Walk in the Glow of Each Other's Majestic Presence

Since we're leaving for Greece tomorrow, I thought I'd go ahead and catch up
on the tail end of steve & Tom's visit.

On Tuesday night I made wild boar sauce with pasta and a yummy new dessert
of mascarpone cheese mixed with candied ginger and ginger syrup and served
with sliced strawberries and oranges.

Wednesday dawned bright and clear, so we got out of the house early and
headed for the South Bank. Our first stop was the London Eye and we were
early enough that the crowds weren't bad at all and we had a nice ride with
a lovely view. Tom & steve had both been a little nervous about the whole
"ferris wheel" aspect of it, but were very pleased with how stable the pods
are. After our circuit, we went next door to the Dali Universe. That
houses a small collection of his sculptures and lithographs that were pretty
interesting. There was a very small special exhibit of a few of Picasso's
ceramics and prints that was not worth the extra #4 fee. Leaving the Dali
Universe, we rang Barbara and she came down to meet us for lunch at the
Archduke restaurant, since her office is just down the street from there.

After lunch we went to the Hayward Gallery, at the back of the National Film
Institute, for their exhibit of ninety pieces of Paul Klee's work. Tom and
I both enjoyed the show, but for steve it was "one of the best experiences
of my life." We let him stay for a couple of hours, but he could easily
have gone back for more.

We had a lovely stroll down the Embankment to London Bridge, where we caught
a train out to Greenwich. We were about an hour early, so we holed up in a
pub until it was time to meet Jim & Claudia. Jason came straight from home
to arrive about ten minutes after we did. Everyone hit it off just as I had
hoped. We hung out in their very nifty flat for an hour or so and then went
across the street to a nice Italian place for dinner. Then we headed back
up to the flat for another hour of chat before it was time for us to catch
the DLR back into London.

Thursday was the boys last day, so I was sad that a doctor's appointment
made it unfeasible for me to join them for another day of exploring. They
met up with a couple of online friends of steve, instead, and wandered
through the National Portrait Gallery for a bit before making one last stop
at Waterstone's for books and Fortnum & Mason for unusual chocolates--Tom
had been intrigued by their saffron & ginger ganache, among others.
Meanwhile, I made my way back to Homerton Hospital, where I saw a
dermatologist who found the persistent rash on my hand very interesting.
She thinks it's something called "lichen striatus," the cause of which is
unknown, and which very rarely appears in adults. I told her my mother
still thinks I'm her baby and she laughed and gave me steroid ointment that
already seems to be helping.

Tom & steve came back to the flat around five and we ordered Chinese food
delivered and then went down to the University of London's student union
where we met Barbara for a concert by former Throwing Muses vocalist, Tanya
Donnelly. The two opening bands were okay, but the headliner really rocked.
Jason and I had given up on standing early enough to get seats up in the
balcony with a good view of the stage. Tanya recognized steve & Tom from
Boston gigs and made them her "focal point" for the evening, singing right
at them the whole time. After the show, I ducked into the ladies' loo and
as I came out, Robyn Hitchcock was standing right there, so I said hi and we
chatted for a few minutes. He even remembered my name! (He's one of my
favorite musicians, whom I met a couple of times while I was working for
Dov, because Robyn's girlfriend is Dov's goddaughter.)

That was all very exciting and we stayed up too late, talking and packing.
I dragged us all back out of bed--except for Jason--at 6:00 in the morning
so that Tom & steve could leave by 7:30am in plenty of time for their
11:00am flight back to Boston. Once they'd left I went back to sleep.

