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I really like New York, much diversified, cool, and extremely trendy. However, we were all a bit disappointed about the nightlife in NY; nothing beats Berlin’s culture scene, laidback ness, cool people, and the huge venue of clubs.  We talked to people in the scene - everybody agrees that the NY scene changed. A few years ago, in the 80th and the 90th it was cool & hip, and now?  

The city seems very big but it really isn’t. The structure of the streets and the skyscrapers makes it big. My favorite "kiez" was Chelsea, Hell´s Kitchen and Nolita I think. Soho is too commercialized and "hip". Chelsea is more diversified, secret corners/shops, meat packing district integrated in the area, etc.

Time square is like stepping into a movie - I still can’t believe it is real :-) China Town is really not what we expected it to be, only Canal Street is good fun I think but I have heard that there are some secrets. Midtown is nice to walk around because of the high rising buildings, the glamour, Madison Avenue (my goodness so posh!), the action on the street, etc.

I went to Harlem one afternoon alone but when I arrived there with the taxi and told him to continue - hm - it looked rather scary where I wanted to walk around. He dropped me of at 125th street where the entire buzz is. I just stayed 10 min and took the subway back!!! Anyway, nice architecture there and you need a local guide I think. 

Brooklyn seems to be a very cool part of the city with hidden places. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to discover it! Next time… The Ferry to Staten Island was GREAT!!! What a view as the sunset reflected in the buildings around Down Town! Beautiful! 

Central Park is nice but I think it must be summer in order to enjoy it proper. Empire State Building is absolutely worth a visit - it is really high and has an impressive view! We were very lucky with the queue but I had a bad hangover so it was a bit hard anyway :-)  

The shopping is very very good, you can get everything!!! Not too expensive either if you look around. Of course Madison Ave. is a world for itself. We had a great time walking down the street from the 86th to 43th - never seen so many expensive flagship stores in one street. The coolest label I found was "Brooklyn Industries" - fashionable and trendy.  

During the New Year NY was absolutely over crowded, especially the touristy places, such as Rockefeller Centre - forget it; Horse carriage in central park – mad; Walk along 5th Avenue - a challenge, an so on… 

My friend Daemon (he works in Gramercy Park Hotel) knows NY rather well and he has very good connections. We stayed at his place, a 45 floor skyscraper at Hudson River in Hell’s kitchen. As there are only low buildings and very few high rising buildings in the area you have a great view all over the city and the skyline is unbeatable. I had a bed with a panoramic view over half Manhattan. Unrealistic at the beginning :-)  

Anyway, the whole trip was worth every penny and I will go back to NY very soon - we just "scratched the surface" of NY.

Miami is more expensive than you expect and more a place for Paris-Hilton-glamour-freaks!!! It is hot, sexy, cool, posh, glamourus in a tacky way. We had a fantastic time on South Beach.

We stayed in the Double Tree Surfcomb, next to Delano. Delano was a really cool hotel and we visited of course the restaurant "the blue Door"! We also went to the "Diner" and "the Bed" and both of them were really great! European standard for international food.

We spent most of the time discovering South Beach but we also drove around in Coconut Groove and Coral Gables. Actually so beautiful and cozy that you think it is a fairy tale. You look through the car window with envy on the privat houses and mansions.

Biltmore Hotel is a true highlight with the swimming pool and nice architecture. Little Havanna - not much to see…

To explain Miami with few words: it is what Berlin used to be for 10-15 years ago with all constructions going on all over the city. The whole skyline is full of construction lifts and cranes. The urban development is impressing so you can really feel the $$$$$$ being spend on investment in the area. 

Key west was a really picturesque place with a wonderful Caribbean flair. A cozy, romantic town with beautiful Victorian architecture, nice restaurants and food places.

The ride down to the point is beautiful and I was caught by the police for driving too fast - oops!

As you know we stayed in the Double Tree Key Resort which was nice. On the day the ghtmare started (see weblink) we went on a sailing cruise on the sea. We were snorkling, paddling canu around a key island, we were observing animal life (e.g. pelicans), having fun out on the sail boat and at the end, watching the sunset!!

When we got back in the evening the horror started. Please check it out at  seattletimes.monoxide

We were evacuated! We were sent to a small beach hotel on a key (an our hours drive).

The day after we went back to Miami and caught an early morning fligth to NY city!

We spent Christmas with the whole clan at a familiy property in Sologne which is 100 miles south of Paris. In France this region is well known for hunting. My brother's family, my sister's family, Alain and I, our children and grandchildren were all part of this year’s season. We always invite guests along as well, in the end we were altogether 50 of us.  Apart from the family, all around the chateau, there were animals in the park, like deer, roebuck, pheasants, peacocks, roosters and Altesse.

