allez!

We left yesterday morning at 9:30, and after returning to grenoble to pick up amy and Marks forgotten plane tickets and passports we made it to the geneva airport, parked in p51 (there is a special deal if you live in certain areas of france), were shuttled between desks, sampling the famous swiss hospitality and helpfulness, finally got our new tickets (Olympic Airlines had inexplicable cancelled one leg of our flight which required new tickets to be issued), got some delicious airport food and got on the plane. There were some nice views of the Ecrins from the plane, and I think I saw Pelvoux. Using Genoa as a reference, I saw portofino, and the cinqueterre from the air as well.

We had originally been scheduled to fly to Athens and then on to Kos on the same day, but as I mentioned, Olympic cancelled our flight to kos, and rescheduled us on the next flight (5:00 AM the next morning). I guess they aren't as good about insulating the consumer from theirfinancial incompetance like the US air carriers are! In any event, it gave us the chance to take the impressive new rail system into Athens for a few hours of sightseeing and eating. On our last trip, the bus from Syntagma was still the best way in and out of the city, and the metro/suburban rail extension to the airport really is a giant step forward. We walked up to the flanks of the Acropolis
,
wandered around the Plaka, where preparations were being made for easter celebrations, with many candle sellers, bodygaurds in black audis and a throng of cops. After chicken souvlaki and some incredibly foul wine, we took the train back to the airport to try to get a little sleep before our flight the next morning. This turned out to be much easier said than done. The lights are bright, and most benches have a thin and unforgiving layer of foam with non retractable armrests. However, we managed to find a corner of the airport where there were no armrests, but the climate control had been set several degrees C lower than the other zones. I put my jacket over my face, put our toiletry kit under my head as a pillow and drifted in and out of sleep for an hour or so. During this time I would awaken to crushed skin on my waist from the metal chairs, light coming in through folds in my jacket, or the once-every-five-minute reminders at rock concert volume that you are not allowed to park permanently in the loading zone or to take trollies onto escalators. This latter announcement was particulalry irksome: are there really so many people that are trying to do this? There are guard columns in front of every escalator, so not only would you have to be deaf and blind to miss the warnings, but you would then have to lift the trolly over the barrier, and stuff it onto the escalator.
Needless to say, I wasn't able to sleep very much, so I went exploring with Amy and we discovered that McDonalds has big cushy yellow bench seats! And if you buy something, they dont really care if you go to sleep on them. We woke Chloe and Mark up, decamped for McDs and bought tea and rolls. Shortly thereafter, I stuffed my Etymotic headphones into my ears, and went to sleep. I woke up drooling on my jacket at 4 in the morning which coincidentally was when they started serving breakfast.
The rest of the trip was a bit of a blur, but we got into Kos very early, took the Olympic bus to Mastixari, and waited for the ferry to arrive. It being Greek Orthodox Easter, the ferrymen thought it would be very entertaining to throw firecrackers every few minutes. At one point they threw several into the ticket booth, which was a prefab plastic box about the size of a closet containing their unfortunate friend in front of the ticketing computer. The muffled sound of the explosions brought back memories of thunderbombs, china reds and M80s thrown into confined spaces during my teen years.. sigh! We took the first ferry into Pothia, were met by Nick Trikilis (he runs the place we have stayed at for three years now) at the port and took a taxi to the Studios. Along the way, the cabbie informed us that the real fireworks would happen tomorrow around 5 pm. Basically, it involves throwing sticks and balls of dynamite (he pronounced it dinameet!) off of high places. He went on to say that Kalymnians are a little crazy with the dinameet, and that if someone dies young, they throw his/her age in dynamite sticks. Marriages are also an occasion for dinameet, "and mayeb, if donkey has babies? sometimes dinameet". After getting settled in the studio, we went to the Glaros snack bar to say hi to Steve and Sue and hear more about this strange dinameet throwing tradition. It turned out that this year they had 3000 sticks of dinammet, of both commercial and "home made" varieties! Old grandmothers apparently make it out of ammonium nitrat and some carrier. You can see and hear the difference because the commercial dinameet is much louder and leaves a white smoke cloud. The grandma dinemeet leaves a brown or black cloud. People occasionally get killed and dismembered during the throwing festivites. This was sounding better and better.
steve gave us an update to the guide for all the new routes that had been put up since last year, we bought water, yogurt and Kalymnian thyme honey, went to the studio for pasta etc and went to sleep.

caro de lyon

first things first: The fennel and fig chocolates from Hybord were just fantastic.

