Wander(lust)

Europe on the Cheap: Barcelona

Just in time for summer and fall, the New York Times' Sunday travel section has culled together money-saving tips on eating and lodging in 16 European cities, from Athens to Oslo and all points in between. Well, bless your heart, as we say in the South. Just have time now to give it a quick perusal, but their tips on Barcelona are spot on. La Boqueria, the amazing food market smack dab on the Rambla, is a must-see attraction in itself in addition to being a great place to cobble together a meal. Try to snare a seat at Pinotxo (Catalan for Pinocchio), where owner Juanito Bayén and his family dish up fantastic food---this is no humble market stall. And the Times' hotel tip is also perfect on any budget for those who like their accommodations stylish: the Hotel Banys Oriental. I'm going to savor the other 15 destinations and add some of my own tips for favorite cities, including Venice, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, and Lisbon. More to come.

A Paean to Pisco

Having just been in Mexico, imbibing all those tequilas, reminded me of my other favorite firewater in all the world: the pisco of Peru. Now apparently the historical "ownership" of this humble little brandy is a bone of contention, with both Chile and Peru claiming parental rights. Never having been to Chile, I'll throw caution to the wind and side with Peru.

Our first time in Lima, we ate with our friends Richard and Avecita at a fantastic restaurant in Miraflores called Las Brujas de Cachiche (the Witches of Cachiche). It was one of the best meals of my life and apparently the restaurant is still rolling, so do look it up if you find yourself in Lima. It's a perfect introduction to the best of criolla cuisine, and the chef uses ancient recipes from pre-Columbian Peru. I must have had five different types of corn that night---a revelation to someone who'd only eaten one kind her entire life----including a purple version as big as a quarter. But I digress.

We had our first pisco sours at Las Brujas---maybe as many as three each---and then the four of us spent an hour and a half pleasantly carried away on the pisco ebb, as I came to call it, sitting on a high point and watching the waves of the Pacific crash a hundred feet below. I was hooked, and took every reasonable opportunity the remainder of our 10-day visit to sample pisco sours at every dive and upscale bar I could find.

True testimony: I would still be sitting up at Machu Picchu, scared out of my wits by the promise of the hurtling, "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" return ride down the vertiginous mountainside (Why, I ask, in god's name, were all the other passengers chatting and talking as though nothing amiss was happening? Didn't they realize that it was HIGHLY LIKELY we would all plunge to our deaths, a plunge that would no doubt be covered up by the Peruvian tourism industry......), if my husband hadn't lured me onto the bus with an $8 pisco sour from the hotel bar up at the top.

I've searched for the perfect pisco sour since then, made them myself, and had other friends make them. They never come out quite right. Also, one must admit that the angostura bitters and raw egg white are kind of a turnoff. So imagine how happy I was when I found the following recipe for a lovely concoction called a "Pisco-rita" at Webmaster.com (bless you, kind sir or ma'am):

Ingredients:

* 6 oz frozen Limeade concentrate
* 6 oz Pisco
* 3 oz Triple sec
* Ice

Add limeade concentrate, Pisco, and triple sec in blender. Add ice until blender is full. Blend on high speed adding water until blender is full while blending. Serve in margarita glass rimmed with salt if desired.

I can make that at home! Especially if it's on the rocks. But let's try to come up with a better name. Something this good shouldn't have to share the limelight, so to speak, with its Mexican cousin. How about the Conquistador? No, bad connotations. The Titicaca? No, too puerile. Ah---the Bolívar. Perfecto!

3 Stellar Playa del Carmen Restaurants

Although we mainly stayed happily moored in Tulum during our recent visit, we did venture into Playa del Carmen for three great meals.

It's astonishing—and more than a little depressing—to see just how bustling and quasi-tacky Playa has become in the past few years. But there is still some excellent shopping and eating to be had. Come to Media Luna or La Cueva del Chango for lunch, after savoring the quieter morning hours along Avenida Quinta. Alternatively, come to John Gray's Place for dinner, after a tamarind margarita or two at the venerable Casa de Tequila.

MEDIA LUNA

Yes, it's in all the guidebooks, but it's really, really, good. We've eaten there several times in the past.. and always leave saying that this is the kind of food we could happy eat day in, day out. Media Luna does a great job of fusing primarily Mexican and Asian cuisines with a deft touch and extremely fresh ingredients. On our  recent visit, we had huge fruit smoothies, zucchini-corn quesadillas with cilantro cream, and blackened fish with sesame-flecked rice and mango salsa. Quick service, colorful walls, and an open-air atmosphere perfect for people watching.

Avenida 5 (between Calles 12 and 14).


EL CUEVA DEL CHANGO

This was a new discovery, suggested by Elizabeth at Suenos de Tulum. We had a great lunch there (note that they serve breakfast all day), made with organic ingredients and served with friendly panache. We needed "stick to your bones" food, so ordered enchiladas verdes and sopas de pollo, followed by an amazing lime pie.

The location is enough off the beaten path that there was an interesting mix of tourists, ex-pats, and locals. You can eat in the airy palapa or outside, in the jungly garden. There's a pond with koi, cool lights, a stream that meanders through the restaurant, local art work for sale, and one of the most unusual bathrooms I've ever seen.

