Tag Archives: Pietro Place

The Journey up Jungfrau

The journey from Zermatt to Lauterbrunnen, up Jungfrau, was a feast of Swiss mountains, green pastures, and alpine chalets.

The descent on the cog railway from Zermatt to Täsch was on the Glacier Express. It was the first part of a journey that would take us around three and a half hours. Our final destination was Zurich and in between we would climb the Jungfrau, stop in Wengen, and pass the magical town of Lucerne. All of this within one day!

We were driving and so we had to figure out a way to successfully get from Tasch to Lauterbrunnen efficiently. The new Lötschberg Basistunnel is the answer. It is 36 km long. The train goes through the mountain with your car! It is a fairly easy process. You queue up, buy the ticket, and drive your car onto a long metal ramp of open carriages. Put the brake on, turn your engine off, sit in the car, and watch the world go by as the train takes off. Alps in the background, mountains looming, and then total darkness as you enter the tunnel! 25 minutes later you pop out the other side and you’ve just saved yourself four hours of driving. It’s that simple!

Eventually we got close to the town of Interlaken (between the lakes) and parked the car in Lauterbrunnen to catch the train that would take us up to Wengen. The train is a cog train and was full of skiers and tourists alike. In Wengen, which is the staging post and midpoint, the town bustled with activity. It was full of hotels, cafes, restaurants, and is the beginning point for all of the lifts that will take you onto the ski slopes of the Jungfrau with the Eiger mountain in the background. It looks like it has a decent nightlife and it is flanked by a number of open bowls so the light is good all day. Many of the colors of the houses are yellow ochre and as the sun drops down the colors against the cog railway and the snow is stunning. It is definitely a place you can hang out for a couple of days.

We changed trains, hopped on the Jungfrau cog railway, and before you know it we were headed up to the very top of Europe. The train stopped inside of the glacier two or three times so that we could take pictures. By that time we were already well over 10,000 feet!

At the Top of Europe, as they call it, we were at 11,782 feet.

Time for pictures and taking it easy as the altitude definitely affected your step. I had a dodgy meal in the canteen at the top, experienced the highly civilized toilets and got to walk through the glacier ice village. After we hung out for a while we caught the express train back to Lauterbrunnen. At the top of the Jungfrau you can see the possibilities of skiing over to the open, broad expanse of Grindelwald. The beauty of this area is that you can buy a pass that takes in the whole mountain….. and the skiing looked pretty good. It may not be as extensive as Zermatt, but it looked awesome to me, especially if you had grown up skiing the ice in Vermont.

A coffee at the bottom, a jump in the car, and within two hours we would be in Zurich for dinner.

The Mystery of the Matterhorn

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Zermatt, as a holiday destination, is famous for its skiing, summer walks through the open trails long left by skiers–and for extreme climbers it’s the challenging ascent of the iconic Matterhorn.

I have been to Zermatt many, many times but I have never actually visited the Matterhorn Museum. Even though I received a frosty reception by walking straight past the cashier’s desk without paying (oops), I was pleasantly surprised by the contents of the museum – but not surprised by the reaction I got from the lady at the desk. She had specially trained in unfriendly customer relations. No smile, only a suspicious smirk as she thought I was trying to skip around her! No credit cards are accepted here; just good ol’ Swiss Francs. It costs 10 Swiss Francs (approx. $10.15). Most days it is open from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm.

The museum depicts a mini Zermatt, with recreations of original houses, interiors, and a chapel, and shows how the town started.

But the biggest focus of all is on the drama of the first ascent of the Matterhorn on the 14th of July in 1865.

This was the story of the last unconquered 4,000 meter peak in the Alps. There were seven mountaineers, four of whom fell to their deaths during the descent after their climbing rope broke. The survivors were the British Edward Whymper, and two Zermatt mountain guides, Peter Taugwalder and his son who happened to be Peter as well.

