On the way to Madison, Wisconsin, we spent at night with friends, who work for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo. Although not a huge fan of zoos, I found the Bronx Zoo quite good fun, as it has a nice monorail to zoom around in, some lovely old buildings and a particularly nice fountain from Italy that one of the Rockerfellers donated to the zoo. James and Liana fed us lots of wine and pasta and let us play with their baby Annika. We left from La Guardia airport and had a good flight to Madison, which is a pretty town surrounded by lakes. Hugh was visiting Madison as an Aldo Leopold annual lecturer, named after the father of American conservation science apparently. Below is a photo of Volker and Hugh in front of his former house. We stayed in a lovely greenie Inn with log fires and yummy breakfasts. Volker is German and looked after us admirably. We tried local Wisconsin delicacies such as deep-fried cheese curds (delicious) and rather nice cider. (Apparently they have many different sorts of wonderful beer which is a bit wasted on Hugh and I). It is ironic that now I can eat cheese again far far away from the land of French cheese. Hugh has decided this is the week for migrating birds so spends every available minute trying to find them. Volker's wife Anna is a Professor of Ornithology and at last Hugh finally finds some new birds and we have a great time meeting their students at their lovely farmhouse outside Madison.
Our next stop is Lincoln Nebraska where our two friends Drew and Brigitte live with their children. Drew and Brigitte both worked with Hugh in Adelaide and they followed us to Brisbane before moving here. It is great to catch up with them again as we are all obsessive game players and spend our first day in Lincoln playing board games and eating the delicious vegetarian food that Drew cooks. They have a darling dog Zoe, who reminds me of Doug and I get to take her for walks and catch up on my reading. It is very relaxing just to hang around their house - maybe I have been traveling too long but I seemed to have lost my enthusiasm for being a tourist. Probably though I am more of a city tourist or maybe there just isn't that much to see in Lincoln! All too soon we say goodbye and head off to Davis, California, where Hugh is giving a seminar.
We are staying with some friends, Mark and Sharon, who visited us in Brisbane on sabbatical last year. Unfortunately Sharon is away but Mark and another colleague Tim Caro, pick us up at Oakland and take us to a groovy Californian restaurant for dinner before driving an hour or so to Davis. Mark and Sharon live in a wonderful community with shared gardens and common garden plots where our friends Alan and Elaine also live, who I met in Paris. We have a great party after Hugh's seminar, where I meet Monique, Tim's wife, who listens to me patiently drone on about a bag that I saw in Paris and didn't buy due to its high cost. Very strange of me not to give into the impulse buy! Naturally everyone encourages me to rectify this error and I promise to leave no stone unturned to track down the bag in San Francisco, where the brand is stocked at Nieman Marcus.
Our last stop on Hugh's American tour of duty is Stanford, Palo Alto, south of San Francisco. I have not been here for 25 years when we lived here during Hugh's post-doc. It sure has changed now that Google, Facebook and Yahoo have moved to town! Very posh and leafy and we stay in a beautiful hotel that oozes affluence. We catch up with fun friends Steve and Laura, who we also met in Paris and drink margaritas in memory of our former days. Stanford is a beautiful campus in the Spanish Mission style and it makes me homesick smelling the eucalypts that abound here. Now we have cracked the public transport system and easily catch the train and Bart (metro) to our hotel in San Fransisco, where we go on a pilgrimage to Greens vegetarian restaurant in Fort Mason (lovely views over the Golden Gate bridge and great food) and have our thrills on the cable car. Alas my bag is not to be found here so we go to the California Academy of Sciences instead and enjoy the birds and butterflies in the recreated rainforest there in Golden Gate Park.
Soon we are in LA to visit the J. Paul Getty villa at Malibu and to fly home of course. The villa is a recreated Roman villa overlooking the Pacific, with an atrium, fountains and peristyle gardens. It is superb and filled with the most extraordinary antiquities. I am in heaven. Unfortunately it is not really designed for pedestrians and caters for people who have lost the ability or desire to catch public transport and walk. It epitomises the best and worst of America! The quest for my bag reaches new heights as we catch a taxi to Beverly Hills, get stuck in gridlock traffic on the freeway and Hugh starts to wish he had another sort of wife! The worst is yet to come as when we finally find the bag - my credit card is declined and the other card is safe in my luggage back at the hotel. Whoops - is the universe trying to tell me something? So after a $100 worth of taxi rides for a fruitless venture, we reach the airport in rather strained silence. However, after a few much needed glasses of wine, I manage to put a positive spin on the whole adventure, telling Hugh that sometimes you have to spend money to save it! (my favorite mantra). Although unconvinced, Hugh is just relieved the whole nightmare is over and in return I let him get to the airport 5 hours early! Despite the adventures and no pretty pink bag, it sure will be nice to be home!
