Travel

Hey, it’s raw. But that doesn’t make it simple.

It’s a commonplace that sushi is a culinary style that comes very close to offering food in it’s natural state. So we expect it to be ridiculously fresh, clean and manipulated only for presentation.

There’s a new-ish sushi place here in Portland, its tiny space appropriately described by many as a jewel. Portland Maine you say? Japanese cuisine in Maine? Then you don’t know just how much of what starts out here in Maine ends up Tokyo’s Tsukiji market – the greatest fish market in the world and a mecca for sushi chefs and other seafood nuts. Ah, but I digress… 

This past summer my boyfriend and I set out on a cross-country road trip from Boston to L.A, a drive whose route would transverse America, and take us to countless places we’d never been before.  With only a few changes of clothes, two sleeping bags and a cooler, we left the East Coast energetic and idealistic about the trip.  The things most looked forward to: upstate New York in August, the peak of wild flower season, wheat fields in Iowa and the Rockies once out west, stretched out ahead of us for weeks on end.  I can honestly say that we did see these things, all of them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying much attention… far too busy reading the Sterns. 

My cover of the Sterns’ 2005 edition of “Roadfood” features a close-up of an oozing triple-decker grilled cheese sandwich, the evidence of whose butter-fried preparation proclaims itself from each crispy edge of toast and glistening golden burnt bit. The bread appears to be highly refined, and the cheese orangey processed.  In other words: the cover-sandwich looks criminally delicious, the kind you’d find in a favorite diner, or perhaps in one of the 600 odd restaurants, spanning 48 states, that the Sterns describes within.  Snappily written reviews of places chosen for their honest cooking, lack of pretense and use of ingredients rated high to higher on the bad-for-you index, make for an addictive read.  It’s also a really fun book for sickos to pour over when the trail mix runs out, and the only work of non-fiction I packed on my person when leaving for The Big Move out west.

Munch's summer house was not far from my family's summer home, in Åsgårdstrand. He spent every summer there between 1889 and 1905, fell in love with the pretty town and with a married woman, Milly Thaulow (Mrs Heiberg).

The Shore of Love (Kjaerlighhetens Strand) is the 2010 summer exhibition at Haugar museum in Tonsberg. It's a rare treat and one of the biggest Munch exhibits ever held outside of Oslo or Bergen.  The images are familiar to Munch fans – the lovers, the girls on the beach, the big Norwegian moon spreading light across the water.

Andy Warhol was a great fan of Munch.  He first saw the work at a gallery in New York in 1982.  Both men lost a parent at a very young age, and both, it seems were obsessed with death.  His paintings and silkscreens are inspired by Munch's The Scream, Madonna and Self-portrait with Skeleton Arm.

Lately, almost everything is out of my comfort zone. Even a drive across town has been moved to my bucket list. A trip to the east side of the 405 Freeway feels like I’m a contestant on Survivor.

An invitation arrived in the mail. Come to a wedding at a castle in Ireland. Three days of free food and board. What to do? Are you kidding? Who could resist? I answered yes. And then went into a panic.

Too many planes, trains and automobiles. Being in a car in LA is unnerving enough. Driving on the “wrong” side of the road in County Mayo? That’s my idea of terror.

I decided to be my own travel agent. This would give me some control and help me get used to the whole idea of the trip. A trip, as Rod Serling might say, to the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, to the pit of man’s fears: My Discomfort Zone.

I enlisted an Irish actor I know and asked for travel advice. He was very detailed about which hotel in Dublin to stay at and even suggested a visit to a second castle.

My own research revealed that it would be silly to land at Dublin Airport since the wedding castle is closer to the one in Knock. But you can’t fly to Knock airport directly from the U.S. So we’d travel first to England and stay for three days. London is sort of within my zone of comfort. I’d been there several times and love it. And I’d be visiting with good friends who live there. More comfort.