Avenida 5 at Calle 38, near the Shangri-La

JOHN GRAY'S PLACE

John Gray, a former Ritz-Carlton chef who worked at a number of the group's properties, settled down on the Mayan Riviera a few years ago. His first brainchild, John Gray's Kitchen, opened in Puerto Morelos in 2002. We ate there twice two years ago while staying at Ceiba del Mar, and the food was amazing. John himself was very cool and approachable, visiting each table to make sure diners were happy—and they were, especially me, who was nipping at my first-ever mescal margarita.

He debuted his second restaurant, John Gray's Place, on Calle Corazon (right off Quinta Avenida) in September 2004. In a town of "primitive chic" establishments, its streamlined black and off-white color scheme is a nice change. Reservations are highly recommended. The menu features only six or seven entrées nightly, adapting to take advantage of what is fresh. Standouts were the grilled shrimp with tabbouleh; the duck breast with chipotle-honey glaze, accompanied by sweet potato hash (pleasing the Southerner in me); and the Mexican-influenced crab cakes.
                  

Calle Corazon, off Avenida 5, between 12th and 14th.

Mr. Caruso, Meet Mr. Escobar

As a journalist, I have a mordid delight in typos found in other publications. And my current favorite even happens to be travel related, so I can unabashedly include it here. From last Sunday's New York Times Travel section comes the following correction:

"A report in the In Transit column on March 12 about the Casa Magna resort on the Riviera Maya in Mexico misstated the name of the Daniel Defoe literary character invoked in a description of the resort's rooms. He is Robinson Crusoe, not Caruso. The column also misspelled the name of the native country of Pablo Escobar, a known drug lord who once owned the property. He was Colombian, not Columbian."

Hotel Review: Suenos Tulum

We returned a few days ago from Tulum, Mexico, a slice of perfection an hour and a half south of Cancun. Our hotel was Suenos Tulum, an oasis of bonhomie, blinding white sand, and sea that ranged from color of louched absinthe (well, let's just say "light aqua") to turquoise to marine blue. The five buildings are embellished with Mayan-inspired reliefs and murals and each is named for an element—Tierra (land), Lluvia (rain), Selva (jungle), Sol (sun), and Luna (moon). Nothing even remotely garish, everything harmonious, in colors of coral, avocado, terra cotta, and putty.

The team that runs Suenos Tulum has much to do with the hotel's laid-back, unobtrusive but completely professional vibe. Jorge and Elizabeth Calles opened the hotel in November 2004; Jorge is also the chef of the beachfront restaurant, which has just four tables and is only open to hotel guests, and the artist behind the Mayan reliefs and much of the furniture. The manager, Alan Gallart, is fantastic—there whenever you need him for a restaurant recommendation, extra beach towel, reservations, etc. (And the only time we went wrong with a meal was when we went against his advice and our better judgment, dining at Ana y Jose's.)

While Tulum is still a paradise in spots like Suenos Tulum, caveat emptor: The "Mayan Riviera" is spreading ever southward, encroaching on the solitude and "off the grid" aesthetic that makes the area so special. From the Tulum ruins, you follow the Boca Paila-Punta Gorda road south, and in many ways can tell how unspoiled a place is by its distance from the ruins.

Suenos Tulum is at Km 10 on the road, practically at the end of the line before the Sian Kaan Biosphere. A glance southward from the top balcony of any of the buildings reveals only jungle, sand, and water. The photo above is the view from our third-floor balcony of the room where we stayed our last of five nights. It was very windy and there has been little rain, so the area is parched and not as verdant as usual. But the sand remains sugar-white and powder fine, swept daily by the rest of the hotel crew, who also make sure that everything is perfect, from lighting torches at night to keeping the rooms incredibly clean for a beachfront hotel.

Suenos Tulum is all about seclusion, from its location to the ever-present roar of the wind and sea that add to the sense of cosseted isolation. There are no TVs or other such trappings in the 14 rooms. But that's not why you come to Suenos Tulum. You come for the breakfasts: awesome Mexican coffee, breads, and heaping plates of fresh pineapple, banana, melon, mango, and grapes drizzled with honey, yogurt, and granola. You come for the impromptu lunches, maybe cactus nachos or tuna tostadas. You come for the sunrise yoga classes—although I never made it to one, I saw no fewer than three guests reading the latest issue of Yoga Journal. You come for the boogie boards and the dips in the Caribbean. You come to cool off in the pool if the surf is too rough. You come for the wonderful day beds (pictured below, complete with two of the hotel's four sweet dogs), where you can spend the entire day reading under an adjustable awning, gazing out at the horizon, or napping after that second Sol at lunch. And, most of all, you come for what you can't get away from at home—and although the property is said to have Wi-Fi, I never saw a guest using anything remotely resembling a laptop (or even an iPod) 

Our last night we stayed in the top-level, master suite (pictured at left) in Lluvia, which was aerier and had better lighting than the second-floor room in Tierra where we'd spent the preceding four nights. All the rooms have tile floors, lovely bedspreads, local art work, porthole-shaped windows, balconies, mosquito netting on the beds (not needed due to the strong breezes, at least this trip), ceiling fans, great bathrooms with open showers, and candles and incense. The master suites have platform beds with built-in storage, king-size beds, better views, and high, palapa-type ceilings. Our room in Tierra (at right) had lower ceilings but, at $40 less a night less, was cozier and warmer than the suite and had a really cool bathroom with a Talavera mirror and sink.

