If it's yellow...

Merry Christmas everyone!

Our accommodation in Dublin consists of a very nice serviced apartment.  It's not cheap accommodation (although it also isn't the Ritz).  Generally it's very nice, but there are some rather curious features.

Amongst them is this sign:

You may need to enlarge this to read it.  In short, it advises guests that due to the adverse weather, there has been an increase in broken water mains and so Dublin City Council are reducing the water pressure or turning off the water as a way to conserve and build water levels back to normal.  It includes a number of tips to "aid with your conservation of water".  One of these is "only flush the toilet when necessary".  The thing that concerns me about this particular tip is that flushing the toilet isn't a particularly pleasurable or exciting exercise.  I certainly have never pressed the flush button just for fun. Indeed, I suspect that most people only do it when necessary.  So what does this request really mean?  I rather suspect that it's code for "if it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down".  Now, we may not be staying in the Ritz, but asking us not to flush our number 1s is still just taking water conservation a bit too far.

It's been a while

When I warned, in my last post, that I would write only periodically for a while, I didn't appreiciate just how long a period would pass before I would write another post.

I've been busy.  I want to say that I've been busy travelling the world, righting injustice and ensuring freedom and fairness for all.  In fact, it's been far more boring than that.  I've been working two jobs - being a lawyer and a teacher - and have also discovered a passion for running.  It hasn't all been work, however.  I've also managed to squeeze in a trip to Basel (and a 5.5km city fun run in the snow) and been to various gigs, including the National, the Dirty Projectors and Local Natives.

G and I have also been trying to cope with the "big freeze" (as the media have been calling it).  London has been snowed under, with ensuing mayhem and chaos. Flights have been cancelled, Heathrow has started to resemble a refugee camp and we entered an emergency world where anything goes.  The weather seemed to give everyone license to do anything, so long as they prefaced their actions or cut off any criticism by saying "adverse weather conditions".  People started turning up to work one or even two hours late.  This was perfectly acceptable during the big freeze - so long as you announced to the office "adverse weather conditions" with a slight shake of the head, to which everyone would respond with a knowing nod.   "Adverse weather conditions" seemed to excusae anything for a while there - people were turning up to work in jeans and uggboots - "adverse weather conditions", they would announe, and no one would question it.  Similarly, people would duck out of hte office for extra long lunch breaks, returning only to say "adverse weather conditions".   It was actually rather fun. At least it was until our flight yesterday from London to Dublin was cancelled ("adverse weather conditions").  For a while, it looked as though we might not have the planned xmas in Dublin.   and we found ourselves rebooked on a 7 am flight yesterday (meaning a wake up time of 4.30 am). 

Now G and I are in Dublin, where the snow is even thicker.  Our first white Christmas!  I promise I will try to post again soon, to let you know how it goes.  If I don't manage to post soon, well, what can I say other than "adverse weather conditions"?

Three birthday dinners

It happened.  G turned 30, thereby finally becoming officially old enough to justify his ownership of boat shoes and to excuse his tendency to waste half of most Saturdays watching Saturday Kitchen.  I also had a birthday to celebrate - the last one of my twenties. 

My birthday falls first, on one of the last days of October.  Knowing my birthday would rightly be overshadowed by the big thirtieth a few days later, I didn't even try to complete.  Instead, I decided this year to keep the celebrations simple but classy, and booked dinner for G and me at Pearl Restaurant.  This is a  smart restaurant in Holborn, London.  It hasn't been awarded a Michelin star, but that fact always puzzled me.  We last had dinner there about 18 months ago and that dinner was one of my most treasured memories of eating out in London.  I remember each course (and the amuse-bouche) as being exquisite.  Perhaps that was the mistake - thinking we could relive that dining experience.  This time, I have to confess, Pearl just didn't live up to expectations.  In fact, it was a disaster.  The disaster was largley of my own making (misreading the menu and so ending up with a main meal incorporating meat, which I don't eat).  But even that aside, the meal was just "good".  And for the prices charged (which are of Michelin standard) it really should be "wonderful". 

