Daniele Visit

(View of New York City from New Jersey)

Daniele was able to visit from November 8 to December 5. We spent Thanksgiving together and took a trip out to California.

He flew into JFK. I told him I couldn't get him from that airport so we met in Hoboken Station. It was perfect because we got to have dinner and walk around Hoboken (where I would like to live eventually). The next day we walked around downtown Jersey City (next town over) and the waterfront up to Liberty State Park. We saw how big the park was and decided to save that for another day. Around noon we took the light rail back to Hoboken and walked all over there including the waterfront and parks. Also had some yummy Thai food. I grabbed some open-in-the-winter Rita's before we took the train to western NJ.

The next day we flew out of Philly for San Francisco. We were really early and our flight was four hours delayed because of fog. Eventually we made it out and had great adventures in California.

NJ and NY Pictures from Daniele's visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111108DanieleVisit

New Orleans Part Two

Continuing the trip, Saturday we started off with breakfast at a diner right across from our hotel, Daisy Dukes. The food was typical diner breakfast, but what really made it great was the bottomless bloodymarys. The first one was good, but the next two I didn't enjoy as much. You can only enjoy so much bloodymary. They were thick with horseradish (I guess) and I don't like chewing my drinks. I had to skip this part, but their presentation is very fancy, it comes with a crayfish hanging off the side.

Bottomless bloodymarys

After breakfast we went to ask the hotel concierge about some things to do. My aunt wanted to see St Roch's Cemetery because it has a room of relics. The concierge made it clear this was not in an area we should be going. So we went with our next choice and she called the shuttle for Mardi Gras World.

Mardi Gras World was one of my favorite things we did. They pick you up and bring you back in a shuttle bus because it is out by the Superdome. This company makes 75% of the floats for Mardi Gras and they run tours showing you the history, how it is all made, the culture of the different krews, even give out some king cake. A lot of their stuff they reshape and reuse following years and some things have to be made from scratch. They have about 10 full-time artists that do it all. We saw them Papier-mâché-ing and painting during the tour.

Us dressed up at Mardi Gras World

Our tour guide at Mardi Gras World

Mardi Gras World

On our way back we asked the shuttle guy about dropping us at St Roch's Cemetery. Once again we were told not to go there. Not a “you sure you want to go there? It's not very safe.” a straight forward “you can't go there, unless you want to become a permanent resident.” We were dropped off instead at the River Walk where there is a nice little park and mall. We had a drink in the park and then went in the mall were there is a Food and Beverage museum. We stopped in a tourist center were we met a women named Cher. She set us up with a tour the next night and lots of coupons, and a cab driver she said she trusts to bring her daughter around that we could ask to bring us to St Roch.

Southern Food & Beverage Museum

Our very first night at the free concert we were given a flier for a parade, so we wanted to be sure to catch it. Plus our Mardi Gras shuttle driver assured us it was a nice area (and he was right) and how to best get there. From the River Walk it was easy to take the street car to Esplanade Ave. I found a restaurant called Three Muses with live Jazz music on Frenchman St, along the parade route. So we enjoyed a delicious dinner until the parade came by. Then ran out to watch it. Then ducked back in for dessert and the next set. It was a beautiful night and this was a really cool area. So we walked around a little bit, figuring we would wander back to the street car. But before we knew it we had walked half way home, so we did the second half too. We stopped at a cool Halloween themed bar along the way and chatted with the bartender. He had this camera hack I want to try where you use a screw to run a string from your camera's tripod mount to the ground, then use tension with your foot to keep it steady. A bit later we walked by Houses of Blues, which looked cool and wondered to the back “Voodoo Garden”. We ordered drinks and when we tried to pay were told it was an open bar for the private party. As we were explaining we were strangers, who had just wondered in from the street, and the bartender was unsure what to do, a man on the other side of the bar said it was no problem, he would cover our drinks. Turns out we had crashed some sort of Warner Brothers Records party. Oops!

From the Parade

Sunday.

