Chicago, Day 1: Happy Friday!

There might be some confusion about whether I travel for something other than weird music or a decent plate of duck.  You know, something practical and/or geeky.  Like my job.

Well, here I am in Chicago on business.  (Gawd, that sounds so 1950's.  Where's my hat and briefcase?  And my martini?).    It's the first time I've been anywhere on business in 10 years.  The last was ApacheCon 2001 in Orlando, FL.   My wife Kathy got pretty ill after that point and it wasn't practical to attend conferences (she would need to go to a nursing home - the minimum stay was two weeks and really expensive).  But, it was tough.  The techie's life should have at least one conference a year, just to keep up with the fast paced world.

So here I am at SpringSource 2GX.  2000 attendees - about 4 times more than ApacheCon.  Lemme summarize it for the geek-allergic among you.  It was 3 days long, buzzword-compliant, and had too many guys and not enough women.  But I learned a lot - stuff with immediate benefits and interesting stuff with no immediate practical value. Conferences knock your brain out of its ruts.

Then it was Friday, the conference ended. At 3:00 Amy comes strolling into the Millenium Knickerbocker hotel in Chicago.  Finally the real work could begin!

Toddlin'

But lemme back up a bit. Chicago is a Toddlin' town so the song goes, and there are a few interpretations of what this means. It stumbles around like someone after a night of drinking (Chicago was not really big on prohibition, hence Sinatra calls it my kind of town.) It's a toddler compared to other cities, like says Memphis or Paris. Or toddlin' is just a nice alliterative word. But that sounds kind of like a dimunitive compliment, like "I can't say anything nice about Chicago, so it's toddlin'." They could at least say it has a nice personality.

But Chicago is my favorite large American city. It has been ever since I came up for air from Union Station in the Sept. 1990. It's fun, laid back, has an interesting mix of people, and a lot of variety. I set a lot short stories I wrote in Chicago after that. There are lots of stories here.

This time I arrived in Chicago O'Hare and got the skyline view. It's very different - pretty overwhelming. The downtown looks like The Adriondacks - it's like a wall of stuff that immediately becomes the foreground. And this time, I had a little knowledge of architecture. Just enough to make me dangerous.

I didn't get to see much Chicago at the conference itself. There were little reminders here and there - the water coolers made out of wood straight from Frank Llloyd Wright. Chicago hot dogs on the buffet. Of course you had to make one yourself, which requires an Internet-fueled knowledge of just what a Chicago hot dog "dragged through the garden" means:

• Poppy seed bun
• Hot dog (of course)
• Lettuce and tomato
• Celery Salt (I used too much)
• Mustard
• Hot thin peppers on top. Just two.

I think I approximated it pretty well. In general the conference food was really good, so I only ate out once ... at the Weber Grill. They make everything on literally a Weber Grill in this place. I had their legendary beer can chicken. It may not have been the most flavorful, but it definitely the tenderest, juiciest chicken I ever had. And their bourbon baked beans were pretty fantastic. I wanted to try dessert from the grill - apple pie baked in a bag is their speciality. But I was too full.

Keynote speakers went on until past my bedtime. But at night,on the 8 block walk back to my hotel, I could really see Chicago in it's finest. At night, it's a beautiful city. There's color everywhere. The John Hancock Building glows strangely, with it's two purple antennae scraping the sky like an ant. The Allerton Hotel sports the neon sign "Tip Top Tap". I find new, interesting things every time I travel down Michigan Ave.


And Chicago is Even Better...

... when your good woman gets there! At every meal, I had asked my compatriots (a new set every time - that's the way I do conferences) what I should do with my girl friend the weekend.  I got lots of suggestions from going shopping (not good) to a Bear's Game (really not good), but mostly they just told me what restaurants to do.  Which of course is the main thing.

Someone suggested, very strongly, to go to Erwin's.  It's a 3 mile walk, our of the touristy section, and the locals have just started to discover it.  Meaning - perfect!  After a few wrong turns courtesy of Google Maps (which works great as long as your GPS working - not a given with all the tall buildings in Chicago) we high-tailed it to Erwin's in the Lincoln Park district, past the zoo.

It was the first eye-closing mail we've had since Paris.  By eye-closing, I mean each bite is so good that you close your eyes to focus your whole brain on taste, feel, aroma.  Erwin's, it turns out, was a groundbreaking restaurant in the farm-to-table movement.  Get local, in-season ingredients and make something spectacular out of them.  Their menu, therefore, is very fluid.   It's quite French, actually.

Amy had duck comfit with basil sausage.  It wasn't like French duck - not as dense and beefy.  But it was so fresh that it blew most of the duck we've had out of the water.  It was every bit as good as Great Range duck.  I had risotto with a creamy tomato sauce, shrimp and calamari.  The calamari was fantastic, not a bit rubbery or tasteless, and reminded me of the best meal I had in Paris (Les Olividades).   Dessert for me was a lemon ice that was spectatcularly creamy without a bit of cream.  Amy had a piece of sour cherry pie with a scoop of fabulous pumpkin ice cream.

It's hard to describe just how much different totally fresh food tastes, but it's pretty spectacular. My grandparents had a farm and I remember the farm food tasting quite a bit different. Maybe too intense. But here it just tasted like "food on steroids" to use a phrase that, on hindsight, means the exact opposite of what I really mean. You get the idea.

Once we were done, we were a block away, and then it hit! Or rather it almost hit. I stepped off the curb and just about got run over by a bicycle. The rider yelled "Happy Friday!" What the? Then I looked left, and found ….

I had actually almost got run over by a thousand bikes! Literally! Bikes as far as you could see down Clark St. There was no room for cars - they took over the whole street. About half were dressed in Halloween costumes, and a lot of them just shouted Happy Friday to us. Seriously. There was about a 2 mile string of bicycles.

What we had witnessed, as I found out later, was Critical Mass. The last Friday of every month in Chicago, people gather on their bikes at one end of the Lincoln Park district and ride to Daley plaza. There's enough that need they need a police escort. It's kind of an organized movement (the idea started in San Francisco and spread to other cities),but mostly not.  There's no real purpose, no leader, no committee to make sure it comes off, and no real reason to do it except people just love to ride their bike with other people. It's a "take back the streets" movement, but there's no protest. People are not angry or demonstrative. They just want to wish you a happy Friday. And they do ... repeatedly!

