We’re shooting today!
Pietro Place’s intimate, local’s tour of Ashfield, Massachusets was so popular that we’re doing a new edition for Boston! Stay tuned for the insider’s view of this gorgeous city…
Lights! Camera! Boston!
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Category Archives: Blog
Champions League Final 2015 – Berlin
I’ve been to Berlin three times. Once when it was a divided city, and the last two times over the space of 2 or 3 years. This time it was football (aka soccer) that drove me back; my annual visit to the Champions League Final, between the great Barcelona and the black and white of Juventus.
The city had changed again – not just that there were 70,000 people milling around with football jerseys. This place is actually one of the most cutting-edge cities in the world. It’s youthful, there are clubs and restaurants on every corner. New buildings are popping up, especially in the Eastern sector and the bicycle paths are on par with most Danish and Dutch cities. If you’re feeling athletic, check out BikeMap.net for some cool ride suggestions.
So here I am, standing in what’s called the Champions League Village, a hastily erected mockup of the event itself, except the Germans had figured out how to put an AstroTurf soccer pitch underneath the Brandenburg Gate. Yes, the same gate that Napoleon did a victory march through in the 1800s. Man these guys are good. In spite of the vast marauds of Spanish and Italian fans wondering around the city with Heinekens held in their hand – yep Heineken is a sponsor – everything worked perfectly. Transportation didn’t skip a beat. You could grab an Uber when you wanted to. Yeah. And the bars stayed open late. If I could think of a better venue for a champions league event, I would probably have to say Copenhagen or Amsterdam. But in the end I actually think the Germans have it. Berlin is an awesome city that has pretty much everything – except, oh yah, they don’t have a soccer team!
Risi e Bici
Risi e Bici
Out in Western Mass, the pea shoots are just popping out and it’s time for peas in a pod. The season lasts about three weeks and it evokes memories of my childhood sitting on the steps of the caravan, shucking peas so that mum could overcook them for dinner!
There is a delicacy in Italy at this time of year called “Risi e Bic,i” a speciality of the Veneto region but cooked all over Italy. It’s a celebration of the peas (world peas! Peas to the world!) and it is a totally fantastic dish, dead easy to prepare. But you have to follow a slightly alternative road from the risotto.
First the broth – you have to use every part of the pea growing process – the pea shoots, the pea pods, add some fresh early spring garlic and a little onion which will form the broth that make the risotto. Prepare the risotto as you would any risotto: finely chopped onion, coat the rice with olive oil, add a dash of white wine and then begin the process of moving the rice around for about 20 minutes, constantly adding the delicious stock. At about 5 minutes to go throw in the peas, working them around the rice; chop in a few more pea shoots and throw those in and keep adding the stock.
Here’s the difference between a typical risotto and the risi e bici. You want it slightly soupier, when the rice feels good and there’s enough liquid to literally spoon a little bit out, that’s when you chop some fresh early mint, sprinkle that across the dish and finish it with some freshly grated reggiano parmegiano, shouting “Peas on Earth.” for the added effect. I ‘m not saying this is good. It’s beyond good. And it takes 20 minutes, and costs next to nothing. Frozen peas can be substituted but this is the time of the year when you have to use the real deal. It’s easy peasy.
Customer Service
Customer Service
Dear TripCase,
I’ve always been so enthusiastic and eager to share you with others. I even introduced you to my mom. You sit on both my phones and you provide me with boarding passes, up-to-date information on my hotels and flights, and you even alert me when things start to go wrong. But there’s something I must tell you – you’re oversensitive. I mean I don’t really need to know that the flight departure time has shifted by 4 minutes, but hey in an open relationship like this, it’s important that we trust each other. So I get it.
But when things get rocky, the relationship can suffer. You’ve been so erratic recently, notably during the latest strike in France. I know that none of us like changes like this, cancellations, being stood up by the airlines, but it’s important to stay calm. I depend on your accuracy and the other day at Terminal 3 at Charles de Gaulle, you let me down. You had wild mood swings. One moment the plane was leaving at 8:15pm, one moment at midnight then again at 9pm. You were all over the place. And then when you assured me that the flight would be delayed by at least 6 hours with no hope of recovery and I had sat down to enjoy a cup of tea, you went behind my back and cheated on me. The flight was boarding, people were queuing up and I had been left standing at the altar.
Can I trust you?
I’m not sure what happened that day –maybe I don’t really want to know. Maybe you just weren’t yourself, maybe you felt like doing something different. Was it something I said? But you nearly screwed me over badly – and I just wanted you to know that. I hope you’ll think about what you’ve done – and if I seem a little distant lately, now you know why.
