Travel

New Year's eve has got to be the most over-rated holiday of the year. I'm all about celebrating any holiday, even the ones I have never heard of but I always dread New Year's eve. Something about being forced to stay up late, wearing a sparkly, tacky hat and tooting a horn, trying to be cheerful and chatty when I am actually dog tired from the Christmas holidays. Otherwise the option is to stay home and feel depressed that everyone else is out having a good time except for me.

I discovered several years ago that the answer to all of my New Year's eve trauma was to go to work. Since I work for a major airline and the 'Senior Mamas" (our semi-affectionate term for the stews who have been flying for 35+ years) don't want to work on any holiday, I can pretty much pick up any trip I want. I debated on a 5 day trip to Prague or Stockholm but decided it was too cold. I looked at long layovers in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires but decided I wasn't in the mood to always be looking over my shoulder. Bingo, 50 hours in Honolulu popped up on my computer and I took it immediately.

Like my ancestors before me and their great ancestors before them, I like love food. The members of the Santiago clan aren’t known for being particularly picky about their cuisine. Eat first, ask later (or ask while eating). But eating anything in China is like a blindfolded taste test. The labels are written in Chinese, so I sit and I poke and I prod.

While I come from a long line of low maintenance eaters (and pride myself for it) I still must inspect the mystery meat that is tossed onto my personal safe haven of choice, white rice. Just because it looks like beef, photographs like beef, and is doused with similar sauce does not guarantee beef.

However, there comes a point in every young adult’s life, where you realize your budget restraints, stop questioning and start eating. I’m not saying I gave in to eating turtle or even chicken claws for that matter, but like the Donner party would have said, “When I’m starving, I will eat almost anything”.

Lunch is promptly at 12pm every day. Like any daily activity, it is a large, public game of charades in which I act out what I’m thinking, the Chinese guess, and occasionally someone bilingual steps in to finish the job. 2 words! Hot? Cold? Hot Tea? Two Sakis? Hot Water? Ice Water? Ding ding!

Unfortunately, this isn’t foolproof, but, in general, I've discovered that China has great food. Especially, if you trust a native Chinese foodie to lead your American taste buds in the right direction. Here is a mini-guide to my food adventures thus far:

I grew up on a farm in south Georgia. I had no appreciation for the fact that we grew our own crops; I never once had a meal from a can. Everything we ate came straight from the farm to the table. We even had a pond and stocked fresh trout and other fish.

Who knew that would become the hip and trendy way to eat?

I remember being a little bit embarrassed that I grew up on a farm. My Mom subscribed to magazines such as Vanity Fair and Town and County. I loved the photos, especially the 'society' photos of all the pretty women dressed in colorful frocks in high heeled shoes.

I could relate because my Mom got the Sears catalog and I dreamt of the day that I was old enough to order those high heeled Espadrilles in all sorts of colors. I remember seeing a piece in Town and Country of Jackie-O on a yacht in Monaco, wearing those shoes. 

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.)

We were on a cruise and the ship was leaving at five. It was three o’clock and we hadn’t eaten. In the spirit of adventure, (risky, as this is sometimes not my husband’s favorite thing), I followed a native (read: person walking dog) through the back streets of Barcelona to a residential neighborhood only to discover the most amazing charcuterie I’d ever seen. In the back of a shop, a white tableclothed restaurant with wine and cheese pairings and other delights. Reservations only.

The sommelier was intractable even though there was an empty table. He insisted we come back in an hour and a half. I tried to explain to him our ship would be gone by then. In desperation, it was almost four o’clock by then and like I said, we hadn’t eaten. My family can attest to the fact that I do not do well without food.