In hindsight, the fact that we were about to cross Clark St at that particular moment in the month was pretty amazing! But I'm convinced that Amy and I just attract amazing things. We can't help it. 

After we got across Clark St. we hiked the three miles back downtown to the John Hancock Tower. We went up to the 94th floor for the best night view of the city. And yeah …. It was very spectacular indeed! As colorful and light as the city was from the ground, it was just as colorful from almost 1000 feet up. It felt a little unstable, but that was probably just my mind flipping around. (I'm not fond of heights).

Coming back to our hotel we saw All Saints Spitalfields, a fashion store on Michigan Ave. Which doesn't sound all that exciting except for their awesome display of sewing machines. Two display windows on either side had about 100 sewing machines, and above the door was an awesome array of about 200. A banner hung in back of them with designs shown on from a projector. The effect was awesome - a peculiar mix of very old technology (The Singer and Pfaff machines were circa 1920's and 30's) and very new.

As people passed us on Michigan Ave., we just stared up at the display. It was a fitting way to end the day.

Paris Day 5: The Sweeps

I read Keith Richards' autobiography last year.  After about 100 tales of snorting, shooting up and smoking, I decided to skip all passages related to drugs.  They got too monotonous.  In that spirit, I will spare you the details of our breakfast this morning.  You know it already.

The Best View in Paris

The temperature plunged overnight and the next morning was caked in a classic European drizzle.  But did this stop Amy and I from hiking?  Of course not!  We put on our rain gear and made our way to Sacre Coeur.

To get there, we passed through some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Paris.  There are no huge houses, and it wasn't glamorous like the Champs Elysee.  It was just very eclectic, full of people on a Sunday morning, with markets and little restaurants and some blocked off streets.  Every once in awhile an unexpected landmark would pop up, like the Palais Garnier, or Paris Opera House (pictured left). 

Otherwise, the North Paris neighborhoods reminded me of Boston or San Francisco.  There were blocks of ethnic shops - Italian and Thai were some.  But these are where real people lived and moved and talked to one another, not just a place where people visited. 

Sacre Coeur itself is on a steep hill that looks like San Francisco neighborhoods.  You can take the Montmontrobus up the hill, but of course Amy and I would have none of that.  We instead climbed the huge stairway to the top.  Supposedly the hill is 150 meters up, which is about halfway up the Eiffel Tower, so it was about like our climb the previous day.  I'm not sure.  It was definitely a hike.  But when we got to the top, the view was indeed worth the effort.  It was a Panoramic shot of all of Paris.  Unfortunately, my pictures of it were a little hazy from the rain, but you get the drift.

I liked the inside of the cathedral itself a lot.  It's way, way newer than Notre Dame - in fact, it's little more than a hundred years old.  But the stained glass is really modern and the almost Frank Llloyd Wright-ish.  Rather than saints, the windows depict bible sayings in French and symbols of everyday life.  Kind of like the neighborhood around it, this felt like a church built for people rather than posterity. 

Organ Recital at Notre Dame 

After all les chiens (dogs) we had seen in Paris, it was refreshing to finally see un chat!  As we made our way to Notre Dame, we saw a cat climb out a second story window, then crawl along the narrow ledges on the Paris buildings. 

After a lunch of vegetable soup and Perrier (standard meal in our book) we went to Notre Dame for their weekly Organ recital.  After all Amy and I both love our organs (uhhhh, yeah, probably need to reword that).   Today was September 11th, and the French marked the event by stationing soldiers with automatic weapons on the Notre Dame courtyard, which made everyone a little nervous. 

The organ is the largest in France, and dates back to the 13th century.  The program, which lasted for an hour and is free, started with some Bach.  At first the music was very soft, a little strange from such a huge beast.  Then slowly it gathered steam until notes were thundering through the cavernous cathedral, bouncing off all the walls and echoing in all the crevices.  It was amazing how much music was projected in such a large space with no amplifiers.  It surrounded and enveloped you and got into every cell in your body. 

They played four pieces, the last two were fairly modern and I thought they were very interesting and effective.  It's tough to write music for ancient instruments, so the people that do it have an almost fanatical love for the instrument.  I could understand that. 

And so, we ended our trip with a classic French picnic in the hotel courtyard.  (Resturants mostly are closed on Sunday, so it was a good time to do it).  We had a baguette from Moulin de la Vierge, cheese and wine and pears from the grocery store.  But we started with dessert.  Amy had a raspberry tartine with a velvety custard and the freshest raspberries in creation on top - she called it the best dessert she has ever had.  I had a strawberry millfeiulle, which is flaky croissant-style buttery pastry layers filled with custard and strawberries in the middle.  Oooooo.   So good.  And good for you too, I'm sure. 


Research Project Results

Before going to Paris, I had questions about their everyday life.  I made sure to carefully research these questions, since I believe every vacation should have an educational component of some kind.  Here are my findings. 

Cheetos:  France doesn't have 'em.  They have Lays and Fritos.  But in a land where cheese is an actual course of a meal, the theory and practice of Cheetos seems superfluous.

Squirrels:  You can't get them in a restaurant.  Birds are pretty plentiful - duck, guinea fowl, goose, etc.  And of course there's rabbit.  But no squirrel.   This was a disappointment, since Amy hates squirrels and I was hoping to increase my "macho factor" by eating one in front of her.  No such luck.  And there aren't any running around in the parks either, which I thought was weird.

Sacre Bleu!  I was hoping to stop in the middle of the street, slap my forehead and say "Sacre Bleu!" and see how Parissiennes say.  I dunno why.  I decided not to do it because (1) I'm chicken (2) I didn't feel like swearing!

Conclusion

And what better compliment for a trip than "I didn't feel like swearing!"  Paris was dreamy, the food was heavenly, the architecture and surroundings thought-provoking and lovely.  Most of all, though, the company was perfect.  Amy is the best traveling companion I've ever had.  She remains calm in adversity, gives me strength when climbing huge hills and stair cases. makes swift decisions when necessary, yet watches all the lovely sights with dreamy eyes and a childlike wonder. 

Amy is an elegance magnet.  I can't wait to see where we end up next. 

Paris Day 4: We Slow Down

I'm Waiting for My Man.  My croissant man.  Amy and I are shivering with withdrawal as our fingers nervously pop the Euro's into the cash register (Parisiennes don't want to handle "ze filthy money", so machines do it for them and dispense change). Finally!  We grab the croissants and don't even bother sitting down before shoving those crusty, buttery drugs in our mouth.  Our eyes close as we chew.  Our bodies stop shivering and melt into contentedness.