The property and rooms are "eco-chic"—a much overused term, at least in Tulum, where every cabana campground and tired-looking property was attempting to cash in on this appeal. But at Suenos Tulum, it was the real thing. The property gets its electricity from solar panels, so that by the time you took a shower at 4 pm after a day on the beach, there was plenty of hot water. The bathrooms are simple, with beautiful tiles and painting, but there's not enough electricity to, say, plug in a hair dryer. The lighting in the rooms is low-level, which can make it difficult to put on makeup, but the air-dried, fresh-faced look everyone sports is the "great leveler" (although, of course, the truly beautiful people still look better than everyone else).

So get thee to Suenos Tulum, before this mini-resort is booked up months in advance and the Mayan Riviera creeps even farther south. For the time being, it's paradise regained.

Istanbul Unveiled

Soon to come: the long-lost travelogue of my mid-March trip to Istanbul, where I first stepped foot in Asia. Incidentally, although I wanted to, I didn't buy a rug---a combination of factors that has to be a first in the annals of travel to Turkey.

The mysterious circumstances that led to this occurrence will be revealed, along with hotel and restaurant recommendations, a list of favorite sites and experiences, and ruminations on raki.

An Inn in Provence, or Toujours Martine

While Provence is not the "region du jour" it was some years back, there remains a mystique about it that continues to seduce newcomers and faithful returnees alike. I, for one, am happy that it is not the Dordogne or the Languedoc or anywhere else in France---or the world, for that matter. It is Provence, and it is magnificent. Until I visited the region, I'd always assumed that the colors in Van Gogh's paintings were exaggerated. Yet there they are in the landscape, in all their intensity: the polleny yellow of the sunflowers, the purple of the lavender, the evergreen of the cypresses, the glinting silver of the olive groves, the mauve of the mountains, and the velvety blue of the evening sky.

My favorite place to stay in Provence is a small bed and breakfast called La Campagne Jeanne, situated a few kilometers outside Aix-en-Provence. I have a natural aversion to most B&Bs, with their lack of privacy and sense of enforced bonhomie. But everything at La Campagne Jeanne is done with the utmost elan by the proprietress, Martine Alexandrian, who lives in the adjacent house with her husband, Daniel. The B&B comprises just four rooms, each with its own private entrance and terrace enclosed by low stone walls. All the rooms are incredibly clean and crisp, with beautifully coordinated Provencal fabrics, antique timbers, tiled floors, and white bathrooms. La Campagne Jeanne is not luxurious, so if your Provence experience necessitates a Relais & Chateaux-type experience, better to stay at Villa Gallici. But I highly recommend it if you want to experience the wind blowing through the cypresses, the beautiful sunsets and night sky, and a chic but not overblown Provencal atmosphere.

And, best of all, the experience comes at a very affordable price: Each room is just 60 Euro per night, including a fabulous breakfast spread of fruit, yogurt, fresh juice, croissants, cheese, jams, and cappuccino. Martine is a wonderful host, and although her English is limited (and our French elementary at best), she always manages to get across directions and restaurant recommendations and to impart, well, joie de vivre. (Cliched, but true.) Because of its location four kilometers outside Aix, you'll need a car to stay at La Campagne Jeanne. You'll want one, anyway, to take day trips to the the Lubéron, Bonnieux, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Roussillon, Cassis, or beyond.

Lastly, Martine and Daniel have put together a great Web site that provides extensive information, including photos of each room and its particular fabrics and antiques. We prefer Le Mazet---with its walls lime-washed in the ochre shade of Roussillon and an antique desk with a secret drawer---but I'd be equally at home in any of the rooms.

The Worst Hotel in Italy

Let me say from the beginning: I'm not one for hyperbole. I don't compose such an inflammatory title lightly; a hotel has to be simply awful in more than one way to merit such an epithet. However, there is one particular establishment that truly earns this dubious distinction: the Villa Athena, in Agrigento, Sicily. Ugh----I shudder to even write its name, as the memories of the New Year's Eve we spent there in 2001 come creeping back, like the mold that covered much of our bathroom. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First off, the Villa Athena is a famous hotel located on a gorgeous site, overlooking the Valley of the Temples. Apparently many celebrities stayed there in its heyday---Sophia Loren and the like---but they certainly wouldn't deign to stay there now. The Villa Athena's sole draw is that from **some** of the rooms you can glimpse the Greek temples when they are lit at night. Yes, this is a lovely prospect, but you don't have to stay at the Villa Athena to experience it. The Valley of the Temples is an amazing sight, and you should definitely see it if you are in Sicily. But if you stay overnight in Agrigento or its environs, please don't make my mistake: stay at the Baglio della Luna or somewhere else instead.