Sunday was our big day to see St Roch's Cemetery. We had breakfast at the hotel to be sure we were ready on time. Or recommended cabbie and protector, Irvin met us at our hotel and we took off. He first brought us by the lower 9th, the area hit the worse by Katrina. You can clearly see here how the ground is below sea level. Everything in this area was destroyed. The only remains of original houses are ruins. Thousands of people died. We saw the houses Brad Pitt built for his “Make it Right”. They are all on stilts, using all the top energy efficiency technologies, so they will be more affordable to maintain. Brad Pitt did all of that right out of his pocket. What used to be a full neighborhood, now the only standing houses he built. He came down right after the storm, like many other people did, but when he heard that the government had no plan to do anything for these people he just did it himself.

Some of the Make it Right houses built by Brad Pit

What was once a house

After that we headed to St. Roch's Cemetery. This cemetery was similar in style to St Louis Cemetery. Irvin said the gravel topped graves were ones that still had vacancies, the ones with a cement top were at full capacity. My mom actually picked some bones off one more turned up looking grave, but we were pretty sure they were animal bones. A few of the graves showed damage / displacement from the flooding that had still not been repaired. Unfortunately the church with the relic room was closed for renovations, but we could at least peak through the window.

St. Rochs Cemetery

My mother, the grave digger

The relics we could see of St. Roch's Cemetery

Irvin dropped us off back by the French Market. It was like any street market with all kinds of vendors selling souvenirs to jewelry to t-shirts. I bought a wax seal from an actual french guy (living here 10 years) who had a nice both with all kinds of paper goods. We worked our way through the market then to Johnny's Po Boy which was fine but did not live up to the hype everyone had given it, possibly because of the crowds in the center for the game that day.

Our cabbie and protector, Irvin

In the evening we went to Old Absinth House where we had a round of Nouvelle-Orléans Absinthe Supérieure. That got us ready for the ghost tour we were taking that night. The ghost tour was pretty good, our guide was Eugenia and we stopped at Lafitte's Blacksmith Bar. We had dinner that night at the Gumbo House, it is actually really hard to find places to get dinner later at night.

The Absinthe House Frappe

Monday.

We started off Monday with breakfast at Cafe on the Corner. We were booked to take a plantation tour all day, but we stopped by Whixnits Gallery quick that morning to see an old friend of my aunt's.

We did a tour of two old plantation houses. The first was Laura, a Creole plantation house. All the stories they have are from what they found archaeologically in the structure and from the memoirs of the last owner, Laura. It had a really rich history of being passed through generations in their family. The business was run by the smartest member of the family, male or female. They had strong french connections. Some men in the family went to school in France. One of the women who ran it married a Frenchmen, inherited his land back in France, and made the family even richer by importing wine. They had a large amount of slaves. Louisianan in the plantation era had ^relatively liberal slave laws and the population was 10% white, 80% slave, and another 10% free-people-of-color. Whether a colored child was free or slave depended on his mother, if his mother was free so was the child, if the mother was slave he was property of the mother's owner. Laura's great great grandmother bought herself 30 slave women and five men, and waited, soon they had one of the largest slave registries on the Mississippi. A generation later, her son is now running the plantation, a son she always said didn't beat the slaves enough. One day he buys back a mother and son who were going to be separated after his mother had sold them to keep them together. That woman asks to stay on after all slaves are freed as a paid worker. The next generation is Laura, and she can't stomach anything about plantation life. When her father dies she sells for very little and in the newspaper article about it she describes this colored family as part of her family.

Laura Plantation

Next we went to Oak Alley Plantation. This was the sight of several movies and TV shows including Interview with a Vampire. The plantation was build here to take advantage of two rows of existing Oak trees.

Oak Alley Plantation

One of the last things we did was each get a Gin Ramos Fizz at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. It was recommended to us by a bartender at lafitte's blacksmith shop bar, and I'm glad we did it. One of my most memorable and delicious cocktails.

Gin Ramos Fizz at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel

Tuesday.

Out last day in NOLA was Tuesday. The day before my mom had found an ad for a breakfast place, Red Gravy that had cannoli pancakes and was run by “the little Italian girl from New Jersey” so we had to go there. Asking the server about her it turns out she was actually the chef. Also both the other tables by us were from NJ. We made friends with them and we all, including the chef Roseann, compared notes on where we were from.

