London III: The Wolseley, London Eye, Hyde Park and Proper High Tea

Jet lag made us miss breakfast, so we walked from our hotel down to Picadilly Circus to lunch at the  Wolseley, a well known London restaurant famous for its food and its interior. Originally built as a Venetian/Florentine showroom for high end autos,

 It was bought by Barclays Bank and then later changed into a high-end designer restaurant by David Collins.

photo from www.telegraph.co.uk

Lunch off the special vegetarian menu:

 Gnocchi with buffalo mozzarella and eggplant

 beet and goat cheese salad

quail egg croustade

And pommes frites for the table. Nothing unusually creative, but all beautifully served and delicious. For non-vegetarians there is a lot of variety to the menu, but reservations are a must. They do a brisk trade. We ate in the front room, which was much quieter than the big open central space.

From there we grabbed a cab to the London Eye,  Europe's tallest ferris wheel and the second highest viewpoint in London (surpassed by the observation deck of The Shard)—we were eager to take advantage of the clear skies since rain comes and goes in London, as we know.

The ride is half an hour, it is very relaxing and stable and did not excite my discomfort with heights at all, and the views were spectacular!

                                                       view from the London Eye

                                                             ...and even higher.

One other benefit of traveling to London over spring break was that we got a little bit of a preview of spring... Irad and Yuval finished their work week and we took a walk through Hyde Park and were delighted to smell the Hyachinth and see actual spring flowers. Soon, Cleveland, soon...

Hyde Park Gardens

The Serpentine Lake afforded us views of many different waterbirds.

We stopped in the Serpentine Gallery and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery to see two related exhibitions: Design is a State of Mind and Haim Steinbach: once again the world is flat. Both exhibitions dealt with collecting: structures for collecting, collections themselves, and art about collecting and they played off each other nicely. My favorite aspect of the exhibitions were the salt and pepper shakers - Steinback requested the public to contribute their interestinging salt and pepper shakers and they were lined up throughout the exhibition. 

 photo from Serpentine Gallery site

Very communal and fun, and brought the exhibition to the public and the public to the exhibition.

These are great galleries—bite sized and manageable and always interesting. Unlike the British Museum, which you must put your affairs in order before entering, because you could get lost there for the rest of your life.

Also really worth checking out is the new Magazine Restaurant attached to the Serpentine Gallery and designed by Zaha Hadid. This was an amazing, luminous and amoeba shaped space that was glommed right onto the side of the gallery.

The skylights bring natural lights through the pillars themselves, and there are curves everywhere. Every table is a different shape. We had just read about Zaha Hadid, a famous Iraqi woman architect, in the New York Times Magazine last October so it was especially exciting to come upon an actual building of hers.

photo from http://www.dezeen.com/

my photo of restaurant in action 

We had moved to the Intercontinental London Park Lane for the weekend, and were happy to retreat there to FINALLY have the real London afternoon tea:

 Real scones!

 

Yuval toasting our trip.

Pip pip and cheerio!

London II: Theater and M&M extravaganza

Before leaving Cleveland I went on line and bought tickets for Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, at the Duke of Yorks Theater (West End), starring Matthew MacFadyen, Stephen Mangan, and Mark Hadfield. The reviews were excellent, the start-time early, (7:30 pm) and the subject matter light. Perfect for young adults.

picture taken from http://www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com

And it fit the bill, so to speak. The Duke of Yorks is a smallish theater, selling programs, champagne and Cadbury chocolates in the lobby, and we weren't too far from the stage. However, just to be safe we rented ancient looking red opera glasses for 1£ out of a dispenser on the chair in front of us.

I am a long time P. G. Wodehouse fan, and once we tried watching the BBC television series with the kids when they were young but they were utterly bored. It was time to try again.

The play was extremely well done. Last summer Irad, Yuval and I had been in London and seen the 39 Steps (excellent!) which featured a small group of actors playing hundreds of roles. This was a little similar—MacFadyen plays Bertie Wooster but the other two gents inhabit every other role that comes up in the story, sometimes needing to be two people in the same scene simultaneously with some hilarious results and very clever stage and set gymnastics.

picture taken from http://www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com

 The premise is that Wooster comes out on the bare stage to recount the goings on of recent events (the usual instructions from a formidable Aunt, stay at some country castle, avoidance of some engagement for marriage, and the requisite stolen property and run-in with the law), and quickly finds he needs the help of Jeeves (Mangan). Jeeves has handily prepared a stage set which he wheels out, and as the play goes on the sets become more and more elaborate. They are joined by Aunt Dahlia's butler, (Hadfield).