From the moment we stepped into the Villa Athena's "lobby," I knew that nothing good could come of this. The rude receptionist immediately charged my credit card for $300, then practically threw the key at me, while the bellhop stood there, unabashedly scratching himself. And no, I don't mean that he was scratching his head. After carrying our bags to our room, he grunted when we handed him his tip. Then the real fun began, as we inspected our tiny room. The carpet was filthy and peeling, the walls were dirty, the bathroom consisted of a bare overhead light and a shower stall with no shower curtain, the furniture was a scuffed melange of pieces from the 70's, and the refrigerator/minibar didn't work.  Between the moldy smell emanating from the bathroom and from the fridge, it was rather pungent in there. My long-suffering husband ("long-suffering" because I always make him do anything I don't want to do while on vacation, since I do all the legwork) valiantly tried to rouse someone from the enervated staff to come fix the fridge--or at least to bring us a bucket of ice so we could chill our champagne, which we'd envisioned sipping at midnight while gazing at the beautifully lit temples--but to no avail.

Despite these well-documented deficiencies, many guidebooks still list the Villa Athena. Fodor's calls it "pleasant," although not outstanding, and writes that "there's a convivial atmosphere in the bar, where a multinational crowd swaps stories." Judging from our experience, it was more of an angry mob at the front desk, trying in vain to get satisfaction. If any stories were being swapped, they were stories of how crappy their rooms were and how nothing in them worked. At least Frommer's has the decency to admit that the hotel's a pit in desperate need of an overhaul, giving it an "overrated" icon along with a star. And while staying our one miserable night there, we laughed ourselves silly at the blurb on the Villa Athena in our Lonely Planet Sicily guidebook: "Ring ahead if you fancy a night of pampered comfort." Oh man, was that ever a knee-slapper! Even if you'd been staying in youth hostels for a year straight, there is no way in the world that even the most downtrodden backpacker could consider that a night of "pampered comfort". After the giggles subsided, we lay on the none-too-clean sheets, toasting the New Year with warm champagne and the knowledge that Morpheus would soon descend mercifully upon us, after which we could flee the place in the morning.

If you think I'm exaggerating, peruse the reviews of the Villa Athena on TripAdvisor.com. I wish such a resource had existed back in late 2000. It would have saved me the pleasure of shelling out $300 for what one TripAdvisor rater aptly calls "the shabbiest dump we encountered in Sicily." Amen, sister (or brother)! Even our hotel in Scopello, where the bed mattress literally sagged to the floor, was preferable to the Villa Athena. At least the propietress of the Scopello hotel was lovely, charged us only $15, and helped us find a fabulous restaurant for dinner. And her hygiene was impeccable. Things were definitely looking up.

Zen in Berlin: The City's Best Hotel

Dorint Sofitel am Gendarmenmarkt
Charlottenstrasse 50-52

Many of Berlin's "boutique" hotels are exercises in passé, Philippe Starck "avant garde" and self-conscious design: the Sorat Art'otel and the Maritim Pro Arte come to mind. So where to go if the other extreme--the opulent excesses (and prices) of the Berlin Hilton, the Kempinski Hotel Bristol Berlin, or the Hotel Adlon--aren't your style? My preferred hotel in Berlin is the Dorint Sofitel am Gendarmenmarkt, a 92-room hotel that is both lofty and intimate. Although the building's facade still has Jugendstil elements, it's a far cry from its earlier incarnations, including one as a youth hostel in the early 1980s in what was then East Germany. Smack dab in the heart of Mitte, its location can't be beat (these days, you'll be hard-pressed to venture into what was formerly West Berlin), and some rooms have small balconies that overlook the Gendarmenmarkt, a jewel-box square anchored at one end by the Konzerthaus and at the other by the Franzsischer Dom.

The building has been painstakingly transformed by the Dorint chain into an upscale hotel that is artfully minimalist while maintaining an unmistakable edge of luxury. Overall, there is a great continuity to the hotel's design and style that is soothing and tranquil without calling attention to its cleverness. The rooms have all the high-tech accessories you'd expect of a five-star hotel, combined with high ceilings, rich brown and creamy white furniture, luxe linens, marble and wood floors, and understated lighting. The bathrooms are works of art, with a single-paneled door that opens into one area while closing off another, making the best of the rooms' size, which, admittedly, is not large. The hotel's wellness area, on the seventh floor, offers a steam bath, sauna, a state-of-the-art fitness room, and--low and behold--a meditation room. The staff are extremely helpful and friendly, yet unobtrusive.

The hotel, which opened in April 1999, is off Unter den Linden, and within easy walking distance to the Brandenburg Gate, the Pergamon Museum, the Reichstag, the Marienkirche, the Berlin Concert Hall, and other destinations. It's close to Hackescher Markt and Oranienburger Strasse, where many of the best, coolest restaurants can be found, and accessible by bus or metro to the happening areas of Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, and Kreuzberg. And, should you find yourself craving "Viennese chandeliers, classic antiques, and silk-covered chairs," the Four Seasons is right next door. But if you're anything like me, a drink there will probably send you fleeing back to the Zen-like calm of the Dorint.

