We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Mrs. BD found, in a box of stuff in the basement, my great grandmother's journal of her trip to Egypt in 1908. 1908 handwriting is a little difficult to decipher. Elegant, but faded.
In the good old days, people journaled their travels. As I read it, they were in Paris, Munich, Italy (Stresa and Rome), Athens, Jerusalem, and Egypt. The Grand Tour with their kids.
Amused me that they stayed in the same hotel in Stresa (Grand Hotel Borromeo) that we did a few years ago. Our lad met us there from the train up from Rome. I recall we brought him one or two big jars of peanut butter, which he could not find in stores during his job in Italy. Then we all had some fun on hikes and trains. It did not all go well, but that's adventure.
Another cool thing with this find is that we are headed to Egypt in January, so it's timely.
Advice: one kipper is plenty for breakfast. They are huge.
Oh - I notice on their site that they have shortened the hikes. That might be better for some people. Remember, European hiking has different difficulty standards.
Pic is a crowded Cape Cod beach - the bay, at Wellfleet. Duck Harbor. You can walk it for hours, if you bring enough water. Can take dogs there, off leash of course. Do dogs love that? Guess. At low tide, it is dog heaven.
Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook. His Kale Soup and Haddock Almondine, along with all the rest of his Portuguese-influenced recipes - are immortal, but his Baked Stuffed Cod is the best. The whole Cape area has lots of Portuguese descended from the visiting Cod fishermen (Emeril, from Fall River, is one.) Interesting fellow, Mitcham. Highly productive in his life; rarely, if ever, sober from what I heard. Dead now, at 77.
I have a few other out of print Cape Cod area history books that I won't link because even Abe's doesn't have them.
Pic is JFK in a snowstorm last week. Managed to get out after an extensive de-icing of the airplane.Got lucky - the plane had managed to arrive the night before in a sleet storm.
I always forget something, so I have a travel checklist to run through.
Obviously one does not need everything for every trip - it depends on what your plans are - but I print it out, circle what I'll need for a given trip, then check them off when they're thrown in the bag. Perhaps it seems obsessive, but it is annoying to arrive somewhere and to find that you forgot to pack any socks. On my last trip, forgot to pack a t-shirt for snorkeling, had to buy one for $25. Mrs. BD does her packing her own way, and always brings too much stuff. That's what females do.
I travel too light, she travels too heavy.
My travel checklist below the fold. Obviously you just bring what you need for a given trip. Let me know what I have left out, and I will add items.
What has occurred in the last week, for me, has been significantly bad. Nothing measured or caught for medical worseness - just that radiation on your brain for 6 weeks slowly causes growth in skull brain reduction in the region after about 4-5 weeks as language and memory slows due to expansions of brain from this. Over time, this will reduce. It ended all yesterday and I headed down to FL to live with my in-laws who were very grateful to offer themselves to me. They are in their late 87s and in wonderful shape than my own parents - and they have been AMAZINGLY HELPFUL helping me with my word members and working through when I hit memory or language slowdowns. As an FYI, over 32 years of married to their daughter, I have gained a great deal of love and support for these people, even as both my parents and one stepmother remain alive, they are simply not capable of keeping up with me at all the way my in-laws have. I owe them great love and support for their effort and support.
Aha, well let's set aside the medical stuff for now. Still lots coming up - but we'll learn on Wed/Th what's about to start. MEANTIME - what else is going on?
Well, a trip to Sandals in Bahamas (Exuma) is set for early May. My in-laws have taken us on multiple wonderful trips in the past. 2 sailing ships in the Caribbean in 2019 and 2020. Covid delayed one year but back to Barbados in 2022 and Curacao in 2023, both Sandals locations. Beautiful and great fun with family.