Learning from our mistake, on the day of G's birthday (a Wednesday) we decided to have a more relaxed dinner at one of our favourite London restaurants - the Galvin brothers' Cafe a Vin.  This is a casual little French bistro, near G's work.  Even though it is casual and well priced,  the food packs a punch.  In particular, my cep risotto was divine.  To top off a near-perfect meal, the waitstaff managed to work out it was G's birthday.  So when he ordered a chocolate tart for dessert, they brought it out on a plate spelling "happy birthday" in chocolate and with a lit candle in his tart.  Even better, most of the kitchen staff came out, loudly singing happy birthday.  It was well and truly beyond simply "good service". 

Not one to let a 30th go without fuss, I also booked a rather flash meal and night's accommodation for us for the weekend.  On Friday night, G and I headed up to Hartfordshire, to Brocket Hall for the night.  This is a huge, sprawling estate with a Michelin starred restaurant, Auberge du lac.  

The restaurant entrance

The back of the restaurant - as you can see, it has a lovely view over the lake.

At Auberge du lac we had anything but a casual meal - instead, we treated ourselves to the degustation with matching wines.   The chef happily modified the degustation  for me to substitute the meat courses for seafood courses, without making a fuss.  Each dish was wonderful, so much so that I'm struggling to think of a favourite.  At a push, I would have to say that the confeit of mackerel with an oyster and vegetables was my favourite.  The  feast of food and wine  G and I had would have left us replete and well lubricated.  However,  to top it off, G managed to strike up a friendship with the sommelier (who initially mistook G as someone else in the wine business).  The sommelier therefore took great delight in treating us to further, additional wines, and was excitedly opening bottles of very expensive wine so that he and G could have long wine-speak conversations about the qualities of the various bottles.  The food and wine were both excellent and I am pleased to say that I now have a new favourite dining experience in the UK: the Auberge du lac.   The staff even made a fuss of G's birthday, bringing out some chocolates on a plate on which the chef had written "happy birthday" in chocolate.

However, gluttony in such an extreme form always has repercussions, and although G and I only had to stumble a couple of hundred metres from the restaurant to our accommodation at Brocket Hall, it was a very hard walk.  We probably should have given our stomachs a break the following day (Saturday), but unfortunately our accommodation included a full English breakfast in the morning.  I am still not so far removed from the student mentality that I can turn down a free breakfast, even if I really don't need it.  

 

The rest of Saturday saw us recovering from our marathon eating session, lazing about on the sofa and groaning about our full bellies.   Eventually I managed to haul myself off the sofa to go for a run, but that was really just so I could wake myself up for the further festivities ahead.  That night (last night) we were off to our local pub, to eat pizzas and drink wine with a group of friends in celebration (again) of G's birthday.  And now, after properly celebrating our birthdays, I think I'm going to try to swear off wine and rich food for a while.  Or at least until next weekend.

My sporadic blog posts

Once again, I've been a bit slack in updating this blog.  Recently I've taken up a part-time teaching role, teaching law.  This is in addition to my usual job. And, as any teacher will tell you, although the contact hours might be minimal, the preparation and marking time could be infinite, if I allowed it to be.  Hence I've found myself with very little time for writing.  Hopefully, as I get used to the teaching role, and am able to spend less time preparing, I'll have more time again for this blog.  In the meantime, my entries will be a bit sporadic.

Cefalu

After Trapani we were off to Cefalu where we stayed for the next week.  Cefalu is a pretty coastal town that became famous for being the town where Cinema Paradiso was filmed.

We stayed at the Villa Margherita, in the heart of the old town.  It is run by Valerio, a very friendly Italian fellow who (I'm guessing) would be in his mid- to late-thirties.  It wasn't a cheap B&B, but nothing in Cefalu is.  Unfortunately, the charms of the town are a poorly kept secret, meaning that the place is packed with tourists during the summer.  Bearing that in mind, we were very happy with our accommodation.  Every morning saw a delicious breakfast spread of fresh cornettos (croissants), fruit and fruit juice. Valerio was unfailingly cheery and helpful and also had a very cute dachshund, Lulu, that he let me take for a walk.

Cefalu itself is a small and quiet town, which suited us perfectly.  We bought ourselves a beach umbrella and happily spent hours lying on the beach, admiring the view and reading our books.  We would break up the days by eating gelato, pasta and drinking wine.

