$60 Trip to Paris

 

How to share the journey? How to linger in the images? Bask in the afterglow?

Keeping a journal on trips is a longstanding habit and ritual. The oldest one in my collection dates from sometime in the 1960s (when I get home from my current teaching gig in Kingsville, I'll post a sample page), and  I filled another nice fat book on this three week-plus trip to Italy. And I came home with more than 600 photos on my digital camera. My plan is to share -- over the next month -- the inspirations, the landscapes, the  flavors and vistas both from my journal and from my photo files. And, please note, this online journaling is at its heart a way for me to keep the journey going a little bit longer.

Jumping into work the day after a grueling return trip (bad layover to begin with, delayed by 4 hours because of Midwest thunderstorms, lost luggage) I am still trying to catch my breath. This dream of a lifetime trip almost seems to have evaporated overnight. So, indulge me as I return via picture, day by day, room by room, train ticket by train ticket.

 

Of course, I'll weave in the present tense, too. I'm certain that June at home will have its own savory moments. But perhaps not so savory as the $60 trip to Paris. The enroute trans-Atlantic leg was also delayed by thunderstorms. We ended up with vouchers for hotel meals and little cubicals in Orsee near the airport. Jumping into a cab, we took a whirlwind trip around the landmark sites of Paris, a first for Linda, and even though I had been to Paris a few decades ago, I'd never seen it this way. Sure, it cost each of the three passengers $60, but I doubt I'll get to Paris that cheaply again!

 

 

 (P.S. I promise not to post all 600+ pictures.)

Firenze

Would you just like a list of all that we have eaten?

The full report must wait until I can upload photos and use a keyboard that has a familiar ching ching to it. However, let this be a warning to you all.  I am now working on a fiber arts Italian adventure for next year. It will begin in Florence and proceed to Selva, a Tuscan home and studio deep in the woods of a 1000 acre estate near Lucca. We will see silks and cashmere goats, weaving and dyeing, and do our own work (as well as cooking classes) in the kitchen studio.

Foods to consider: bread soup and bread salad, bufalo mozzerella (forget everything you thought you knew about the cheese), gelati in all imaginable flavors, buttery lettuce and tomatoes shaped like the duomo, chocolate bars by the Bolognese Majana, lasagna from the street corner cafe, eggs with yolks as orange as saffron.

And that was I think day one. 

Fine Cuisine for the Right-Brained

This had better be quick. In case I hadn't realized it yet, our departure to Italy is one week from tonight. You may be the organized focused sort who has it all together before a three-week journey but, I, on the other hand, do not.

OK, my suitcase is packed. (That, I know, is crazy. But Rick Steve, my new travel guru (along with Anthony Bourdain) says pack it all and carry it around for a day to see if you REALLY want to haul all that stuff. All of the less pleasantly anticipatory tasks are not (complete). And to compound the craziness, we launch the Botero Family Days for the public library system this week, and I am fine-tuning the art projects, buying supplies and organizing for that afternoon event at Landa Library. (For those of you in San Antonio, stop by from 1:00-4:00 for Colombian music and culture, collage, painting and sculpting inspired by Fernando Botero's work.)

So what did I do yesterday? Took a five hour drive through the countryside to Marble Falls. It was business-related. One hundred pounds of foundry clay awaited me at Dan Pogue's sculptor's studio -- at a better price than having it shipped from Dick Blick, especially if I did the schlepping. Of course, this involved a few sidesteps: a stop for pork ribs at Ronnie's Pit Barbeque in Johnson City, avoiding a round trip route by taking a side trek though Lady Bird Johnson country and a short little step in at Wild Seed Farms, and then a two-lane highway alternative to the interstate between Fredericksburg and Boerne. All this with a few roadside photo stops. In otherwords, an errand morphed into a pre-vacation vacation, just in time for sanity.

 

 

Meanwhile, in the email inbox, June Underwood's Ragged Cloth Cafe post about right-brained acendency for the future. Finally. Seems like I've had to endure round peggedness thoughout the square holes for not jsut the Industrial Age, but the Information Age as well.

I won't repeat her post, you can follow the link, but in short, the book by Daniel Pink just moved to the top of my wisl list. In short, though, what the world needs now (and will be looking for) are those of us with right-brain skills and experience. We in the well-enough-off American and other First World abundence may actually have enough stuff. Our hunger is for experiences packed with emotion, creativity, story. Just those things we artists happen to be good at delivering.

 

So, rather than see my escape yesterday as a flaky artist's escape from the calendar countdown, I prefer to see it as a refreshing palate-cleansing course in this particular life's banquet. The green was calling, the flowers were strewn along the roadside ever so much like magic carpet, a swirling, breezy tapestry of golds, reds, orange and blue. The gallardia, Englemann's daisies and blue mealy sage were splendid and so were the pork ribs. I am sure my right hemisphere is feelling nourished and saited with spring. What's on your plate today?

 

Cool Badge, New Cards, More Toys

Oops. I just found another excuse to spend time uploading photos onto my Flickr page -- this cool little badge now heading up the "about this blog" text. You can make your own, too, just click on the link under the badge.

And I also just learned that Moo.com is now making very cool greeting/thanking/catching up/snailmail cards on its site. If you missed my moo card posts, those are tiny little smaller-than-usual calling/business/whatever cards that can each have its very own photo on the back. Upload 100 photos and you can have 100 different tiny pictures. I upload those through my Flickr account too, though now, Moo offers a direct upload feature.