My friend Tiffany just got name-checked on SFist.com. Nice. And no, she’s not actually Matt Smith. But the art show review she wrote for SF Weekly is super funny.
P.S. This post officially commences the gradual transition of this blog from my vacation blog to my regular blog. It’ll be fun, I swear.
Latte art, from slashfood.
Originally uploaded by commamommas.
meat and veg: one of the British terms Liz often uses
top drawer: great, top notch, Neumann’s favorite British expression
great tits: a bird–and when I say “bird,” I don’t mean in the British sense of “a woman,” I mean in the flying feathered critter sense
Since I ate all the Hot Cross Buns I bought at the Borough Market (they would have gone stale anyway), Liz and I bought more at the farmers market near Notting Hill Gate on Saturday. It’s a cute farmers’ market: two cheese vendors, two bread vendors, yummy fresh apple juice blends (Liz bought the apple and beetroot, which was delicious and a bright pink color), meat, etc. We picked up some pork tenderloin, kale, and parsnips for Easter dinner (Liz wanted a “meat and two veg” meal).
To digress briefly, I don’t see where London gets a bad rap for food. There are plenty of places that serve healthy food on the streets and in the airports. Liz buys mostly organic stuff, which is fairly easy the farmers markets everywhere. That should serve as a reminder to me that I need to go to the Noe Valley Farmers Market more often.
Easter morning–er, midday–we took the Tube to Regent’s Park, which was “absolutely…top drawer,” as Neumann would say. We walked around the park for a while, and checked out St. John’s Wood (which felt like a really traditional English garden), and all the people who were out doing exactly what we were doing: enjoying the sunny day.
The streams there have so many ducks, swans, and other birds, including according to one sign, Great Tits. I’m not sure who did the Beavis and Butthead laugh at that point, but I’m sure someone did, or at least thought it.
We walked back through Marylebone, got some falafel, stopped briefly at a small museum there (the Wallace Museum?) for the last fifteen minutes it was open, then walked back through Hyde Park. Liz made pork tenderloin with prosciutto in dough, kale, and roasted parsnips. Then for dessert, we cracked open the Easter egg from Michel Chaudun chocolatiers in Paris and ate Liz’s strawberry rhubarb crumble. Two good bottles of wine (with screw caps–the Brits don’t have issues with that, they’re so darn practical). It was the best Easter ever (in London).
Cambridge Relays: annual boat race between Cambridge and Oxford, an excuse to drink outside on a spring day
WWII: a great opportunity for Germans and Americans (and presumably, British, Russians, Italians, etc.) to come together in the mutual goal of mocking the French military
Neumann and I walked down Portobello to check out the Portobello Market, made famous in Notting Hill as the market Hugh Grant walks through as the seasons are changing. They had some amazing teacups, made in England, for very, very reasonable prices. Other than that, it was a madhouse.
In fact, everything was a madhouse that day, including the Thames near the Hammersmith Tube stop, which is where I went to meet up with Neumann and Liz to catch the Cambridge Relays. We went to a place called the Dove, and met a guy who looked a bit like James Mason in Lolita and told Neumann he was Dutch. His friend then said that he was just taking the piss, because he was actually German and the Germans hate the Dutch. To which Neumann wondered, who is he taking the piss out of, since Americans aren’t going to get that joke?
We met more Germans and after proving that the Americans are superior militarily to them (“By my count, we’re 6 to 1,” Neumann said. I followed up by asking when was the last time Germany won a war. We realized it was two wars in the 1800s against the French, which we then decided don’t count.), we focused on WWII. Gonst (there should be an umlaut over the o), who actually went to Cambridge and was wearing a Harris tweed jacket, offered us some Doublemint gum and told us, “That’s what the GIs gave us.”
WWII is funny.
Take the piss: to tease
With all the bits: with everything
One benefit to visiting your temporarily expat friends almost a year into their time abroad is that you benefit from all the visitors who have come before you. Liz recommended a walk near the Tower of London, across Tower Bridge, and up to the Tate Modern, which was the main museum I wanted to visit to help me complete my international hat trick of modern art museums: SFMoMA, Centre Pompidou, and the Tate Modern.
Before I headed out, I stopped at the Orange store to see if I could top off my SIM card, but I had to buy a new one. Still, the SIM card was free, and I just put 10 pounds on it. Not bad.
Today’s a bank holiday, plus, it appears that a bunch of European countries have holy week off, so everything was packed with tourists like me.
I walked along the Thames, decided that cities with rivers running through them are much cooler than cities without rivers running through them, took a photo of City Hall (which, according to my guide book, a London mayor refers to it as “the testicle”), and wandered down to Borough Market for lunch.
