London digs

Late Thursday night after the typically surreal Eurostar train-chunnel trip from Brussels to King's Cross-St Pancras, and a semi muggy bus ride over to Notting Hill Gate, I checked in to my digs for the next 10 days, a quirky residence hotelish outfit called Vincent House, located in quite a nice neighborhood near the corner of Kensington Gardens.

I say quirky because it's neither hotel nor apartment house: I gather from the exhibit in the Art Deco / Arte Moderneish lobby it is an institution that dates from the 1930s when it started as a residence hotel for women, and then went through various crises but never closed down completely. It was saved from speculators in the 1970s and still maintains a lot of connections with foreign scholars and student workers, many of the ones I have met being from Brazil. The rooms are "simply furnished," that is to say semi spartan by hotel standards, with an edge of down-at-the-heel gentility that is still on this side of charming.

I have remodeled slightly, moving the desk to the other side of the room (so that it is next to and not across from the only outlet in the room), and I guess because this was lived in, once upon a time, there/s a lot of closet and storage space, all made "simply" out of wood. Kind of endearing.

Though the wifi connection is too spotty to use in the room, I could have just gone down to the lobby, but I elected to bill Uncle Charles for the 10 pounds a week to have an Ethernet connection. There's no TV, which is a blessing in disguise for procrastinators like me, and I face a courtyard rather than the street--though being a block from Notting Hill Gate this corner is surprisingly quiet anyway. There's a terrace to sit in, off the lobby, though occasionally the tables get colonized by smokers.

When I got here the place was ghastly-stuffy, as all of un-air-conditioned London is during a heat wave (temps over the 80s with high humidity), especially since there is next to no cross ventilation thanks to spring-loaded fire doors everywhere.
Luckily I am near the end of a corridor, with a utility stairwell nearby, so I have discreetly propped open one of the double doors (using a folded-cardboard shim) and held my own door open with my trusty red luggage strap. As long as I remember to remove such contrivances each morning I'll be OK, I suppose.

So--the night after a spectacular meal, I had a semi squalid one at the Doner Kebab take-away where Bayswater Road turns into Notting Hill Gate. Rather than bring it back into my room, I ate it rather furtively while sitting on a wall across from a private park in Pembridge Square, feeling a little strange.

I spent a decent night, then took care of some Tour related stuff after a too-sumptuous English Breakfast (I have already toned it down) in the comfortable dining room, where the quiet babble of at least ten different languages mixes with the clink of cutlery and cups on saucers. The coffee is drinkable, and so is the orange juice, so there's nothing to complain about. My room catches a little too much sun, so I have to be careful to close the curtains and not let it warm up.

A memorable dinner in Brussels

The last day in Belgium had been pleasant--we'd gone to an excellent new restaurant called Rouge Tomate, where initially the service threatened to be on the "we're too hip to recognize your existence" side, but ended up probably bumping out a memorable meal to be on my list of top 25 meals of my life. (Clara took most of these photos, by the way.) This place had been started by a former colleague of Christine's at the Commission: years ago she recalls him asking people, "What about 'Rouge Tomate'? I think that's a great name."

Everything about the place was beautifully executed, from the furnishings to the plates. This lavender risotto was amazing, as was my chicken, and Christine's fish, she said with a mixture of admiration and frustration, "was the way you could never make it at home." They're also trying to do the local / sustainable thing, which is a bit ahead of the curve, ironically enough, and most of the time they seem to be on the right side of "precious" food. We were at the end of the sitting, which may have explained the slow start, but it also meant that when the chef came over at around 10:45, we could talk for awhile. He's a young (like, 25) powerhouse who was tickled to learn Julius and I were originally from California--he was from Graton, near Sebastopol, and was on a fast track to success, having worked at Cyrus when he was in high school and at a bigname New York restaurant before joining Rouge Tomate in New York and then coming to Brussels. His description of the precision with which the fish has to be put over the potatoes ("Everything has to be at exactly the right temperature and moisture, and you only have one shot to place it.") made me glad once again that I am not and never will be in the restaurant business.


However, the desserts didn't disappoint either. We split a couple of them, including one of the best chocolate creations I can remember (Clara didn't share much) and Alex the chef sent over a dish of the best ices I can remember tasting--apricot to die for, and mint, just exquisite.