Nazim Hikmet at the Four Seasons

Sometimes a building is just a building. And sometimes it isn’t. Take the example of the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul. As its Web site tells us, it was “created from a century-old neoclassic Turkish prison in the core of this fabled city.” Yes, a prison, but one just “steps from the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace.” A prison in a country where prison conditions have traditionally been, shall we say, less than stellar, but one now outfitted to provide “an atmosphere of personal attention and ease unprecedented in Istanbul.”  One with “just 65 guest rooms and suites [that] frame an open courtyard,” the precise spot where its former occupants—intellectual dissidents, artists, poets, journalists, and others—exercised or contemplated freedom while catching a glimpse of the outside world.

Here is how Pacha Tours describes the Four Seasons: “A neoclassical structure that was built as a prison in 1917, now the only thing that will imprison you is its beauty and luxury.” Savile Tours tells us that “the Four Seasons Istanbul is a Cinderella hotel, its story a tale of imaginative transformation, from a dour prison built 80 years ago to imprison dissidents, to an intimate luxury hotel in the heart of old Istanbul.” I’ll let the poor taste of those statements speak for themselves. For those and other reasons, not even a desire to be at the heart of Istanbul’s glorious Sultanahmet district could ever persuade me to stay at the Four Seasons Istanbul.

I freely admit that I have a great personal interest in the case of this particular edifice. Turkey’s greatest modern poet, Nazim Hikmet, was imprisoned there along with countless others whose names I will never know. In January 1938 he was arrested and sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison on the grounds that military cadets were reading his poems and that he was thus inciting the Turkish armed forces to revolt. His friend, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, later described Hikmet's account of his subsequent treatment:

     “Accused of attempting to incite the Turkish navy into rebellion, Nazim was condemned to the punishments of hell. The trial was held on a warship. He told me he was forced to walk on the ship's bridge until he was too weak to stay on his feet, then they stuck him into a section of the latrines where the excrement rose half a meter above the floor. My brother poet felt his strength failing him: my tormentors are keeping an eye on me, they want to watch me suffer. His strength came back with pride. He began to sing, low at first, then louder, and finally at the top of his lungs. He sang all the songs, all the love poems he could remember, his own poems, the ballads of the peasants, the people's battle hymns. He sang everything he knew. And so he vanquished the filth and his torturers.”

I include this description because it sums up the remarkable spirit of Nazim Hikmet and his unbreakable idealism, despite years of imprisonment, persecution, censorship, and, ultimately, exile and death after having been stripped of his Turkish citizenship. That spirit also shines forth in his poems, particularly those written in prison. As Carolyn Forché writes in the foreword to Poems of Nazim Hikmet: “If, as the French Resistance poet Robert Desnos has written, the earth is a camp lit by thousands of spiritual fires, Hikmet is among them; if it is true, as Bertolt Brecht believed, that the world’s one hope lies in the compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed, then Hikmet serves as an exemplar of that hope.”

But let us return to the Four Seasons Istanbul, that now-luxurious prison that lends itself so well to remarkably callous advertising copy. When its current occupants gaze into its “pretty garden courtyard,” maybe they’ll take a moment to consider Nazim Hikmet walking there for exercise and perhaps composing this poem:

Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.

Translated by Talat Sait Halman
(Literature East & West, March 1973)

And maybe, just maybe, as guests curl up in their happy state of confinement, they’ll hear Nazim whispering in their ear “Some Advice To Those Who Will Serve Time In Prison”:

If instead of being hanged by the neck
          you're thrown inside
          for not giving up hope
in the world, your country, your people,
          if you do ten or fifteen years
          apart from the time you have left,
you won't say,
              "Better I had swung from the end of a rope
                                              like a flag"---
You'll put your foot down and live.
It may not be a pleasure exactly,
but it's your solemn duty
           to live one more day
                         to spite the enemy.
Part of you may live alone inside,
             like a tone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
          must be so caught up
          in the flurry of the world
          that you shiver there inside
      when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves.
To wait for letters inside,
to sing sad songs,
or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling
                   is sweet but dangerous.
Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget your age,
watch out for lice
              and for spring nights,
     and always remember
        to eat every last piece of bread--
also, don't forget to laugh heartily.
And who knows,
the woman you love may stop loving you.
Don't say it's no big thing:
it's like the snapping of a green branch
                              to the man inside.
To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advise weaving
and making mirrors.
I mean, it's not that you can't pass
    ten or fifteen years inside
                        and more --
        you can,
        as long as the jewel
        on the left side of your chest doesn't lose its luster!