Perhaps you want to know the menu, which (of course) is typically French: 

Foie Gras on toast, with a (sweet) Muscat de Frontignan Dinde à la farce fine et marron grillé. (Yes, we eat turkey in France! With a fine-grained stuffing and grilled chestnuts)

Salade, just some greens

Fromages assortis, cheese from the Savoie, Bresse and Auvergne regions of France

Gâteau à l'ananas avec crème anglaise. (Pineapple cake with custard) 

We also shared a Christmas Pudding, an English recipe we have had in the family for more than 150 years, with a bit of a French twist, because the pudding is hot and we flame it with rum and serve with a cool buttered-powdered-sugar sauce, just great and so Christmas. With the pudding, we drank a Crémant de Bourgogne from Chateau de Pierreclos.  

Over all a huge success — if you didn’t mind at all: 

The slicing noises of three four knives going together to cut carrots and onions on wooden planks (!) for about 4,5 kilos or so – no modern kitchen instruments were to be found in the chateau. 

That the beautiful Christmas candles I had brought especially we weren’t able to light within the castle for safety reasons - an enormous alarm sound would last a full 5 minutes with all doors swung wide open automatically! However, as true Lyonnais with our traditional "Fête des Lumières" (Light day), we developed an alternative plan: All candles were lit outside on the balconies. 

“Taptaptaptap and tappppttapppaapa and more tapppttaapp” on the wood floor created by “Altesse", William's dog who slept on the wooden landing. We found out just how loud dog paws can sound on wooden floors. Who can blame Altesse who was happy to greet everyone who passed by him in the morning. So we all awoke to his continuous cheerful “taptaptaptap”.  

No sleep in’s really: Between Altesse “tapptapp” and the roosters’ welcome-to-the-new day message “krikri”; or in French “koreqiou”….

My message to you: If you spend a long week-end with all the family, consider it "L'auberge Espagnole". It basically means: "It will be what you want it to be!” “Bring with you: happiness; joy; a positive attitude, a big smile and you all will enjoy a jolly grand old time.”

Here in Elounda, Crete, a gorgeous little fishing village hosting thousands of tourists each year, it seems the small taverna owners are at the mercy of the palates of their foreign visitors.  Many tourists come here only for sun, beer and cheap, familiar looking food (fried potatoes and grilled meats – no vegetables), preferably for $10 or less. They're not on a mission to discover the wonders of the healthy Cretan diet. So you won't encounter much of the finest food Crete has to offer at a tourist spot unless you ask for it, which is perfectly acceptable and always a welcome change for the chef.  

Worlds apart, in the hills above the bustling port is the original village of Pano Elounda. The best time to visit is on the eve of a full moon, when the bright moonlight casts abstract shadows along the narrow, stone paths. Silhouettes of cats patrolling the territory flash into view. The bay below glows like liquid silver along the shoreline, reflecting streams of light like precious gems.    There are no tavernas and very few tourists in Pano Elounda — just a kafeneo (café) for the villagers run by Zambia, a lovely women and a great chef. Zambia is a quiet, angelic woman in her mid-70's, although I never would have guessed, judging from her physical strength and the amount of food she manages to pump out of her tiny kitchen. She's one of those subtle, hardworking Cretan women who never cease to amaze me.  

One evening, we went to Zambia's place at dusk, bringing our own meze — 2 kilos of very fresh mussels plucked from the sea just a few hours earlier. My partner, Panos, went snorkeling for the mussels himself. Mussels feed on rocks in deep waters and must be individually removed with a knife and placed in a waist pouch, which becomes quite heavy after collecting a kilo or two – an ancient form of diving weights. These mussels are not like the average black-shelled variety served in Parisian bistros. Their shells resemble the skin of a lizard — prehistoric-looking. Their texture is a cross between mussels and clams. Zambia steamed the mussels briefly and served them with lemon juice – delicious. Most dishes here are made with very little seasoning. The art of letting the food speak for itself.    

We huddled around a little outdoor table as the party grew to eight people. Locals dropped by to chat and share some of their homemade specialties. Zambia kept bringing more and more food from her tiny kitchen and the table quickly became piled high with little plates of this and that. There are no separate plates for diners here – no room for them anyway! You just reach over and take a sample with your fork (or fingers if you’re eating fish). This method of family-style dining wouldn't go over too well in the States – but what's the difference between that and everyone's hands in the chip bowl?!  