A truly grand evening, which after a rough start even elicited non-teen behavior from the girls--a pleasant surprise. Of course, the next day, the trip to England awaited me, but not before a dozen more Tour-related e-mails and a phone call with more news of car-repair follies.

Mini-vacation in the Walloon Riviera

Just like the roller-coaster that inches up the incline before the dizzying drop, I enjoyed about 30 hours off the electronic leash to go cycling with my brother, a couple of hours' drive south of Brussels in the Ardennes, where a lot of Belgians used to vacation before it became possible to shoot down to the south of France or more exotic locales.

Apologies for the weird formatting with the photos. What you see with Preview sure isn't what appears on my screen once I post. I may or may not try to learn how to do this better, or I may simply get less cute with the photos


We piled two road bikes (the one I would be riding came from a baritone in the Bach group that Julius directs) and a minimal amount of gear into the trusty Toyota minivan, not before a last delay (just as we were leaving, a 'cello student showed up for his lesson, the kind of brain-fart I know well from my own teaching).

Julius was determined to complete a little loop centered around a rails-to-trails segment, though he warned me that the descriptions in the guidebook were truly idiosyncratic and hard to follow. This was definitely accurate, although we had a great time for ourselves, only having to double back a couple of times, and enjoying a long and surreal gentle downhill through dense forest where I popped a tire (luckily we had a spare) and fast finishing cruise back to the car in the midsummer dusk after 50 miles or so. We were both pretty tired, salty and smiling at the end.

Julius then called a B & B he'd read about, there was a room, we drove another 45 minutes, and there we were. Quick shower, late dinner in a nearby town (plenty of water and a couple of excellent wheat beers), and it was bedtime amidst some hilariously kitschy decor. You can't see it, but the wallpaper border is cherub-themed, as is this little holder for the ghastly candy,

But hey: check out the array of house-made jams that awaited us in the morning:

This next day's ride was a simple out-and-back along the Semois river, from the river-side town of Bohan (where the picture of the van was taken) to Bouillon, a historic seat of a medieval king (hence the citadel) and a tourist destination for centuries. Maybe 45 miles total, lots of changes in scenery, and straightforward navigation.

The riding was excellent: mostly good roads, no super-tough climbs, but enough to get you thinking you were rounding into form.

Booming and zooming on these rollers worked up a serious thirst, and we found a nice little cafe on a side street and had a scrambed egg and salad combination that was quite satisfying. Not sure what to make of the label of the local brew, but the result was quite enjoyable.

All in all, a wonderful mini-vacation, setting the stage for a post-Tour bit of cycling in southern France, and clarifying what sorts of tweaks have to be made to the bike (super hard and snicked-up saddle gave me an abrasion, gotta replace old rubber (tires and brake pads), and maybe adjust the derailleur. The guys at the bike store may call it an antique (it's even older than my road bike) but it's got a 531 frame and I installed cushy bar tape so I feel pretty darned good on it.

Our family dinner last night--at a hip new restaurant on the Avenue Louise--will await another post.

Brussels and bicycling

Yesterday after a nice morning nap to get jetlagged old me through the day, I tried out the bike Julius had borrowed from one of his choristers (a guy who's 6'6" and no longer road bikes, so I'm on his 30-year-old frame, even older than my road bike), zipping through the nearby Foret along bike paths and trails (weird on 22mm tires!) and semi-enjoying the video-game-like aspects of quick terrain changes and slightly hairy street crossings. All good, nice destination, a little chateau where they filmed The Music Teacher I believe it was. Then we had a nice dinner out on the terrace until we were chased inside (around 10 PM) by smoke from the neighbors who were on their terrace as well. Ahh, summer in the city.

I slept like a baby on the floor of the 'cello studio downstairs, and awoke pretty refreshed at 6 AM. Having established an effective wifi connection chez Julius, I've done a few dozen more e-mails, and lined up what I hope will be a nice unpretentious group dinner for my Tourers at a local restaurant near my friend Natacha's apartment in Paris.

This morning I played around with my new camera (my old one refused to wake up, and of course the lead time on repairs is 4 to 6 weeks), and figured out how to use the self-timer, among other things. As usual I am blown away by how many cool functions these new cameras pack into a tiny package--reading the manual on the plane I was slightly intimidated at not even knowing the meaning of some of the terms.

