All in Food

First day in Namibia

Friday was a very, very, very long day. Landed in São Paulo at 10 am and our next connection was at 11:30 pm for our overnight to Jo'burg. I had booked us a day room at the Wyndham Tryp hotel which is in the secured in-transit area of the terminal so that we could get some sleep and have a base for the 14 hour layover without going into the public area of the terminal and so avoid having to deal with passport control and security. Good idea on paper but 14 hours marking time is very slow in reality. Slept for a couple of hours and found that the best way of getting through the day was to concentrate on not looking at my watch until at least a half hour had passed since my last look, a game with a remarkably low engagement factor. I was reminded of a movie made 5 or 6 years ago concerning someone who, for unremembered reasons, lost papers?, could not leave the transit area. Couldn't go back and couldn't go forward, had no accommodation so slept on benches, and simply waited. Don't know who wrote the script but it should have been Beckett. I empathized.

Arrived in Jo'burg in the early afternoon on Saturday, slept for a few hours, took the train into the city and had a really good dinner at The Butcher Shop grill, we both had very rare steaks, lots of fresh vegetables and a gallon or so of a wonderful South African cabernet, the single best prescription for re-kindling the ashes.

Paris 2

Dinner party was a great success. Food was very good, and as the cook I am allowed to say that, the wines were excellent and the guests were charming and witty, in English and in French. As the evening advanced and the level in the wine bottles lowered, we were given some hilarious lessons in idiomatic French, many of which cannot be used in polite company. Birthday cake was excellent and we sang Happy Birthday in both official languages. Party ended late in the evening ....

Paris 1

Weather has finally broken. Distinctly chillier, wind picking up and skies overcast for the first time since we arrived. Rain forecast for tomorrow but we have had a very good run so can't complain about our change of fortune.

Yesterday we were up early for a run out to Clingancourt, the very large Paris flea market in the northern suburbs. Since we had a dinner party planned for the evening and needed to get back in time to shop, prepare the apt for guests and organize the meal, we decided to arrive at the market an hour later than the official opening time of 8 am. Jane, V and I took the subway out and arrived shortly after 9 to find that most of the vendors did not feel the same urgency....

Posadas - Day 5

We were due to take a boat across the river to a deep, narrow bay on the Argentine side of the river near Paraguay, which is a quiet backwater about 25 metres wide, and whose banks are lined with trees full of assorted birds and monkeys. The wind had really picked up overnight and was blowing with enough force to turn the river into a welter of large breaking waves; it was not practical to take the boat across 10 or 15k of open water in the teeth of the wind and with large breaking waves so our trip was postponed until the afternoon, weather permitting....

Buenos Aires - Day 2

Hugh had arranged for a car, driver and guide to spend Saturday morning with us to give us a sense of the city. Useful exercise, particularly with as fluent and as knowledgeable guide as Maryanna was. Got a good sense of the city and am beginning to create a mental map, a sense of where things are in relation to each other.

The afternoon was spent walking and in anticipation of our coming dinner. We had made a reservation at a "closed-door restaurant" described in an article here: "The secret to accessing some of the most memorable meals to be had in Buenos Aires is a bit of insider knowledge and a reservation. Puertas cerradas, or closed-door restaurants, are where some of the city's best chefs are at work, often in the comfort of their own homes, creating mouthwatering, multi-course meals. Lately, more and more of these closed-door restaurants have been popping up, leading to a new variety of cuisines and dining styles, and they're quickly becoming the most sought-after tables in town."...

Buenos Aires - Day 1

Arrived on Friday morning after a relatively easy 10 hour flight. Have reached the conclusion that if you have to fly, and as exciting as I still find it after many years, it's getting to be a real PIA, the ideal flight crosses only 1 or 2 time zones, is an overnight flight, there are lie-flat beds available and is about 10 hours long. Using that yardstick the Houston-BA flight was ideal. Departed at 9PM had a large glass of red wine after take-off, refused dinner, laid my bed down flat, sleepmask on and a sleeping pill ingested I slept for a solid 7 hours. Awoke to a hot breakfast and shortly afterwards landed with virtually no jetlag since we crossed only 2 time zones. Met Hugh of McDermott's Argentina at the airport and spent a pleasant couple of hours driving to our hotel, having lunch and comparing adventures. Hugh is a widely-experienced young guy whose adventures have led him from a childhood in Dorset, to horse rearing on the Masi Mara in Kenya, to riding his horse Pancho across the Andes and riding from the northern top of Argentina to the southern bottom end....

Paris - Days Five and Six

After yesterday's very pleasant weather, our day began more in the Provence mode than we would have liked, with grey skies and a steady cold rain.Not much fun slogging through the rain to look at sights so decided that today we would visit Le Bon Marché, our favourite department store in Paris and pick up any bits and pieces that we still needed to fill in the shopping gaps. It's a wonderful 19'th century building, straddling the 6'th and 7'th on the left side of the river, with a fabulous food hall and wine cellar. Took the Métro and arrived at about 11:00 and very surprised at how quiet and un-busy it was. First stop the food section and picked up some long pepper, a hard to find type of type of dried pepper that looks like a small black dry catkin, and which tastes like black pepper but with floral notes that span a much wider and richer taste spectrum than ordinary black pepper as well as a bottle of sel de citron which looks and smells wonderfully lemony and which will work very well sprinkled on asparagus or grilled fish. V loaded up on freshly baked Madelines....