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Mexico City, Winter 2023 ~ Travel
Mexico City (Cuidad de Mexico, or CDMX) has it all: The architecture… The food… The history…
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Nice, Spring 2022 ~ Read
Book review to come.
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Nice, Spring 2022 ~ Travel
An early spring visit to Nice, located in the south of the Provence region in France. Our Airbnb looked out on the Mediterranean Sea and the famous Salyea courtyard with flower and vegetable markets. A short stroll down the embankment took us to famous waterfront hotels, and through beautiful squares to famous shopping districts of the newer Nice. Castle Hill separates the popular waterfront promenade from the old Port Lympia on eastern side of town. There is a very small and kind of rickety mid 20th century elevator that can take you up to the top of the hill, and a very pleasant switchback walk back down on the western…
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Nice, Spring 2022 ~ Revel
Marc Chagall National Museum in Nice is my favorite. The museum is housed in a building that Chagall specifically designed to house this collection. Every room is planned for display and lighting of each specific painting, therefore each work is positioned precisely how the artist intended, with proper angles, and in conversation with the other works surrounding it. Marc Chagall is a Russian-French artist whose dreamlike paintings reflect on his shared Jewish-Russian heritage. His works are full of wonder, mysticism and folk beauty. His subjects often float among the stars, delight in bright colors and glow in stained glass windows. “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only…
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Ireland, Spring 2022 ~ Read
What a journey of a book! The story of womanhood and motherhood that carries across two centuries and two life stories of female poets in Ireland. It is raw and obsessive, literary and personal, and most of all is an intimate look at a much celebrated and much misunderstood event in Gaelic literature, the 18th-century Irish poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, written by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, a woman mourning her husband and raging at his murder. A Ghost in the Throat examines the author’s first-person visceral experience of this work, the process of the poem’s new translation, and many vivid pictures of life in Ireland both now and then.…
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Ireland, Spring 2022 ~ Travel
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Ireland, Spring 2022 ~ Create
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Dublin, Spring 2022 ~ Read
I mean, could this blog even be considered legitimate if I traveled to Dublin and did not read James Joyce for my prep? While I didn’t have spare time to conquer Ulysses (but probably will try now that I have visited Dublin), the fifteen short stories in this book present a fascinating cast of characters from a hundred years ago who the reader-traveler would get to consider against the backdrop of this moody city. Many of the stories provide wonderful environmental settings throughout Dublin, street names and buildings are named explicitly, and as one visits some of the historical landmarks like the port, cathedrals, River Liffey embankments, the characters’ faces…
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Dublin, Spring 2022 ~ Travel
Travel to Ireland in mid Spring and you might just enjoy all 4 seasons on the daily. Luckily, we managed to escape the rain with remarkable skill (maybe because we are from the Pacific NW and got a nose for it?) and enjoy an incredible amount of sunshine and warmth. We spent our first two days in Dublin, getting over jetlag, taking in all the culture, and sampling some pretty incredible cooking. Our Airbnb on Grafton Street overlooked Trinity College, walking distance to the famous Trinity College Library and the Book of Kells exhibit. On the opposite end of Grafton St, our very first tourist stop was Stephen’s Green. Dublin…
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Dublin, Spring 2022 ~ Create
Colcannon with Brown Butter! Ok, so cabbage is not as common here in the United States, except for coleslaw. Most people have a tendency to perceive certain foods only in the one familiar context. Here is an opportunity to broaden your cabbage vocabulary… Hehe! Colcannon is a traditional Irish recipe of mashed potatoes and cooked cabbage, mixed together, with added butter! And it is delicious, if you don’t insist that your mashed potatoes must be creamy! 😉 The cabbage gets quickly stewed (no need to boil it!) to soften it some, and then it’s thoroughly mixed with the mashed potato, some green onions and maybe some other herbs like dill.…