Yesterday Chloe and I had reservations to go to lyon for her birthday dinner at le Caro de Lyon. It was already raining when we woke up, so we decided to take the more expensive but much lower stress method of getting to Lyon: the TER train from grenoble to Lyon part dieu. We took the 2:18 express train, and were suprised to see snow on the ground in Voiron

And as we moved east past le Tour du Pin we were suprised to see even more snow on the ground, and it continued almost until Lyon. At Part Dieu, freezing rain was coming down, so we hopped on the tram and took it to the Liberte exit to make our customary walk through of au-vieux-campeur. After gazing wistfully at the Millet 80 meter ropes, we took the metro to vieux lyon, and took a peek in the cathedral. The highlight was probably the astrological clock

which, it turns out is not Y2.02K compatible:

We continued down the street, ogled a beautiful 17th century map of the Savoie (550 euro!!), grabbed a Gaufre at a nice stand that makes their own special confiture

and went to a cafe that we had scoped out last time. It was still pretty early, and despite having just inhaled a cassis-reglisse gaufre, I was still hungry, so I ordered a wonderful chocolate almond crepe. We spent quite a long time in the cafe, watching in awe as some college students sucked down enough cigarettes to kill a donkey. About 45 minutes before our reservation, we started walking back towards the opera and le caro de lyon. I didnt capture it very well, but along the way we saw a jet black mini copper dusted with cherry blossums

Finally, we made it to the restaurant, which is big, but full of books and little sub-rooms, so it was very cozy.




We both ordered the menu de printemps, and there isnt much to say except that it was fantastic and is our new favorite restaurant in Lyon.

Soupe d'olives vertes, salade de pain et tomates au basilic, langoustines roties
Green olive soup, bread and tomatoes salad with roasted crayfish


Noix de Saint Jacques a la rhubarbe, Saute de brocolis amers et raisins aux cacahuetes, Beurre au vin doux de Tariquet
Scallops a la rhubarb, sauteed broccoli and grapes with peanuts, some crazy ass butter thang. The peanuts were a perfect complement to the scallops... I think I'll try this the next time we find good scallops. Incidentally, this is one of the few cases where the french words sounds much less appetizing than the english. cf. "Saint Jack's nuts" with "scallops". The tiny broccoli were cooked perfectly.


Carre d'agneau roti aux mangues, fenouil braise et mijote de tomates, Salade de jeunes pousses d'epinard
Rack of lamb with mangos braised fennels and mijote (??) of tomatoes, young spinach shoot salad


we had a bottle of M Chapoutier Crozes-Hermitage 2002 with the meal. It was hard to pick one that would go with everything!

Dessert did not dissapoint.

I had the Tortellini de chocolat et noix de coco, Coulis de mangue fraiche aux fruits de la passion
Chocolate and coconut tortellini, fresh mango sauce with passion fruits


and chloe had a white chocolate fondant with coconut ice cream


we missed our train because it took them 20 minutes to figure out that their credit card machine wasnt plugged in, but we forgave this pecadillo after such a perfect meal. I know, we're so gracious. It snowed like crazy on the train ride back to grenoble. Just as we pulled up, the roof of our car sprung a leak and started dripping freezing water on chloe.

today, I give you glorious springtime in grenoble:

chloebirthday!!

It was Chloes birthday today, but unfortunately she is still sick with some kind of sore throat/flu like symptoms from one of bastard co-workers. Hint: when you can't talk and have a hacking cough, STAY HOME. Anyway, we were supposed to go to a gite in the drome this weekend to climb and relax, but its going to rain the whole weekend, and now chloe is sick! Instead, we're hoping that she'll get better so we can use our reservations at Le Caro de Lyon. We really should be taking more advantage of how close we are to Lyon! Today I re-discovered a wonderful chocolatier called Hybord just down the street from us on rue Thiers. They have the standard fare of truffles and florentines (the florentines are excellent by the way), but they also have some wonderful and creative chocolates filled with unusual flavors. For example, I bought chocolates filled with fig, some with fennel and others with jasmine. I bought some roses for chloe in the florist just down the street and had an entertaining experience: A middle aged guy was in front of me, acting a bit uncomfortable, and being really indecisive about shoosing which kinds of flowers he wanted. After a few minutes he finished choosing the bouquet, and the florist started preparing them for him. Just at that moment another woman came into the shop and it became clear that they knew eachother, since they started talking. Actually, they were so familiar that I thought that they might be married. The funny thing was that he became visibly uncomfortable as soon as he saw her, and told the florist that she could prepare the flowers at her leisure and that he would come back to pick them up. And then he sped out the door. As soon as he left, the lady looked over at Chloe's roses, which the florist was stripping leaves off of and starting oohing and saying "Oooh, are those HIS?!". She then explained that the man was her boss, and that he was getting divorced, so she was shocked to see that he had bought roses (he hadn't). In the next five minutes I learned a surprising amount of detail about the poor guys life: he has two wonderful children, who thankfully ("heureusement"! she shrieked) take after his wonderful wife, and that he is always morose and boring etc. etc. Honestly, I was titilated and would enthusiastically nod my head whenever the woman turned to me to tell me or the florist more about how much of a loser the man was. The whole time, I was trying to figure out if it was the kind of conversation and experience that I would normally have enjoyed in the US, or if it was just the rare experience of fully understanding and being a part of (sort of) an intimate french conversation, that kept me so entertained. I suppose it doesn't really matter. At one point the lady said "but didn't you know any of this? He is a regular customer!", to which the florist drew herself up and responded "In my metier, discretion is important, and I don't ask questions". And then she leaned forward and said "but between women is a different story of course...!!".