Cannoli pancakes

We only had a little time to kill after that, so we got some drinks and had them by the Marriott pool, which was actually a nice way to spend our last hour. Then finally we packed up our final things and met up with Irvin who was driving us to the airport. Since he knew we liked cemeteries, he brought us by one on our way. This was one for all the people who don't have anyone to claim them. Maybe half the tombstones were real, the rest were handmade from cement or anything people had. The graves were squared off with wood or cement or different materials; one had PVC pipe. Many of the graves here seemed fresh. It was such a contrast to the marble mausoleums just down the street. Very strange.

On a much sadder note, we found out that morning that my Aunt Linda's best friend Karen died in the early morning. Years ago she had a stomach bypass and had more or less been on borrowed time ever since. Recently it had become too much for her liver and she was going fast. She was a great engineer, but she never worked after that surgery. She was a really amazing one-of-a-kind person and it's hard to believe she's gone.

The rest of my photos from this trip are in my New Orleans album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111019NewOrleans

New Orleans Part One

This week my mom, Aunt Linda, and I are spending in New Orleans. The three of us have taken a few trips together, but none recently, so we thought we were due.

Wednesday.

We left Wednesday 10/19. It is a three-hour flight, so we didn't get in until the afternoon. We had wanted to stay in a more boutique-y hotel for a more authentic experience. However, thanks to the incompetence of hotels.com we are staying in one of the tall tower hotels. We were worried about it since it had all gone down the night before and we had not had any other choice, but it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. The hotel was nice, naturally, it was a well known chain. Plus we had a really nice view from a corner room high up facing the river. On our way in my mom and aunt noticed that there are liqueur stores on every corner (they are good at noticing that). So once we got settled they grabbed some wine, four loko, and junk food snacks that we enjoyed before venturing out. Our taxi driver from the airport, Eric or 'Big E', had told us that these months there are free concerts in Lafayette Park on Wednesdays at 5 PM. So we headed there first. The concert was fun. The jazz music was good. There were craft venders, too. A charity was selling tickets you could by drinks with and we found a guy who was giving very generous pours. Just before the concert ended we went to dinner at Capdeville very close to there, which worked out great because we only had to wait maybe 10 minutes and just after we were seated the place was packed. We split jalapeno cheddar corn fritters and a bowl of truffle mac and cheese then each got our own grilled cheese and tomato and artichoke soup. Everything was really, really good!

The view from our hotel room

Free concert in Lafayette Park

Thursday.

We passed a breakfast place the evening before (I hadn't looked up any a head of time thinking we had it included). So we went there the next morning. The Red Slipper, named after the Dorothy like feeling of coming home after Katrina.

After we went to the water front to take a ride on the Steamboat Natchez. My great-great-aunt had always wanted to take a river boat ride down the Mississippi, so we did this in memory of her, and toasted her. The boat gave a nice view as we went down the river and they gave a narration of what we were passing. They are the last steam powered boat on the Mississippi, and they let us walk through the engine room and take pictures.

Paddle wheel on the Steamboat Natchez

How a Steam Engine Works

Downtown New Orleans from the Steamboat Natchez

The port is close to Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, so we walked around there after the cruse and saw the church. There were lots of street performers, of all sorts. We stopped in a museum that was an old apartment. It was set up in period furnishings with information on its history. Also a french artist had arranged it and written these strange, colorful stories to go along with the rooms. It's hard to explain and I can't remember the name of it. We were getting hungry then so we went into Central Grocery, an Italian grocery story famous for muffaletta sandwiches. We eventually found ourselves wondering down Royal St. until it seemed we reached the end of the interesting area, then we hoped over a block and walked back on Bourbon St where we stopped in a few places.

St. Louis Cathedral

St. Louis Cathedral

In a museum that is a historical house, set up with period furnishings that tell this strange story written by a French artist

Friday.

Friday morning I ran out and got us breakfast sandwiches and grits from FredRicks Deli. Then we waked down Royal St, which is full of cool shops mostly art and antique stores. We went to the Voo Doo Museum which gave a history of voo doo as well as had altars set up of all sorts of voo doo paraphernalia. People add to the altars as well. After we went to St. Louis 1 Cemetery. This is one of the older and nicer cemeteries in NO. It has what is believed to be the grave of Marie Laveau though no one is sure where she is buried. There was also a large Italian mausoleum where all the early Sicilian immigrants would have been buried.