It wasn't all pasta and gelato, however. G and I did manage to fit in a rigorous climb up "the rock", or La Rocca.  This is a one hour climb up a steep rock on which there are the remains of a medieval castle, norman castle and the Tempio di Diana (9th Century BC).  The top of the rock also offers incredible views over Cefalu.

Tempio di Diana

G and I admired the local Cathedral with its beautiful mosaic.

I also spent a few evenings jogging around the town, while G would go for a walk, each of us enjoying the sunset and working off our pasta meals in our own ways. G also managed to take some pretty spectacular photographs of the sunset.

The lovely thing about Cefalu is that, even though it is overrun by tourists in summer, it is still a working, bustling Sicilian town.

If this is all sounding pretty idyllic, it's because it was.  The only exception was one night when a crazy storm blew in, flooding large parts of the town.

But despite the storm, and the damage it created, the following day was still lovely and sunny and we spent it on the beach. All up, it was a pretty perfect holiday.  The only disappontment was having to return home to work.

Food we ate in Sicily and food that attacked us in Sicily.

Growing up in Australia, I thought of Italy as a more-or-less unified country in the same way Australia is (if one ignores the occasional crazy secession movements in Western Australia).  However, the contrast between Sicily and the north of Italy really brought home to me the relative youth of Italy as a "unified" nation.  Most of the people I met in Sicily spoke primarily the local dialect rather than "Italian".  Perhaps most importantly to me, as a tourist, another key difference was in the food.  

I love food but wouldn't dare call myself a "foodie".  I suspect a foodie would read this post and scoff at how little I know about food.  But simply as a person who likes food, I have to say that for me the difference between, say, Tuscan food and Sicilian food is stark. Whereas Tuscan food seems to employ big flavours (ripe and juicy tomatoes, delicious and sharp cheeses, garlic, capers and anchovies), Sicilian food is  much more subtle.  We spent most of our time in seaside areas, so a lot of the food was seafood, fresh and very simply prepared.   However, even comparing the pasta dishes with those in the north I found noticeable differences.  The pasta dishes in Sicily didn't involve the rich tomato-based sauces I associate with "Italian" food.  A common dish was pasta with a  sauce made of sardines, tomato, nuts and raisins.  And in place of pecorino or parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs or chopped nuts seemed to be used in a lot of dishes.

Another popular dish was a seafood couscous dish.  It sounds (and even looks) a bit more exciting than it in fact was.

The food was all nice.  However, I have to say that, despite trying really hard (and eating a lot), Sicilian food didn't win me over.  I didn't love it the way I love Tuscan food.  The exception to this was the desserts, which were superb.   I could happily live off Sicilian biscuits and desserts.  I wouldn't live for long before my arteries became clogged and my heart failed, but it would be a happy life.

I also adored the mulberry granitas.

Sicily also boasted lots of fruit stands, selling delicious melons and figs.  I noticed that some of the fruit stands were also offering for sale an unfamiliar fruit labeled fichi d'India.  It wasn't something I'd ever seen before.  

On one of the days we were in Trapani, we decided to have a picnic and so went to the local supermarket.  There, I saw a tray of finchi d'India, in a cling-filmed box.  They looked pretty harmless.  I assumed they would be similar to custard apples.

We bought our food (including the mysterious fruit) and left the supermarket, returning to our hotel.  There, I thought I'd pre-cut the fruit, so we could eat it with our fingers on our picnic.  I took off the cling-film and picked one of the fruit up in my hand. It took me a few moments to feel the tingling in my hand.  And at first I wasn't sure what had caused it.  Then, when I looked closely, I saw what appeared to be thousands of tiny spines embedded in the skin on my hand.  By that point, the tingling had turned to pain.  It turns out that the English name for the finchi d'India is "Prickly Pear" and it is an apt name.  G and I spent the next two hours with a pair of tweezers trying to remove the spines from my hand.

It was after that incident that I discovered that the fruit came from a cactus that grows like a weed in the area.

A few days later, when I told a local about my encounter with the prickly pear, he looked at me aghast.  "You held the fichi d'India  with no gloves?" He asked.  "Why do you do that?  You don't do that.  You wear gloves and use the knife and cut it. Not hands".  I explained that yes, I'd learned that lesson, albeit the hard way.  I recognised the look this man gave me as he was talking - it was the same one I use for tourists in London who try and talk to strangers on the tube.  It was the "you idiot tourist" look.  Maybe it was my karma for feeling superior to the fluorescent-hatted tourists the previous day.  