Amy's eyes pop open.  "Let's just climb the damn thing!"

Eiffel Tower by Stairs

The "damn thing" she meant was the Eiffel Tower.  We spent the last three days ogling it from near and far - there's no place in Paris it isn't casting some shadow.  Now it was time to get up close and personal.

You can basically go up the tower two ways: stairs and elevators.  The elevators are expensive and you have to wait in a long line.  But they go all the way to the top.  The stairs are cheap and you only need wait in a 10 minute long line for a ticket.  They only go halfway up the tower - basically to where the four legs meet and start one big sheet of metal to the top.  The tour guide on our Red Bus two days ago describes it, "You can take the elevators or ... IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE ... the stairs!  Gasp!"

But we climbed friggin' Algonquin just two weeks ago.  How bad could this be?   We looked at the sign for the proper way to ascend the stairs ... one arm raised in front, one arm lowered below (we couldn't find a turtle to attach to our foot - oh well) ... and embarked on our journey.

And it really wasn't bad - Algonquin with handrails.  We stopped at the Premier Etage (first floor) and surveyed the landscape.  Very nice.  There were three or four restaurants, a gift shop, and bathrooms - and if you're wondering where the sewer pipes go in the Eiffel Tower, I'm as mystified as you are.  And there were lots of plaquards describing the building of the tower and its subsequent opening. 

Then up to the Deuxieme Etage (second floor) where the end of the stairs are.  This is where it starts getting freaky.  The pillars going from the first to the second are more exposed to the air outside, and you feel less sheltered.  You've got cages around you - it's not like your climbing a utility pole - but it's still more raw.  I white knuckled the rails.  Still the view was worth it:

Amy said, "Ooo, you know what would be great?  Call your mom!" 

So I dug out my cell phone and dialled Lincoln Nebraska.  "Hey mom!  This is Craig your son ... remember him?  Well guess where I'm calling from.  You'll never guess.   THE EIFFEL TOWER!  I'M ON THE EIFFEL TOWER!  You wanna talk to Amy?"

Amy said, "Hey there.  What time is it in Nebraska?  7:00 in the morning huh?" 

Catholic guilt settles in.  I try to make myself feel better by saying, .... well as far as 7:00 calls one might be expecting, that one wasn't too bad!

Chillax!

After one climbs the Eiffel Tower, one finds an overwhelming desire to take it easy.  And we knew just the place.  The Jardin by the Louvre. 

As I said a couple of days ago, this park is what parks should be.  It doesn't try to cut itself off from the city like Central Park does.  It it large - 5 blocks long and a few blocks wide -  with lots of moveable metal chairs everywhere, sculpture and fountains.  The grass is all blocked off, so there are no prosaic scenes of children running through the greenery.  You walk on mostly sand and a little concrete in between.  There are a few classic restaurant areas around, a few glaceries and creperies.

Getting chairs to sit in and put your feet on required big city predator instincts.  We used the ladder method.  Find an uncomfortable, unoccupied spot.  Use it as your temporary home base.  Wait for a chair to come free.  Grab it, sit down and wait for another chair to be free.  And so on. 

Pretty soon Amy and I were in the lap of luxury, scarfing down trail mix and water, writing post cards and my blog entries (which I still couldn't send for lack of an Internet connection.)  The autumn was settling in the Paris trees although the weather that today was hot and a bit balmy.  I will say this.  Fall tree colors are prettier in the Northeast, and I found the leaves turning a crunchy brown on the Paris trees as closer to my midwestern roots than I was expecting. 

Refreshed and enlightened, Amy and I made our way back to the hotel and dressed up to the nines for dinner.  Well.  I don't mean Tuxedos or anything, but we looked great.  There's something about the backdrop of Paris that makes you look more elegant than you normally would. 

A Fine Evening

If you're lucky, you find a rhythm when you travel.  You find what generally works, what looks right.  Amy and I plugged the address of La Gout Dujour into Google Maps and made our way from the hotel across the Champ Du Mars (the park that connects the Eiffel Tower to the Military School).  The neighborhood was a bit newer.  But the restaurant was old school Parisienne, waiter in white and black clothes and tie.

Amy had Guinea Fowl, which was beautifully crispy with the meat falling off the bone.  I had duck - big surprise.  It was like Amy's dinner the first night at Le Bistrot de Paris, but spectacularly different.  It had the density of good prime rib, but the spices rubbed into it were fascinating and surprising.  It was a different dish every bite.  We finished with a fromage plate apiece, and the honey and walnuts which graced them brought out their subtlety.  There's really nothing like French fromage!

I think it's important to note here ... we have not eaten hardly ANY recognizable vegetables in the last 3 days.  The French like their vegetables, but in season, and often whirled and pureed beyond recognition.  People ask how the French stay thin and they do it by eating LESS, smoking more, and riding their bikes, I suppose.  Evidently not by roughage. 

And we ended the day watching the sparkling lights of the Eiffel Tower as we hiked back.  We stopped in a grocery store and bought stuff for a picnic the next day.  Brie for 3 euros (4 dollars), white burgundy for 4 euros (about 5 dollars).  Only flash forwards of eager custom inspectors ransacking our belongings kept us from filling every pocket of ours suitcases with the stuff. 

Paris Day 3: Bones!

Today is the day we became Parisiennes. We got our inside jokes down pat:

• Everytime a dog walked by, we'd say "un chien!" I guess we impressed ourselves knowing this much french, so we used it whenever possible. Amy noted that were absolutely no ugly dogs in Paris. I agree.
• When we'd get to a traffic light, the pedestrian single was either a red dude ("homme rouge") meaning don't walk or a green dude ("homme vert") meaning walk. We wanted to call him a little green dude, but we couldn't decide whether that was "homme vert petit" (little green man) or "homme petit vert" (green little man) (Do you like Green Little Man?  Do you like them, Sam I Am?)  Also, at one light, we found a man with one leg ("homme vert petite avec un jambe"). Amy joked that if it were a woman, it'd be named Eileen.

So speaking of legs ... which reminds me of femurs, let's have some fun at the Catacombs of Paris!

Tossing Old Bones

After breakfasting on croissants at the Moulin de la Vierge, Amy and I decided to hit the Catacombs. So here's the deal. The French needed a lot of stone to build buildings, and they pretty much picked out all the stuff on the ground. So they decided to dig underground quarries next. They were huge underground caverns, and they dug a big one near the Saint Germain de Pres section of town.