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993) 

Transcendent Travel Experiences

Watering Albert Camus’ untended grave in the pretty Provence town of Lourmarin
(photo at right, by Henri Bosco)

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Finding the perfect, isolated beach on one of Mexico’s Bahías de Huatulco

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Standing in the Pantheon, in Rome, and watching light rain filter through the oculus, the “eye of God”

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Cruising full speed ahead across Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala, in a rickety motorboat driven by two 10-year-old boys

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Eating rijsttafel and drinking witbier in Amsterdam

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Visiting Jerusalem’s Western Wall and tucking a prayer on a slip of paper in the cracks between the stones

Being overwhelmed by the immensity and intensity of El Greco’s canvasses at the Prado, in Madrid

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Surviving the harrowing bus ride up to Machu Picchu, then stumbling out and seeing the site for the first time

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Sitting on the river’s edge across from Notre Dame at night, drinking a bottle of wine and watching lights glimmer in the Seine

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Watching the sun set over the Pyramid of the Magician at the Mayan ruins of Uxmal, Mexico

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Enjoying a leisurely lunch at Le Fournil, in Bonnieux, France

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Being enveloped by the sinuous Alhambra—by day, by night, any and every time

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Seeking out every Caravaggio painting in Rome

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Doing yoga at sunrise on the beach at Mexico’s Maya Tulum resort

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Drinking a bottle of cava in a leafy square in the old section of Girona, Spain

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Chancing to find, in Barcelona, the astonishing "Migrations" exhibit by the great Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado (Salgado photo at right, Vung Tau, Vietnam, 1995)

Death and Resurrection in Andalucia

Of course I can’t pinpoint the exact moment the land, the tierra, of Andalucia claimed me as one of its own. Perhaps it was when we rounded the monumental gate and entered the grounds of Granada’s miraculous Alhambra for the first time. Or later that day when we sat on the Mirador de San Nicolas and watched the sun set over the Al Qal’a al-Hamra and the Sierra Nevada mountains? Or was it in Cordoba, where I wandered aimlessly, happily around the Mezquita and first experienced flamenco and its dualistic longing and exuberance? Or the time we spent four lazy days in Ronda, criss-crossing the stupendous gorge and feeling our faith in humanity restored by the “Paz” banners hanging from every window in the town square?

No, I suspect it goes much further back, before I ever traveled there, when I first heard the Clash’s song “Spanish Bombs,” in 1982:

Spanish songs in Andalucia
The shooting sites in the days of '39
Oh, please, leave the ventana open
Federico Lorca is dead and gone

The Clash were the coolest, and Joe Strummer shouted out those lyrics from his corazón in a way that made me know that this Federico García Lorca must be cool as well. Over the years, I read some about Lorca, the leftist poet and dramatist who was murdered in August 1936 in Víznar, a village outside Granada, at the outset of the Spanish Civil on the order of one of Franco’s generals. His bullet-riddled body was dumped unceremoniously into a unmarked grave, but, in death, Lorca triumphed as an enduring symbol of all Spanish victims of political oppression.

Although Lorca was born in the nearby farming village of Fuente Vaqueros, it was Granada that exerted its pull on him. The city and the poet had a troubled relationship, with each repudiating, yet unable to deny, the other. The city was late in granting Lorca his due, finally converting one of his family’s properties in Granada into a museum and memorial park. The poet also had a complex attitude toward the city and its history. He credited it with making him a poet and wrote some beautifully evocative descriptions of it. Yet, in an interview in the Madrid newspaper El Sol, published a scant two months before his death, Lorca lamented Granada’s expulsion of its Muslim (and Jewish) population in the last years of the 15th century and lambasted its current citizenry: "It was a disastrous event, even though they say the opposite in the schools. An admirable civilization, and a poetry, architecture and delicacy unique in the world----all were lost, to give way to an impoverished, cowed town, a wasteland populated by the worst bourgeoisie in Spain."

Granada’s Moorish past is most strongly felt in the Albaicín, the old Muslim quarter that is a steep maze of whitewashed, mostly modest homes. Some guidebooks warn visitors about theft by drug addicts and other dire circumstances that may befall them in the quarter, but it’s never frightened me. On our most recent visit, in May 2003, the Albaicín hummed with teahouses, restaurants, new boutique hotels crafted from old buildings, and a luxury complex of Arab baths, or hammams. Most significantly, Granada’s new mosque was nearing completion; the mosque has adopted an “open door” policy that allows school groups, tourists, and others to visit it, helping to dispel opposition to it on the part of some city residents. Finally, we were cheered to see T-shirts sold on the street that extolled the virtues of Christians, Jews, and Muslims living side by side in Andalucía. There seems to be a renaissance of tolerance and cooperation in Granada and elsewhere in the region; perhaps the ghosts of the expelled Moors have been put to rest, at least for the time being.

For an analysis of the historical precedent of this phenomenon, I highly recommend María Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. And for an elegant depiction of Al-Andalus from an Arab perspective, I offer Andalucia's Journey, an article by the late Edward Said that appeared in Travel + Leisure in December 2002.

Mole Olé: Great Oaxacan Restaurants

As if Mexican food weren’t already wonderful enough, Oaxacan cuisine adds another layer of subtlety and complexity. Avocados, squash blossoms, chocolate, nopales, almonds, corn, bananas, tomatoes, peanuts, beans, green olives, cinnamon—the list goes on and on.  Add to this the remarkable palette of chiles and local herbs such as chepil, epazote, and hierba santa. And a special niche in gastronomic heaven should be reserved for Oaxaca’s delicious string cheese, or quesillo. It’s impossible to describe how something so prosaic can be so good. During a recent stay at La Casa de los Milagros, the centerpiece of our favorite breakfast was melted string cheese (quesillo a la plancha) topped with a tangy salsa verde.

