Tag Archives: travel
15 dishes for €29: epic gluttony in Lyon
My first time in Lyon and I was eating pickled pig feet. Or snouts? Well anyway, it was a lot of pig parts. My first time in Lyon and also my first bouchon. A bouchon—I realize now that I’ve tried one—is the kind of dining experience I enjoy; unfussy, cheap, locally specific, and delicious. To […]
The Churchwreck of Senlis
I’ve taken a lot of pictures of churches but this might be my favorite. I had arrived in Senlis not long before, just off a plane, actually. I took a bus directly from the airport in Paris and in under a half hour I was standing in front of the church trying to figure out […]
The Calendar of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Hey, I’m an art pilgrim; I’m always going to want to see the original. But when it came to Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, I was going to have to settle for looking at reproductions. This delicate manuscript has been preserved out of view in the Musée Condé in Chantilly France and […]
The Montréal Signs Project
Last week I was in Montréal taking a bus to the Concordia University campus with instructions on how to find a hidden doorway. In other words, my vacation was going well. The Montréal Signs Project is a kind of sign museum (and maybe a bit of a sign graveyard). These signs were rescued from shuttered […]
The Liminal Space of Premier Inn
For a couple of decades HOB and I slept in budget hotels and guest houses. In some countries (memorably Albania) the cheap rooms were clean and sometimes even lovely. In other countries (looking at you, France) there seemed to be a national effort to make these rooms poorly heated with sketchy beds reeking of body […]
Wells Cathedral: in case of emergency, apply scissors
The view of the English countryside during my 90 minute bus ride from Bath to Wells—with frost outlining the shingles on stone cottages and sheep finding patches of the rising sun to stand in—distracted me from an increasingly desperate need to pee. Fortunately, Wells Cathedral (and its restroom) was close to the bus stop. Like […]
The Self-Referential Panto in Bath
It’s the holiday season, when English families long for a wholesome evening of fart jokes, fake smoke, sexual innuendo and drag. I’m in Bath, and last night I watched the Panto at Theatre Royal. Panto (or Pantomimes) run during the month around Christmas, but they aren’t holiday-themed shows. It seems like they are mostly loose […]
Danish things
There are charming things about Demark that I wouldn’t have known by staying home and googling UNESCO sites. For example: chocolate milk is a perfectly acceptable and abundantly available beverage for adults. Here are some other Danish things: No need for a truck when you can haul it on your bike: Danish folks will transport […]
Well, of course I went to Hamlet’s castle!
Shakespeare called it Elsinore, but he never actually visited the real life Kronberg Castle in Helsingør. Some actors from his company performed there, then must have told him about it, and he used that for the setting of Hamlet. The dude is King Frederick II and here is is with his bride (and first cousin—eww!) […]
Hot Liver and Honey Cake Picnic at the Moravian Church of Christiansfeld, Denmark
Two parallel streets with a church in the center: that’s plan of Christiansfeld. This is the planned city of the Moravian religion in Southern Denmark. Moravianism is an early form of Protestantism out of Bohemia. You know these Protestants aren’t going for fancy—what you get here in Christiansfeld is symmetry, order and pruned trees. And […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 