Around 1790, they had a bigger problem - they started running out of land to build buildings. So they had a great idea - dig up old cemeteries and move the bones and skulls where they had room ... like a quarry! You see where I'm going with this. The business of digging up bodies (which were often coffin-less) happened at night. The quarries were consecrated by a priest. And then they were thrown in there. But "throwing" is really too sloppy a word. In fact, their femurs and skulls were snacked neatly into piles that were resistant to falling over. Each dug-up cemetery had its own section in the quarry. A couple of alters marked where priests would say mass before their bones were piled up.


You pay 4 euros to walk through it. It's a couple hundred steps down to the quarry, where you then walk through the eerily lit caverns. When you reach the bone rooms, the sign above says "Here is the Empire of the Dead." As we made our way through, past the five-foot high neatly stacked piles of femurs and skulls, people made nervous jokes. (e.g. Amy says "I see dead people!" ala the Sixth Sense).

After what must've been a half mile of bone piles, the jokes became fewer. Signs with eerie comments in French and Latin mostly said, "Don't laugh at the dead, you will be next."

After must've been a hundred piles of bones and skulls we hit a couple of cave-in spots.  The ceiling above rose from 6 foot to a cavernous 20 foot or so.  The un-caved-in portion has been reinforced with concrete so more doesn't fall.  But it still kind of freaks you out that were were so close to getting pelted with rock.  Amy and I then climbed the stairs to the sunlight again, looked at each other, and felt a little glad to be alive.

Back In the Future

In a city of 850-year-old cathedrals, you start thinking everything modern is banal.  We cured ourselves of this by walking to the Musee d'Arte Moderne de la Ville Paris in the Tracadero section.  This part of town has an American flavor- the streets are named after Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and there was a big, hastily-erected, temporary monument to the World Trade Center (today being close to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.) 

The very first painting we hit was La Fee Electricite, and we spent almost a half-hour looking at it.  Eee gads, how could a painting command that much of our attention?  Well it helps that the damn thing is 10 meters by 60 meters - about 30 feet tall and 180 feet wide!  (The picture above is only the right half of it, and not even the FULL right half!).  It's not a mural.  When you walk up close to it, you can see all the little tiny details that little paintings have.  It's more of a symphony than a theme - it depicts life before and after the invention of electricity, and it's amazingly both complimentary and critical.  You think you might get overwhelmed by such a large painting, but it's a work you can look at both a macro and a micro level.  Amy and I debated lots of little details, and I suspect that's what Raoul Duffy wanted.

Amy's approach to modern art makes sense to me. If the invention of photography makes realist paintings superfluous, then modern art's job is to capture feelings.  So when you look at an abstract painting, it's not to figure out which blobs of ink are the horse and duck, but which are tenderness, anger, and bliss?   So we wandered around, finding works that inspired us.  The big surprise to me was how many paintings invoked a first response of "Ehhhh," only to find, on second look, something completely different and beautiful. 

In true Parisian fashion, there were no shock pieces that American intellectuals gravitate toward (no "poop in a can" here).  Just lots of cool modern art - Matisse, Victor Brauner, etc.  It was a nice, focused time ... as opposed to the Louvre which is just way too much to absorb.

Where the Locals Eat

That night we were so exhausted from walking (10 miles on concrete, plus the Catacombs, plus the art museum) we took a nap. It was 8:30 and we headed for St. Germain district without a recommendation. It was a tough journey. The menus were all posted outside, and we scanned what seemed like a thousand. There were lots of Italian restaurants, lots of Americanized restaurants, resturants that were tourist traps (e.g. Deux Magots.)


After an hour, we finally settled on Café Varenne mostly because I recognized Confit de Canard (duck comfit). Amy had this at the Great Range in the Adirondacks a couple of times. And fortunately … it was exactly the right choice.  Confit is a method of cooking where you marinade the duck for a day or two, then poach it in a low-temperature oven in its own fat.  The duck was crispy, carmelized, and very tender inside. The potatoes were heavenly too. And I've never been a fan of sopping up juice with bread, but I felt compelled to break this tradition here. I would've licked the plate if we weren't eating outside with people strolling past. So wonderful! And we decided to do like the Parisians do and end the meal with a fromage plate. The camembert and toast points were the perfect meal ender.

I thought the waiter was strange, but Amy had him figured out. He was acting reserved and a bit embarassed because Amy and I were making googly eyes at each other.  He was just trying not to step in a tender moment. Once Amy explained that to me, I thought it was pretty cool. Food is not all business to the French, as it is to Americans.  Dinner is like a microcosm of all that's good in life.

As we walked hand-in-hand, Amy noticed I had my shirt on inside-out (unintentionally).  I'm just mentioning this because it's sure to become the fashion trend in Paris in the next few weeks.  Now you know. 

Since it was 12:00 - Round Midnight, as it were - we had to go a jazz club, right? We landed in Chez Papa, dabbled in white wine and Evian, while the combo Take 3 played Bossa Nova and Gershwin. They were superb, and the piano player had the Monkian habit of growling "Yeah!" between phrases.  It was the perfect place for a couple of tired ex-patriate Americans to wind down the day.  

A day of bones: corpse bones, duck bones, and piano bones. And I was tired to the bone. I was all up for slowing down a little.

Paris, Day 2: Butter! Plus Gargoyles

Amy and I woke up late, the jet lag pretty much gone from our bodies. It's pretty clear that Paris is on a different schedule. No more waking up at 5:30 AM. The day was to be shifted about two hours - breakfast at 10, lunch at 2, dinner at 8 or 9. OK.  We expected some adjustments in that area.

But then something happened that screwed up our food schedule entirely.  Pastry.

In the morning we traced Amy's found baguettes back to their source - La Moulin De Vierge, a pattisserie and bakery next door. We stood at the window and drooled (down their window - it was tres gauche) at the raspberry-topped custard tarts, the flaky triangle millefeuille (thousand layer pastry) with custard filling and fruit, the pastel-colored macaroons with raspberries shoved in the middle. The inside of the shop was covered in ancient painted mirrors and ornate trim.  It was the opposite of an antiseptic American bakery.