Oaxaca is known as the land of the seven moles, but visitors to its capital city will find that those are just the seven basic moles. Restaurants regularly feature negro (black), amarillo (yellow), coloradito (reddish), almendrado (with almonds), verde (green), rojo (red), and manchamanteles (translated as “tablecloth stainer”). But chefs are continually experimenting and adjusting, adding a pinch more or less of this or that to their moles, which can include 30 or more ingredients.

And, lest I forget, there’s mescal—tequila’s smokier, earthier relative. Forget all that you’ve heard about the worm in the bottle and mescal’s rough edge. Undoubtedly, factories somewhere churn out firewater complete with the requisite maguey worm. But the best of the artisanal mescals are surprisingly smooth, with flavors as complex as moles.

Following are five of our favorite restaurants in the city of Oaxaca, all of which share an emphasis on creative renditions and the freshest ingredients possible:

CASA OAXACA EL RESTAURANTE
Constitución #104

Casa Oaxaca is probably the city’s top-shelf hotel, filled with art, flowers, and Oaxacan textiles. In its restaurant, chef Alejandro Ruíz specializes in seafood, which he has flown in from Oaxaca’s coast.  There is a dining room in the hotel proper, on García Vigil #407, which caters to the hotel’s guests, as well as another space on Constitución, near Santo Domingo, where we ate. A narrow pool forms the centerpiece, with some tables straddling the water. Our server brought out a immense platter of raw seafood for us to peruse that included red snapper and large camarones. We chose roasted sea bass and grilled shrimp in a garlic sauce with hierba santa, both of which were superb, and finished with pumpkin and coconut flans.

LOS DANZANTES
Macedonio Alcalá #403

Translated as “the dancers,” this restaurant serves nuevo Mexican cuisine. The setting is half the treat: Stepping in from the street, you enter a sanctuary with soaring adobe walls, columns, and fountains that is half open to the sky. We had lunch there, and particularly enjoyed the pasta with wild mushrooms and pasilla chiles. Other standouts were the duck enchiladas with a pumpkin-seed sauce, and the roasted hierba santa appetizer stuffed with Oaxacan and goat cheeses and topped with a tomatillo sauce. At night, the courtyard is beautifully lit, and its hip little bar even offers “hand-rolled organic cigars”.

EL NARANJO
Trujano #203

Chef Iliana de la Vega’s restaurant, a block or so from the zócalo, has received much press coverage and acclaim, including a prominent feature in Bon Appetit. The patio setting revolves around a fountain and the orange tree that gave the restaurant its name. We began our meal with a robust guacamole and an organic spinach, lettuce, and jicama salad with a hibicus-flower vinaigrette. For my entree I chose the poblano relleno de flor de calabaza, a poblano chile stuffed with queso fresco, squash blossoms, and fresh corn, served with an almond sauce. John ventured into his first authentic mole experience, trying the coloradito, a red mole replete with ancho and other chiles, almonds, raisins, bananas, tomatoes, chocolate, and a touch of cinnamon. Even with all this food, we couldn’t resist the great whole-wheat bread served with two spreads, one a chicken-liver pâté, the other a blend of butter with orange zest and piquin chile. Iliana, who is fluent in English, stopped by our table to see how we were faring, and we signed up for one of her cooking classes on the spot.

LA BIZNAGA
Garcia Vigil #512

Biznaga, named after a type of cactus, was our special find in Oaxaca. It serves "cocina mestiza" in an open-air courtyard—with retractable roof—surrounded by an art gallery. The menu begins on one huge chalk board and continues across the courtyard on a second. We liked the romantic, upscale bohemian atmosphere, which included music by unexpected favorites like Tom Waits, Miles Davis, and Radiohead. We ate dinner there twice, and each night began with excellent, tart margaritas. We ate fairly lightly both nights (one day we had taken Iliana’s cooking class and feasted on a late lunch), savoring their huge salads and unusual appetizers, including quesadillas featuring three different flavors of tortillas, each filled with mushrooms, squash blossoms, sauteed onions, chiles, and cheese.

LA OLLA CAFE-GALERIA
Reforma #402-1

Two blocks from the stunning church of Santo Domingo, this restaurant is affiliated with the Las Bugambilias B&B. For those tired of moles and other heavy Oaxacan cuisine, its inexpensive comida corrida or a la carte choices are a welcome change. The space is cozy, with local art work for sale and ochre-colored walls. We ate lunch here twice, and enjoyed the tlayuda azteca, a thick tortilla laden with chicken, avocados, and quesillo, as well as excellent, unusual sandwiches and salads. Chef Pilar Cabrera and her assistants bake their whole-wheat bread—still a rarity in Mexico—and say that they even make their own mayonnaise from scratch, a claim I have no reason to doubt.  Vegetarians will be very happy here, and you can finish off your meal with locally roasted coffee, vanilla flan, or a house-made granita.

My Top 10 Hotels, Thus Far

To me hotels are an integral part of any travel experience. My criteria are straightforward: The hotel must be architecturally interesting; incorporate high-quality design and materials; offer great service; be hip or dignified (but not too too); and go for $300 or less per night. Each month I eagerly await my new travel magazines to see if there are any new gems to be plucked, and far more often than not I’m disappointed.