A bit of Friday night sentimentality

I'm not one to discuss my innermost thoughts.  That is, of course, unless I've had a couple of glasses of wine.  Then it can be hard to get me to be quiet.  But on this blog I generally avoid discussing my personal thoughts and feelings.  I'm conscious the Internet is a public forum.  Hence the use of initials in this blog rather than names.  And the only photos you'll ever see of me on here are from a great distance or from behind.  I don't want to become one of those statistics - the people who blog or use the Internet to tell funny stories about their employers and colleagues only to be found out, to lose their jobs and to end up in the "quirky story of the week" column in the newspapers.

This post is therefore going to be something of an anomaly.  Perhaps it's because it's late on a Friday night and I'm home alone on the sofa, having injured my back, feeling sorry for myself.  Or maybe it's just because of all the prescription painkillers I've taken for my injured back.  Either way, I've decided, for once, to give in to the desire to be sentimental.

Tonight I've been thinking of my maternal grandfather, "P".  This isn't uncommon - I often think of him.  But tonight I have been thinking of him a lot. 

It started when I noticed my "learning to drive" pack in the bookshelf, still in its clingfilm.   That's right - I'm one of that small minority of Australians over the age of 20 who still doesn't have a driver's license.  I ordered the pack on amazon a couple of months ago, but still haven't even unwrapped it.

I did learn to drive, once, back when I was 18.  I was actually pretty good at it.  But when it came to the driving test, I spectacularly failed. I had a bit of a panic behind the wheel.  Particularly unfortunate was the fact I had that panic before I'd even started the car.  I shut the door of the car and sat down next to the examiner.  She told me to start the car but I just sat there at the wheel, already convinced I was going to fail the test and unable to even get the car to start.  I don't think the fact I kept saying to the examiner (and remember I was only 18) "oh my god, oh my god.  I know how to drive, I promise!" helped the situation.   Once I finally turned the key in the ignition and started the car, the panic rose again, and rather than smoothly drive it out of the car park, I almost crashed it into a chicken wire fence.  After that, I became convinced I couldn't drive.  And I didn't want to go through the humiliation of another failed test.  So I gave up.

There are lots of things I can't do because they absolutely freak me out or because they just seem so hard I give up.  I can't dive into water.  Not properly.  The idea of going into the water, essentially head-first, always struck me as mad and terrifying and no amount of cajoling on the part of my swimming teachers or mother could make me do it.

According to my mother, my fear of doing things started pretty young, and I was a slow and tentative walker.  But as I grew up, I had people around me who managed to bully me into overcoming these fears to a point where I could blend into society and seem like a reasonably normal human being.  One of those people was P.

Sadly, P died from cancer when I was only 12.  I've now been alive for longer without him than I was with him.  But he was a huge presence when he was around, and I don't think that such a personality can ever really dissipate, even when they are no longer physically here.

P taught me how to put my head under water.  I don't remember this - I was too young to remember it.  But my mother has told me that he spent hours in our backyard, in the pool, forcing me to overcome my paranoid fear of putting my head under water.  As someone who loves swimming now, it's a fear that seems particularly hard for me to comprehend.

I do remember P teaching me to overcome my fear of swimming in the ocean.  Again, it's one of my favourite activities now, but when I was a child I found it terrifying.  I was convinced that the waves would suck me in and carry me out to the depths of the ocean.  P lived near the sea, and I remember well one particular day when he insisted we go to the beach.  In my mind the waves that day were enormous, but I suspect that in fact they were tiny.  P got me to go into the water with him, "just a little", up to our knees.  He held my hand tightly and tried to convince me to go out further.  Finally, when I refused, he decided to do it the hard way.  He took hold of my wrist and started to pull me out into the sea.  In defiance I refused to walk or swim, just flopping down in the shallows and refusing to move my legs.  Stupidly, I didn't realise that would only make it easier for P to drag me deeper into the ocean, which he promptly did.  As each wave came towards us, he lifted me up over it, until we got out past where the waves were breaking and, sure enough, it was calm.  There, he proved his point, that I shouldn't be terrified of the waves.  Strangely, despite the passage of about two decades, I can still remember the strength of P's grip on my wrist.  A strong and unmovable pressure, but a gentle one nonetheless.  The incident didn't miraculously erase my fear of the ocean's waves (I am still scared of the big ones) but it was the beginning of the end of my general fear of the ocean. 