We went in for breakfast and got a crash course in croissants. A real croissant should have a very crisp brown edge. It should collapse when you bite into it. The actual pastry should be moist and should stretch when you pull on it with your teeth.  It should taste like butter at every stage and French butter taste more like very, very subtle cheese than a chemical. I had that and an Escargot Raisin (named because it looks like the curly shell of a snail, more like a cinnamon roll). Amy had a an apple-filled pastry. We closed our eyes on every bite, realizing we would never walk into a Dunkin Donuts again.

Here's the thing about buttery pastry - it can sustain you fairly well, as long as you keep well-hydrated, for long hikes. You don't a large lunch, or a lunch at all, really.   This maximizes your site-seeing time, and this being the center of Paris, we had lots of site seeing to do.  And it was pretty clear what Amy wanted to do first.

Notre Dame

Churches should be fun, right? Notre Dame is an 850 year old bottle of laughing gas. The flying buttresses alone are a scream - if you're going to build reinforcements to your wall, you might as well make them ornate and interesting.  And well-placed gargoyles keep your blues (and demons, I suppose) away. 

Amy and I took one spin around the ground floor of the enormous church. Mass was being said, and the hundreds of people that toured around the mass, while being fairly quiet, must be an awful bother to the priest and the congregants. They're used to it, I'm sure. The inside of the church was like most Catholic churches - the smell of incense and candle wax - but on steroids.

We waited outside the church to get the tour, and it started raining. And that's when we saw the humor in the downspouts, which looked like weasel heads sticking 3 feet from the wall. As water poured into them, they came out of their mouths and spit down upon us. Riot!

Then we climbed the towers. It must've been a thousand or so steps up the spiral stone staircase, and you learned to look at the walls and not your feet, lest you get dizzy.

The view from on top was breathtaking - a panoramic view of the city with all its old and new architecture all squashed together. And the gargoyles were Amy's favorite. They all had their own little personality. The people who carved them really had fun, and put in a little human touch that is so lacking in church architecture these days.

Paris: An Overview

We hopped on a double-decker Rouge Bus to take us around the inner city. It was pretty incredible, but it also gave us a very good idea of where not to go. The north part of the Seine, Rive Droite, was fashiony, trendy, expensive, and full of cinemas and American stores. The Champs Elysees (the main drag) was nice, as was the Arc De Triomphe and the Paris Opera House. But not our cup of tea. The south part, where our hotel lived, was home to the Eiffel tower, the Hotel Des Invalides (the enormous hospital where soldiers were treated) and the St. Germain de Pres district. It was very artsy, older, and more varied. I liked it better.

We got off the bus and strolled through the Louvre. Not the museum itself, just the outside. As was becoming a theme in our Paris journey, lemme tell you something. The Louvre is GIGANTIC! It goes on for at least five city blocks long, and two city blocks wide. I mean, what buildings do you know that last for more than a block? It's a horseshoe shaped design with a large courtyard (that's where the infamous IM Pei pyramid is … and yes, it sticks out like a sore thumb.) A street traverses the middle and goes right through the building, since you can't cut off five city blocks without some major traffic damage.

The park next door was about 5 blocks long as well, and it's everything a city park should be. It's not Central Park - it doesn't try to cut off the city around it. But there are fountains and gardens and sculptures everywhere. Benches line the edges of squares, and about a billion moveable green metal chairs dot its surface. Literally thousands of people were camped in these chairs, many using two - one to sit and one to prop their feet with. They read, talked, watched people. They were all different races and nationalities, though I counted more Italians than your typical American park. Amy was enthralled and we vowed to come back here when we needed a break.

Which was not going to happen anytime soon. We were amped!

French Food: Turns Out It's Pretty Good

Amy and I vowed not to visit any restaurant that was either trendy with Americans or had primarily non-French cuisine. We got some good recommendations, and ended up at Les Olividades on the Rive Gauche. It was a little tough to find on foot, but once we made it … OMG!

I started with Kir and we had a tray of olives (which you'd expect at a Les Olividades) Our waitress was very rusty on English, but very charming and we bumbled our way through most of it. Amy had chicken with a little tunnel of fettucine in butter and wine sauce. It was crispy on the outside and fell apart to the touch on the inside. I had squid melted into a rice patty with herbs and sauce. It was probably the best thing I have ever eaten. If you ever had rubbery tough calamari, you'd be amazed at how thoroughly tender and succulent well-prepared squid is.

Amy finished with crème brulee, which crackled at the touch of the fork and felt cold and inviting on the inside. I had a Tartes Aux Pommes , an apple tart with a dollop of vanilla ice cream that had some spice in it that still haunts me. I mistakenly called it a Pomme De Terre (= potato) to the waitress, who laughed at my awful french.

In general I heven't found Parisiennes rude.  If you make a valiant attempt at French, they respond with patience and humor.  They may rush you, they may sound exasperated sometimes, but I think that's more of a big city "let's keep this show going" attitude than a "you stupid americans" thing. 

Here are the three things you learn quickly about Parisians:

• They love to smoke
• They love to wear skirts above the knee (at least the women do)
• They love to bike

Bikes are everywhere in Paris, and we dodged around them to get back to the Eiffel Tower to light up again. All around Paris are Velolib stations where there are unadorned grey bikes locked up to electronic stations. If you have a Velolib card, you can walk up to any of them, swipe your card and grab a bike, ride it to some other station, then lock it right back up. You see them everywhere, and Paris' bike lanes are plentiful and convenient. Cars know how to drive alongside them.

I saw a woman dressed in a power suit, skirt above the knee and pumps, leaning on the handlebars of her Velolib smoking a cigarette. And I thought - this is about as Paris-y as you get, doesn't it?   She could be the symbol for a tub of French Butter, a la the Land O' Lakes Native American maiden.

And again, we close the day seeing the Eiffel Tower erupt in light and sparkles.  What a day!  I can't wait to see what happens next...

Paris , Day 1: Make That Rare

We're on the first leg of our journey, heading toward Toronto on a small plane.  Amy points to my seat number, "2B".  She says, "You have the Shakespeare seat!" 

Hmmmm.  After a minutes thought, I realize ... she's the perfect traveling companion.

After puddle-jumping to Toronto, we shift into a 777 on our way to Paris.  We have neck pillows, two ipods with splitters, trail mix and water.  We are so ready!  And I think about how we got here.  It was on the way to Bob Dylan concert when Amy asks me, "So what do you want to do for Labor Day?"  And I reply, "Oh I don't know, we could climb another peak."  "We could go to Montreal," she countered.  "Or Paris." I said.  And we looked at each other and said, "Is there any reason why we can't?"  Nope.

