Wedding Road Trip, Day 3

We drove from Billings to Fargo - a long day, but a good one. We followed the trail of river flooding throughout eastern Montana and North Dakota. The amount of water everywhere is incredible. It is like North Dakota has become the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes instead of Minnesota. And the wind! 40 mph everywhere. We stopped at one place to switch drivers, and when I opened the driver door it about blew off! Fortunately the wind was at our back the whole time. The car clocked some pretty heady mpg scores - 63 once!

Today was the 40th anniversary of the first time I went to Holden Village. I went to be on Volunteer Staff for three weeks and stayed for eleven. It was a simple idea by a friend in Tacoma, and it shaped the rest of my life. Amazing to think about for me.

Tomorrow we head first to St. Paul where I have a meeting re: candidacy work, and then down to Stockholm to Paul and Carol Hinderlie's Should be fun!

Wedding Road Trip, Day 2

We had a beautiful drive today through western Montana, albeit a wet and rainy one. The amount of mountain run-off into the main rivers is huge. The flooding, particularly along the Yellowstone River is significant. We kept commenting about the amount of water. Although it had compromised the roads from time to time (not so much on the freeway, except for one place east of Livingston), it was mostly the water just standing in fields and forest. It was everywhere. Due to the floodinng, we have had to change our travel plans. Instead of driving US 212 through northern South Dakota, or even US 12 (just slightly farther north) we'll have to stay on I-94. There are too many closures due to the flooding. But this is lovely country, and we've enjoyed the scenery and the animals - wild and domestic! Lots of deer, cattle, and sheep.

Tonight we're in Billings. We tried twice to go to local restaurants but they were both closed for Memorial Day! That's nice for their employees. So we ended up having burgers at Fuddruckers. They were very good.

That's it for today.

On the Road Again

It's been almost three weeks since we returned from our Europe trip. (What trip? Did we go on a trip? ) They've been busy days, and now we're heading east for Minnesota/Wisconsin. I'm presiding at the wedding of my goddaughter Annelisa Steeber in St. Paul next Saturday. We'll be staying with Hinderlies down the river in Stockholm, Wisconsin, and driving up and down the Mississippi to do all the wedding stuff. Should be lots of fun.

Tonight we are in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. A favorite restaurant (The Wine Cellar) is not open on Sunday, so we tried a place called Scratch. It was very good! We had a lovely meal. The only downside was that they can't spell. The menu was full of misspellings! I might be being too picky here, but it kind of shows a lack of attention to detail. The food was terrific, and there was no detail deficit there. But they could spell the items correctly - just adds a nice touch, don't you think?

Tomorrow we drive through flood-ridden western Montana. If you've driven this route, you know I-90 crosses the Clark Fork something like 14 times. From the news it sounds like that river has run over its banks almost everywhere. Parts of West Missoula have been evacuated. Should be an interesting drive.

London to Seattle

Our day started with breakfast and breakage - while (or, as the English would say, whilst) putting a small drinking glass in the dishwasher, it slipped from my hand and landed on the tile floor and shattered into a thousand pieces all over the small kitchen. What a mess! So we spent the next 15 minutes getting that all cleaned up. Amazing how many places it went!

We finally got to breakfast and to packing. The packing got done, some thank-you notes were written, and I went out to post the cards while Larry did the hand dishes. When I came back, I heard a cry from the kitchen. Larry had broken an egg cup whilst doing the dishes! No bleeding, but a knuckle cut. We put a band-aid (plaster) on it, and got on with our departure preparations!

About a half hour before the car to the airport arrived, there was a knock on our door and our landlord (lives in the flat above) came and introduced himself. (He had been gone for several days, and the flat arrangements are through an agency.) His name is Charles Bingham, and we are very glad we met him. A very nice man. We told him about the breakage, and besides it being no problem at all (we assumed that to be the case), when we showed him which glass broke he told us they had been his grandmother's martini (make that gin and it) glasses! She must have liked her gin! The glasses aren't that small!

The driver took a lovely back route to Heathrow, so we were able to enjoy some more of London streets on a beautiful day. Now we are awaiting our flight. We have had an amazing and wonderful trip, and at the same time it will be very good to be home.

There will be more blog posts in the next few days - lessons learned, travel tips, some more pictures, and books. Stay tuned!

London, Day 7

This morning we went to the home of my old King's Singers friend Alastair Hume for coffee. We had a wonderful 2.5 hours of conversation - and a lot of coffee and chocolate digestive biscuits!
We walked back toward Angel Tube Station along the Regent Canal, which is a block or so behind the Hume's Islington home.
We took the train to Waterloo and walked to Lambeth, where Larry was able to talk to someone from the Library about the best way to find out more information about his putative archepiscopal ancestor. (Thought I'd use putative in a complete sentence once more and then throw in archepiscopal!)