Best,
Peter Jones
Next Stop: Berlin!
Stay tuned for a taste of this unmistakeable, unparalleled and unpredictable city! All the “glamour and grit,” as Lonely Planet calls it, coming soon!
Visiting Versailles in a Virtual World
We’ve been struggling lately with the whole notion of communicating art history to students as they walk through museums or historical places. Let’s rewind to the good old days. Upon entering any historical site you were handed a printed walking tour. Then you would wander at your own pace, reading what you need to help get through the art work.
Fast forward, people walk through museums now with headsets or handsets provided by the museum. For the most part technology adjusts and evolves at the right pace so that the people are comfortable with new devices inside these great treasures. The challenge for us as educators is to provide the students with a means to go through these museums without being bogged down inside their smartphone device. They could do that from home.
Our main challenge is to get kids to look up and so we’re experimenting with different ways to have them look down, to look up, to look down, to look up – getting a full experience – and then use technology to enhance that experience, not take away from it.
We’ve tried MP3s, tablets and are now moving through the smartphone vortex. But it’s complicated. The other day I went to Versailles with a new idea. Armed with my tablet I attempted to navigate the museum, take in the extraordinary sites and rooms (including the spectacular Hall of Mirrors) while at the same time trying to answer a time-sensitive quiz. As this was all happening, I was squashed at the front by a tour group and at the back by another tour group, as we all funneled our way through the various rooms that make up the palace.
And you know what I found myself doing? Looking down. I missed some extraordinary paintings as I was desperate to get the questions answered correctly and also to stay in sync with the others doing the quiz. Would I have been better off to just have walked through, keeping my eyes and ears open, taking everything in and then reflecting afterwards? Would it have been helpful to have a guide drone on, not tied to my age-sensitive brain? I think that I’m not sure what the answer is.
For now, my advice is to look up, stay in the moment and let the moment take you like a time machine into another age – simply not possible if you’re looking down.
If you’re planning a trip to Paris – Versailles should not be missed. You can get tickets on their website.
Ipads killed the Newsstand Star
It might be hard to believe, but before the digital newsstand that you click on through venues like the Apple Itunes store, there existed actual physical newsstands. You don’t see them as much now when you’re traveling. In England they’ve practically died out, and in the US, even though I pass one at South Station every day in Boston, they’re more novelty than practicality. Even at airports they are combined with so many other things that it’s sometimes difficult to separate the news from the junk.
So what a wonder it is to wander through Paris, or Rome or Madrid and still see these delightful, wooden mini-houses full of newspapers, magazines, and lottery tickets. Anytime I see one, I buy something from them. I’m fascinated by the people that run these, these hand-me -downs from previous generations when news to spread on Twitter before it had a chance to get into print.
It must be a labor of love. Or is it possible that there is a cadre of like-minded travelers, bent on nostalgia that keep these guys in business? There are those of us still, who like the touch and feel of a newspaper. It’s tangible. It goes well with a cappuccino in a café, sitting under the shadow of the Pantheon in the Piazza de la Rotunda. It’s the simple pleasures. I like to read the news from home, to check the baseball scores, and even though it would be faster on a device, faster isn’t always better. I prefer the navigation in print, the way your eye can dart across the page to different stories – even the layout is part of the news reading experience that an iPad just can’t duplicate.
Eiffel Tower of Problems
Take a perfectly big monument designed by engineers Maurice Koechlin, Emile Nouguier and architect Stephen Sauvestre before the patented design was bought by Gustave Eiffel, whose company than constructed the tower and imagine that there are more and more tourists that want to visit this thing because it is so perfectly placed in the middle of this beautiful city called Paris. It has views for miles – two restaurants (58 Tour Eiffel and Le Jules Verne) and is the most visited paid monument in the world, and certainly the most recognizable. If they could charge people to look at it, they would. They can’t so they do the next most obvious thing, make everyone who’s trying to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, truly hate the experience. Well, the French have done it.
Now you have to book reservations online with a specific time slot. That sounds OK, no problem. Except there are hardly any time slots available! You can only book 3 months out – and at 3 months out, until zero days in, there are precisely zero time slots of available. So with no time slots available, I wonder who they’re going to. You have to resort to standing online for 2-3 hours, if you’re lucky. And this new system, if they have put in place, is called progress or avancé. Well there is absolutely nothing avancé about this ridiculous state of affairs. If you do manage to get tickets it’s 15.5 Euros ($17) for adults, 13.5 Euros ($14.50) for ages 12 – 23, and 11Euros ($12) for ages 4-11 as well as for handicapped and those assisting them.