Tucked away under what feel almost like overpasses, the Borough Market is your typical farmers market, but with cheese from all over Europe, fresh-baked bread and pastries, fish and meats, and even, presumably for Easter, freshly killed rabbits that you can de-fur yourself at home. I bought Boeren Stelutelleidsekaas (a cumin-flavored Dutch farmhouse cheese made with skim milk) from Boerenkass and a Northern Italian cheese made from sheep’s and goat’s milk from some guy who didn’t ID his business at his stall.
At the unidentified stall, I pointed to one cheese with a really pretty rind, and the guy said, “That? That’s poisonous. I just have that to take the piss out of guys when they want to try stronger and stronger cheeses.”
For lunch, I decided to continue my pattern of ordering something I’ve never had before. The woman in line before me asked about the wild boar sausage. “Is it like pork?” “It is, but it’s quite gamey,” the woman said. I’ve realized gamey isn’t a negative here. I ordered one, too. “Would you like all the bits?” she asked–all the bits being a slathering of cranberry sauce, a bed of rocket, and cooked onions on top. Delicious.
Off to the Bramah’s Tea and Cofee Museum, which is well worth the 3 pounds when you factor in the big souvenir book they give you (and the opportunity to see the biggest teapot in the world), then to the Tate Modern, where you can get free tickets to go down a slide from the second, third, fourth, or fifth floors. They were booked up when I was there, but it looked like fun.
Baggage reclaim: baggage claim
sorry: excuse me, pardon
sorry: I’m sorry, I’d like to get by, I’m British, etc.
Gof: “Goth” from someone with a thick accent
George Bernard Shaw was right, the Americans and British are two cultures divided by a common language. Coming through Luton, I realized that it’s easy to get confused when you think of British and American English as the same language. You let down your guard a bit because you think it will be easy. But then you realize that the reason it feels like you’re walking right through a crowd is because you are. British people walk to the left on sidewalks, in queues, etc. Even the escaltors are switched around (the one arriving is on the right, the one departing is on the left).
On the train, I eavesdropped on a group of four people talking about one guy’s daughter’s fascination with My Chemical Romance, her recent adoption of “gof” clothing, and, of course, football (soccer). It’s nice to be able to understand people again.
Wednesday night, my friends Brian and Liz took me to the Chiswick Arms (Chesterfield Arms? Something arms), a very traditional British pub in Notting Hill with a very traditional Thai restaurant in the back. There are more cultural juxtapositions like that here than I might have thought. But the Brits are so easygoing, I suppose it makes sense.
Liz got the No. 16 there, which confused me because it’s the No. 17 at King of Thai. The other thing I liked about the place is that all the dishes were numbered, but they weren’t listed in anything resembling numerical order.
Today, Prentice’s friend Carter met me for lunch, then took me on a scooter ride around the city. It was perfect. A gorgeous, sunny day (the weather’s been AMAZING here), and a great way to see sights that I want to see, but don’t really want to spend a lot of time seeing.
We went to Hyde Park and saw the Diana memorial, a cool installation with water flowing like a river through it. People were wading in the stream, which varies in width as it moves along and has what looks like plastic perforated plates at various points to give the flowing water different sounds.
From there, past Harrod’s, Buckingham Palace, to Big Ben and Parliament (Carter said that Big Ben is actually the name of the bell inside the tower, not the clock), past 10 Downing St. (the prime minister’s residence, made famous in “Love, Actually” starring Hugh Grant), past MI-5 (home to real-life James Bonds), past the Battersea Power Plant (where a Pink Floyd cover was shot), and back home to Notting Hill. It was great, and helped me get the lay of London.
At a red light, one Brit on a motorcycle commented to us that he was impressed to see two girls on a scooter, compared MPG (or whatever the metric equivalent is), and offered Carter some friendly advice on helmets. Those Brits. They’re nice.
Tonight we’re going to a place called Trailer Happiness on Portobello for Brian’s birthday dinner.
On my last morning in Paris, I dashed over to Notre Dame to go up to the transept and see the gargoyles. I love gargoyles, and a few of the ones I have are modeled after the ones at Notre Dame (don’t ask me which ones, I’ll have to compare my photos to them once I get back).
One of the midwesterners behind me in line said that they weren’t actually gargoyles, they were chimera. I don’t know the difference, but now I’m semi-inspired to figure it out.
I didn’t have a lot of time there, but I’m so glad I went. That was one thing I really, really wanted to do and it was just the perfect time to fit it in.
Once again, it was an experience that tied in nicely with the book I was reading, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and since the sky was so clear, the view was just amazing. And shorter lines than the Eiffel Tower.
One of the things I was most excited about doing on this trip was seeing the flea markets (les marches aux puces–literally “flea market”) at Clignancourt and Vanves. People tend to have a strong preference for one over the other, and it’s difficult to sort through all the information as to which is better. The short version is that Clignancourt has a lot of stuff. A lot of crap, a lot of pristine (and expensive) antiques, and a lot of stuff in between, all organized into multiple marches (markets). Vanves has much less of everything–much less junk, much fewer nice antiques–and has more of the feel of an American flea market. And it only takes about an hour or so to meander through.
