On our recent trip to Chicago, my husband and I found ourselves fairly
secluded from the outside world as we cared for my aging father-in-law
while my mother-in-law got a much needed vacation. With only one day to
ourselves – thanks to the brief appearance of his brothers – we decided
to meet up with some friends on the shore of Lake Michigan, in
Michigan. It would have been easier to hook-up on the Chi-town side of
the water (they only live 20 minutes away from my in-laws), but since they were off
boating there, we like to road-trip and I had never been to Michigan,
we tentatively agreed to meet in a small town on the lake called New
Buffalo.
Spontaneous is a word rarely attributed to me, especially when I
travel. The advent of the Internet has been a godsend to my obssesive
need to pre-plan and find exactly the right place to go before I leave
my living room. Sure, I might miss the best local "whatever" that just
opened yesterday or is too obscure to be on the web because of my
control-freak nature, but I'm too old and particular to leave lunch to
chance. If I'm going to make the effort and take the time, I want
better than even odds that I'll enjoy the excursion.
Travel
Travel
The Other Wine Country
It’s all my fault. I’ve been telling people for almost a decade about this lovely wine region in the middle of California. Most of them had no idea where Paso Robles is – halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco – and had never heard of any of the wineries that call this region home. Until the last 3-4 years I couldn’t really blame them. Even though some people have been successfully making wonderful wine here for over 3 decades, their efforts rarely reached beyond the county’s borders.
Unless you made the trip, you’d have no idea what you were missing…and you are missing some of the best Bang-for-the-Buck wines being made in California.
Coco Lezzone
The first time I ate at Coco Lezzone in Florence, it was at the invitation of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who knows a thing or two about Italian cooking:
(1) He created the gourmet Italian DDL Foodshow Emporiums in New York and Beverly Hills about 20 years ahead of their time,
(2) His lovely granddaughter Giada, with many of her family’s recipes and great charm and skill, has become a best-selling cookbook author and very popular Food Network chef, and,
(3) He is Italian and always has been.
We were in Florence because that’s where Hannibal was being filmed, and Dino asked my wife Elizabeth and me and some others working on the film to join him at Coco Lezzone for dinner.
Tap dancing
I walked right past Christian Louboutin last weekend. He made an impression.
Louboutin is Paris’ most well-known ladies shoe designer, notable for his sky high heels and their trade-mark red patent sole. Louboutin’s shoes eclipsed Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik at the peak of the swinging hey-day of ‘Sex and the City’, and I can see why: every pair I own are well-cut, sexy, and outrageously comfortable (and, to be fair, outrageously expensive).
Louboutin was easy to recognize: I remember seeing pictures of him in an article about how he spends his free time drifting down the Nile in an over-sized Egyptian dhou, and I also knew that his Parisian flagship was just around the corner in one of the covered ‘galeries’ in the 1er. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was wearing a well-cut khaki suit, accented by an outrageous and sparky pair of silver studded black leather shoes that flashed in the light as he hopped up onto the pavement.
Easy Travel to Other Countries
I have a horny wanderlust, always insatiable, perpetually unrequited. Oh sure, I’ve had my trips on locations: from the gentler parallel reality of Canada to the third world intensity of Jamaica. And vacations to the usual European locales — Italy, Ireland, Scotland, England, France for business and pleasure. But I want moooore! Although currently landlocked until the dollar heals, business prospers, travel improves, and fuel cheapens, I can best trip out by visiting friends from other cultures.
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