Travel

View from the roof of the Bundestag / Reichstag of a conference room at the top of the Jakob Kaiser Haus.

The metallic arched dome in the back is the top of Frank Gehry’s DZ Bank building on Pariser Platz.

We had lunch here yesterday, on the old Route 66. It was the last day for these owners (after 30 years), having sold the place. We got some (actually rather tasteful) Route 66 t-shirts for $10 each, and she threw in some Peek’s trucker hats. Be very afraid…

More photos.

Sauvie Island is pretty.

On vacation (barely). The conference is a lot of time and mental work. The food here is excellent. Favorite restaurants so far:

Carafe – more elegant setting for Florent-like food. We’ve eaten lunch there every day so far.

Veritable Quandary – great bar menu, had scallops wrapped in bacon on top of corn (me) and grilled pizza with heirloom tomatoes (James) for dinner the first night. We had great wild salmon there last night for dinner.

Park Kitchen – sort of like Savoy’s food. Fresh ingredients, brilliant execution. We had a chilled cucumber and almond soup with bits of house-cured salmon on top. It was one of the best soups I have ever eaten.

The raw ingredients chefs have to work here are excellent: heirloom tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, mushrooms, lamb, etc.

Great wines we’ve had: Jezebel white (a blend of Pinot Gris and others), Pinot Noir from Argyle, Belles Soeurs and Brick House, late harvest Gewurtztraminer (dessert wine) from Andrew Rich.

I have made some minor edits to my Mexico City posts, to add names of places and artists that I hadn’t taken the time to figure out while we were there.

James has added captions to the photo gallery for the trip.

In the taxi on our way home from the airport on Wednesday night, James turned to me and said, “I guess we’re not on the no-fly list!”

I apologize for not being more interesting or analytical in my posts. I think I did a better job when we were in Germany. Several things were going on: We were both sick with cold/sinus things in Mexico City, and the 8,000 feet elevation and smog didn’t help. The other was the exhaustion caused by sensory overload. There is so much to see, hear, smell, and taste in a place like Mexico City. That’s a good thing, but it meant I felt too worn out to write well after returning to the hotel each night.

On our last day we explored more of the downtown area. We went to the Palacio Nacional (National Palace), on the Zócalo, to see the great murals of Diego Rivera, the rooms where Benito Juarez lived, and the parliament room (I think that’s the right name). There are some images of the Rivera murals here. Oops, I just realized I never talked about the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts). It is filled with great murals by Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco. It has halls for performances, like Lincoln Center, but it is amazing to see that the murals are all very left wing, with images of Marx, and attacks on capitalists. I think Lincoln Center could use a few of those.

We also saw the Cathedral (including women selling “relics”, bits of a saint’s skulll from a table set up inside, and the Templo Mayor. In the same area, and definitely worth a visit, is the Plaza Santo Domingo, surrounded by very old buildings. It is also the location of an arcade with “scribes”, all equipped with typewriters to help people compose letters, or fill out official forms. I was surprised to see they were all (except one) using electric ones now. The last time I had read an article on the area, they talked about old manual ones.

We had a great lunch at Casa de las Sirenas, Guatemala 61, just behind the Cathedral. It is in 17th century building. James has some photos of it.