In the afternoon we went down to the Houses of Parliament. I had tried to
arrange a tour while Tom & steve were with us, but when our pass arrived, it
was for this Friday instead of last. Jason and I had a marvelous time with
our guide, Eddy McKay, who told us silly jokes and stories about the
building and the workings of the government he's observed during his 40
years as one of the Royal Messengers of the House of Commons. The Lords
were still sitting, so we were unable to see their chamber, but after the
regular tour, Eddy asked if we needed to run, or if we'd like to stay for a
pint. We agreed and he took us off the tour route, down the backstairs of
the palace for a brief stop out on the riverside terrace before ducking into
the Lord's Bar for one pint and then into the Peer's Club for another.
These are two of the fifteen bars in the palace. I went to the loo and when
I came back, Eddy had introduced Jason to one of the Members of Parliament
and her husband. So we stood around and chatted with them for about half an
hour before Eddy guided us to the door. That was a great experience!

We had a quiet evening at home and today has been much the same as Jason
ties up the loose ends of his work and I get enough laundry done that we can
pack for Greece. We'll be back Sunday week and I look forward to telling
you all our adventures then.

Our quick weekend hop to Zurich started with a tube ride on Friday
afternoon. The process of flying out of Heathrow is always an exercise in
hurry-up-and-wait--dash up the hill, run for the train, sit for an hour,
dash through the airport, check in, run the security gauntlet, wait for a
couple of hours. We got some food in the terminal--pizza for me, a chicken
& bacon foccaccia sandwich for J. and a Caesar salad split between us--and
then discovered that due to a runway closure earlier in the day, most
flights were running about two hours late. We found seats in the crowded
waiting lounge and settled in, but after only ten minutes, were called to
our gate and took off less than an hour late. It was a fairly clear night
and we got a great view of Paris, with the illuminated Eiffel Tour clearly
visible.

With no luggage to wait for, we breezed through the Zurich airport and
jumped on the train into Zurich center before realizing that our hotel was
actually quite a ways out. It was eleven by then, so rather than sorting
out the trains any further, we just hopped in a cab.

Check-in at the Swisshotel Zurich was easy enough and our room was
reasonably pleasant, although we didn't find the bed very comfortable and
the sheets irritated both our skin--must be the detergent they use. It's a
business hotel, chosen because that's where Linda's conference was, and we
were concerned at first that we'd be too far out of things, but with a train
station just across the street, it was actually quite convenient.

On Saturday we set out to see the town. Our first stop was at the Kunsthaus
Zurich, the main art museum. They had an eclectic collection oddly
scattered around a building that has been added to again and again to create
a strange maze of galleries. One of our discoveries there was the work of
Agosto Giacometti, Alberto's cousin, whose style reminded us of Mucha's
work. Another was Felix Valloton, whose vivid colors and stark lines
appealed to me. We were very amused by a Magritte that was new to both of
us, entitled "The Sixteenth of September" and were disappointed they didn't
have a postcard of it. They also had one of the prettiest Picasso pieces
I've ever seen. Their special exhibit was called "Sade Surrealism" and was
an exploration of the themes of eroticism in surrealist works.

Leaving there, we stopped into the Fraumunster, a church built for the noble
ladies of Zurich around the turn of the last milennium. Its current claim
to fame is a series of stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall that
we found enchanting. After staring at them for a while, we walked back
across the Limmat River and up the stairs to the Grosmunster, where we saw
some windows designed by Agosto G. that we didn't like nearly as much as
either his paintings or the Chagall windows--too dark and cluttered, like he
didn't really "get" the medium. In the crypt we found a very strange statue
of Charlemagne that used to adorn one of the niches elsewhere in Zurich.

Slipping back out of the church, we wandered through the pedestrian alleys
of the Old Town, looking at antique shops and candy stores and a
"schnappsboutique." We stopped into a coffee shop for a drink and snacked
on a wonderful slice of apple pie with a cinnamon almond crust. At that
point we were facing the dead zone of the touristic day, when all the shops
and sites are closed, but it's not time for dinner yet. So a brief stop
at the hotel, we went to the movies and saw _Ocean's Eleven_. It was
amusing and fun to watch without being particularly notable.