It is clever, creative, non-stop hilarity and the usual cavorting and hi-jinx associated with Jeeves & Wooster. The use of the stage and the sets, the impersonations of multiple characters, are all wonderful. My only negative was that it is all rather one-level - non-stop hilarity and one madcap crisis after another so that at some point I was looking at my watch. The curtain call entailed a wonderful dance number by the three stars. I was amused to learn that the kids remembered everything about the BBC version we had watched and asked if we could watch it again when we get home.

picture taken from http://www.jeevesandwoosterplay.com

But, as in the Sanderson Lobby experience, you never know what kids will find interesting, and the real take-away of the play experience for the kids was the audience reactions and a sense that British humor is VERY different from ours. From the moment Bertie Wooster walked out on stage and said "Hello" the audience was in stitches. And I don't mean polite little titters and giggles. I mean howls and guffaws and shrieks of delight. Non-stop for 2 hours. The kids couldn't stop laughing because of the colorful laughs around us, and they spent the rest of the evening marveling at the English sense of humor. Our sense was that if the play had been performed in the States, though it may have garnered the occasional chuckle, most of it would have been greeted in silence which would have greatly reduced the atmosphere of the romp. 

We wandered out into Liecester Square (pronounced Lester Squaw) and were amazed at the hordes of people out in the streets on a cold rainy night. We walked briskly, trying to hug the storefronts with overhangs, and suddenly we came upon...

M&M's World, the largest candy store in the world. It struck us as so bizarre, so surreal, its bright lights and primary colors like a window into another daylight dimension, that we entered the store. We couldn't believe the floor after floor of M&M merchandise. Music everywhere, bright lights and those M&M colors.

Four floors down into the bowels of the earth, like a psychadelic trip in Willy Wonka's world, we perused an endless variety of M&M themes merchandise, characters and candies. Who knew? 

Though we entered just to goggle and spectate, we couldn't help filling one bag of dark chocolate peanut M&M's from the dispensers, and we may have picked up a pair of bright yellow M&M socks for Amnon, but wouldn't you? (to paraphrase William Boroughs.)

From high art to high consumerism, first night in London.

London I: Bookstores, Cheese shops and a Mad-Hatter Tea

Spring break and I decided to take the two younger kids to London, to meet up with Irad who was there on a business trip.

The kids and I arrived late Wednesday evening and went straight to the Sofitel at Heathrow airport where Irad was waiting for us—Irad and I have discovered this is an excellent hotel for softening (or sofiteling) the comings and goings from London. It is IN Terminal 5 and is itself an experience, with beautiful glassed in, natural-light lit lobby spaces, top restaurants and even a tea room.

photo from Sofitel site

We had an excellent late night supper before hitting the room to sleep off the trip.

Recovered from our flight, the kids and I set off into London late Thursday morning to set up in our new digs, the lovely Landmark London, with the famous Winter Garden glass atrium. (photo from http://www.landmarklondon.co.uk/en/galleries)

We set out to explore the adjacent neighborhood and began with Marleybone High Street, which is described as a hidden wonder of the West End. Suffice it to say that cute shops and charming architecture abound.








We had the pleasure of visiting a REAL bookstore, which as we all know is a rare experience these days.

 It had galleries and stairs, and stained glass windows and skylights and one could easily imagine spending the better part of a day there. My daughter enjoyed the layout by country, and my son was interested in all the stylish science books.
My find of the day was a really fun book to bring back for Amnon, my graphic artist son. Building Stories

It is the kind of book I would only buy after having had the opportunity to handle it, open the box, and appreciate its 3D qualities. A flat screen explanation of this wonderful book, which contains inside of it 14 separate and distinctly formatted graphic novels, ranging from pamphlet to Game Board, all unified around one subject.

Not a British book, but discovered by route of a bricks and mortar book store, which abound in London.



From there we went on to one of the highlights of our trip, "La Fromagerie." The kids and I love cheese, and this was the ultime meilleur of all cheese shops! We lunched in the tasting cafe on three cheese boards. the "French", the "Irish" and the "Cheese Shop", all including 5 different cheeses beginning with a soft  goat cheese and moving through a range of cheeses to a blue cheese.

We kept a menu with us and carefully notated and rated each cheese. At the end we selected our two favorites and went into the mysterious cheese room, a hermetically sealed climate controlled, odoriferous (ahem) glass walled room to purchase our choices and bring them home to share with Amnon. We all agreed it was the best cheese experience of our lives!

The next stop on our itinerary for that afternoon was the Sanderson Hotel where I planned to introduce the kids to afternoon tea via their Mad Hatter Tea.

The Full Display

 Drink-me Strawberry Juice

Queen-of-Hearts Teapot

Though it gets points for creativity, the scones and sandwiches were inedible. The sandwiches tasted like they had been frozen and not defrosted and were soggy and disgusting and the scones did not resemble any scone I've ever tasted. The tea was made from tea bags and the service was completely indifferent. Nor did it have the grand setting one associates with tea IN LONDON! 

Chocolate Tea cup, Green Tea Mousse and Popping Candy

The pastries were amazing, but the tea is not recommended unless you want a complete meal of sweets at a full tea premium price.

The funny thing about traveling with kids, is you never know what will interest them. You can plan world-class museums, historical monuments, theater and five star restaurants, but they can have more fun just...