more E commerce

I was talking to my friend Jose, a recent arrival to Madrid from San Francisco, about what a small role e-commerce plays in peoples everyday lives in Europe. We were thinking that it might have something to do with weak fraud protection on euro credit cards, but I have the feeling that theres something else at play. I think its simply because (apart from Amazon.fr etc) euro E-commerce sites still have extremeley non "E" back ends which makes them only marginally more convenient, if at allor than bricks and mortar. A great example of this was when I tried to pay my tax d'habitation online, and ended up getting emailed a PDF to print out and mail in with a check. This week I experienced another example. Our employer has a contract with a french photo finishing bureau which entitles us to certain discounts on prints, film, processing etc. It has a seamless and well designed ofoto/shutterfly esque web site. The only difference is that it inexplicably deletes photos (even ones you have ordered prints of) within a certain amount of time. But this is a minor point. The big shocker comes when you realize what is happening on the back end. They have a standard 2 hour photo system: the ubiquitous Fuji Frontier. I imagine there are turnkey options to hook your webserver up seamlessly to the frontier itself. Now my expectation was that they would crank through the prints and well, mail them to me. Thats why I was suprised that there were no fields for a shipping address. It turns out that they print out a giant batch, and every Monday a rep from the company drives from Tours to Grenoble and sits behind a desk for one hour handing out the photos and accepting payment. I ordered 40 prints more than two weeks ago and still havent received them. The first time the woman unapologetically informed me that they simply weren't there, and re-focused her attention on reading a book. Yesterday there was a handwritten sign informing me that there would be no photo pick up today. No rescheduling or explanations were provided. Compare that with the service bureau I am working with for my fine art prints on a ZBE Chromira. I didnt hear from them for a bit, so I emailed them today and they told me that not only were my proofs finished, but they had been mailed last wednesday. Its not a 100% fair comparison, because west coast digital is one of the best imaging places in California (which is saying a lot!), and the work photo place is like a mini shutterfly... but I feel like that should be an even better reason for the smaller machine print company to be hands off: order prints->frontier prints them->mail them to customer. It should be fast, automatic and way faster than makinf fully color managed, individually processed prints. I would say that in the US you would need to be kicking WCIs ass in terms of speed and volume in order to stay in business. Its perplexing.

wine tasting

we went to l'Echanson for their new series of wine tastings with the producers. This one was with Arnaud Freychet from Domaine Massereau in Sommieres. He had an impressive line of wines and was a really nice guy. I'm always a little nervous that despite my best intentions, I will end up saying or doing something that will offend the vintner. This is his passion, after all! Anyway, we tried his rosees, which I liked, but really loved the COTEAUX DU LANGUEDOC ROUGE 2001 (90% syrah and 10% grenache) and the oak cask aged "LES CISTES" COTEAUX DU LANGUEDOC ROUGE 2002 (same proportions). It mentions that the nose is dominated by fruits rouge confit and finishes with garrigues and anise for both wines. The 2002 is a big, impressive taste, full of winelikeness. I can't wait to try them with desert cheeses and steak. I also bought a very expensive bottle of single malt scotch : the Ardbeg 17 year old to celebrate signing my contract.

Contract Signed

Just signed my contract for my new job!

Life Aquatic

we saw it yesterday in Versione Originale. It was playing at our neighborhood original language theatre ("La Nef") on what would have been a really impressive home theatre, but was a rather disappointing movie screen. The show was at 6:00 pm, so the only people there were other americans and crazy people. Anyway, I was expecting something a bit different, but I really loved it. Steve Zisou turned out to be less Carl Spackler than I expected and more Bill Harris. There were plenty of great lines: "Everyone gets a Glock!", and I also liked the Blue Velvetesque difficulty in establishing the time frame (Flat screens and Glocks vs. Owen Wilson's 50's pilot character). I also loved the Seu Jorge Bowie covers.

Dad's Haiku

My dad sent me a great watercolor and accompanying Haiku



its about a Cherry tree that I planted in their front yard. Years ago we had an absolutely stunning and huge japanese mapel which succumbed to some kind of root disease. It was really sad to lose that tree, and I think my dad and I didn't really want to let it go, so we got out the acrylic paint and painted the withered and creaky stumps of the dead tree vivid blues, yellows and polka dots. Eventually it had to be pulled out, so I put in another tree (not a maple) which promptly died. Most recently, I planted a cherry tree which we thought had also died, but put up flowers this spring much to our delight.

Kayakers in the Saone

I took this picture a few weeks ago and just got it developed. It will look great at 16x20 or larger.

also, I updated and added new medum format pictures to the ligurian entries below

Poisson D'Avril

I spent half of the day with a fluorescent green paper fish taped to my back thanks to Dave, Chloe and Amy. Revenge will be mine.