From the Voo Doo Museum

St. Louis 1 Cemetery - Believed grave of Marie Laveau

In the afternoon we went over to the Garden District. The Garden District is the other side of NO. After the Louisianan Purchase, when Americans started moving into NO, they didn't get along with the French-speaking current residents. So, they built their own town on the other side of NO. This part of town has a very different feel from the French Quarter; less curly iron balconies and more Victorian-looking wood. We had lunch at Parasols, a neat pub were you open a trap door to the bar to give your drink order. http://www.yelp.com/biz/parasols-restaurant-and-bar-new-orleans]. After we took there trolly back and grabbed some dessert at PJs Coffee.

House in the Garden District

The rest of my New Orleans photos are in this album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111019NewOrleans

Hotels.com Rant

My mom booked a hotel for our upcoming New Orleans trip back in August (for October). She used Hotels.com who instantly charged her credit card and even went so far as to send an email saying there is no need to call the hotel, everything is confirmed.

But nothing was confirmed. By chance she calls anyway the night before we are leaving, and the hotel had never heard of us. And they are booked solid. Or course they are, it was a really cool hotel. An converted brewery, that included breakfast and wifi in the rooms, had a salt water pool, was right in the heart of the french quarter, and even greets you with a cocktail when you arrive. She had spent a lot of time researching the perfect hotel, because that part of the experience is important to us.

So what does Hotels.com do? They should make it right after taking her money but not booking the room, right? And letting the place she wanted fill up, while assuring her that they had made the reservation, right? Well, nearly everything in the center is booked, except the slummiest of places. A big chain hotel with a big tower building has free rooms, so they put us up there and cover the supposed higher rate of this hotel. Although this place does not include breakfast, internet, a cocktail, and the location is certainly not any better.

Why is this insufficient? Because we came so close to showing up to N.O. and not having a place to stay due to their mistake. Because we really wanted the cute boutique hotel we spent time choosing and booking months in advance for a more “New Orleans” experience and ended up with the farthest thing from it. Because our original hotel included breakfast and our new one is $15/person/day and Hotels.com refused to cover this extra cost. Because our original hotel included wifi and our new one is $15/day and Hotels.com refused to cover that extra cost as well.

So I will never ever use Hotels.com again and I think if you ever hear anyone mention them you should let them know they make terrible mistakes and then don't make it right.

Palisades Park

My friend Fabienne and I decided to spend a fun day out taking pictures together. We picked Palisades Park since it is a pretty park with views of New York City.

Here are the pictures I took that day:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111015Palisades

LBI

Last week my family took our annual vacation to Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My dad's oldest brother, Bill has a house there and we have gone every summer my entire life. We choose this week because it was right after I came back from Italy, but it worked out well because we love LBI off season. Not all the restaurants and stores are open, especially in the middle of the week, but it is so much more quiet and peaceful. Not to mention you are allowed to being dogs on the beach and go on the bird sanctuary at the end of the island. We spent nine days down there, reading, knitting, taking the sun, and eating way too much of my Uncle Larry's heavy cooking.

(Entrance to the beach)

(Sunset on the bay)

(The bird sanctuary on LBI)

The rest of my pictures from Long Beach Island:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20110918LBI#

Back to the USA

I have finished another 3-month stay in Italy. This was June, July, and August in Rome with Daniele. Rome is feeling more like home than NJ right now, and I'm pretty sad to leave. At least I have enough to do state-side these coming months that I think the time will go fast.

This seems like a good time to share my latest observations of Italian culture, educate, and other miscellaneous things.

(1) In the grocery story you generally have to pay for the plastic bags, thought not much. The bags will either be under the belt before the cashier (potentially free) or you have to ask the cashier. If you have to ask, you have to pay. If the cashier asks you something while ringing you up, it is probably if you want a bag.

(2) Also in the grocery store, customers weigh their own produce. Each type of fruit or vegetable, next to its name (and normally its origin) has a number. In the produce area is a scale, use this number to print a price sticker for your bag of produce. Also note, it is etiquette to use plastic gloves while selecting your produce and discard them after. They are normally by the plastic bags along with a garbage bin.

(3) The post office is always really crowded. That is because the post office in Italy is also a bank. Italians have to come here all the time to pay their bills. For example, If I were the electric company, I would not send a bill to your house, I would bill you through the post office, and you would go there to pay. When you arrive at the post office, you press a button to take a number. The buttons are P for people with actual “Post” business (almost no one), A for people with bank business, and E for people with checking accounts with the post office.