I had been suffering from a nagging, low-level headache all day and during
the two hours in the cinema, it bloomed into one of my Top Five Worst
Headaches of All Time. I thought my head was going to explode--pain so bad
I was nauseated by it. We headed back to the hotel as quickly as possible
and got me pain relievers and a dark room. After about an hour's nap, the
ache had receded to bearable proportions and by the time we'd eaten
dinner--room service, since I wasn't feeling up to going out--I was fine.
Since the last time I had one of these (and the first time in years) was
about 24 hrs. into our Italy trip, my theory is that it is a delayed
reaction to flying, that I'm not working hard enough to repressurize my
inner ear. I hope it's true and knowing this will help me to avoid the pain
in the future, by taking decongestants in a timely fashion.

We were waking up on Sunday morning when Linda called to say she had
arrived, she was not only in the same city with us, but in the very same
building and she was going to sleep. We partook of the hotel's excellent
breakfast buffet (real American style bacon!) and then popped into town and
went to the Helmhaus, an art gallery housed in yet another old church. They
do temporary exhibits of contemporary works. Currently they are showing
photographs from Afghanistan by Faizal Sheik--the most striking image was a
woman in full burkha that brought to mind a hazmat isolation suit--and
something called Wald/Explosionen, which consisted of photographs, video and
an installation depicting forest, explosions and explosions-in-forests.
Jason was very amused by a section title in the catalogue that read "Was ist
Wald? Was ist Explosionen? Was ist Wald/Explosionen?"

After an hour there, we walked back to the train station along the opposite
side of the river and headed back to the hotel to meet Linda. It was so
good to see her! The three of us went back into Zurich (hurray for day
passes!), grabbed a quick lunch--seafood bisque and sandwiches--in the train
station, and set out to find the Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Buehrle. This
private collection, housed in one of the former homes of the collector, was
well worth the ~45 minute walk. In addition to a substantial sampling of
medieval art, Buehrle amassed quite a group of French Impressionist and
post-Impressionist works. One of the best sets was four different Van Gogh
works on one wall, one each from 1884, 1887, 1888 and 1890, illustrating the
wide changes in his style over his relatively short working life.

We stayed until closing time and were glad to just walk down the hill and
hop on the tram back into the center of things. We wandered through the
mostly closed shops of the Old Town, pointing out the coolest ones we'd
found to Linda. It was too cold to enjoy wandering for long, so we went to
Adler's for fondue. We share a fondue bourguinnone (hot oil in which to
dunk various meats and a selection of sauces to season them) and a cheese
fondue that Jason especially enjoyed and washed it all down with some very
nice beer.

Filled and warmed we went back to the hotel and spent a couple of hours in
Linda's room, drinking tea and playing with the toys she'd brought for her
cousins' kids, whom she will visit in Germany after the conference. When
Linda's eyes could no longer be propped open by juicy gossip and discussion
of current events, we left her to sleep and went back to our room to watch
BBC World and CNN until we fell asleep.

This morning we had breakfast with Linda and then she started her conference
while we packed up, checked out, and caught the free shuttle to the airport.
Because of fog in London earlier in the day, our flight was held, but they
boarded us on time in the hopes we might get an earlier slot. No such luck
and we eventually landed about 45 minutes late, at 1pm. Then we had to sit
in the plane while we waited for a bus to come out and fetch us to the
terminal. Usually that's just a matter of a few hundred yards, but this
time we got a real backstage tour of Heathrow, winding through the offices
and baggage handling tunnels for almost ten minutes before finally reaching
Terminal 1. We zoomed through the concourse to the Immigration barrier,
confidently handed over our passports and then became more and more confused
as the official asked me all these questions about wasn't I working in the
UK and hadn't I ever worked and why didn't I have a dependent visa in my
passport. I offered to show it to her and she handed me Jason's passport!
No wonder she was confused! That straightened out we hurried on past
baggage claim and customs and were on the tube by 1:30pm.

It was our last day in Tuscany and we wanted to squeeze in a little bit of everything.

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Up early, we made the 8:30am train in Montevarchi and headed in to Florence for a very full day. ( Read more... )