Mrs. Bulldog and I traveled, taking the boys to Montana, Yellowstone and Jackson in late 2020. We took up Portugal in March 2023. We also did a wedding in New Orleans in 2021, another in South Carolina in 2023. We like to travel to Stuart FL where the in-laws live. Lovely area, but full of resting and beaches regardless of seasonal. I no longer golf with my 87 year old in-law father but he goes every day - and good for him! I enjoy the visit to the beach, walking and we stopped down at the old National Naval UDT SEAL museum in Fort Lucie. Several other museums, but local restaurants or bars are full of great foods. Sadly the bars for me, now, just full of blandness which is fine. Foods have been overwhelmingly tasteful. I'll take the gains where I can.
Music! Seeing Neil Young in early May, then the Rolling Stones and then Madness. I've always loved Madness, who I saw while I studied and lived in London of 1983! Elvis Costello even showed up and played with them that show I attended and I have fond memories of them as a young band with an Elvis Costello show up! Always a pleasure!
Paris is on the list of "well - when you can travel, what is the timing or plan?" We will figure for later in the summer if we can pull it off. I've been to Paris many times in my youth (formerly knew a bit of the language, now not so much). But Mrs. Bulldog has never been so time to GAIN more. Also looking forward to some side trips. Maybe Mont Saint Michel. I'm hoping for a visit to the Bayeux (learn about William the Bastard) and Normandy (WWII always a pleasure for historical visits).
So lots of planning about to start BUT we need 6 weeks and will fill you all in as we learn more with the immediate medical and radiation about to start!
If you have suggestions for local trips/travel or HIKING (always a pleasure and will reach out to Bird Dog soon for the first one!), just share ideas. Always open to a hike of some nature! We are North/Central Jersey but other travels or bike rides are open for an option!
Since we got home from our trip to the Veneto in October, many have teased us about even expecting decent food in the scenic Venetian tourist trap. I guess we're naive, but we really did not know that in advance even tho I'd been there decades ago. Price was not the issue.
What's the Venetian classic? Pork liver. Excellent in NYC with a crispy crust and a balsamic dressing but in Venice it was dog food, inedible. And how could seafood lasagna be bad? They figured that out. Sure, they had spaghetti with red sauce for the Asian tourists but I won't touch that crap anywhere.
This was our best meal, below, on Piazza San Marco. Beer, pretzels, and chips for me, a giant pistachio gelato with whipped cream on top for Mrs. Given the location, I think it was $60. OK, Euros, whatever. 60 liras would have been fine but they got rid of the lira a while ago.
Call it lunch...they did have a nice band like all the cafes on the piazza.
My pic is early morning. I am an early (often too early) riser:
"We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a hearse than any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola. And this was the storied gondola of Venice!--the fairy boat in which the princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moonlit canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier!--the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said: "Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water. It is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted forever as to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this system of destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse, under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but here I register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another yelp, and overboard you go.""
One of Antonio Vivaldi's long-term gigs was to teach violin to orphan girls at the Ospedale della Pietà . That 18th C. building is now the Hotel Metropole. Quite a pleasant hotel, old-fashioned and Venetian-style, of course.
Lots of famous people have stayed there, including Freud. It's a ten-minute walk along the docks to Piazza San Marco.
Immediately next-door is the church where Vivaldi was the music boss - the Chiesa Santa Maria della Pieta. Convenient for Vivaldi. Their string + harpsichord group has baroque concerts every night, always sold out. Of course we went. Four Seasons and other things. Kinda wonderful. Vivaldi was known as a brilliant improviser too. Easy to believe.
That's his Chiesa, and Hotel Metropole immediately on the right:
A bunch of fun Venice and Veneto photos below the fold -
I was about 55 years old the first time I went to Disneyworld. I'd been to Florida and Orlando several times before, but never any of the theme parks. I'd been to Disneyland with my boys while I was in my late 30s. The comparison between California and Florida is stark. Not that Disneyland is bad, if you're into theme parks and Disney in particular. Orlando just offers so much more.