(4) I thought I knew all there was about making pasta already, not that it is the most complicated dish. But I have improved my technique recently with little things that I never thought made a difference before. Boil water in a thin pot (thick is for sauce), covered with a lid. This gets the most heat most efficiently to the water to boil faster. Use a bigger pot for spaghetti, it is barbaric to break the pasta in half. Keep the pasta pot covered after adding the pasta. This is especially important for ravioli type pasta that float and need heat above the water too, don't cover completely so you can see before it boils over. I used to think I was healthier for not salting my pasta water, but now I am used to it salted, I can't eat it unsalted. I worry about who I severed unsalted pasta to all those years. I only add a small amount, but it makes a big difference. You can also cook pasta in sauce. It takes longer, about twice as long, but the pasta has great flavor and is creamier because the starches remain in the dish rather than getting tossed with the water. Just add pasta to sauce over heat, add small amounts of hot water as needed, stir. It's perfect for something like a pasta puttanesca or pasta fagioli.

(5) The correct way to store garlic is to refrigerate it. It is good for a long long time. Eventually, the part in the middle turns green and you don't want to eat that part, but the rest is still good as new. To remove the middle, after pealing, cut in half lengthwise so you have two flat parts with a pointy tip and a part of the base. You should see a line of green from base to point (or not and your good). It flicks out easily with the front round part of a butter knife.

(6) How to pay at gelateria or bar. At most of these places, especially the busy and big ones, you will first go to a cashier, tell then what you want, pay, and get a ticket/recite. You bring that ticket to the counter to get your coffee or ice cream.

On the other hand if you are at a by-the-slice pizzeria you normally go to the counter first. You tell them what you want and how much, they weigh it if they are by-the-kilo and they give you the ticket to bring to the cashier.

Obviously if the place is really small and there is only one person working there and you are one of a few customers you order and pay with just that person.

(7) Slices of pizza are typical for lunch, while personal pies that are considered real meals are for dinner only. Italians will grab a slice of pizza for a quick lunch, but a sit down “round pizza” is only for dinner. In fact a restaurant outside the center normally wont even have the pizza oven going during the day.

(8) Americans more typically put all the food on the table at once. The advantage is that we know everything there is and the chef can sit and enjoy the meal, too. A full meal starts with a soup or salad then has a main course with sides, finishing with desert. A vegetable and starch are normally incorporated. On the other hand the full Italian meal starts with antipasto, then pasta, second/main dish possibly served with a contorno/side dish, then salad, then deserts (possibly also served in courses like nuts, pastries, and digestifs). The biggest difference is each dish is cleared between each course and you never know how much more food is still waiting ready in the kitchen. It's wonderful, but very dangerous.

(9) Parmigiano-Reggiano is made with the summer milk. Grana Padano is the same thing but made with the winter milk when the cows are eating dry grass. Both are D.O.P (AKA P.D.O., D.O.C., C.D.O.) cheeses that can only be made in Italy.

(10) Almost no one in Italy has a drier. Which is great, they ruin your clothing anyway. But what about sheets and towels, right? Daniele passed me some of the wisdom of his ancestors in getting by without a drier. It starts with the spin cycle in the washer. You want get rid of enough moisture that you have a head start, but not so much you have wrinkly cloths. So while they are still damp from the washer we fold, pressing them flat, against the edge of the bathtub. We leave them there a few hours before they get hung up to dry. We have three cloths drying wracks. A small one inside on one of the wall heaters (for winter when it's harder to dry outside), one on the biggest balcony, and one that hangs over the other balcony over our garden. The one that hangs over the garden is where we dry big things like sheets. We just fold them and hang them up. The next day fold them the other way, eventually they dry, it just takes a while. Every bed has two sets of summer and two sets of winter sheets so you can do this. Fun, right? Our clothing gets put outside and we just try to time laundry with the weather so they can have a chance to dry. I've used these racks for years for my cloths (I don't like to put my cloths in the drier even when one is available), but I have been doing it wrong. I always draped each top over a different bar, but you need to use two bars per top. That way it dries folded over in a way that stressed the fabric less. Can't believe I never thought of it!

Well, so long for now Italy. See you after the holidays!