And so after a leisurely dinner (Air Canada is really good at this, by the way), we fall asleep.  Kind of.  Then an hour and a half later, the captain wakes us up.  "Time for breakfast!  We'll be in Paris an hour early because of the head wind."  We land in Paris at 7:30 their time, the sun is coming up over the city of lights.   The day has just begun and we have an hour and a half of really bad sleep.  How could we possibly do this?

The Eiffel Tower: It's Big

We deposit our bags in the Hotel St. Dominique around ten and start walking toward the city.  I have my map, and I figure if we walk West we gotta hit the Eiffel Tower sooner or later.  But the buildings were so close together (though low) it was impossible  to tell where it is. 

Then as we turn a corner, like Godzilla, it appears in the horizon.  I gasped.  "OHMIGOD!"  I poke Amy.  She laughs and starts clapping her hands.  We dodge around buildings and streets until it appears in full view.

And lemme tell you.   This thing is HUGE!  Like most everyone, I walked around with a vision of the Eiffel Tower in my head as sort of a symbol.  A couple of curved lines and some straight lines across it.  But it is ornate.  Extremely detailed.  It's not like a skyscraper where the lines are clean and manufactured.  It's not a statue.  It's a real work of architecture.   The names of 72 French scientists are plastered around the outside. 

Amy and I walk around the entire thing, through the middle, looking it over from all sides, and we were in awe.   We saw elevators going up on two pillars, and one set of steps with people walking up.  "Do you want to climb it?" I ask.  Yeah right   With an hour and a half of sleep.  We defer it for later.

We have our first French meal at a small café.  I have a Parisian salad, which is your garden variety bed of greens but with boiled potatoes and green beans.  Amy has sausage, pork and lentils, which have this country-ish flavor that I find totally charming.  That a couple of bottles of Perrier, and I'm settling in.  We people-watched for a long time.  Amy notices every third person was carrying a baguette, and most had a bite taken out of the top end.  Hmmmm.  This could be useful information later.

Getting Our Bearings

We decide to fight our jet leg with an extra hour of sleep in the hotel.  Bright eyed and bushy tailed, we head out of our small hotel room ready for action.  Amy and I mapped out all the things we wanted to see beforehand, and see what the walking distance was like for everything.  So we walk along the Seine.  About every block or so, our mouths drop open.

• The Alexander III bridge is crowned with four gold plated  statues, one on each corner, made of gold
• The Grand Palace has four horses and a charioteer leaping out of the building above, practically suspended in the sky above.
• The Louvre, which seems to go on forever.  
• Book Sellers along the Seine 
• And then there was Notre Dame.  We looked around the outside to get a view of it.  There's about 10 million details in the architecture.  It's gonna take at least a day to figure it out, but Amy and I are both tremendously impressed.   This is no ordinary cathedral here.  

 

Our brains were fried.  Which of course reminded us of food, and off we went to the first of our restaurant recommendations, La Bistrot De Paris (pretty boastful in a city full of Bistros.)   There I discover Kir, a beautiful pre-dinner drink of white wine mixed with cassis liqueur.  It's a little sweet, but not terribly so, and I vow to have it before every dinner in Paris.  Amy ordered duck, but when it came it looked suspiciously like rare beef.   We kept takeing turns tasting it, trying to figure out whether it was a steak, but its finishing taste was so much like duck, so we kind of believed it.    It was served on basmati rice with a very subtle un-basmati flavors in it.  Me - I had albacore tuna, extremely rare (this is France, after all).  So delicious, it melted in my mouth.  It was about 10,000 miles away from the tuna salad sandwiches that fueled my childhood years.  And we washed it down with white burgundy that was so dry and crisp and clean … we were reminded this was France. 

Tired but full, at 10:00 we made our way back to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up.  The lights make it larger, and then a bunch of sparking lights turn all the blocks around it into a giant dance floor.  (No one was actually dancing).  Amy and I were amazed and exhausted.   We dragged ourselves back to the hotel for a good night sleep. 

Algonquin: Rock Like a Hurricane!

Cheating death. It's all part of the game.

Two weeks ago a professor died of a heart attack climbing Algonquin, the second highest peak in the Adirondacks (and all of New york State). Amy and I didn't know this until after we had chosen this as our next adventure. As it turned out, there was a lot to rattle us besides that, but first ...

Room Upgrade! Score!

Amy and I arrived at base camp Friday - All Tucked Inn in Westport, same as our last adventure. We liked it so much - the breakfast, the interesting hodge podge of art - it's on our short list now. So we get there and on the board it says "Amy and Craig: Room Upgrade." Turns out we were the only ones at the Inn that weekend. Which makes sense, being the week before Labor Day, moving in day for lots of students ... plus Hurricane Irene, which we remained pretty ignorant about.

Anyway, the upgrade was about half the size of my house! And it had a fireplace! Plus a bed that was so big, we briefly considered subletting a portion of it. It was so high off the ground, that climbing into it was a good trial run for Algonquin. Anyway, it was very luxurious. We had actually asked for a smaller room so we could get used to European-sized hotel rooms (practice for our Paris trip next week). But you don't get everything you ask for in life. Thank god.

The next morning, packed with French Toast and Bacon (Amy skipped the bacon - more on this later!), we drove to the trail head of Algonquin.

Yeah, It's Big

Wright and Algonquin share about 70% of the trail, and since we had done Wright a few months ago, this was like visiting an old friend. With lots of rocks, that is. The Sawteeth trail was so luxuriously packed with soft, spongy growth, that the Wright/Algonquin trail was a rude awakening. But the waterfalls were still there, and they were pretty. And the vertical ascent wasn't too bad.

Then the trail split, and we were tackling the last mile. Algonquin is pretty popular with hikers, so we met (and passed) a lot of them on the way up. There were some difficult spots to be sure, but mostly it was just a longer version of the last half mile of Wright. We got to a point where the trees cleared, and we could see the Wright summit and where we had stood just months before. The people over there looked like ants. We were once those ants.

And then the summit! It was huge, spread out, and full of hikers - this being prime time for a day hike (about 12:30 on a Saturday). It was also a bit hazy, but it was definitely the most surreal of all the views we had seen. It looked more like a painting than something real - most of the peaks being far into the distance, and the lakes just splashes of blue across the canvas. Wright and Iroquois, the two closest neighbors, looked like dwarves as well. Marcy, which you see to the right here, covered up the other peaks of the great range.