We’ve written to the people who run the Eiffel tower and they agree with us (which is even more frustrating and simply incredulous). Here we have yet another government agency trying to deter tourism of an iconic site that people have saved up all their lives to see. Right now all I’m looking at is a long line of kids desperate to see the world from way up on high and romance in this marvelous story of Paris, waiting and waiting and waiting. It can’t help but be anti-climactic and frustrating. Guess what, we’ve got one in Vegas – you can’t scale it, but at this rate you can’t scale the one in Paris either. At least in Vegas, the canals of Venice are just a short walk away! So here goes, in case you’re listening.
Dear Gustave,
You’ve no idea what they are doing to your tower. I know you just built it for the World’s Fair and thought it would be torn down. And lots of people at the time said it’s horrid. But it turns out it’s become the most iconic site in the world. More than the pyramids, even. And I know you probably can’t hear this, but if there is any way you could bring sanity to the bureaucracy that prevents us from seeing your beautiful piece of art, than I would appreciate it.
Faithfully yours,
Peter Jones
English Champagne
I used to mock the English for their wine. What kind of person could ever choose a bottle of white wine or sparkling white wine over the iconic French houses of the Loire or Champagne regions? Even the Spanish cava or the Italian Asti Spumante gets higher sparkling ratings than an English equivalent…surely? Well no, it’s not like that anymore.
The Brits have discovered the bubbles and even though it’s taken them over a hundred years to figure this out, they’ve also discovered that the soil in Southern England is pretty similar to the soil in Northern France. And why shouldn’t it be, it’s only 25 miles away! Well better late than never, that’s what I say.
I was in a bar at a posh hotel ordering a dull white wine when the bartender (as he should) rescued me with a suggestion that would forever change me – English champagne. Champagne’s not my favorite drink, but every now and again, why not? I thought what the heck, let’s have a go. He deftly poured a glass out of a bottle labeled Nyetimber. Lumberjacks immediately came to mind. But there is nary a lumberjack in the Nyetimber story.
Cherie Spriggs is the winemaker behind Nyetimber, a perfectionist who in 2012 didn’t bottle a vintage because the grapes were not up to par. She only uses grapes (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) from Nyetimber’s own 152 hectare vineyard in West Sussex. For her crafting the perfect champagne is an obsession – the result was absolutely delicious. And you don’t have to trust my sophomoric palate; Nyetimber has won significant awards for its quality, even beating out its neighbor across the channel. The annual International Wine Challenge – picture those in the know drinking and judging the finest wines that grapes has to offer and picking the best – awarded the 2009 Nyetimber Classic Cuvee the Gold Medal.
Of course they’re not allowed to call it champagne, but champagne is indeed what it is. And frankly it was as good as any champagne, in my limited experience, I have tasted. So hang on to your horses there and remember what Napa Valley did to Burgundy and Bordeaux! Well, the Brits are coming and winning awards and producing some of the finest sparkling white wine in the business.
For now Nyetimber is only available at retailers in the UK or abroad in Japan and Denmark.
Jeans By any other Name: Nudie
Jeans By any other Name Nudie
So I don’t buy jeans very often, but I landed on some jeans a couple of years ago that actually fit my frame. Jeans have their brand beat now – the days of just Levi’s and Lees are long gone. Jeans have grown up – they’re not work pants anymore. They’re generation pants – and their price tag has gone up with the buying power of those who like to wear them. Designer brands have multiplied by the bucket load – bringing in denim from Japan and Italy to further inflate the prices.
So I had landed on a company that I’m embarrassed to say, calls itself “Nudie,” which would indicate jeans as taut and tight as skin itself. So tight in fact, that you would imagine that you weren’t wearing jeans at all, except for a modicum of cover; the skin tight look that frankly belongs with the under 20s.
But these jeans, these Nudies, are a misnomer. There’s nothing skintight about the ones I wear so I unabashedly ordered them online using their normal website. When they arrived they came in a black plastic bag labeled “NUDIE WEBSHOP” and had been sent COD from a Swedish address, looking suspiciously like I had been shopping at an Adult bookstore. That would’ve been fine, but of course I wasn’t the one that received them. I was out of town. And the fact that it was COD required the UPS delivery guy to announce my delivery from NUDIE WEBSHOP to the unsuspecting 20-year old temp receptionist. Then my assistant told her, “Mr. Jones can’t travel without that package.” The receptionist probably wondered what kind of person gets paraphernalia from Nudie Webshop in Sweden. We’re expecting a call from the temp agency any day with a complaint about the strange goings on at our office. So here’s the deal, I’m never going to buy from Nudie again until they change their name and COD policy. COD in this day and age??? Please….