Sanderson Hotel Lobby

trying out all the different chairs in the lobby!

NYC: Flowers, Fruit Tarts and Theater

I am catching up on my back log of pictures and experiences, so this trip to NYC was actually two weeks ago.

In the city for work, I finished my meetings early on Monday, at 3 pm, and had until the following morning all to myself. In my younger days I would have rushed through my address book to find friends to meet for coffee, dinner, dessert—whatever I could squeeze in.

But lately I have found that I enjoy being my own travel companion. Of course, it wouldn't be fun if that were all the time, but from a life of people-immersion: colleagues, children, (lovely) husband—there is a novelty to just being by myself.

I started by walking the 45 blocks down Broadway from Columbia to my hotel, taking my time to look in shops. Sigh, what a great city! I bought myself flowers for my room, and then an interesting glass to house them in, a new tradition I am establishing for myself. I love cut flowers, and I love having interesting vases and glassware to do my own floral arrangements at homes, so what better way to indulge than one-arrangement-at-a-time paced with my own travel schedule?

I took a break at one of my favorite cafes, Le Pain Quotidien. I know that it is a chain and not "cool and indy,"but I like the spacious farmhouse interior, the really good food, and great coffee, and since it is only in NYC, Washington DC, LA, London and Philly, for me it is exotic. And I am addicted to their fruit tarts...

This photo of Le Pain Quotidien is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Settled in with my latte and fruit tart, I browsed the theater selections. I wanted something low key and entertaining—not big, blaring, Broadway and loud. Lately, my daughter and I have been watching Ugly Betty together, a fun sit com about the fashion industry that has a tongue-in-cheek template of Mexican soap operas and a wonderful bright color palate. One of its stars, Michael Urie, was performing a one-man play in the Village called "Buyer and Cellar." I bought my single ticket (second row center—the advantage of being a singleton theater goer), and headed back to my hotel for a brief rest.

I was staying at the NYLO again, and I was delighted to discover their redesign. The rooms were bright, colorful, well laid out and full of amazing light and playful modern decor accents. Also had a great work table area for me to set up my flowers and my new vase. Just like home. (Only someone else makes the bed!)

Down to the Village by subway, into the intimate Barrow Theater,  and I had the perfect theater experience!

The play has a very quirky premise based on a riff off of Barbara Streisand's recent book:
in which she describes her house, including, a private "mock" shopping mall in her basement to house all her tchotchkes and collections.

The playwright imagines that if she has a shopping mall, well, she must have a clerk to wait on her when she "shops" and from there the play takes off. Michael Urie plays the out of work LA actor who takes the gig....

 Photo from Broadway.com

The play has a bit of a gay-culture insider's feel, (Barbara is after all a stereotypical gay fetish), but not to the exclusion of the non-gay viewer. It is about loneliness and narcissism and celebrity, about relationships and projection and being genuine. And it works. Wonderful use of a spare stage with projections and very few physical objects, and really brilliant script which brings to life several characters through the auspices of our one man star. But what also struck me was the power of seeing an actor up close and really feeling the power of his art, energy and charm, as opposed to what I had experienced by watching this very same actor on the TV screen.

Long live theater!!!

Book Review: Signature of All Things

 


I was not a fan of Eat, Pray, Love. Well, let me be honest. I was a huge fan of "Eat" but "Pray, Love" got a bit much for me. Too much self-expose and precious prose.

So it was with some surprise that I found myself completely blown away by Gilbert's recent novel (her first fiction since 2000), The Signature of All Things: A Novel.


Now THIS is a book! No cutesy gimmick, no ironic authorial voicing, no sweet and contrived denouement. Just good solid plotting, wonderful characters, rich setting and careful, but submerged, research, and the tremendous act of imagination that makes reading a novel more fun than sitting around having a conversation with oneself!

I loved this book. I loved the botany, the liveliness of the ideas, the wonderful characters, and Alma herself. Set in the 19th Century, it felt like a 19th Century novel in its Dickensian richness and scope, and full and fleshly omniscient narrator.

A perfect anecdote to winter blues, the book is both a journey of the mind and a journey of the globe, evoking the steamy intensity of 19th Century scientific inquiry (Joseph Banks and Alfred Russell Wallace make actual appearances as characters, and Darwin and Linnaeus are in pages), as well as an homage to the sea faring literature of exploration a la Horatio Hornblower and Master and Commander that I also dearly love.

IF I were creating a mini-course on botany and evolutionary biology in literature, I would include this book, the stories of Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever: Stories and Servants of the Map: Stories, and Simon Mawer's Mendel's Dwarf


And as a nascent, extremely amateur botanical watercolorist, I love that one of the characters is a genius botanical artist and that drawings throughout the book as well as the endpapers contain botanical prints. Worth leaving the Kindle in the drawer for this one.

Gilbert spent three years reading botanical works as well as visiting botanical gardens in preparation for this book, and it shows. Following up a mega-seller memoir with a solid work of fiction is no mean feat and I think we have a serious novelist in the house.