Mid-West and way home

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!

Last week in New Haven

We have a nice weekend at home and decide to climb the nearby East Rock.  It is a lovely and not too gruelling walk up the hill with a fabulous view over New Haven out to the shore.  It has a very distinctive 19th century war memorial at the top but alas few birds.  It is supposed to be the top migration time at the moment but the migrants have not appeared due to the late arrival of spring. Hugh is depressed but we try again the next day meeting up with some former students of Hugh's, Lianna, James and their darling baby Annika who are working nearby in the Bronx for the Wildlife Conservation Society.  James is a crazy bird-watcher like Hugh but still they do not find many birds.

I am very happy, as not only do we have pancakes for lunch, but it is a lovely sunny Sunday just right for driving around small towns in Conneticut.  We actually have lunch in Guilford where my friend Julie and her former husband lived when they were at Yale.  It is very cute with a village green and many painted wooden houses with shutters like you see in all the American movies. We also stop at many coastal parks in the vain hope of seeing birds.  It is nice to smell the sea-air which vanquishes my allergies and feel the sun on my face for a change. Also it is lovely to play with Annika and catch up on all the gossip. We are going to stay a night with them all next week before we fly off to Wisconsin.

This is our last week in New Haven and we head off each day together to work, although Hugh likes to go to work much earlier than me.  I have been taking the opportunity of the nicer weather to explore the campus at Yale as I have compared it unfavourably with Princeton.  There are some gracious old ivy-league type buildings around - see below Vanderbilt Hall and lots of pretty courtyards. Yale also has two wonderful art galleries - the Yale Museum of Art and the Gallery of British Art which was orated to the university by a rich philanthropist Paul Mellon. They sure do have a lot of rich philanthropists in America. Hugh's visit to Yale is being funded by one and went to the fancy annual board meeting where he sat opposite George Bush's Aunt. Moving among the rich and famous!

Pretty Princeton

As we are collecting ivy-league universities, we take the metro into New York and then change to the New Jersey metro for Princeton, where Hugh is giving a talk and meeting up with some colleagues. It is a beautiful day and Princeton looks lovely in the afternoon sun - all the magnolia trees are in flower and the pink contrasts well with the greyish stone of the buildings as you can see. The campus is tranquil and free from cars and people yelling on street corners - makes a nice change! We are staying in a lovely old Inn in the central square of the town, which is rather quaint and full of Einstein memorabilia as this is were he worked until his death. So I take the opportunity to view the outside of his house (second photo) and to see his statue before heading off to the amazing Princeton Art Museum which has some lovely pieces of art to add to my imaginary art museum with a gorgeous Angelica Kaufmann portrait and one of Monet's famous water-lilly paintings. It also has a wonderful antiquity section and soon I am thinking about which pieces I could add to our little UQ Antiquities Museum in Brisbane. More fantasy I'm afraid!

For lunch we are treated to the Princeton Staff Club in historic Prospect House overlooking the fountain. Pretty posh stuff and I wish I wasn't wearing jeans! Apparently I was sitting next to the most famous ecologist in the world and I didn't even know! While we are there, we hear about the horrible Boston marathon bombs and I am a little anxious about getting home through New York, as no-one is sure yet whether it is an isolated incident or not. The police presence was very strong however and Times Square had temporary barricades around parts to deter crowds forming and becoming a target I guess. All very unnerving and it was a relief to get back to our apartment in New Haven.

 The next day we have our own little drama as Hugh gets a burst blood vessel on his nose which will not stop bleeding, so we have to go to the emergency room to get treatment. Luckily it is not that busy and we only spend a few hours filling in paperwork and sitting around waiting. He is fine but will have a black nose from the silver nitrate treatment for a few days. Unfortunately it happens just before his seminar so he has to explain his odd appearance at the beginning of the talk. It is a really good talk and is well received. It is fun going to work together and his office is so big that we can work together quite happily except for Hugh's sighs and my muttering. The picture below is of his buuilding. I am getting a lot of Latin and Greek done which is good. We have a great dinner in a nearby groovy restaurant with Yale colleagues Walter and Celli, where there is a huge cocktail list and we choose wisely and well I think. Our time in France has given me a taste for French wine, so I was pleased with the wine list too. Walter is German and studied Ancient Greek for seven years at high school (how amazing) and can still recite whole passages - I am very impressed and hope that I can be like that some day.

