A new garden has been installed at Spring Valley, which we visited over the weekend, during a run of flawless summer days. We’ve been in every season.
It’s a lush garden.
Even better, we were all able to get out to take a look.
The black-eyed Susans have emerged.
As well as – sunflowers?
We weren’t sure, but they do have a tall presence and yellow expansiveness, like sunflowers.
Hibiscus are blooming. Since last week. That seems a little early, but I can speculate that the summer’s rains might be at least part of the reason.
Only some of our bushes, however. Mainly the ones that receive extra water when we water the vegetables and flowers, which is usually in the morning and evening. That strengthens my speculation about water, but not enough to do any actual research.
They aren’t our only back-yard glories. We have morning glories rising from seeds my brother Jay gave us some time ago. They grow near the garage.
And more.
Worth the small amount of effort when it comes to watering.
Rain, rain, rain. So many times in that last few days I can’t remember how often. The best of them was Sunday not long after midnight. Not a lot of thunder, just rain. I opened the windows in our north-facing bedroom and lay in bed, listening to the rhythm of the falling rain. It didn’t tell me what a fool I’ve been, and even if it had, I’d have told it to mind its own business.
An artifact from Italy, July 1983.
Why do I have this? Just my pack rat nature. It’s in an envelope marked Europe, 1983.
Also, it confirms what I already knew: pre-euro Italy was a good deal in those days, though it took a few minutes to gather some data points on that. Not exactly dirt cheap, but reasonably priced, especially considering the high value, such as the many good meals.
The receipt shows that I exchanged a $100 travelers check for lira at Banco di Roma one day in July. At that moment, the exchange the bank gave me was $1 = 1,502 lira, though the bank dinged me 5,000 lira as a fee, so I didn’t quite get that. But 1,500 lira to the dollar is close enough
I checked the diary I kept during the trip for notes about what cost what. I wasn’t very good at making such notes, but I did mention a few costs in passing, such as the fact that admission to the Forum in Rome cost 4,000 lira.
So, 4,000 lira would be about $2.66. That’s in fatter 1983 dollars, however. A current equivalent ($1 in 1983 = about $3.15 now) would be roughly $8.40. And how much does admission to the Forum cost these days?
It’s a little hard to get an exact equivalent, since the options are more complicated now. Of course they are. The Forum Pass SUPER Ticket has this description: “Roman Forum-Palatine and Imperial Fora in a single itinerary. One ticket gives you access to the new route, which allows you to visit the archaeological heart of Rome in about two hours: the Roman Forum, the Imperial Fora and the Palatine.”
That costs €24. So let’s say three times as much as I paid, more or less. Are the Italians three times better now at maintaining the Forum than they were 40 years ago? I’m skeptical.
Other costs from 1983 (expressed in period units):
A bed in Rome at the Pension Grossi: 7,000 lira ($4.60). Of course, there were about a dozen beds in that room.
A meal at Mario’s in the Trastevere in Rome: 5,800 lira ($3.80). I had a number of wonderful meals in Italy, as you should, but that was one of the best: spaghetti and salad and liver and onions.
A room at the Albergo Italia in Salerno: 15,000 lira ($10)
A meal in Salerno: 7,500 lira ($5). The stars of that meal were gnocchi, along with squid fresh from the Mediterranean, about which I raved. Wish I could actually remember it.
A toilet at the Salerno train station: 200 lira (13 cents). Cheap, but not for something that should be free.
A room in Florence: 10,000 lira each ($6.60)
Doughnuts in Florence: 500 lira (33 cents) each. I remember the gelato in Florence, which we ate more than once, but not the doughnuts. I bet Florentine doughnuts were almost as good. I didn’t record the price for the gelato, but it was probably comparable. A 33-cent doughnut would be about $1 now. Still not bad, and certainly cheaper than any hipster doughnut you can get these days.
On July 6, 1994, I mailed this card from Malaysia. It was a leftover from Vietnam, from which I’d sent some cards in late June.
I don’t remember seeing the upmarket Rex Hotel in Saigon, though perhaps we walked by it. The hotel is still around.
Mainly, the card was about how we weren’t in Vietnam anymore. I wrote: We’re in Georgetown, Penang Island. I didn’t come here two years ago. It has a quiet, pleasant feel so far.
Three days later, I wrote a letter about our time in Vietnam, using a Malaysian aerogram. Do such things even exist any more? I’d rather not find out.
A bit of an education, these aerograms. I didn’t know — and I didn’t remember until I looked at it today — that the hibiscus was the national flower of Malaysia. Specifically, the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. As for the Rafflesia, also known as the stinking corpse lily, it is one bizarre flower.