Amy said, "I have a confession," as she ate her peanut butter sandwich. The professor+heart attack incident had so rattled her, that she had been eating a low fat diet all week. She didn't want to be carried off Algonquin in a body bag. Well she didn't, and I was of course pretty glad of that. And all the way down, I kept checking back at her a bit more than usual.

I really started to feel my right knee on the way back down. Put it in the right place, on the rock rock at the right angle, and pain shot up through my body. When we got to the restaurant that night, I needed three Tylenol Extra Strength to quiet it down. A fellow hiker had told us at the top of Algonquin that he was hurting too and that, "You get the body you're given." He was in his twenties. Ay carumba.


Vamonos!

OK, so yeah ... we didn't know much about Hurricane Irene. We were busy climbing mountains, after all. So the next morning we were listening to the radio as we waited for our breakfast. Uhhhh, so they shut down all the mass transit in New York City. Hmmm, that sounds kinda serious. And then I got a phone call from a friend of mine that said Albany, who was two hours due South of us, was getting hit and losing power. Amy's friend said they were expected to get pounded in Ithaca pretty soon.

So basically, we bolted down out breakfast and jumped in the car just as the rain and wind started getting bad. According to my calculations, we skirted around the North and West edges of Irene. The further inland we got, the lighter it became. But there was still debris in the road. It was ... well, unsettling.

Syracuse and Ithaca didn't do too bad, but the places we had just left didn't fare as well. Keene, where I had downed three Tylenol the previous night, got plowed by the Ausable River which rose 19 feet above its banks. Westport wasn't bad, but just across Lake Champlain in Vermont, they got majorly socked with flooding. It was pretty sobering to see this.

It's all part of the mixed bag of nature. There are beautiful vistas that awake your senses and beckon you. And there are storms that pelt you and blow your belongings all over the place. Perhaps one makes you appreciate the other more.

Equipment We Used: I gotta say, I'm loving my Marmot jacket. Light, waterproof, and yet breathable, it sits quitely and unobtrusively in my day pack until I need it. Like at the top of a summit, where it's chilly. Then out it comes! I'm taking it to Paris with me.

Food: Need I say it? The Great Range. Amy had pheasant - unlike my old standby of pheasant sausage, this was the whole kind. Very different than the tough, stringy pheasants we got in South Dakota! Me, I had pork ribs with Monkey Gland sauce. I was a little disappointed to find no monkeys or glands were used. It was invented by a South African chef who called it that simply for shock value. I say "shock yeah!" Shockingly good that is. After Algonquin, we did Tippacanoe in Keene again - eating as much fried food as humanly possible to break Amy's fat free diet. Fried fish, Pinot Gris and Tylenol. Does life get any better than that?

Oh yeah! There's Paris! Stay tuned. There are gonna be some stories!

Sawteeth: Clif Bars, Scenic Views,

At the top of Sawteeth, a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar has an aftertaste like fine tobacco. I mean like Marlboro's not Lucky Strikes. I suddenly had a thirst for a bourbon and a snort of coke. "There's some psychadelic mushrooms on the trail," Amy pointed out. I quickly regained my composure.

We don't need drugs to exercise bad judgment. We were about to make a haughty decision that would leave us thirsty and sore ... all on our own!

Luxury. *Sigh*

This was going to be our longest hike yet, so we started around 9 AM. There's a three and a half mile hike down the Ausable Club road just to get to Sawteeth's trail. Biff and Skippy pass you with their tennis rackets and their designer water bottles. I don't really feel jealous. But I just wished my walking stick ... sorry, my TRACTION POLE (just in case you hoity-toity people from Eastern Mountain Sports are reading this) ... would stay straight. It kept collapsing on me. About an hour of fiddling with it along the trail, and I finally figure it out. I twist it to the just the right length and lock it in place. Triumph! I felt a sense of accomplishment already.

The road ended and the trail began ... and Amy and I fell instantly in love with it. It was cushy, like carpet, full of ground cover and hardly any rocks. My traction pole sunk a little in the dirt, giving my arm a little push for some needed torque. The vertical climb was perfect. It'd be steep and just when you ran out of breath, it would level out. This was very unlike the trails at Giant and Wright, which were endlessly rocky and uneven in comparison. We saw the Rainbow Falls early in our hike. And yes, there's a rainbow in it. It was all so Brigadoon-y. Except for the sign that says, "Stay back, don't be a dropout!"

The hike felt unnaturally short, and we reached the last ascent way ahead of schedule. It was 500 feet over 0.9 miles, and it mostly nice and easy except for one challenging pretty-near-mountain-climbing part. After that mess, we started along the trail and heard ... sleigh bells? "Santa Claus?" Amy asked. Nope, just a regular ol' hiker. As I looked over his equipment to see what was jangling (I didn't find it), he gave us the greatest gift of all - he said, "You're just about up top."

It was unlike the other peaks we've been on, in that the nearby peaks are quite close and higher than you are. You feel like you're in an audience. The Gothics beckon to the right, Saddleback and Basin in front of you, Haystack to the left, and in the background looms Mt. Marcy. They overlap each other a little, like the president's heads on Mt. Rushmore.

Feeling Too Good

After the best damn peanut butter sandwich we ever et' we were feeling pretty plucky. There are two trails up to Sawteeth, the Weld trail which we were just on at 2.4 files to the road, or the Scenic Trail which is 2.9 miles. Amy and I were feeling really good. Let's do the Scenic Trail! It's only half a mile longer!

Here's the thing. At the entrance to the Ausable club, we asked the ranger about the best way to hike Sawteeth. He said, "Nobody takes the Scenic Trail. It's just too hard." But Amy and I decided to ignore his advice.

You figure that at 0.5 miles longer, the descent should be more gradual than the Weld, since you end up in the same place. Easier on the knees, right? But once we started along the Scenic Trail it became apparent quickly ... we were going up AND down. And none of it was gradual. In fact, there were some spots that needed ladders, which were helpfully provided. Amy and I both got our legs scraped up a bit by the huge boulders. It was not luxurious like the Weld trail.

That said, the Scenic Trail is well named. It offered views of the opposite range, with Indian Head and Mt. Colvin. They were more like theater curtains, their big wide ranges blotting out the sky. And the Ausable Lakes below were very beautiful. The overlooks were nice, but scary in a way, and Amy and I found ourselves backing away from the edge gradually as we looked out over the distance.