There is a whole mystery attached to the tragedy. Depending on whether you are British or from Zermatt, you will likely get different versions from different sides. There is even a movie that recreates this climb which was shot in 1937 and includes scenes from “the deadly fall” following the first ascent. In the museum, the snapped rope is right there and some of the effects of the climbers that perished are in preserved cases. There are also Neolithic age things and a whole bunch of black and white photographs of the early mountaineers. The exhibition that was on was all about who caused the fall. Was it the dastardly English guy who came down to claim that he was the first to conquer the Matterhorn? Or the guides who may or may not have cut the rope to save themselves? The intrigue is brewing everywhere. To this day, it is the main talking point of the museum. If you ask anybody who has lived in Zermatt for a number of years, they all have their own version. What is absolutely amazing is that the climbers seemed to wear suits, hats, and mostly looked like they were heading out to dinner, not climbing the most difficult precipice in Europe! Everyone carried a sling of ropes around them but beyond that it was all pretty much down to the knowledge of the mountain. The fact that these guys even made it to the top in those outfits is testament to their skills, their endurance, and frankly their craziness. The museum is worth a visit if only so you can write a column like this. It is a perfect “who done it” and really very interesting.

The Glacier Express

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Switzerland offers a remarkable way to sightsee your day through the beautiful terrain: the Glacier Express.

No car needed. Just a slow moving, winding train that is Switzerland’s greatest ad for Narnia.

The Glacier Express is a regular scheduled year-round train service between Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn and St. Moritz in the Engadin skiing area.

No idea why it’s called an express since it is slow.

Built on a narrow gauge train, it takes over seven hours to cover just over 290 km (180 miles), at an average of around 24 mph. However, it’s very civilized inside and you can get a decent lunch on board in the restaurant cars. The views are breathtaking, blizzards and all, and it also offers the unique experience of climbing to 2033 meters up the incredible Oberalp Pass, the highest point on the line. It truly looks like Narnia along the way. At the end the train magically winds its way to the chic resort of St Moritz. All in a day’s work!

Prices are not that bad for Switzerland. Below are the rack rates.

Zermatt – St Moritz, basic fare:

149 CHF (€149) 2nd class, one-way

262 CHF (€262) 1st class, one-way

Glacier Express supplement:

(this must be paid in addition to

the basic fare or railpass)

33 CHF (€33) in summer.

13 CHF (€13) in winter.

Cost of lunch (optional):

30 CHF (€30) for Plate of the Day.

43 CHF (€43) for 3-course lunch.

Children under 6 go free; children aged 6 to 16 pay half fare but must pay the adult supplement.

The Glacier Express is run jointly by two private Swiss railways, the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB) and the Rhätische Bahn (RhB), which also operate the regular hourly local trains over the same route. There is one daily Glacier Expresses in each direction in winter, but up to three daily Glacier Expresses in the summer. It is a great experience and I highly recommend it.

You can easily buy tickets online at www.glacierexpress.ch

The Strange Country of Switzerland

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Let’s face it – it’s a strange place. Encircled by beautiful mountains, Switzerland is famous for its scenery, cheese, watches, chocolate, skiing, drugs, and corruption…oops, I mean banking. A small bottle of water costs $5, a sandwich is $15-$20, and they think that they are doing you a favor!

It has a slightly dubious history. In World War II they pretended to be neutral but it was really a friendly outpost of Nazi Germany. Up until two years ago, most people kept a private bank account in Switzerland that was not traceable in any other country. It was thus a tax haven for the rich. It is the home and headquarters of football (soccer), the Olympics, and the Red Cross. It is also where Charlie Chaplin chose to live the remainder of his life after being kicked out of the USA for being a communist sympathizer. The Great Dictator! One of the most brilliant anti-fascist movies of all time.