Fifty Malaysian cents was a deal, though = U.S. 20 cents at the time. That was the same price as a postcard stamp.
In my recollection, Saigon was the opposite of quiet. In the letter I called it a “busy, energetic city.”
One of the things to do there is sit and watch the streets from the sidewalk cafes. You can see whole families balanced on motorcycles, and fewer riders (but not always solo) on bicycles, tricycles, rickshaws, and other motorized thingamabobs, numerous vendors and hawkers, kids kicking balls, idlers, beggars, dogs, cats, and roosters.
I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.
When we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.
I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.
Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)
Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):
“Just Following Orders”
I step inside my fav’rite store
And spy a cone inside the door.
“Wet floor,” it states, and so I do
Exactly what it tells me to.
Then, rather wishing I had not,
I’m banished to the parking lot.
“All Set”
I’ve saved enough money
To last me for life.
The children are grown;
I don’t have a wife.
I’ve got enough money.
Yes, plenty and then some.
To last me forever.
(At least ’til I spend some.)
“Half-Pint”
It isn’t that I’m little.
I’m just not very tall.
Until I grow,
I’m last to know
When rain begins to fall.
I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.
Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.
I’m glad to report that The Choo-Choo, a novelty restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, still seems to be open and serving burgers and fries by way of a model train.
I’m not sure the exact year I picked up its card, which isn’t shaped like a conventional business card but is square. I do remember taking Ann there when she was old enough to appreciate the place, but probably not old enough to remember it. So sometime in the mid- to late 2000s.
“The Choo Choo opened its doors nearly 70 years ago, with diners looking for creative ways of creating different dine-in experiences,” according to Classic Chicago Magazine.
“In 1951 original owner James Ballowe and his wife Marilyn wanted to open a business that would be an enjoyable experience for all ages. Ballowe had hoped that The Choo Choo would quickly become popular for both kids and adults.”
Apparently it did. They ran the place until 2000. The current owner is the third, taking over in 2022 after a period of pandemic closure. His name is Dale Eisenberg, who with partner Mike Ventre, runs a similar restaurant – one featuring model train delivery – in Bartlett, Illinois, the 2Toots Train Whistle Grill.
That restaurant was once in Downers Grove, and we took Ann there as well, and probably Lilly, sometime around 2010. I don’t think I have a card from it, which is too bad. These are not, of course, the only such joints anywhere, as this Reddit page illustrates.
Hot weekend, at least for northern Illinois, which means temps touching 90° F. A little early for that, but not too far from the norm. It is summer, after all, never mind the exact date of the solstice.
Not as hot (or steamy) as Thailand 30 years ago. Thirty years? How did that happen? I know, one day at a time. In June 1994 we visited Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, which we reached by rail from Bangkok. One day during the visit, we took a day trip to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, as a lot of people do.
Written about a week later:
We were in Chiang Mai until June 21. They say it’s more manageable than Bangkok, but the traffic was every bit as fierce as Bangkok’s, just on a smaller scale, and with a good deal less traffic control, which is saying something. At first getting across any street was a chore, but by the second day it had gotten easier, though never easy.
That day (the 18th) we blew a bunch of money (all of $9) having a songthaew (siitor, sic) take us to Doi Suthep. We could have traveled there for a fraction of that, but the excellent breakfast at Montori – very very good pastries – must have put us in a less tight-fisted mood, and off we went.
Doi Suthep didn’t disappoint: a splendid wat, great and gilded and on a hilltop, up a winding park road.
Only partly up a winding park road. It was then a climb of 300-plus steps to reach the wat. If I were there now, I would think I should have visited 30 years earlier. Good thing I did.
The art of gilding at Thai wats is highly advanced. I assume this is one of the wat’s chedi, which tend to be done in gold leaf and contain a chamber for relics.
When you have access to a gong, use it. That’s what I always say.
After our visit, the siitor (sic) man talked us into going shopping. We thought about refusing, but were a bit curious. He took us to a silver working shop, an umbrella factory, a lacquerware factory (I almost bought a lacquer egg) and of course a jewelry display room.
I can’t visualize that egg, but if I’d bought it, I’m sure it would be parked in my office even now with other debris from across the decades and continents. I might not even have to turn my head to see it.
It’s a minor travel habit of mine to visit a McDonald’s in each country I visit, if there is one. Not as a source of comfort food, particularly, though I knew other gaijin in Japan who treated it that way.
