Emma, Vin, and Katie in Colorado
A short, family video to my mother.
My Travels
A short, family video to my mother.
For much of the past decade, El Bulli in Catalonia has been considered the best restaurant in the world. Restaurant Magazine ranked it Number One on its Top 50 list of the world’s best restaurants for a record five times — in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, and #2 in 2010. Now, El Bulli’s owners, Ferran and Albert Adrià, have opened a cocktail bar in Barcelona, our favorite city. The seven-minute video above from The Guardian will give you an idea. When Emma and I think about our eventual retirements, we think of Barcelona. That shouldn’t be surprising about her, a Spaniard (although our Catalan friends maintain that the autonomous community of Catalonia isn’t really part of Spain). My own experiences in Barcelona started late for me, beginning in the late 1990s: primarilyspeaking the NetMedia conferences held there, at Pompeu Fabra University, and at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Vilanova y la Geltrú 50 kilometers south, plus friends at La Vanguardia. I remember waking one morning after arriving, and hearing the sounds of roaring motorcycles outside. I saw hundreds of leather- or denim-clad riders astride Harley-Davidsons passing by my hotel. Badly jet-lagged, I wondered if I was still in the States. Hundreds and hundreds of Harleys. But they were speaking French, Hungarian, Finnish, or Greek, etc. I’d arrived in Barcelona when it was hosting the continent’s annual Harley-Davidson riders’ conference. The next day, once I’d gotten used to the all that, I was walking across a crosswalk on a street near Pompeu Fabra when Jay Leno, at the wheel of a Smart Car, pulled up at the stoplight (turns out he was in Barcelona on vacation for Harley conference). That’s Barcelona−surreal, delicious, and always unexpected. Just like the Adriàs’ new cocktail bar.
When I was growing up, I was a big fan of the mountaineer John Harlin II, who tragically was killed when a falling rock severed the rope he was hanging from during the first directissima ascent of the Eiger‘s legendary North Face, a climbing route that’s subsequently became known as the Harlin Route. So, I was pleased to see his son John Harlin III, who was age nine when his father died but nowadays also is a mountaineer and the editor-in-chief of the American Alpine Club‘s American Alpine Journal, and who is now my age, is endeavoring to circumnavigate Switzerland by traveling entirely along that country’s borders. If that doesn’t sound hard, understand that: Switzerland’s southern border contains the summits of some of the Alps most notorious and highest peaks—including the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, the second highest mountain in the Alps. Harlin will have to climb those peaks. The northeast quarter of Switzerland’s border includes the Rhine, which that far upstream includes the Rheinfall, Europe’s version of Niagara Falls. Harlin will have to kayak down that river. The rest of Switzerland’s borders include several hundred kilometers of meandering hills and escarpments that Harlin will have to mountain bike. All of that is a formidable endeavor for any athlete or outdoorsman. Indeed, Harlin fell while climbing the alpine Franco-Swiss border on the tenth day of his journey, broke a rib and five bones in his feet, and had to suspend his endeavor. He’s now resumed his journey, but this time is starting at the headwaters of the Rhine and by tomorrow should reach Basel, completing the Rhine river portion of his journey. Swissinfo.ch, the website of Swiss Radio International, is sponsoring the journey, and you can read Harlin’s daily trip blog there.
So stupid a photo of me that I had to post it publicly! Cocktail time on the African plains.
Prior to World War II, airline flight attendants were required to be registered nurses. How the qualifications for that jobs has changed! Here is a recent (yesterday) video a passenger shot aboard a Cebu Pacific Airlines flight on which flight attendants danced their recitation of the airline’s Airbus safety instructions. No surprisingly, six months ago Cebu Pacific, a discount airline based in Manila, was banned from flying to European Union countries. EU officials decided that the airline’s safety and aircraft maintenance practices weren’t safe enough. The EU also banned most other airlines based in the Philippines.
’Romantic’ Willimantic, my hometown, from the viewpoint of students at Eastern Connecticut State University in the Prospect Hill neighborhood where I grew up. Not quite the ‘Heroin Town’ CBS’s 60 Minutes portray it as 7 years ago. Willimantic is also the market town for the University of Connecticut (UCONN), 7 miles north in rural Storrs.
I was honored on Wednesday, July 14, 2010, to give the Singapore Press Holdings Foundation’s second annual Media Lecture, at the Drama Centre in the National Library of Singapore. Here is Razor TV’s news coverage of the speech.
Emma hadn’t before been camping, and had some apprehension about sleeping in a tent. Pity us having to sleep in this one. July 20-21, 2009. Shamwari Game Reserve, near Sidbury, Eastern Cape, Republic of South Africa.
TripAdvisor.com has released its 2010 list of the world’s best hotels and its list of the dirtiest, as selected by travelers themselves.
My niece Meredith pointed me towards David Newton‘s animation of the Bayeux Tapestry. Even without animation, people in the Medieval Period must of thought of it telling its story that way. I remember seeing the 70-meter long original in Bayeux during 1972.
Another reason why I love the Europeans. Stockholm turns a subway station’s stairs into a piano