So, why do I keep coming back to Switzerland? It is because I like the efficiency of the place. There are trains that climb up mountains on cogs, trains that you can put your car on to that hurtle you through insurmountable mountains and save you hours of driving, and toilets that are very clean compared to most of their neighbors. But most of all it is such a damn beautiful place with famous mountains jutting up above the clouds like the Matterhorn and the Eiger. It is just so stunning. Driving through the tunnels that have been beautifully carved in the mountains, I am aware that Swiss tunnels are the cleanest tunnels in all of the world, like they have a team of cleaners coming in at night to spick and span the walls. Not a wink of graffiti and the streets are clean.

So I guess that I have a bizarre love affair with the place. When I ski between Italy and Switzerland, I confess to loving the rösti, the raclette, and the fondue (really good for the cholesterol) a little more than the pasta. Yikes – what I am I saying?!

Every year I ski in Switzerland. I love the comfort of the place, the width of the slopes, the guaranteed snow, and I guess the Swiss are not that bad after all!

The Beauty of Sayulita

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What a pleasant surprise to discover that just 45 minutes south of Puerto Vallarta is a cool, laidback, surfer’s town called Sayulita.

Famous for its beach break, Sayulita has a guaranteed supply of mixed level waves, perfect for the amateur and pro together.

It feels that Puerto Vallarta has been attacked by the overdevelopment syndrome, but Sayulita, with its year-round population of around 2,000, has remained relatively unscathed.

It was first discovered in the 1960’s and was (and still is) a surfer’s paradise. The beach is a beautiful, huge crescent shape intersected by a river that seems to emanate from the jungle. Grazing by the river by an old plank bridge are horses and donkeys.

This is a town where the beach is the magnet. The beach is stacked in the center with surfboards, surf shops, and surf schools. You can rent everything from paddle boards to boogie boards. I sat under a very civilized umbrella easily rentable from Don Pedro – a restaurant come beach set-up where you can get fantastic grilled octopus and seared tuna.

Frankly, my idea of fun on a beach is to find a place like Don Pedro that sells umbrellas and lounge chairs and where I can get incredibly fresh and delicious seafood with a drink while watching other people do what I cannot do, namely surf and paddle board! So I watched expert surfers, beginner surfers (who wore beginner’s t-shirts), paddle boarders, body surfers, and just regular splashed types like me. At the far ends of the beach the fishermen and the pelicans went looking for their dinner. I’ve never seen so many pelicans diving in between surfboards in my life.

There are numerous tiny seaside accommodation places and at the end of the beach is a very nice, but not glitzy, hotel called Villa Amor which is where I stayed. Rooms range between $175-$300 per night for a one bedroom in high season. Sayulita is loaded with fantastic restaurants, taquerias, and a whole slew of funky bars that stayed open way after midnight. The crowd was mixed, cool, and very fit looking. Surfers usually are.

I love this place. The tiny shopping streets that stray off of the beach, the groovy restaurants, the mix of locals, old hippies, and newcomers. The beach had a freer feel to it.

If the beach was a spectacular white coral sand beach like the one in Cancun, it would have been ruined years ago with high-rises and packaged tours. This place never got there. A fiercely strong local citizenry protected it and the beach was funky enough to not pull the developers in. One of my favorite shops in Sayulita is Révolucion del Sueño which does an incredible trade with Zapata t-shirts made from beautiful soft cotton. My only tip to travelers who discover this place, don’t tell too many people.

The 9AM Flight to Mexico City

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Great news for Bostonians. AeroMexico has begun a nonstop flight to Mexico City four times per week.

With departures at a very civilized hour, New Englanders can escape the frigid temperatures and within six hours are in Mexico’s capital. Formerly known solely as Distrito Federal (Mexico D.F.), the entire sprawl including the D.F. is officially called Mexico City although it is still quite trendy to say D.F. Of course that’s what I’ve been calling it all the time.