We walked back to Westminster Bridge along the Southbank Embankment with its great views of the Houses of Parliament and the boats on the Thames. (It's the place where all the US London reporters stand!)
We took the Tube back towards the flat. When we arrived, Larry went to Holland Park to try to find the head gardener to get some iris names while I went to the computer to check us for our flight home. I went out and did a couple errands, and now we are organizing and packing to go home!

London, Day 6

When we talked about going to worship this morning, we had thought about heading out to St. Paul's for one of their wonderful orchestra masses, but we opted instead for the local church, St. James Norlands.
We're very glad we did! It is a small but lively community, and the liturgy and preaching were very good. It was wild with children! Lots of energy. I had looked at their website and was really drawn to the place. Their them is Breaking bread, sharing God. Perfect for this day with the Road to Emmaus text. You can click here to look at their website.

After church we came back to the flat for a while, and then went out for Sunday lunch at a place called Chimes of Pimlico. We'd heard about this being a good place for English food, and we enjoyed our glasses of cider and West Country Cidered Cod and Haddock. Very good.

After lunch we walked looking for flowers. It really is in between blooming seasons! We saw lots of dead tulips in St. James Park and the Embankment Gardens! We did find a statue of William Tyndale, which was pretty cool. There is a really great book about Tyndale: God's Bestseller by Brian Moynahan. It is out of print (only published in 2003) but you can find it used at amazon.com and probably in libraries. It is well worth reading.

And, speaking of books, we caught the Tube at Embankment and went to Leicester Square to go to Blackwell's and Foyles. (For those of you in the know about London, the Tottenham Court Station is closed until 2012 for a huge remodel.) We bought a couple books, and walked along Oxford Street to the Oxford Circus station, and then back to Holland Park. We stopped and picked up a couple things for our last two days. We also decided we needed ice cream to go with the strawberries we'd bought on Saturday at the market! The local gelato shop was swamped! But we had fun standing in line with parents and children and grandparents and young adults and teenagers from all over the world, all just hungry for delicious ice cream on a warm Sunday afternoon. We finally got our ice cream and headed back to the flat. Another fun and interesting day in London.

London, Day 5

After a leisurely morning getting caught up on logs and blogs and continuing to do some of the things that need doing at the end of the trip, we headed out for Portobello Road and the famous antiques market that has happened every Saturday for a very long time. It is quite close to where we are staying. We walked up the road to Notting Hill Gate and followed the massive crowds to the market street. Even with the crowds, it was a lot of fun, with lots of good people-watching!
After going to the market we went to a shop in Sloane Square, and then headed back to the flat via the meat market in our neighborhood. We bought two meat pies - one with lamb, one with chicken. We heated them in the over and ate them - well, half of them - with fresh asparagus we'd bought at the market. Yum! We'll repeat with the leftovers on Monday night.

London, Day 4

We got up early on Friday and headed out to Hampton Court. I had been there in 2008, and Larry really wanted to see those kitchens up close and personal! And they are indeed impressive. It's the first place you go on the tour of this magnificent palace that belonged to Henry VIII. And Henry and Anne Boleyn were there to greet us!
It's interesting to learn about the real efficiencies of 16th century cooking - they really knew how to turn out food for 1000 people! There are food historians that specifically work here to determine what the patterns and benefits of Tudor cooking, and see what we can learn about it. One commentator on the audio said that this Tudor "stove" was terrifically efficient, with places for storing wood and receiving ashes under the cooking pots, so that the whole thing could be in continual use.
Here's the big fire for roasting meat:

We did the kitchens, Henry the VIII's apartments and the William and Mary apartments. In the middle of it all there was a fire alarm and everyone had to evacuate! We were impressed by the smooth and non-excited way in which it was all handled.We really wanted to get out into the gardens to see if anything was in bloom. We tried out the famous maze and never found the center. We did, however, get out again! Larry did find irises in bloom and took lots of pictures. But the real bonus was finding the real name of one of the Holden irises - he was ecstatic! Here's the iris called Sunset at Holden and really called Harriet Holloway.We took the train back to London after a wonderful day. We made another effort (there had been others) to find an Indian restaurant somewhere near our flat. One of the fun things about London is great Indian food. But we seem to be in an Indian food challenged zone in this great city. So we went to M&S Simply Food (Marks and Spencer, Marks and Sparks) to get some stuff to heat up for dinner. And, lo and behold, there was a whole Indian food section! So we got our Indian take-away after all. It was pretty good!

London, Day 3

On Thursday we had a leisurely morning. Larry went out and took some pictures of the Royal Crescent Gardens that go with the row of houses that includes our flat.

On Tuesday we had walked through Holland Park, the local big park, and had seen lots of irises. So Larry went there and took some more iris pictures:
He found some other lovely things along the way.

