In our effort to downsize but continue to have fun, we scrambled
together all our frequent flyer miles and managed to put together two
return flights to London and Italy. Then, by making a small investment
on a home exchange site, we found a young woman in Prato (twenty
minutes from Florence), willing to do a non-simultaneous exchange with
our desert house in Joshua Tree.
Our first stop was London, where a kind friend loaned us her
house. Although I grew up in London I have not lived there in over 30
years. The minute I walked off the plane, I was surprised by the
intense 80-degree heat, a byproduct of global warming, and something I
had never encountered in my childhood, where you were lucky if it
reached the mid 70’s in the summer. After struggling with the new
monetary denominations and a new subway system, I began to feel like a
stranger in my hometown,
Yet, one area that has vastly improved since I lived in London is the food. But like everything else, it is very expensive. Fortunately, another ex-Brit friend had recently visited London and her sage advice was that bargains could be had at posh restaurants if you went at lunch, rather than dinner. Following her recommendation, backed up by “Time out”– still the best magazine to tell you what is going on in London – I made reservations at Gauthier, a French restaurant in Soho.
New Orleans, founded in 1718, has many long standing traditions. During the holidays, many of these still exist and there are even a few new ones! There is always a reason to have a celebration in New Orleans but from November - January, traditions and celebrations truly shine.
Where a certain quality of light illumines the lush foliage and warms the honey coloured brick of this fascinating country house hotel. It dapples the grey and pinkish white hides of the does as they playfully flirt and then shyly turn away from the piercing eyes of the antlered deer. It ripples across the quietly moving waters of the trout stream and turns the shining leaves of the great towering trees to gold.
We’d been at the Barcelona Cathedral, the old one, not the Gaudi one that’s never finished, extraordinary gothic architecture graced with gargoyles and an adjacent museum with jewel encrusted crosses, too many carats to count. The cathedral is the resting place of Santa Eulalia. Almost like a film credit, she is the co-patron saint of Barcelona and the cathedral is guarded by thirteen white geese as she was thirteen when she died. (I know this is true because I counted them.)
I walked right past Christian Louboutin last weekend. He made an impression.