AeroMexico has elected to leave its super Boeing 737-800 airplane on the JFK route and instead offers a pretty old and tired product to Bostonians. I was in First class, if you can call it that. The ticket was not that expensive…and it showed. By the time that the disinterested flight attendant had reached the third row of first class seats, the hot meal was not available. So it was all down to a yoghurt, soggy croissants and dreary fruit with cornflakes! God knows what was going on behind in the economy seats but I bet sensible people in the back had stocked up before the flight. I foolishly thought there would be something awful, but passable, and made an Airplane 101 mistake. It’s a simple rule of thumb really and I preach it all of the time. But goddamnit I forgot! Never, under any circumstances, eat the food on an airplane unless you are so desperately hungry that you would contemplate eating an old sock.

The video situation was no better. There were countless reruns of old TV shows that had long left our orbit to be sent to some other part of the world for regurgitation (including AeroMexico!). But I jest as I was so happy to have a nonstop at my disposal on my doorstep to one of my favorite destinations. I’ll take a bad seat, a tired meal, and a very disinterested flight attendant over many, many connections any day.

Soccer in America

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I had an amazing couple of days at the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Convention in Baltimore.

Baltimore is like soccer in America – it is in transition and it’s heading the right way. A few shady spots here and there, but new waterfront development and a strong convention center are rebuilding the city.

In a country where about 25 million kids play soccer, and close to 5 million play at the club level, it still amazes me that we have not discovered our own Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi. When I talk to the guys around here, they feel that it’s coming. Soccer is a craze in the USA. We get to see it practically every day on primetime TV at the highest level and it is the longest season of any sport in the world. Ironically through the advance of video soccer games like FIFA (unlike the real institution that governs soccer, the video game is not corrupted) kids now know all of the stars, all of the leagues, and are getting into the rhythm of this great game.

Soccer is a great deal more complicated than any of us think. I got to talk with a lot of coaches and a scattering of stars during my two days there. The amazingly charismatic Uruguayan International, Ruben Sosa, who played for Inter and Lazio, was one of the great highlights of the convention. I spent some time chatting with him about his coaching schools down in Uruguay. Alegre he said is the key to unlocking the talent. Getting kids to enjoy the game and developing skills. Using the brain and ballet to perform beautiful moves and work always as a team. As one guy said, “Winning games is not what we are here to do. We are here to develop a love for the game so that kids will want to continue playing past the drop off age of 14. The talent will emerge. Teaching teamwork and ball skills. That’s our goal and much more important than an actual goal scored in an 11 vs. 11 game with 13 year olds.” We even got a little feature on Sirius Radio through our beloved John Kerr, ex-USA and International and now head coach at Duke.

For me, I am a soccer addict and always have been.

I see as much pleasure in 0-0 as a 5-4 result. Soccer, unlike all of the other American sports, is truly an international phenomenon. The crowds are crazy, they sing inappropriate songs with tons of swear words aimed at their idols or not, and one day Major League Soccer will provide us with a league worthy of the world stage. Yes, soccer breeds superstars but ultimately a coach’s configuration is no different than setting up a team project in the office, developing a strategy and working together. Team.

One of my greatest heroes in soccer, George Best, was the first modern, sporty, good-looking superstar – the fifth Beatle. He was reckless, talented, brilliant, and had a career that was extraordinary and far too short for a man with such talent. I first saw him play against Chelsea in 1965. He was quite simply the most amazing player I had ever seen, and will probably ever see. A la Pele, a Maradonna, a Leo Messi. When asked where he spent his money, and he made a lot in the early days, he said, “I spent my money on birds, booze, and fast cars…The rest I squandered.” A life too short, a talent too wasted on mere mortals. All the Georgie.

A Morning to Remember in Barcelona

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We got into Barcelona on the Friday along with the commuter traffic but it really was a pretty smooth journey in. There is only one thing to look for when you come in from the airport and that is the Sagrada Familia – now in its 134^th year of restoration and due to finish in 2026. On a side note, I have to say, and I am surprised, that they have not put up a Sagrada Familia in Las Vegas. Let’s face it, if they were to do that it would be done in three months!