I'm not writing about Disney, though. What I found really intriguing was, when I visited Disneyworld, I was surprised to see how well it has adapted through the years (Disneyland still has work to do to catch up). I realized, upon visiting Epcot, what Disney's original goal was. At a time when long distance travel was rare, and still a luxury, he sought to bring foreign lands and foreign experiences to the United States. As authentic an experience as possible, whether from abroad or from entertainment. Disney hired locals from the regions represented in Epcot, and they continue to do so. In fact, when I was in Britain I met a former pub owner who was one of the first Disney had brought over to run the "authentic" English pub in Epcot. My Italian dinner in Epcot was served by a native of Tuscany.
Saw an ad for one of those Orlando places in the gym this morning with that tag line. Of course, those Orlando places are about fantasy.
My pic is the Grand Canal from a crowded Rialto Bridge a week or so ago on a rainy day. Lots of real work boats, delivery boats, some police boats, the occasional ambulance boat, etc. (Venice has no cars, trucks, or bicycles.) Being the jerk that I am, I repeatedly refused Mrs. BD's desire for a gondola trip except for one quick traverse for 1 Euro to bypass the bridge.
Tourism is basically what Venice is about. Without it, it would be a dead zone.
(One cool thing about the water taxis: Hotels have little docks on canals. On our morning of departure, the concierge got us one to take us to the airport. Yes, right to the airport dock. Luggage off boat, step on escalator and you're in the airport.)
Scenic Venice? You betcha. Food in Venice? Fugettabout it. As someone close to me who knows Italy well commented, "Great food in Venice? No chance." I even tried the Venetian classic, Pork Liver (this was made with suckling pork liver - sheesh) with onions. Barely edible: It's far better in our favorite place in NYC. Mrs. BD tried a seafood lasagna, and was not charmed by it. I tried one pasta - crabmeat. Just not good. OK, the fancy places can do a nice filet of fish.
The Asian tourists (lots of them there) seem to go for spaghetti, but I don't recommend that.
Yeah, we tried very high end, regular tourist, and local dinners (7 or 8 pm, of course). Our fancy old and interesting hotel had lavish breakfast spreads with all cheeses, scrambled eggs and bacon, tons of pastries, cakes, and salumi. I'm just not a breakfast person unless you mean a double espresso from the workingman's joint at 5 AM, watching all the boats come and go and maybe sneaking a cigarette.
I prefer NYC pizza (and maybe New Haven pizza) to Italian, so ignored it. We tried quick daytime breaks for cicchetti and, for me, beer or a spritz (Aperol is the main spritz). Beer was good. Interestingly, I could get not Bud Light. Just kidding - places only have one local beer so you only ask for the size you need. Do not go for a Grande - it's like a pitcher.
Cicchetti are little snacks presented on fried polenta, toast, or bread. They could be like bruschetti, and pretty uninteresting, but with stewed octopus or creamed baccala are ok. Pickled sardines, some pancetta. A little fried baccala makes me happy enough.
In my view, the best Italian food is in Siena. Wonderful and surprising, even in the little trattorias. Doubt I'll be back there again, though.
I'll post some pics from Venice and the Veneto over the next week, where Mrs. BD and I have been for 10 days. I think of Venice as a Disney-type place because it feels unreal, almost designed for tourism. Crowds all day and most of the night. Most lovely at night, hiking through the darkish alleys until you come across a campo with cafes and some trees, and kids playing soccer in the dark until their Moms call them for supper at 8.
Venice itself has only a 50,000 population, but 4.5 million tourists/year. Here's Piazza San Marco last week. Interesting point: that bell tower, the Campanile, was build in 1912. Yes, 1912, as a replacement for previous towers. Venice has tons of towers, most of them leaning because it's all built on a swamp. Most of Venice is 16th and 17th C - it was indeed a Magic Kingdom (but a very wealthy Republic with its own Mediterranean empire) for over 500 years.