Instead I’m curious to scope out any differences, such as the bouncers at the Moscow location, the availability of alcohol in various European locations (including Portugal), the occasional item that far exceeds anything at a USA McDonald’s – the wonderful McTeriyaki in Japan – or even tiny distinguishing details in something otherwise like a domestic restaurant. The one I visited in Australia might as well have been in the Midwest, except for the sign that said that 100% Australian beef was used, with notes to that effect on the boxes and wrappers.
The first non-American McDonald’s I visited must have been in Lüneburg, West Germany in 1983. I don’t think we went to one in the UK, though we did eat at a Wimpy’s, nor in the Netherlands, before our arrival in Lüneburg. But I know I did once we got there. The first visit wasn’t planned.
June 12, 1983
I discovered today that Frau Horsch probably isn’t going to supply us borders with toilet paper. An unpleasant discovery, this. At 9:45 in the evening I went out seeking that paper by which we all live and found it – where? – the public WC was closed, locked! Argh. McDonald’s was open, and I accessed its facilities for the price of a soda to go.
I went back a time or two for a fuller meal, though it couldn’t really compare with the chicken shack where you could get roast halb hähnchen mit pommes frites nor a number of other spots in Lüneburg.
I checked my envelope of paper debris from that trip, and remarkably found this (which was a little larger that the scanner bed). Or maybe not so remarkable, considering my idea of an interesting souvenir.
Through the marvel of Google Maps, I’ve determined that that location – which I think was near the Rathaus and the Marktplatz – doesn’t seem to be there any more. These days, you need to visit the main bahnhof or a 24-hour location north of the town center near (I’m not making this up) Hamburger Straße. Of course, that isn’t so odd when you realize that the road is named for the city of Hamburg, which isn’t far away.
Early last year, I ordered a number of 4″ x 6″ tabletop flags from an online vendor that doesn’t happen to be Amazon. I have pocket change and postcards and tourist spoons and all kinds of bric-a-brac from the places I’ve been, so why not flags? One for each nation I’ve visited.
So I ordered a Portuguese flag last week, to add to the collection. While Macao was still administrated by Portugal when I visited in 1990, it was too much of a stretch to say I’d been to Portugal, until last month.
Something I never noticed on the flag – behind the shield of Portugal, which has a lore of its own – is an armillary sphere, a model of objects in the sky. A navigators’ tool, among other things, which fits Portuguese history nicely. A cool design element.
We saw other representations of the globe — terrestrial or celestial — at Pena Palace in Sintra.
This one at Jerónimos Monastery.
For sale at the Cod Museum, canned fish. At fancy prices.
For sale at a Portuguese grocery store, canned fish. At everyday prices.
In case you didn’t buy enough canned fish in the city, at the airport there’s a branch of Mundo Fantástico Da Sardinha Portuguesa, a sardine store on the Praça do Rossio.
For once, the Google Maps description is accurate: “Souvenir shop showcasing fancy tins of Portuguese sardines in a wacky, circuslike atmosphere.” You can even sit on a sardine throne.
The “Beer Museum” off Praça do Comércio seemed more like a restaurant and bar, but anyway you have to have a beer at a place like that, and I did. A Portuguese brew whose name I was too much on vacation to remember.
I wasn’t awed by the beer, which was good enough, but I was awed by this display. That’s one artful wall of beer.
We didn’t make it to the castle overlooking Lisbon (Castelo de São Jorge), so I can’t comment on the view from there. I will say that the roof of our hotel offered a pretty good one.
Looking up at the city is another kind of vista. There’s a ferry port (and subway station) on the Tagus near Praça do Comércio. Step outside there, and some of the city is visible. The stone tower is part of Lisbon Cathedral.
We emerged from the subway one morning and spotted this.
Monumento aos Mortos da Grande Guerra. I had to check, and found out that about 12,000 Portuguese soldiers died in WWI, including in France but also fighting the Germans in Africa. The memorial is on Av. Da Liberdade.
Europe, in my experience, is pretty good at putting together leafy boulevards.
That’s a tall order for a sandwich shop. We didn’t investigate the claim, either the number of steps, nor the state of mind.
At Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, we encountered this fellow.
Rather Roman looking, and I mean the ancient Roman army, not “prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.” At first I thought he might be Cornelius the Centurion, but the key clue is HODIE (“today”) written on the cross, meaning he’s Expeditus. I don’t ever remember seeing him depicted in a church. The patron of urgent causes, among other things.
We saw a flamenco show in Barcelona last year, but no fado in Lisbon. We did see a fado truck, however.
We ate at the Time Out Market Lisboa twice.
There was a reason it was crowded. Everything was a little expensive, but really good. Such as this place, whose grub was like Shake Shack.