Another of P's successes with me was teaching me to ride a bike without training wheels.  I can't remember now how old I was, but I remember that I was adament I didn't need to learn this skill.  P obviously had a better understanding than I did of the ridicule I'd receive from my school friends if I didn't learn to ride without training wheels, and so insisted I learn.  After he took the training wheels off my bike, he pulled the wooden handle off a broom and taped it to my bike, so that the handle stood vertical.  He then used this to hold me and the bike upright and to stop me from falling as I "rode" the bike and gradually learned to balance on it.  Childhood memories are, of course, unreliable.  So I don't know how many times P dragged me out on that bike, but I remember there being a great many lessons.  And I remember throwing tantrums, insisting I was happy using training wheels, and inevitably being dragged out against my will to practise riding the bike.  We went around and around the block, with P holding the broom stick and promising me I wouldn't fall. When P wasn't around, my mother would take up the mantle.  But P was by the far more effective teacher.  Nonetheless,  I was convinced I couldn't ride the damn bike, even when P told me that I was effectively riding on my own.  I insisted he keep his grip on the handle, so he spent many an afternoon running alongside me on my bike, loosely holding the "handle" to reassure me.   I made him run with me for some time before finally accepting that I could do it on my own. If it hadn't been for P and his patience, I suspect I would still be using training wheels.

I have so many more memories like that.  Memories of P cajoling and forcing me to do things I was convinced I couldn't.  And memories of P being so proud even of my most minor achievement.  My mother briefly forced me to go to ballroom dancing classes (at the height of her competitiveness with her sister whose son was a champion ballroom dancer).  When I got a chocolate bar one night for being the dancer who made the "best effort", when P collected me from the class he was incredibly proud.  He tried to convince me not to eat the chocolate bar straight away, so I could show it to my mother when I got home.  That was one of the rare occasions when I didn't listen to him.

Tonight when I saw my cling filmed driver's pack, I thought of P.  I still miss him.  And if he was still here, I have no doubt I would have learned to drive a decade ago.  I would probably also be able to dive, speak another language, play a musical instrument and do all the other things I've given up on.  Instead, I'm going to have to start forcing myself to do a bit more.  So I've promised myself to organise my learner's permit.  And because I've declared it publicly, to all of the 3 or so people who read this blog, I'm going to have to do it now.

And don't worry, the next post I do I'll go back to my holiday blogging.  Now, at midnight, it's time for me to pop my prescription Valium (for my back, I promise) and to get to bed.

hats, vomit and, finally, an azure ocean

On day three of our Sicily holiday we decided to take a day trip to the Islands off Trapani - a fun boat ride and then a day swimming in crystal clear waters in the Egadi Islands.  At least that was the plan. 

We left Trapani Port on a ferry that was to stop at each of the three islands.  Our plan was to get off at the second stop, at the largest of the islands, Favignana.   There you can hire bikes and ride about the island, exploring the relics of the largely dead tuna-fishing industry and swim in the pretty bays.

The day did not start auspiciously.  Amongst the other tourists boarding our ferry we discovered a family all wearing matching fluorescent hats emblazoned with  the word "Italy". The hats didn't offer a great deal of sun protection, so the only reason I could think for wearing them was a) to prevent the wearers from losing one another; b) to ensure the wearers and those around them did not forget what country they were in; and c) to advertise to the world that the wearers were, indeed, tourists.

I assumed the family must be from Japan.   It's a stereotype, I know, but it seems to be Japanese tourists who prop up the tourist clothing trade and who don't mind being immediately identifiable (even from a great distance) as tourists.  The rest of us tend to try our hardest to blend in, hiding our maps and guidebooks and taking great pride in being mistaken for locals. We probably look just as silly, or perhaps more so, as we try to hide our Lonely Planets under our arms, but it's just the way we travel.  Therefore, I was shocked to hear the youngest amongst the family, a woman of around my age, say in an unmistakeably Australian accent:

"Dad, we're in Sicily.  We can't eat Chinese for dinner again!"