Our feast began with roasted and marinated red peppers and beets, fava beans (yellow split peas) steamed and coarsely ground with a splash of olive oil, vinegar and onion, and a few plates of tiny black and green olives that were unusually sweet. There's always a tomato-something salad served — this one was the fancy kind with boiled and quartered eggs, onions, cucumbers, green pepper and new potatoes. A person of great authority at the table is entitled to dress the salad with olive oil, vinegar (locally produced, of course) and salt. There's an art to this process and we all stopped to observe. I had the prime spot next to a 5-foot tall basil bush that Zambia’s nephew, Kostas, maniacally rattled to release its heavenly scent. Basil is not used in cooking too much here, and this variety was more robust than the small plants used for cooking. It’s a religious or romantic symbol that can grow several feet high if tended to carefully. I wanted to clip a bit to put into the tomato salad because I love the combination – but I think I would have been escorted out of Elounda for such vandalism.    

My thoughts of exile diminished by the appearance of a gigantic plate of steamed snails, collected from the hills by Zambia's neighbor. There's a knack to prying the little delicacies from their protective tunnels, and my attempts to do so always become the topic of conversation among the experts at the table. Snails can be prepared in many different ways and they are definitely an acquired taste and texture. This version was simply steamed.   

Another villager came by with “new” almonds, a favorite snack and good for the digestion to an extent. We cracked the furry green shells open with a rock. All was washed down with either raki (dangerous fire water made from grape must, like grappa) or retsina with a splash of soda water to soften the bite. The younger generation drinks restina with cola, another acquired taste I’d prefer not to acquire, and would not have been appreciated in Pano Elounda. It’s hard to count your drinks, as the moment your glass is half-full, someone at the table fills it. It’s a good thing we were eating all along, which is customary. 

Variations of dried bread or crackers have been made throughout the Mediterranean basin for centuries, to take on journeys along the Silk Route or campaigns in faraway lands. It’s a great comeback for an ancient staple.   

Five hours and many retsinas later, when I thought for certain it was time to go, Zambia brought out the last tier — mounds of sliced honeydew and watermelon. I don't plan to conduct any scientific studies on the matter, but I've never tasted melon so sweet. The sun is so intense here that everything develops the maximum flavor and color – sugar in fruits like cherries, figs and oranges seems double in intensity and tomatoes have a deep, rich color and flavor. The contrast between what taverna owners must serve to tourists and what they serve to their friends and family is quite drastic. Wow, I wonder what Zambia makes for special occasions.   

Athens has been in the news lately, and not necessarily for the right reasons. A couple of home-grown troublemakers fired a rocket at the American Embassy at 6 am on January 12th. Although they caused a minimum of physical damage – a hole in the ceiling of the ambassador’s private bathroom – they may create doubts in the minds of foreigners thinking of visiting Athens. The Embassy was up and running a few hours later, but what about the city’s reputation?

            My advice to would-be travelers: don’t let news like this worry you. Those guys are more interested in making statements than in harming anyone, Greek or American. As one commentator put it, if they were Al Qaeda, they would have left a lot of carnage behind them. Instead, they broke a window.

            Actually, now would be a perfect time to come to Athens. We seem to be enjoying a long stretch of perfect sunny weather. Some might call it global warming. I prefer to think that these are our halcyon days – a phenomenon known since earliest antiquity. Alkyoni was one of Zeus’s paramours. His jealous wife Hera turned her into a seagull to spite him, but Zeus was able to arrange for calm seas during the time his exmistress would be building her nest and hatching her eggs. These gorgeous days arrive, almost without fail, every January or February.

            We were enjoying them last Sunday (Jan. 14) as we walked below the Acropolis. I always love the back alleys in the Plaka, where no cars are allowed. We strolled by a sunken Byzantine church surrounded by cypresses, the so-called Lantern of Diogenes beside a new strip of red earth marking the location of an ancient street, an inexplicable decaying shack, which turned out to be government property (a storehouse for spare marbles) and dozens of beautifully restored 19th century houses. We daydreamed about having the cash to own one and sit under a pergola in the shadow of the Parthenon.

But we were headed for a new exhibition on the site of the new Acropolis Museum. The museum isn’t finished but while excavating the foundations, contractors and archaeologists worked together to record the layers that establish the time frame and to make sure nothing valuable was damaged in the digging. They discovered streets, homes, wells and graves of a neighborhood lived in from the 5th century BC to the 12th century AD. Most of the finds will be on display when the museum opens in 2008, but as an appetizer a fraction of them can be seen right now. Mosaics, pottery, statues, jewelry . . . they gave us a sense of the daily life of ordinary Athenians from the age of Pericles, when the Parthenon/Temple of Athena was being built, up to the late Byzantine era when the center of gravity had shifted to Constantinople and Christianity ruled a provincial town.