Today Julius and I will pack light and head south into the Ardennes for a bit of bicycling and brotherly yakking--I'll try to take a few pictures. I'm feeling a little less nervous about July, though who knows what the next few weeks will bring. I suppose that will be a recurring theme of this blog, that nagging feeling that I have overlooked some detail or another. Meanwhile--south to adventure.

From the plane, second time round

Blog notes, written at 35,000 feet with the screen not quite angled properly--but at least I have an empty seat next to me. I'm determined to write a bit in this thing each day, for better or worse, although when I was prowling around the "real" blogosphere (is there such a thing?) earlier this Spring, I couldn't help wondering when some of these folks found time to have sleep, much less have friends or lives. I sure hope no reader needs or wants a minute-by-minute Twitterthon, 'cause that ain't gonna happen.

Being the Officiant for my friend and chorus-mate Gene's wedding on Friday served as an odd prelude to this adventure, signing the papers with Gene and Sharon up at North Tahoe at the post-wedding brunch and then hustling home to pick up Alex who's spent one night with a friend and another with a cousin--and stopping in Davis (beginning to be boiling hot, finally) to pick up ridiculous amounts of stuff for the Tour. Last year I off-loaded a dozen pounds of tickets and railpasses and gear onto my on-site coordinator Andrew, but this year my coordinator Tiffany had to leave early for a wedding in Chicago, so I found myself this morning at the American Airlines baggage check-in being told to lighten my load or face a $50 charge. Luckily I had finally bought new luggage--a rolling convertible-pack that had a zip-on-daypack that I could just zip off. I guess I could've billed Uncle Charles for it, but the UC has enough troubles of its own, heh heh.

Besides the aftereffects of the wedding duties--the service went well, everyone seemed pleased--I'm feeling a little bleary from only four hours of sleep last night: it wasn't packing so much as some unexpected computer follies: a new breed of "honey-do" list that morphed into transferring thousands of photos from our trusty iMac onto Amelie's newish laptop so she could sort them during Tahoe family time in July, as well as getting round to installing Office on that little machine so she could manipulate her spreadsheets, as well as (most maddeningly) configuring and reconfiguring AppleMail to accommodate both her account and a new subaccount for Alex, in the interest of not only staying in touch with the lad but also giving him incentive to do more keyboarding / writing, which his teacher confirms he truly needs. That said, it felt good to compose a couple of paper letters for Alex to get at music camp later this week--a nice connection with my father, now seventeen years passed, wow, who was always very diligent about writing to us on the not too frequent occasions when he was away.

The mail server problems were just that mixture of frustration and inexplicable partial success that I find absolutely maddening, especially since error messages sometimes appeared and sometimes nothing at all seemed to happen, as the outging messages resolutely stayed in the outbox and the little icon spinning aimlessly away: by the end of an hour, I had rejiggered the settings several times and the damned machine appeared to work, but I still don't know whether the problem was on my end or at ATT's. I'm sure I'll be doing some long-distance tech help with Amelie via Skype, bringing its own brand of stress.

As the language turns from mostly English to the mixture of tongues that always shocks me out of my monoglot stupor (this flight to Brussels has ultra-loud announcements in English and French and Flemish, and there are a bunch of Germans around me), I'm acutely aware of how rusty my French is bound to be, not having done as much of my non-English reading of late. Then again, I laugh at my smattering of Italian, gleaned from my Chistmas-gift language CDs put on my iPod and studied on the train, mostly. Yet here too, another opportunity to simply accept what is, and not beat myself up for not having done more to prepare.

That may be a refrain I'll have to be aware of these coming weeks. So much can go awry, no matter how well one plans and scouts, and the fact that I am only returning to one of the locales that I familiarized myself with last summer--the little family hotel near Chamonix--engenders a strange sense of unfairness, as if I should be able to relax with something familiar a little more this year. Recognizing how fine the line is between success and disaster is also a little unnerving: pawing through a messy drawer while I was looking for the charger to Alex's camera last night, I gulped as I saw the 30-odd tickets for the Globe Theater performance on July 7th: they'd been sent to me way back in January when I ordered them, unlike last year where they were held at the theater until I claimed them. Just how bad would that have been, trying to get them Fed Ex'd or something? And, the little voice asks, is that the same time as the World Cup final? should I have foreseen that possible conflict?


[The fact that these are posted is testimony to my having safely landed, and figured out a wifi connection at my brother's house in a suburb of Brussels.]