In the afternoon we went to the Foundlings Museum near Russell Square. This tells the story of the Foundling Hospital that was started in the 18th century by Thomas Coram with the assistance of the painter William Hogarth and the composer G. F. Handel. It is a wonderful story, and has carried on over all these years in the Coram Foundati0n. You can read more about it here. When the original hospital was destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century, the people of London put up such a fuss that the site was made into a children's park called Coram Fields. There is a sign on the gate that says no adult can enter without a child.

From there we walked to St. Paul's Cathedral. (Yes, Larry it's only 15 minutes - well, 45!) This day would have been my mother's 100th birthday. She was a church organist, and there was an organ recital at St. Paul's that evening. The organist was Henry Faris from the University of Birmingham, and his program was four fantasies by Alain, Franck, Boely, and Liszt. It was really fine. There is also a special connection with my mother and St. Paul's that will have to wait for another posting!

Here is a great shot of St. Paul's from the midst of the new Temple Bar buildings:We stopped for dinner in Notting Hill Gate on the way home. Another nice day.

London, Day 2

Today we went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. The Director of the Herbarium, Library, Art, and Archives section is Dr. David Mabberly who was, for about four years, Director of the University of Washington Botanical Gardens where Larry volunteers. (When he's in Seattle!) Larry had contacted him before we left, and he graciously invited us to lunch and tour of his domain.

We met him at 12:30 and saw the amazing collection (where the 8 million plant specimens are housed ) in the Herbarium. They are in the process of updating everything from the 19th and 20th century storage to 21st century protocols. It was fascinating to walk through it all with him and get such a concise and clear history of everything. It is quite a complex, and a complicated process. They get 50,000 new specimens each year!

He took us to lunch at the local pub, and we had a lovely conversation about Seattle, England, and Sydney Australia where he is headed in August. He then took us into the gardens and introduced us to the Kew iris expert, Richard Wilford. He was a very nice man who took us all through the places where irises are planted and shared lots of information with Larry. Sadly, England had a very early Spring, so we are here in between bloom times for just about everything. Here's a picture of Richard Wilford and Larry in the rock gardens:He also took us into the greenhouses where we saw how they care for each specie bulb. They've also been part of a bulb conservation effort as part of the global effort to monitor bulb marketing. Here they are in the greenhouse:

We did a few more things in Kew and then headed back to Holland Park. It was a unique and informative day!

Burgundy to Lille to London

Our journey out of Cluny was a bucolic drive in the rich and beautiful Burgundian countryside. We saw lots of cows, and the villages along the way were planted everywhere with irises. We pulled over often so Larry could take iris pictures.

We finally had to leave the country roads and get on the freeway to continue our journey north. It was a long day, but the scenery, ever-changing, was interesting and full of the wonderful greens of spring.

We eventually arrived at Lille, just in time for rush hour! We made our way (with some GPS struggles - mostly operator error) to our hotel. We found a good local place for dinner - although Larry found the Belgian/Alsatian meats in aspic (cold) to not be quite what he had in mind!

In the morning we did some reconnoitering at the train station for our car drop-off. This was not particularly smooth as the people who were supposed to meet us to pick up the car spoke almost no English. French baffles me (we often wished we could have channeled Kathy Brandstetter!), even with some language skill. We finally had the clerk at our hotel translate for us on the phone. In the end we successfully parked the car, met the local agents, said good-bye to our little Peugeot.
We waited a bit in the station before they started the check-in for the Eurostar to London. The train trip was uneventful. When we first went through the Channel Tunnel in 1998, they made a big deal about announcing when the train was entering the tunnel and when it had come out. Now it's done without comment.

We arrived at the new Eurostar station at St. Pancras and got a cab to our flat. We arrived at just the right time, and were very pleased to see the place where we would spend the next week. It's a flat off the normal tourist routes. (When I gave the cab driver the address, he asked if we had family in London - good indicator of our location!) It is in Holland Park, and very pleasant indeed. We had heard that there was a London Whole Foods nearby, so we set off for there just for the fun of it. It was a lot farther than I thought, but we had a lovely walk in the whole area, and I am always happy to have London pavement under my feet! We returned to the flat with our food, got organized there, and in the evening found our local pub for a pint and some good English food. (It really is good!)

Provence Day 6 into Burgundy

We headed northwest from Nice, going through some now familiar territory by Avignon. The route north took us out of Provence through farmland and mountains, and we eventually came to Cluny in Burgundy. Cluny is the site of a very famous medieval abbey with influence all over Europe. Only a few walls of the abbey are still standing. The historical museum was closed as 1 May is a national holiday in France, so we enjoyed the simple medieval church.