Food for thought called for something more substantial. We popped into a fairly new restaurant in the area. Called ManiMani, it specializes in dishes from that middle finger of the Peloponnese but with a modern twist. I had baby squid with a pesto sauce, zucchini fritters, a huge salad of mixed greens, and mille feuilles with sour cherry preserve. It might not have been traditional, but we can’t wait to go back. Tempted?

First image by Mahmoud Al-Yousi; second image by Piere Metivier on www.flickr.com.

Lots of people come to Italy with the romantic notion of buying a little place and settling down. Paul Simonis is the latest one. He came to stay at my bed & breakfast in Pescara (www.pescarabb.eu) last month while he researched the province.

There's a backstory, of course. Paul was born in Capetown and grew up in Pretoria. Educated as an engineer, he was about to be married when his fiancée changed her mind. Paul's response was to move to a totally different country and culture: Japan. In Tokyo, though, he wasn't really integrated all that much with the local culture. As a civil engineer, he was working in a resort for westernized Japanese businessmen, teaching English and western culinary techniques, mostly baking. He didn't learn Japanese, absorb local customs or take to Asian food. Instead, he's had a dream: to live in Italy.  

Rome was too expensive, so Paul set his sights on the region of Abruzzo and the city of Pescara, one of the few Italian cities situated directly on the sea. From the Central Train Station to the beach is just 300 meters. He planned a two-week stay in Pescara over the Christmas-New Year's period.

He was well organized with numerous appointments throughout Pescara and surrounding towns. I often escorted him and introduced him to local food, wine and traditions. He visited many lovely towns such as Atri, Loreto Aprutino, Navelli etc.

On the day before he departed, I brought him to Santo Stefano di Sessanio, the oldest and most authentic town in Abruzzo, an hour's ride from the center of Pescara. We were a small group: my wife Adriana and other friends. We had lunch at a trattoria then walked through the streets of town.

On the way back to Pescara, we stopped in Tocco Casauria, my birthplace, and went to say hello to my parents. My dad speaks some English and Paul was overtaken by the real Italian ambiance he was experiencing. My mother made espresso and took out a delicious local home made cake.

Paul enjoyed Abruzzo, Pescara and all the little towns he visited, he loved Santo Stefano di Sessanio, the food and wine. His one complaint: that there seemed to be little choice of vegetables in all the restaurants. I had never considered this but it's quite true. Here in Abruzzo there are only salads or grilled vegetables if you are lucky. People are used to eating lots of vegetables at home, and when they go out to a restaurant, they tend to prefer other dishes.

Paul had an unforgettable experience. He told me it looks as if he will buy property in Loreto Aprutino where he saw a small house with two acres of land, olive trees and grapes. He needs to renovate a little. He does not know when he will move definitely but next summer he will certainly return. I'll let you know how it goes next.  

Late for an appointment, I quickly park my car in Viale delle Fosse (translated: street of the ditches), the main thoroughfare of Bassano Del Grappa.  After 20 odd years living in Italy I had mastered this art of Italian parking; or so I thought. Forward, now back….  oops!   Too far to the right… I get out and found one of my wheels all the way down in the ditch- there’s no way I would ever get myself out… Well, I’m late, I’ll worry about it later… as I rush off to my appointment in the center of town. 

An hour later, back to the sad reality and my problem to solve. I slowly make my way through the piazza towards my poor car, thinking about the tow truck I would have to call, the time, the expense and above all the embarrassment …  Just then I see a group of Albanian-looking men walking by and I impulsively approach them. 

“Come with me, I want to ask you a favor”.  The four men follow me. My inside voice says, “Are you crazy, you’re soliciting four Albanians!”  But I march determinedly through the piazza trailed by the men. I show them my predicament. 

“Can you lift it out of the ditch for me?”  They look at the car, at each other, and say, as only Albanians can: “OK”. 

Just as the guys were rolling up their sleeves to lift my car, a policeman passes by.  Alarmed, I tell my men with a series of looks and gestures to “stand by” until the coast is clear.   We spend a few minutes of trying to look nonchalant, (not easy to do for a middle- aged woman and four Albanians at her side) but our patience pays off and the police are on their way.   I know we have to work fast.   “OK, go ahead…” I tell them. 

The four men grab my car in unison and in a matter of seconds it’s lifted up and safely of the ditch. I slip them a nice tip and could scarcely believe I’d solved my problem so quickly and efficiently. 

“What a wonderful place to live” I murmur, as I smile to myself.