The last meal of the trip wasn’t at Time Out Lisboa, but a Vietnamese restaurant with room enough for about 20 people. It too was full.
Spotted at one of the subway stations we passed through more than once. Alice in Wonderland‘s fans are international in scope.
On the whole, the Lisbon subways are efficient and inexpensive, and the lines go a lot of places. Even so, elevator maintenance did seem to be an issue. There were times when our tired feet would have appreciated an elevator, but no go.
Scenes from Parc Eduardo VII, which includes green space and gardens but also elegant buildings.
There was an event there that day, at least according to those blue signs, that had something to do with the Portuguese Space Agency. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I’d have assumed Portugal would participate in the ESA, and leave it at that. But no, the Agência Espacial Portuguesa was founded in 2019, and is looking to create a space port in the Azores.
We didn’t investigate the event any further, but we did look at the tiles on the building. Nice.
Among the kings of Portugal, there was no Edward VII – only one Edward, who reigned from 1433 to 1438 – so when I saw it on the map, I figured it was for the British monarch of that regnal name. Yes, according to Wiki: “The park is named for King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who visited Portugal in 1903 to strengthen relations between the two countries and reaffirm the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.”
Lisbon manhole covers. Maybe not as artful as some of the other street details on Lisbon, but not bad.
I saw S.L.A.T. a fair amount. Later, I looked it up: Sinalização Luminosa Automática de Trânsito – Automatic Traffic Light Signaling.
On the day after much climbing around the Sintra hills, that is, Friday, May 17, the idea of visiting the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and the surrounding Calouste Gulbenkian Garden had a lot going for it. A reportedly great collection of art, for one thing, in a vivid green park. Just as important, it was walking distance from our hotel. A fairly short walking distance, with the interlude of a leisurely brunch on the way. Our last full day in Portugal was going to be leisurely.
The brunch. Mine anyway.
There are pancakes, as you might find in North America, but under the meat and eggs, a position that’s less common over here. Good pancakes too. Considering the cost of living in Portugal and the relatively strong dollar vs. the euro, we enjoyed high-quality breakfast food at IHOP prices.
Much has been written about the oilman Calouste Gulbenkian (d. 1955) elsewhere, for feats of industrialism and a colossal amount of philanthropy. Then there was the matter of collecting art, which he did with both hands.
Apparently he liked Lisbon a great deal, and who wouldn’t, especially after Paris got too hot in 1940. Much earlier, he and his family escaped Ottoman persecution, so while you can’t call such a wealthy fellow a refuge, he did feel the need to flee occasionally, along the way evolving into a shadowy British-Armenian billionaire with a massive art collection. These days, his artwork is in the museum named for him in Lisbon, developed by his posthumous foundation.
“When it comes to sheer diversity enhanced by the highest of standards, then the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon is in a category of its own,” the NYT reported in 1984. “Its collections range from art of the ancient Greeks to the Impressionists, from Iznik faience to Jacob armchairs made for Marie Antoinette, with a goodly complement of carpets, coins, tapestries, ivories and illuminated manuscripts thrown in…
“Unlike most other museums (the Frick is a significant exception), the physical plant has been designed to fit the collection, rather than the other way around. There are vast halls for carpets, and small rooms for silver, vitrines designed so that objects can be seen from every side, and all in such a way that nothing ever looks crowded. The light, too, is unusually good.”
The description is still accurate. The variety doesn’t hit you until you’re past a half-dozen galleries, but then it hits all at once. The aesthetic appetite of this oilman emulator of Le goût Rothschild spanned centuries and continents, and he had the means to act on it.
Among other things, I spent quality time with his ancient coin collection. Gulbenkian had examples from all around the Greek world in the first few centuries after the invention of coinage in Lydia. He had some from Lydia itself; some of the first coins ever.
A good number of Near Eastern carpets were on display, some near the floor lying flat and lightly roped off. To my eye, flawless works. They gave me the opportunity to pass along the idea (to Ann) that certain carpet markers of yore, perhaps Persians, deliberately included a small imperfection in their work because only God is perfect. Something I heard years ago, I don’t know where, and I can’t vouch for its accuracy, caveats that I also passed along. I’m not the only one to wonder.
The Gulbenkian Foundation complex, including the museum, didn’t open until until more than a decade after his death, and pretty much screams 1969.
The garden, lush in an Iberian May, takes some of the edge off the brutalism.
We visited the museum first, then strolled the garden afterward.
The museum includes an indoor-outdoor cafe, where we stopped for pastries late in mid-afternoon, sitting outside.
Note the birds. They were not afraid of people.
Not at all.