New York New York

The trouble with New York is that you remember all these movies and songs everywhere you go - one moment you are are Audrey Hepburn outside Tiffanys on 5th Ave and then you are Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate on Lexington Ave and then you are in a Seinfeld episode or even a Woody Allen movie on the Upper West Side. It is amazing just to walk the familiar sounding streets. New Haven is the last stop on the metro so you can get in fairly cheaply and quickly and we stayed in a nice hotel on the Upper West Side, not far from the American Museum of Natural History where Hugh's conference is. It is also close to Central Park which I have never really explored before. I just love it - all the fountains and statues but also the wild woods and lakes. It is sad to see where John Lennon was killed and to see his Imagine memorial and the strawberry fields area, where fans gather to remember him (some unfortunately choose to sing!).  Full of John Lennon thoughts, I am pretty sure I saw Yoko Ono walking in the Park one morning - she was wearing a funny blue hat like a rock star's wife and had a friend or assistant beside her and what looked like a security guard behind her, who glared at me when I looked around in disbelief, so I chose not to take a photograph but you will just have to believe me!

We are lucky to have neighbors in our street in Brisbane, who are American and live half of their time in New York, so I meet up with John, who kindly offers to show me his favorite parts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is fascinating to see his favourite artworks and have another perspective. It is an amazing museum full of antiquities and masterpieces and better laid out than the Louvre but still quite overwhelming. It is another museum where you need to choose a section for the morning and come back frequently - unlike the Louvre, however, it is up to you how much you pay! My favorite museum though is the Frick collection, also opposite Central Park on the East Side, which was a wealthy industrialist's home and his collection of art and furniture is very eclectic and personal - he has Vermeer's next to Renoir's and it is gorgeous! He even had whole French wall panels by Fragonard and Boucher transported from French Chateaux and Hotels as you did I suppose in the good old days! It got me to thinking about what pictures and furniture I would have in my fantasy museum - all my favorites in one place - oh to be a wealthy 21st century Woman of Industry! Like the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the museum has a lovely central courtyard with an indoor fountain like a roman villa - I would definitely have that in my museum. I also like the size and scale of the collection - a couple of restful hours and no museum fatigue, perhaps in part due to the carpets on the floors instead of marble and no stairs! Also, it is not terribly crowded and you have space and time to enjoy each picture.

 Like Paris, New York is a city where people walk and the food is very good - I have a breakfast to die for - lemon and ricotta pancakes with fresh raspberries - divine! In place of the French yummy bread, New Yorkers tolerate vegetarians better so it is easier for me to eat here. For the conference we go out to a great Mexican restaurant and I have fun with the waiter like in a movie when I ask for a Margarita. He asks me what kind - a classic or some other sort and I answer classic, then he asks "On the rocks or blended?" So I say on the rocks of course and still not finished with me, he shoots back "Do you want salt or no salt?" It is hilarious and so New York - instantly I am Meg Ryan in When Harry meets Sally and very decisive about what I want! I haven't ordered a sandwich yet as I need to build up to what bread, cheese etc I want and everyone gets impatient with you - time is money you know!

Back in New Haven, Hugh and I decided to walk to the nearby Long Island Sound shore line in search of birds.  Somewhat nervously we walk past railway tracks, boarded up car-lots, underneath free-ways and are among the few pedestrians in this car-dominated world.  It is almost like being in a post-apocalyptic world.  Very odd so close to genteel ivy-league Yale.  From the above pictured jetty we learn that a boat load of kidnapped African slaves finally returned to their home in Sierra Leone after a two year legal battle which helped kick start the abolition of slavery movement in 1839.  A Yale Professor of Ancient Languages learned enough of their language to find an interpreter for them - see how useful ancient languages can be!

Yankee Yale and Walks in Washington

After a smooth flight across the Atlantic we arrive at JFK in New York for a month's stint at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut - a 2 hour drive north of New York. Although it is sunny, spring has still not arrived here and it is cold. Our apartment in downtown New Haven, though, is very nice and light and conveniently located, but there is a bit of drama about getting in. Apparently the owner of the apartment has been sub-letting the place violating his tenancy agreement. Whoops! After some debate we are allowed to stay as we have already paid in advance - I knew things were going too smoothly! A bit shell-shocked, Hugh and I wander around New Haven stocking up on supplies. The downtown area is a strange place - full of shouting homeless people and a palpable sense of menace - I almost feel a Bruce Springsteen song coming on! Yale itself is lovely as you can see but there is such a contrast in a few blocks. I don't really feel like I want to walk around by myself. Luckily Hugh has a nice big office so I will go in with him to work and catch up on some neglected Greek and Latin work as I have got behind with all that Parisian frivolity.