Easy, moderate, and difficult. We stuck with Moderate mostly. The moderates generally have no more than 4-500' ups and downs. 100s of miles of interlocking trails, fairly well-marked but not always so you need the trail maps. April seems like the best time, when all of the high desert (above 4000') plants are in bloom and the high mid-day temps are in the mid 70s.
Hiking poles and grippy boots are handy. Around that altitude, oxygen is not what it is at sea level (around 17%).
Sedimentary formations, red sandstone and limestone. Animals? Mule Deer and Collared Peccary. One rattler crossed the trail. Birds? That's another topic.
Posting a few pics. Only from the easy parts, because they are the only places I could safely grab my iphone while trying to keep up with our pals. We stayed at a very comfortable resort-type-thing.
Website now turns my vertical pics into horizontal. Annoying. From our deck - that's a seasonally dry stream with cottonwoods in the foreground. See my moon shot?
I've read enough about hiking pacing. Whatever people or experts say, it depends on your fitness, your weight, your natural pacing, somewhat (but hopefully not too much on age) - and the terrain. Especially the altitude change and the amount of rocky or bouldery trail.
The thing people estimate is 2-3 miles/hour, but it depends on terrain. An hour of 5-600-foot altitude change slows you down, especially with rocky trails. Also, on how much you want to look at birds, take in the landscape, or take a photo.
Since Mrs. BD and I are no longer 20 years old, we always use hiking boots and carry hiking poles. Don't always need the latter, but when needed they are good to have for the tricky, rocky, clambering, steep, slippery parts. Sometimes only for balance, but I grew up with a walking stick broken from the woods. Feels natural to me.
Our hiking pals in Arizona last week are speed demons, no matter how steep or rocky. We can't keep up. We catch up with them waiting happily for us in the shade of a lone juniper drinking water and having a granola bar, but impatient to keep climbing.
Over years as amateurs we have learned a few things about day hiking: Skip breakfast except for coffee, because food saps your energy. Drink water before you want it. Do not stop and rest for long. Keep a rhythm. Keep your eyes on the rocks and roots on the ground, and you'd hate to step on a rattlesnake. Mentally grind it out when needed because you always have miles left in ya even if you feel like you don't. 6-7 miles of rocky hill hiking is plenty for me for a 6 AM morning hike.
Then a 20-minute nap. Plenty of time later in the day for a less strenuous expedition.
I'm not a big fan of visiting Rome, but I've been there a few times and have walked all around and seen all the required sights. Got stuck there one time too (long story). Did enjoy this book: Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome.
One cool thing about Rome is that you can hop on a quick train south to Ostia Antica which is the most intact ancient Roman city. Far more preserved than Pompeii, which is all rubble except for a few ancient street food vendors and the porn pictures in the ancient whorehouses.
One thing Pompeii and Ostia have in common is that they were both seaports. Ostia (now Ostia Antica - Ostia is nearby, a beach town) was the Port of Rome in olden times, now silted up as is Pompeii.
Ostia Antica is huge - can't see it all in one day but a few hours with a nice lunch and beer in their cafeteria is enough to get the gist of it. Except for our technology, their lives were not too different from ours. Heck, they even had apartment buildings. We live in a Roman civilization.
Western medieval times were a crazy step "backwards" in civilization. A degeneracy, you could say, or a throwback. That's why those medieval times capture the imagination. I guess Hadrian's Wall, and Regensberg, were Rome's high water marks before the barbarians took over again. Ancient Rome is familiar, kinda boring to me. Medieval Europe is weird.
At the end of October, we spent two nights in Avignon before heading up to the Luberon for our hiking. It's about an hour or more north of Marseilles.
The old town is comfortable, easily walkable. We went to the two necessary sights - the medieval Pont D'Avignon (half of it remains) and the Papal Palace - sheesh, what crazy papal conflicts went on in the 14th C. Not much to see, just an old town to hang out in and tramp around in and to get lost in. Tracked 21,000 easy steps in the day when we checked. Have a beer in a cafe and watch the people. I've seen enuf cool castles, cathedrals, and palaces in my life.