First, the hotels touted in Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler (to cite the biggies) are too expensive for my budget: Since when did $400 or $500 a night become the norm? And, truth be told, it’s not only my budget---I’d be willing to splurge for a transcendent experience, but not for what is basically a business hotel with a lot of concierge or spa services I’m not going to use.

Second, the hotels are often in places like Canouan, Dubai, Cancun, Taiwan, and the Maldives---all places that, for one reason or another, are not at the top of my personal list of future destinations.

Third, I seek out unusual, smaller, and often newer properties that often don’t show up in the guidebooks or the Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler annual readers’ polls of top hotels. Those polls are, by and large, retreads of the previous year’s list, with a few new properties. In Granada, for instance, it’s a sure bet that the top pick will always be the Parador de Granada, which is situated, admittedly, on a coveted spot within the romantic Alhambra grounds, one of my favorite places in the world. But why stay at a parador that charges $310 a night and is booked a year in advance, yet hasn’t invested in its infrastructure in years and has less than stellar service, when you can stay at a nearby five-star hotel that is a luxurious and well-conceived refurbishment of the old Convent of Santa Paula, yet charges only $150? You can always visit the Alhambra on a night tour. Similarly, when in Lisbon, why follow the readers’ poll and stay at the oh-so-predictable Four Seasons Hotel Ritz for $452 a night, when you can stay at the sleek, contemporary Solar do Castelo, built within St. Jorge's Castle walls on the site of the former Alcáçova Palace kitchens, for $250?

It does takes some sleuthing to unearth the gems. And I must confess that I’m secretly pleased (and smug) when Travel + Leisure or one of the other travel magazines touts a find several months later, as was the case with Solar do Castelo and La Sacristia. Finally, two caveats: Properties often change ownership or undergo other revisions, so I strongly suggest that you check out the hotel’s Web site, as well as the comments of recent guests at tripadvisor.com. Also, particularly with the larger hotels, you will need to hunt around on Travelocity or other search engines to get a discounted room rate. 

Following is my current top 10 list, in no particular order:

1.    La Sacristia  (Tarifa, Spain)

2.    Hotel Les Ateliers de l'Image (St-Remy-de-Provence, France)

3.   La Casa de los Milagros  (Oaxaca, Mexico)

4.    Hotel Monasterio  (Cusco, Peru)

5.    Villa Sumaya  (Lake Atitlan, Guatemala)

6.    Hotel Gault  (Montreal, Canada)

7.    AC Palacio de Santa Paula  (Granada, Spain)

8.    Hacienda Puerta Campeche (Campeche, Mexico)

9.    Castle Hotel "Auf Schoenburg"  (Oberwesel, Germany)

10.  Solar do Castelo (Lisbon, Portugal)

Quintessential Paris

Hands down, my favorite city in the world. If you love Paris, devour Edmund White's Le Flâneur and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London if you haven't already had the pleasure. With immense gratitude to Monsieurs White and Orwell and countless others, my quintessential Paris experiences:

 

L’as du Fallafel, on rue des Rosiers in the Marais for the best falafel sandwiches, preferably with eggplant and eaten in the nearby park

The Musée Picasso for the world's best and most manageable collection of his paintings and the lovely wrought-iron railings, light fixtures, and benches by Diego Giacometti

Touristy, yes, but obligatory nonetheless: a boat ride along the Seine on one of the Bateaux-Mouches at night when Notre Dame and other buildings are illuminated

A trek out to Père-Lachaise Cemetery to ponder what has been deposited lately on the graves of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, and to pay homage to Chopin, Isadora Duncan, Richard Wright, the Communards, and others

Mint tea at the Mosquée de Paris

The fish-eye view of the Seine from Square du Vert-Galant

The Musée Rodin for its incredible collection, sculpture gardens, and Rilke connections

Sainte Chapelle, particularly for its upper chapel's virtual walls of 13th-century stained glass---the largest such surface in the world---with its incomparable winey reds and cobalt blues (photo at right)

Rue de la Seine for its art galleries, Cosi (yes, the original one, which is nothing like its siblings) for lunch, Fish for dinner, and other assorted charms

The Musée de Cluny for its medieval architecture and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries

A concert at the small, squat Romanesque church of Saint-Julien le Pauvre

The stark, evocative Mémorial des Martyrs Français de la Déportation de 1945 at the far end of the Ile de la Cité

The Musée d'Orsay for its train-station setting, enormous clock, and collection of masterpieces by the Impressionists, Fauves, and others

Berthillon ice cream, ideally taken from its flagship store on the Ile St.-Louis and eaten al fresco 

Wandering and shopping on the tiny Ile St.-Louis, particularly at dusk

Dinner at 404, 69 rue des Gravilliers in the 3eme, for its sumptuous tagines, exotic Moroccan decor, and hip Arabic grooves

The Arènes de Lutéce, an often-overlooked Roman amphitheater that now hosts the soccer games of kids from the surrounding neighborhood

The symmetry and calm of the Place des Vosges, followed by meandering in the Marais

The Cathédrale de Notre-Dame from its many angles and in as many lights and moods as possible