After a good French sidewalk cafe dinner (steak frites et salade), we drove a few km to the community of Taizé for Evening Prayer. For those of you who may not know about Taizé, click here for more information. Here is a picture of the bells that begin to ring 5 minutes before worship:

You sit on the floor on steps in the large but very modern and simple worship space, surrounded by thousands of young adults. (People over 30 cannot visit there more than a week year.) Rick Steves calls the worship space "the place where Lutherans can get over their fear of icons!") We sang new chants and familiar ones in English, French, Latin, German, and Romanian. It was great to have this opportunity to worship at Taize in the Easter season. I had good memories of when I first visited there in 1992 with my friend Joan and her daughters (then 12 and 10) Erin and Annie.

Provence, Days 5 and 6

On this day we said good-bye to Venasque and headed southeast to Cannes. We drove cross country over some amazing geography - high passes, more beautiful roads lined with Sycamore, amazing views and vineyard after vineyard. We had great pizzas for lunch in a little town along the way.

We dropped down into Cannes from Grasse with beautiful views of the sea and all. We found our B and B in the town of Vallauris in the area known as Golfe Juan. It's run by a couple - he's French, she's South African - who for many years did yacht charters in Greece and Turkey, and later in Cannes. They have since sold their boat and have this beautiful spot for a B and B. (And they have great security! Right along the road coming into their place are three big palaces that belong to the King of Saudi Arabia, one of his sons and one of his brothers!) Daniel and Gillian are delightful, and we spent a little time just lounging around by the pool before heading down into Cannes to find dinner. Here's a sunset picture from Port d'Attache, the B and B:
We drove down the hill to Cannes, and spent an hour or so walking around looking at GIGANTIC yachts. Amazing. Here's a picture of Walleen picking their new boat:
Illusion is a good name for it! We had a good dinner and then back to our super secure beds!

The next day was our last traveling with Wally and Eileen, and it was all lots of fun. We took a "group" picture before leaving to take them to the airport in Nice.

We left them at the airport at 11 a.m. for their trip for a week in Lisbon.

Provence, Day 4

We had a leisurely start to the day, going for a walk after breakfast to see some more of Venasque. We went into the church, which is lovely. It had the most gracious words of welcome any of us had seen in any church that deals with tourists. They made us feel like they wanted us to see their church and learn the history. We then bought a ticket to visit the baptistery, the origins of which are pre-Christian. It was a very simple and quite moving building, where the parish's baptisms are still held. It is also one more tribute to the genius of the Romans in terms of plumbing and engineering! Here is a picture from the baptistery:
After our walk we went back to our B and B and then watched the Royal Wedding in real time! We started with the little TV in Wally and Eileen's room, or "Walleen," as we have come to call them. Then someone discovered that our hosts were watching on a big screen downstairs. They invited us to join them and we had a nice time conversing with them under the incessant French commentary on the television! We learned that Martine had been to London with her family on June 2, 1952 for Elizabeth II's coronation. She was 9 years old, and remembers it well.

After the wedding, we headed out to see some more of the landscape. We drove over a pass through our own local gorges, and dropped down into the town of Gordes where we had a little lunch. In Gordes we saw another "royal wedding" Provencal style.
We then headed out across the opposite valley. We were in the region made famous by Peter Mayle in A Year in Provence. (We learned from Blue Guide Provence that people in the area were so tired of seeing tourists walking about clutching a copy of the book that one local wrote his own book debunking Mayle's claims!)

We headed west a bit to find a couple examples of the local ancient hut, called a borie. These are dry-stone buildings unique to Provence that date back to 4000 BC! Here's a good example not too far southwest of Venasque, outside and in:
We drove back to Venasque through the neighboring village of St. Didier, where we had walked around a little bit the afternoon before. And we ended the day with another fabulous meal at Cafe Fontaine! Yum!

Provence, Day 3

When we were driving back to Venasque the day before, we approached Avignon from the west and saw the beautiful view of the old papal city. We decided to make Avignon our destination on this day.

Modern Avignon is a big city, but we did a pretty good job of finding our way to the west side of the old city wall, and even found a free parking spot! We went in through a small portal in the wall and walked through the quiet old streets to a long set of stairs that took us to the top of the essentially big rock where the old city is. From the top there are wonderful views of the Rhone and the surrounding area.
From there we walked into the cathedral, and then stood in line for quite a while to go into the Papal Palace - Palais de Papes. Armed with the requisite audio guides, we toured this amazing building with its long history, and the interesting stories of the seven popes who resided here from 1309 to 1378. (If you want some more history, click here for a Wikipedia article.)

After the palace, we saw a few fun things in the square in front, including this merry-go-round and a terrific elephant sculpture.

We next went to the famous Pont d'Avignon on the Rhone. Here are pictures of the bridge and the view back to the city.
When we got back to Venasque, we eventually went to dinner at one of two possible spots in the village. We had eaten at the hotel the night before and had a good meal and fun time. This night we went to the other place, Cafe Fontaine. It was fabulous. Amazing cooking and a wonderful small menu. It was great. We determined to eat there again the next night, which we did!