Wandering under the Skylight
Wandering under the Skylight
Serendipity in travel is what I always find provides the moments, the surprises. I was down in Soho strolling around, wandering through the village. I’d walked from 5th Avenue down through Washington Square along Bleecker into Soho and was thinking, wow, I used to come down here all the time in 70s. I ended up on Spring Street and grabbed coffee at some bar and needed to get uptown. The traffic was looking bad and it was raining – thank goodness I had my 2 dollar umbrella with me. A lovely lady, because I think I looked lost, asked if I needed help and like a lost schoolboy in the rain, I told her, “Mam, I need to get uptown.” She pointed me all the way down Bleecker Street and off I went. Who says New Yorkers aren’t nice?
So here’s what I don’t get about the subway in New York. It’s not intuitive; it’s not an Apple product- it’s more like a Microsoft product. It’s not stylish and it’s not simple and it’s almost barely functional. Getting a ticket is a hassle, scanning isn’t brilliant – it cost me $9 for one ticket because the scan didn’t work on the previous two and there was nobody around to help me. And then I went looking for signs that are everywhere in the London Underground and the Paris metro, and guess what, they don’t exist! You have to ask somebody. Times Square?
And then you jump on the wrong train, not the express train and you realize it’s going to take an hour to get up town, so you jump off and get on the right train, and then you have to peer out of the window to see what station you’re at. There are no maps in the carriages except a tiny one at the very end that you can’t see. So I got off at Grand Central and walked about 5 miles to get across town on another train that takes you to 42nd Street and I have to say that the whole experience was awful. I mean everybody complains about Boston and how it’s a little toy town train, but the subway in NY, honestly, sucks. It’s grimy and overcrowded and hot and unclear. But I made it.
And this is why I love travel. As I came out of the subway, it was still raining and then I was guided by the lights. When you walk in New York you zigzag with the lights and there I came across the most remarkable sight, a show I had been dying to see in London called Skylight was in previews on Broadway with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan and I landed a ticket. Pure and fabulous coincidence that made my day. So thank you subway for delivering me to the not quite right place, and thank you chaotic New York for zigzagging me past a theater I would not have passed if the lights had led me elsewhere.
Dear W Letter
Dear W,
We’ve been sleeping together for 15 years. We have grown familiar with each other – and we’ve grown old together. Except I go to the gym and try and stay in shape – and I’m sad to say that you don’t. So here’s the deal. I’m leaving you.
Yes, I might miss those evenings in the king-sized bed, but here’s what I won’t miss. You’re not as fun as you used to be. I remember when I first met you, the room was clean – I could actually see our future out of the window across Times Square. And the bathroom shower worked. The air conditioning duct didn’t fall out when I bumped into it. And every light bulb seemed to glow when I turned the lights on. You’ve really let yourself go. The colors you are wearing are the colors of 15 years ago. Everything is bland and what used to look fashionable, now looks faded. Room service arrives when you don’t request it and when you want it, it never shows up!
It’s not me, it’s you. You bought me extra drinks to hide the cracks – you’ve upgraded my room because the previous one was broken or I couldn’t see out of the dirt-caked window. But you know, the time has come. It’s not working. The kids have grown up. I’m moving on. I don’t even want to be your friend. And I might even share this break-up with my buddy TripAdvisor.
No longer yours,
Peter
Asparagus Season
Asparagus Season
The season of asparagus is on us. In Germany it’s practically a religious institution. Spargel is everywhere. They put dollops of hollandaise on top to negate the healthy calories of the green, but what I love most about asparagus season is wandering through the supermarkets of Paris. In France the true delicacy of the asparagus season, is white asparagus. So how is it done? How do you sap the color from asparagus?
It’s simple, you deprive it of light, like in Plato’s cave. That process is called etiolation and it’s supposed to make the stalks weaker. There’s something fabulous about white asparagus, cultivated as it is, under a cover of earth. Its texture and taste are completely different. The season is now – it’s much thicker than a regular stalk of asparagus; more brittle and simply delicious.