But man! That trail seemed to go on forever. We ran out of water, my knees were crabbing at me. and Amy stomped down the trail as if she were angry at it. Finally we got close enough to the lake that we dunked our tootsies in the water and felt instantly better.

At the registration book at Ausable Club, someone (God?) left an unopened bottle of Poland Spring, which Amy snatched up like gold. We downed the whole thing in a few swigs. An 11 mile hike, the longest one so far ... and here's the weird thing. I looked back at Sawteeth, how high it was against the sky, and I still don't know how we did it. You'd think that with experience, I'd be getting more used to how much we can actually do in a day. But the mountains look bigger to me.

Equipment That Worked: You gotta love Smartwool! These thick socks look like they'd be wearing cement on a warm summer day. But they are cool and dry and so completely comfortable. I'm tempted to get their hiking shirts as well, but I find bicycle jerseys act pretty well in that capacity. Since I'm not doing as much biking this summer, it's good to keep the clothes workin'.

Food: The Great Range in Keene Valley continues to be our go-to restaurant for good eatin'. We had a summer tart appetizer, with some interesting goat cheese and vegetable filling. Amy had quail. I had pheasant sausage with mashed potatoes and a rosemary sauce over the whole thing. The menu is a bit different every time we go, so we keep being surprised. On Saturday we went to the Westport Marina and tucked away salad grilled chicken and grouper and Toasted Head Chardonnay. Amy now swears by the following rule - always end a hike with a really, really good salad and wine. It lubricates the joints, and makes one feel instantly fresh and reconnected.

Next up? Seems to be a tossup between Algonquin and The Gothics. Both are close to peaks we've already climbed, so the trails are a little familiar. But the ending vertical ascents of both are very difficult. Then again ... when the payoff is this cool, what's difficult?

Mount Wright: Attack of the Summit Stewards

So ... I'm climbing mountains.

My partner, Amy (more on her in a minute), and I climbed the last 500 feet or so, pictured on the right. It didn't require ropes - it wasn't your traditional mountain climbing - but the vertical ascent was pretty steep. Amy had a headache from what turned out to be a virus. My knees were crying in pain.

At the very top ... there is a perky, 18-year-old Summit Stewards named Gloria.

Gloria: "Welcome to Mt. Wright? Did you come from Algoquin?"

Amy: *muggah muggah* (translation: "Are you kidding? We barely made it up THIS mountain!")

Gloria: "There are some endangered species up here, and we ask that you step only on the rocks and not any plants or soil."

Craig: *muggah muggah* ("I can't walk, so no problem there.")

Gloria: "Would you like me to take your picture? I can get Mt. Marcy in the background."

Amy: *muggah muggah* ("I'm not getting up. The hard rocks will be our background.")

Craig: *muggah muggah* ("Don't bother, Gloria. After we push you off Mt Wright, they'll be taking our mug shots for free anyway.")

How Did I Get Up Here?

Fair question. It starts with Amy.

Amy and I started hanging around together about a month ago. She's a hiker, camper, canoer, kayaker, and just all-around outdoorsy type. Me ... well, I gave up that life a long time ago when I left Boy Scouts. I'd been to the Adirondack Mountains in New York a total of four times ... one of which I camped and hiked, three of which I partied in the Syracuse University retreat cabin, which pretty much doesn't count as outdoorsmanship. (They don't have a Bartending Merit Badge yet, do they?)

Like Green Acres when Oliver pulls Lisa across the split screen ... Amy pulled me into the outdoors. Here's the weird thing: I like it there. A lot!!

I climbed my first Adirondack High Peak with Amy two weeks ago. It was Giant, and it had a short path with a huge vertical ascent. How I made it it up is anyone's guess ... I'll tell the story in a future blog post. But from the top of that first peak, I felt the molecules in my body shift. It was my first drink of scotch, my first snort of cocaine. The view from an Adirondack peak approaches something of a psychadelic experience. You don't really believe what you're seeing. There is no sound except wind. The trees are like toothpicks beneath you. "It's like you're on the moon" is how Amy describes it.

Mt. Wright

So there are 46 peaks over 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks, affectionately called The 46. Wright is the third I've climbed, after Giant and Cascade. (Amy was there for all of them, and has done an additional one herself). All the peaks have a certain character.

The Wright trail is short, about 3.5 miles, and it's pretty gradual for most of that distance. A couple of waterfalls make nice stopping places. There's not much of a view the whole way - you're enveloped in a canopy of trees, so you better have a good conversationalist handy. (Amy definitely fits the bill for me.)

The last 0.4 miles, where the trail splits off to Algonquin, is a killer. The vertical ascent is pretty steep, and the Alpine Zone prevents you from stepping onto soil or plants. And it's friggin' cold! At the beginning of July, the temperature was in the 50's. If you didn't pack your jacket and you are more than 20 years old (yeah, there were a few), you couldn't spend more than a few minutes there.

Wright isn't very popular because Algonquin sits right next to it, and it's bigger. It's like hanging out with somebody's little brother. But here's the thing. The little brother has a better view of the west, which is the best side of the range. Because from Algonquin ... that damn little brother is in the way. And you can't make it move. It's a mountain. Duh!

After a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches - and there's nothing on Earth better tasting than peanut butter sandwiches at the top of a mountain - Amy and I headed back down. Her headache gone, we made pretty good time on the way. 3 hours later, we were back at the lake, dunked our tootsies in the water and made the lake steam up.

Equipment that worked: Walking sticks, or as the Eastern Mountain hoity-toity people call them, traction poles. We got Leki's, and they work like a charm. Keeps your balance, and gives you a boost up the rocks when you need it. Both Amy and I use just one, although most serious hikers do two. (We like to be just a little off-center).

Food: It's very important to get good sustenance before and after a hike, and Amy and I take this very seriously. Before the hike we did The Tip-A-Canoe Restuarant in Keene, and I had mussels from the shell for the first time evah. Nice! Afterwards, we did The Great Range in Keene Valley, which is now as close to a tradition as we have. An appetizer of Scallops with ground pea and arugla sauce was heavenly. She had Duck Comfit, and I had the Lavender and Thyme Chicken. It was pretty nice - not as good as the pheasant sausage I had there two weeks ago - but nice.

Next Up: We're thinking Algonquin next. Hopefully no viruses will invade this trip!