We have a lovely Easter Sunday lunch with some old friends David and Kealoha, their kids and some colleagues in their adorable old house in the woods outside of New Haven. One of our first deeds after arriving was to visit the famous Frank Pepe's pizza restaurant which was apparently one of the first places to serve pizza in America. The pizza was ok but not as good as the best pizza we have ever tasted which was, of course, in Naples. After only a few days settling in, we are off to Washington DC by train as Hugh is giving a talk to WWF.  I have never been to Washington before and am looking forward to exploring. I find it is an easy city to get around as our hotel is well located in the funnily named Foggy Bottom part of town. On our first night we catch up with some old friends for dinner and talk about middle eastern politics over a few bottles. We are also celebrating as Hugh has been offered a part-time position at Imperial College in London.

The next day I walk down to the Lincoln Memorial and wander around the Constitution Gardens, admiring the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument in the distance. It is the famous cherry blossom festival but, due to the late arrival of spring, no blossoms are out! It is still very beautiful walking around taking in the war memorials, the Martin Luther King memorial and the very cute Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and his dog) Memorial. I am also an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, so it is a great thrill to see his Memorial and read the words of the Declaration of Independence that he drafted on the walls. I enjoy my first look at the White House and end my day at the National Women in the Arts Museum where there are two paintings by my favorite French artist Louise Moillon. Her still lives of fruit are so simple yet elegant. I meet up with Hugh and after his talk go out with some colleagues to a fabulous restaurant where there are heaps of vegetarian options and I am very happy.

 Still on the trail of Thomas Jefferson, on Friday I visit the Library of Congress and see his collection of books. Then I decide to wait in line and see the original copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the National Archives. I am not sure it was worth the hour and a half wait in line as the Declaration of Independence was so faded as to be almost illegible. However I have a lovely time in the National Gallery of Art which has the only Leonardo Da Vinci paining in the western hemisphere! Again, like the Louvre, I am somewhat puzzled by the crowd frenzy that Leonardos create - the nearby exquisite portrait of a lady in green by Titian had no-one in front of her. Bizarre. It is a wonderful gallery though- well laid out and easy to see in a couple of hours and perhaps best of all - free! On our final morning in DC Hugh and I take a couple of hours to walk across town to Union Station so Hugh can check out some sights - the National Academy of Sciences, the Old Post Office and of course the iconic Capitol Building which looks a little like a wedding cake to me. I can see how Canberra was modeled on Washington with it's big public spaces and monuments. Our train trip home was very pleasant and the New York skyline looked wonderful in the sunlight - luckily we will be spending a few days here next week. Lots more art and shopping I hope!

Mission completed

This will be my last blog about Paris, as we are leaving on Easter Saturday. So sad. The good news is that I completed my Joan of Arc mission at some risk to life and limb. It was a foggy day and Paris looked very Gothic with the white buildings, grey roofs and skeleton-like trees. I think I spooked myself because when I caught the bus way out past the Gard du Nord to find the last statue of the warrior maiden, I realized perhaps why the Michelin guide did not recommend finding it, as it was not in a very salubrious area and people stared at me in a shifty kind of way. So, hurriedly I took my last statue photo of Joan of Arc and visited the church where she stopped to pray before heading off to attack Paris to try to wrest it from the English. Unfortunately she was wounded and had to retreat. The photo shows a memorial to her above the old Porte St Honore.

After completing said mission, I felt some recreation was in order, so I wandered along the Rue St Honore looking at all the posh shops. I belatedly remembered my handbag needs and went into a lovely shop called Moynat which I had never heard of before. The nice salesman called Angelo soon enlightened me and told me all about the history of the company which was a famous 19th century travel luggage emporium to rival Louis Vuitton. He was so warm and friendly - I recommend everyone who visits Paris to seek him out - unfortunately the beautiful bag I saw was astronomically priced but it was a fun experience nevertheless! I also visited my favorite wine-shop called Lavinia for our last bottle of champagne for research purposes.

 The highlights of my last week have been to see the Conciergerie which has the largest surviving Gothic Hall in Europe and helped me to visualize The Hunchback of Notre Dame which I finally finished- it's a great book full of melodrama although somewhat depressing as almost everyone dies in the end ( whoops plot spoiler!).  Now I have started The Three Musketeers so no doubt I will now be obsessed with Richelieu and the court of Versailles! For all Harry Potter fans the next highlight was tracking down the house where Nicholas Flamel lived - he of the philosopher's stone fame. Most exciting. On Friday, Hugh kindly left work a little earlier so we could see the Louvre together. After spending time with the Mesopotamian antiquities, we hit the Italian Paintings, which are usually very crowded with Mona Lisa addicts but late on a Friday night it wasn't too bad. The art here is extraordinary - Boticelli, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and of course many Leonardos. It is almost overwhelming. The statue of the winged victory of Samo-Thrace is so beautiful and dramatic it may well be my favourite artifact at the museum. On my last visit I found the picture by my favorite women artist Louise Moillon, who I discovered in Toulouse, which unfortunately is hung very high above another painting and is not that easy to see. Although I generally dislike people who take pictures of paintings, I include hers here as there is no postcard of her work to buy.