So why does it taste so damn good? I have a theory. Imagine you’ve been buried under a mound of earth for the whole winter, and suddenly someone comes and shows you the sun. It brings color to your cheeks and a smile to your face…before of course you are plunged into boiling hot water and served to someone like me. Incidentally be careful of pairing with wine. Asparagus is not great with tannic red or oaked wines – unless of course you slather it with hollandaise. Luckily for those who can’t imagine a meal unaccompanied by wine, Fiona Beckett at Matching Food and Wine – has put together a helpful list of wine and asparagus pairings.
The Acela Train That Couldn’t
Not to rag on the ACELA train that services the Boston – New York – Washington corridor, but it is a particularly painful experience, costly and inefficient. Compare the Limoliner at $89 where the wireless works, the seats are like first class on an airplane and you get movies to boot vs. the ACELA at anywhere between $130 – $275 where the wireless rarely works, the service on board in first class is a joke and in business class non-existent and there are no movies. Not to mention that you leave from a beat up station like South Station in Boston and arrive at one of the most horrendous in the world, Penn Station in NY. It’s grimy, it’s confusing, it’s full of people who seem to not be catching trains.
And you wonder why America runs on Dunkin’ or buses rather than trains. The journey time is more or less the same, except you have a far greater chance of being delayed on the train, than on the bus. But it’s the service that really stands out. The Limoliner wants you to come back. Amtrak doesn’t care and what’s more, given that the price is half the price of a one-way ticket by air, you would think that the appeal of the train would inspire Amtrak to try and make me want to come back.
I haven’t given up, but I find it incredibly frustrating that in this day and age, when trains are flying along in Asia and Europe at speeds of 200mph or more with friendly service and efficiency, that we seem still to be tied up with a ragged antiquated system along the Eastern seaboard, which is a prime artery for train travel. Boston to Washington, DC (about the same mileage) takes roughly 7 hours and that’s on the fast train. We could learn a thing or two from the Italians: Rome to Milan – about 362 miles in just under 3 hours.
5 Ways to Make Sure Your Flight Goes and That You’re on it
So what do you do when the forces of nature or mechanical problems cause a cancellation? Get rebooked ASAP because more often than not it’s first-come, first-served. I misconnected on a flight from Geneva to London recently and eventually when I arrived at Heathrow it seemed that the whole world had suffered delays. The lines were unspeakably long; airline staff was pushed to the limits and I knew it would take me more hours than I had to connect to a flight that would get me back to Boston. This is where it pays to do the unconventional – don’t follow the crowds! Think quickly. I went out through passport control, pretended I was arriving in London, went immediately up to departures, (pleasantly queue-free) and checked my options there. It worked!
In these days of trending away from travel agents and into DIY travel, you leave yourself exposed to the long lines that are choking your options, and the not-so-friendly folks who are overloaded too. Does this sound terrible? Well, not really because it doesn’t happen as much as you think. But when it does happen and you’re stuck in this vortex of panic – be aware and be ahead of the game. Firstly, get to the front of queue as fast as possible. If you have a responsive travel agency (like ACIS!) that booked your flights, contact them immediately – they can see things and evaluate a whole ton of options that will take you hours to figure out. Be alert and notice the signs of a potentially cancelled flight: delay, upon delay, upon delay, with very little explanation. And probably the hardest part for most people – you have to walk the fine line of being pushy, without being a pain. Airline personnel are invariably nicer to the nice people who understand what they’re going through as well. Get nasty and they’ll get nasty too.
Fun facts that would be nice in a carefree and no money limits world.
- Fly Internationally – these planes are huge and expensive to cancel.
- Don’t fly across the street – regional flights are 3x as likely to be cancelled than larger planes. And they suck. There’s no room for bags and if you thought the drinks tray was scant on a big plane, you gotta check out the scene on one of these babies. And let’s face it, when those planes change direction it’s not subtle.
- Be important – seriously. No one is going to cancel Brad Pitt’s plane, assuming he doesn’t have his own. If you’re not important, look important.
- Borrow a kid – families get priorities on rebooking. Traveling solo? Saddle up next to a family of 5 and strike up a conversation. It helps if it’s Brad Pitt’s family.
- Avoid high season – flights are packed so if yours gets cancelled, good luck squeezing onto another one; winter travel is easier to rebook than summer travel so chances are you’ll be re-booked faster in the winter than in the summer when the airlines have less capacity to play with. Sure, it might mean a ski holiday or a freezing fortnight in Europe rather than a balmy Paris in July holiday, but these are the cards we are dealt!
Forget the list and take your chances – Imagine a world without delays, without mechanicals and with lovely weather. May the force be with you. The stats are.