in the jungle near Colima is delightful, stunning, and secluded. 40 or so of us went for a friend's 40th birthday - hiking volcanoes, riding horses, staying up too late playing Perudo and poker and drinking and dancing and...and...oh, it's too late to recapture it all now.

The Mejico pix are great - courtesy of Fred Marigaux.

- Left San Francisco.
Sadly but excitedly. Had a fab weekend up in Mendocino at Jacob Christfort's ranch as a fitting ending to life in CA. A bit nippy, but lots of dancing in the barn kept us warm!&n