We like Austria which we’ve visited twice. But language is a problem although certain German words seem to have obvious equivalents in English. Food was sometimes a problem for us as well. Austria is a meat-eating country. It tends to serve everything in large portions. And that flower-shaped mound of whipped cream seems to top…
in Paris, but exhausted or stressed out? Taking in too many museums and monuments all at once? You have a number of choices for flaking out. Sitting in cafes and nursing an espresso (or expresse as they call it here) is what most people choose to do. Some stretch out or doze off in the…
How do you imagine Paris? For the artist in many of us, it is a Bohemian Paris we conjure up and even yearn for. But is Bohemian Paris merely an illusion? What is a Bohemian, anyway? In the popular view, she is someone unconventional, carefree, and usually involved in the arts. A free spirit who…
Undulating forms are beautiful, sensuous, and seductive. You often find them in nature—in the curve of a woman’s body, the outline of a camel’s neck and hump, the motif on a sidewalk mosaic, etc. They appeal to an aesthetic sense in all of us. Artists have been aware of this appeal for a long time.…
October 2012. I stood in the Bibliothèque Polonaise on the Ile Saint Louis in Paris, looking at the works of Andrzej Kreütz-Majewski. Captivated. Unsettled. His images haunted me and I had to find out more about him. An operatic and theatrical scenery designer, and professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Kreütz-Majewski was…
Bugs in your mug? In your Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccino maybe? Or your pink tequila? Picture these squashed creatures in your drink: Humongous yuk factor, right? But it’s not really these bugs you’ll see. It’s the color they impart. One thing you can reassure yourself about—it’s natural, not one of those chemical dyes with toxic components…
Milan. We like it. Quite a lot. Some guide books tell you Milan isn’t really Italy and many tours exclude it from their itineraries. Maybe, they mean it’s not the Italy they have romanticized. Nor Italy of the renaissance or baroque periods. But Milan is Italy as: • Grand gestures; • Innovation and design; •…
Green peppercorns. If you’ve ever used this ingredient, you probably got it out of a bottle. Soaked in brine. Its taste and aroma irreversibly altered by the long salty bath. I never knew the taste of fresh green peppercorns until I came across them in Paris. Not at one of the supermarchés nor the food…
We didn’t know exactly what to expect in Oaxaca, though we’d been to other parts of Mexico in an earlier trip. But we knew a couple who waxed wistful over Oaxaca’s charms especially “los siete moles,” a label often applied to Oaxaca. We just had to experience the place for ourselves. Mole, as you might…
It’s a long journey from San Francisco to Florence. On our last summer trip, it took a fairly uneventful seventeen hours of flying and waiting at airports. For a month our pied-à-terre was on the Oltrarno, south of the river. About 900 sq. ft. of voluminous dark space with a loft bedroom and two bathrooms,…
“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Recall that famous line? No, Mark Twain never said it quite that way. It turns out that’s a misattribution. If, indeed, Mark Twain (Can you ever just say “Twain”? I can’t) uttered something like it, it might have been in reference to Paris.…
Custard tarts and patterned stone pavements. These are the attractions that stood out for me in Macau when I visited it with my husband before China reclaimed it. Both are Portugal’s legacy to China. You may know that Hongkong once belonged to the British. But it’s neither the first nor the only Chinese region occupied…
Artsy Rambler 