The weekend was devoted to Napoleon and Josephine, as we caught about three buses to Malmaison, their former country house which is very elegant and neo-classical (see Josephine's bedroom below) with a beautiful garden where Hugh saw three species of Woodpecker. That evening we caught up with some American colleagues, Alan and Elaine, for a nice meal where I discover I can still eat chocolate mousse as it has no dairy - just chocolate and eggs! Yippee! This vegan thing is no doubt good for you and indeed my stomach is getting better but it is a trifle dull. Lucky champagne is ok! But speaking of Champagne we try but fail to visit the champagne region due to a combination of tardiness and train delays! At least this gives us a reason to return to France - however I think that my research project has been very useful although all the bottles have tasted good - I mustn't be discerning enough! At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic I will just say that the last highlight of the week was visiting an absinthe bar in the 11th arrondissement which was such fun and I find I prefer absinthe to pastis or ouzo, which it slightly resembles. It is an experience almost like taking tea as absinthe is poured into a glass, a tea-strainer like object is placed over the rim and a sugar cube placed on top. Then from a big glass container rather like a samovar, cold water is added drop by drop and you can mix it to your taste and strength. The bar was very atmospheric and had excellent food as well. The photos will be found on Facebook.

A Night at the Opera

Well - the big day finally arrived - we dressed up in our finery and caught the bus to the Opera for the production of La Cenerentola or Cinderella by Rossini. Very fortuitously, the bus outside our apartment goes right by the opera house - I love my no. 21 bus! We arrive freakishly early as usual but have plenty of time to wander around the foyer, grand staircase and main salon. It is La Belle Epoque on steroids - gilded statues everywhere, chandeliers as far as the eye can see and many frescoed ceilings. I love it, but Hugh seems to think it is a bit over the top. We get some drinks and I start people watching. Alas it is very disappointing, as most people appear to be in jeans and daggy parkas. I am appalled - standards have really dropped! So instead I try to imagine what it must have looked like when people wore beautiful gowns, sparkly jewelry and dinner jackets.

We have to wait until everyone is seated before we can enter the balcony because we were only able to get these dinky little seats at the end of the row, that pull out blocking the exits - at least we are ok if there is a fire - it's a pity about everyone else! We have a great view as you can see in the photo and I find the seat surprisingly comfortable (or at least less uncomfortable than I imagined) and I spend the time gazing around the incredible space, admiring more gilded statues, red velvet and beautiful balconies. The best bit is probably the amazing ceiling painted by Chagall which is divine but causes a lot of neck pain to view - a little like the Sistine chapel - but it is worth it, as he has painted scenes from famous operas like the Magic Flute and ballets like Swan Lake. It is a strange contrast to all the Empire glory of the rest of the theatre but seems to work well.

 I get that familiar thrill as the lights dim, the orchestra begins and the curtain lifts - the anticipation is so exciting! However the set, at first, is a little disappointing - it appears to be a black and white drawing of a dilapidated castle but then as the music swells, the lighting changes and the building takes shape. It is made of curtains that lift, revealing the interior, rather like an old-fashioned cardboard dolls house. It is gorgeous and reveals the ugly step-sisters in their boudoirs, the mean step-father (not step-mother in this version) in his attic bedroom and Cinderella, or Angelina, as she is called here, in the kitchen by the fire-place. The step-sisters and father are very funny and it is almost like a pantomime at times - no melodrama or tragedy in this Opera - just people in disguises and of course love at fist sight. Cinderella and Prince Charming (unfortunately he is rather short and stout) have wonderful voices and their duets are just beautiful. Her transformation at the ball is everything that I was hoping for - she wears a black velvet dress with silver embroidery and heaps of sparkling gems - finally someone is suitably attired for the surroundings! In the final scene where everyone is revealed in their true characters she is again superb in a white satin wedding dress. It was really wonderful and an amazing experience.

 The bus ride home was great too as our bus goes past the Louvre, St. Germain L'Auxerrois, my favourite church, the Conciergerie and the Notre Dame all illuminated at night. We even got a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, all lit up and sparkly, sending out its laser beams across Paris. All very romantic - it had even rained earlier giving Paris that quintessential look that you see in movies! Definitely a night out to remember.