It wasn't a great day for the image of Australian tourists.   I suppose it served me right for relying on stereotypes.  

After that shock, it was time to board the ferry.  I was in such a good mood as I skipped on board that I didn't think to wonder why, as we boarded, there was a friendly ferry employee handing out plastic bags to everyone.   Five minutes into the trip and I discovered what the bags were for. That was when the first person started to loudly, violently and repeatedly vomit into his plastic bag.  That seemed to set everyone off.  It was like watching a row of dominoes fall - one by one, everyone started heaving into their plastic bags.  The friendly employee then began doing rounds - handing out more and more plastic bags as the passengers filled them.  I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that 50% of the passengers were vomiting.   I came close but, thanks to a loving husband fanning me with his ferry ticket and mopping my brow, I managed to hold it in.  Just.  So the moment the boat stopped we were out of that boat like a shot.  We didn't even stop to see what island we'd arrived at, my only thought was that I couldn't stay in the vomit boat another minute longer.  Once I was out on stable ground, I asked a helpful woman at the tourist both what Island we landed on and was told we had arrived at Levanzo.

 This is one of the smaller islands and it has very little on it aside from stunning beaches.  As it was, we were rather happy with that, and spent the day exploring the beaches, swimming in the crystal clear waters and reading books in the sun.

Thankfully, by the time we were ready to leave, the ocean provided a smoother pathway to the mainland, and we had an uneventful ferry ride back to Trapani.  We also spotted the Australian family back on the mainland, still wearing their hats.

Erice (and Cannoli)

Day two of our Italy holiday G and I took a cable car from Trapani to the historic town of Erice.

The town of Erice is on top of Mount Erice, about 750m above sea level.  It has incredible views over Trapani.

Erice itself is a beautiful old medieval town with gorgeous little cobbled streets and buildings. 

Unfortunately, however, like so many of Italy's gorgeous little towns, it's been rather overtaken by tourist stores selling all manner of tourist tat.

One of the shops we visited that I would recommend was a delicious pastry store selling cannoli. 

This is the pastry store that was or is owned by the woman who wrote Bitter Lemons.   G and I absolutely gorged ourselves! 

Thankfully, the cable car down the mountain was still able to hold our weight, and we rolled back into Trapani that evening.

buon giorno Trapani

Never ones to let the dust settle, a week after returning from Malaga G and I were off to Sicily for a ten-day summer holiday. 

We were flying in to Trapani, on the West coast, on that most budget of airlines (or at least it's budget in everything but its price), RyanAir.  Given our disastrous return flight on EasyJet only a week earlier, we were somewhat apprehensive about re-entering the world of budget airlines.  However, as much as I hate RyanAir, I have to confess that our flight went without a hitch and we arrived in sunny Trapani just before lunch time.

Trapani seen from Erice

Trapani is a pretty but small and sleepy town.  Most of its old buildings were destroyed in the second world war.  However, the main streets still retain some charm.  The city also has a rather nice beach.  Perhaps because of Trapani's size and sleepy nature, the beach is much cleaner and quieter than most city beaches.

me on the beach

 

Trapani has recently become a popular tourist destination and many of those wandering the streets seemed to be tourists.  I gather that the growth in Trapani's tourism industry has coincided with RyanAir using its small airport (all of the less-budget airlines seem to use Palermo airport).  The main appeal of Trapani is really its location, as it's a great base to use to explore the Egadi Islands and Erice. 

The first day of our trip we spent largely lazing on the beach in Trapani.  That first day of beach lazing  did, of course, enable me to take the obligatory photos of locals wearing ridiculous swimming costumes.  Given I was trying surreptitiously to take these using my camera phone, the quality of the photos isn't great.

The rest of the time in Trapani was largely spent with us taking day trips elsewhere (described later on in this blog), and returning to Trapani only of an evening. 

Nonethess, during the short periods of time spent in Trapani we managed to make a friend by way of a stray dog who insisted on following us everywhere, and who somehow managed to find us, night after night, no matter where we were in Trapani.  We were almost sad when we left Trapani and had to say goodbye.