Nice boutiques according to Mrs. BD, but no big name brands. Yes, she bought a couple of unique things. I have been trained to stay outside a shop, blending into the woodwork and maybe sneaking a cigarettelike a real European. Yeah, I had to buy a linen polo shirt for myself because the weather prediction said cooler than it all turned out to be.
Like so many famous medieval old towns in France and Italy, outside the walls are modern suburbs with big box stores, mass housing, auto repair shops and car dealerships, Burger King, and all of the things non-tourists want and need. The Old Towns are mostly for tourists and students. Avignon has been a destination for Brits for centuries and has some very Brit shops and cafes.
View from the Pont D'Avignon over the Rhone. They have a nice clean bathroom at the entrance to the bridge. Without the ancient song, who would have known or cared about that bridge?
I took a few pics of our Luberon trails and routes, but not many of the challenging trails. Too busy clambering over stoney trails. Various routes wind down dirt roads, some through little paths, some past farmhouses, vineyards and olive groves. As I mentioned, the hardest part is following directions and trail marks.
The Brit hiking company (The Carter Company) that organized our trip gave us hiking guides (no maps). They also left off huge picnics each morning for us to carry, and transported our luggage from hotel to hotel. How long were the hikes? 5-6 hours.
As usual with hiking, it's mostly uphill but this bit was just easy and pleasant. Olive grove on the right, woodlands on the left::
I didn't mention that our hiking trip in Provence was mainly in Le Luberon National Park. Lots of villages in the area. Best times to go are May or October - no heat, few tourists, and off-season prices. Plenty of gnarly mountains which can be considered foothiils of the Alps to the east.
Mrs. BD's favorite village was Lourmarin. It's surrounded by villas and farms. Expensive to buy there. I doubt Lourmarin is crowded in peak season because there are few places to stay unless you rent a villa.
My topic for this post is routine shopping in a village. In Lourmarin, market day is Friday. All of the producers and farmers and clothing-sellers assemble in a different village each day. No supermarkets anywhere near. Clothing, fish, meat - everything. The marketplace is filled with people and dogs, and by 4 pm it's disassembled from the village square and moved on.
For starters, the only daily food store in Lourmarin is the place below. True, they do make a lot of those great 4" deep kiches each morning but they are sold by 9 am. I think people drive once in a while to regular supermarkets in the suburbs of Aix or Avignon for supplies in the way we drive to Costco.
Some of my Friday marketplace pics are below the fold -
Plenty of pics etc. of the Friday market below the fold -
She wanted - no, needed - to visit the active monastery of Senanque - with better photos than I can do. Cistertians - they will not speak and otherwise live by Benedictine rules. Nowadays, the monks raise lavender and make honey. Oh yeah, also, they have a gift shop and charge for admission. The core of the abbey was built in the 1100s.
Their lavender fields had already been harvested. Besides olives and grapes, lavender is a big deal in Provence. There is even lavender ice cream.
Since it was a hiking trip, we had to go the long way over the Petit Massif, up to the wild west-looking plateau, and down to another valley. Then back to our place over the mountain again. 6 hour hike, spre quads for sure. The hiking paths were rated as "mostly gentle", but it's a Brit company. In the US, they would be rated moderate at least. Mostly stoney paths, easy to get lost, and every one uphill. Will post hiking pics later.
Here's their cloister. Lucky John D. Rockefeller didn't buy it and ship it to NYC:
Mrs. BD found, in a box of stuff in the basement, my great grandmother's journal of her trip to Egypt in 1908. 1908 handwriting is a little difficult to decipher. Elegant, but faded.
I've read enough about hiking pacing. Whatever people or experts say, it depends on your fitness, your weight, your natural pacing, somewhat (but hopefully not too much on age) - and the terrain. Especially the altitude change and the amount of rocky or bouldery trail. 