Clignancourt feels like a little city, once you push your way past the booths of jeans, incense, knock-off pocketbooks, etc. (and you do have to push), you get to these organized markets of antiques dealers. Everyone has at least one dining room table in their stall, and around one p.m., I discovered why: they lay out a tablecloth, put out a pretty impressive spread of food, open a few bottles of red wine, gather up their shopkeeper friends, and eat lunch together. It’s really cool.
I searched for pots for pots de creme, but didn’t turn up anything. A monsieur, who was very helpful and had a stall of fancy kitchenware, told me they’re very hard to find. I did see a stuffed baby kangaroo and was going to ask the shopkeeper to take my photo with it, but he was eating lunch with his friends and talking to some other Americans. Come to think of it, there was a lot of taxidermy at Clignancourt.
By the way, my advice is to head straight for rue de Rosiers a Saint-Ouen when you’re going. That’s where La Chope des Puces is, and it’s also the far end of the nice stuff (Marche Paul Bert has the nicest things).
After Clignancourt, I headed for La Chope des Puces, the bar with Gypsy jazz. It’s a tiny place. You enter and the art deco-y counter points right at you. You can take one of the eight seats (at four tables) in the front, stand by the bar, or go and sit at one of the six or so tables in the restaurant part in the back. The musicians–two guitarists–were mostly talking and telling jokes with some friends standing at the bar, but the music I did hear was great. Plus, it was fun to stare at the photos of Django and compare everyone’s version of the de rigeur Django moustache (I liked the bartender’s best).
I wandered around Montmartre in the rain Sat. afternoon. Sharlene was right, it’s “very Amelie.”
premier: first
etage: floor
premier etage: second floor
There are lots of funny differences between the French and American cultures. One is how they count floors. When I checked into the Hotel Marignan, they told me my room was on the 6th floor, which I think it was (coming down the spiral stairs every morning, I kept getting dizzy and losing count). But on Sunday, I moved to the Hotel Studia (due to a booking mistake at Hotel Marignan), to a room on the 7th floor.
See, the French count the ground floor as zero. In fact, in the department stores, there are numbers at the top and bottom of escalators telling you which floor you’re on. 0=ground floor, 1=second floor (to Americans), 2=third floor, -1=basement. -1 is my favorite.
Fortunately, the Hotel Studia has an ascensieur (not sure of the spelling) to the 6th floor, and then I take the stairs up one more.
Since the lines at the Eiffel Tower were so long yesterday (and since I was afraid my gift for Neumann and Liz, who I’m staying with in London, would melt in the nice, hot sun), I decided to get up early this morning, eat breakfast (a croissant and small baguette with lots and lots of coffee), and head over there before it officially opened. I got there at 9:10, it opens at 9:30, and I actually got in the elevator to the second floor (en francais, so second up from the ground) at 10:30.
While there, I realized that the Americans should be so thankful to the Italians. A lot of the Americans I see in Paris are well-intentioned but a bit clueless (I heard one lady referring to Notre-Dame as “the big church.” Victor Hugo would be mortified). The Italians, on the other hand, make me proud to be an American (don’t worry, Greg and Dad, I was already proud to be an American. Cue Lee Greenwood).
On Monday, I took a trip to the Jardin du Luxumbourg, continuing my quest to figure out where parts of Charade took place (I think this may be where the stamp collector was and maybe also where Hepburn and Grant watched the Punch and Judy play and Audrey Hepburn read too much into it).
While there, I stopped by Patisserie Sadohuro Aoki, and discovered two funny things.
1) You can’t always rely on addresses in Paris to be in numerical order. If there’s a park or something on one side of the street, the numbers stop–on that side of the street only–then start back where they left off at the next block with buildings. So the Patisserie Aoki, which is at #35, I think, is across the street from addresses in the 70s. When in doubt, keep walking.
2) Just as I was getting proud of myself for figuring out that “tirez” means “pull” and “poussez” means “push,” I encountered the door to Patisserie Aoki, which doesn’t say either. Now, let me just say that this is one of the very, very chic places I found myself in. It’s the kind of place I’d probably be too intimidated to step into in San Francisco. It feels very New York–very, very modern. The chocolate brown, very simple exterior is a sharp contrast to the stark white interior. The tall, slender Asian woman behind the counter looked like she could be a model.
So I push gingerly on the door, and it moves, taking my hand with it. It’s a sliding door, and my hand has slid in the gap, wedging itself nicely in. I wrench it out as chicly as possible (grimacing from the pain, as chicly as possible), and walk in.
The pastries look amazing, but I went with the black sesame eclair, which was mentioned in the “Paris Confidential” article in Bon Appetit, s’emporter (to go), making a hasty exit and eating it for lunch in the Jardin du Luxumbourg (where some pigeons eyed it dangerously).
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