But seriously I love Barcelona. I think what I love most about it is that there are no real iconic sites. No major distractions to clog up your day. Yes, there is Gaudi, Parc Güell, the Olympic Village, the Frank Gehry fish in Barceloneta, and Las Ramblas, but it is a city that is just so relaxing because you kind of wander through the neighborhoods without the need to see the Eiffel Tower, Roman Forum, St. Peter’s, the Tower of London, etc. I grabbed a couple of hours sleep, took a bike tour of the city which was an absolute joy (Un Cotxe Menys Bicicletes), hung out a little bit at the beach area (the cleanest city beach in Europe), and walked back through the El Born district and Gothic Quarter. In between, I got lunch at the La Boqueria market and had razor clams and more razor clams (navajas). 03

Trains vs. Planes

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A too tight connection at JFK gave me the opportunity to change up my itinerary, grab a cab to Baltimore Grand Central Station, and take the Acela to Penn Station in New York. I have to say, when you have the opportunity to ride on the train, it is just so much more civilized than flying. Frighteningly, there is no security, which means you can arrive only 10 minutes (even less!) before the train pulls in. And the trains are always on time….well nearly!

At Penn Station, I never quite understood how to make the transition out to JFK. I arrived there and sought out some help. Fighting the commuter traffic which was rushing between stations and platforms, I managed to connect to the Long Island Rail Road ($10) which sped me out to Jamaica. At that point, I got off there and took the AirTrain ($5) straight to JFK. I was at the Delta Terminal in no time at all. Penn Station to the Delta Terminal was 40 minutes. No traffic, no hassle, and so I wandered to the Delta Lounge, grabbed a bite, and a beer, and got ready for the nonstop to Barcelona. Loved that day!

While I was getting ready for my flight, I started thinking about the benefits of nonstop flights. I have to confess that a nonstop on an overnight journey is optimal. In other words, if you gave me a chance to fly LA – Rome via London for a chance to get more airline miles on BA, I would say no contest. I will take the nonstop all the way. By the way, when can you ever use those miles anyway? How about practically never unless you don’t work and are totally date flexible. So taking the nonstop to Barcelona from JFK was a solid winner as opposed to connecting over Madrid out of Washington-Dulles.

Delta has improved dramatically over the two years. They are scoring up there with Jet Blue and Alaskan and have left their other erstwhile competitors in the dust. Wake up American!! The business configuration is better than most, the TV and movie selection is pretty good , and the food and service was fine. On an overnight flight, I tend to get the food out of the way before I get on the plane. Once the plane is in the air, I am all about taking some sleeping tablets to grab my five or six hours before we hit the European morning. I must confess to never having breakfast on an airplane. I would rather grab the extra hour and a coffee and croissant when I hit land. Have you ever tasted airline coffee? It is worse than hotel coffee and that is pretty bad!

Irish Bars and American Football

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When you travel anywhere in January, especially in Europe, there is a good chance if you are an American and love American football, there is a major game going on. As it happened, I was in Barcelona when the Patriots were playing Kansas City so of course my first inquiry on my smart phone was to find an Irish bar.

Irish bars are these remarkable institutions found in every city in the world from Shanghai to Istanbul. The Irish understand the needs of the modern sports fanatic. Yes, they sell you Guinness and Harp along with local brews and average food, but the thing they do the best is stay open late so that we can all watch an American football game long after the other bars in the neighborhood have closed. Irish Bars and American Football simply go hand in hand. My favorite bar in Rome is Scholar’s Lounge and it is ironically next to Berlusconi’s house. I guess he doesn’t mind the commotion with all the parties he hosts!

Irish bars are good for soccer in the afternoon, and American football or baseball into the late evening and early morning. Plus they rock. They understand that one television screen is not enough – they have 10, maybe more – and everybody gathers there. I often thing that some people never leave the bars. In Barcelona, I’m not sure when the bar even closed. It’s a late city and the Irish bars can outlast any city ordinance for closing. It must be because my grandmother is Irish that I feel right at home drinking Guinness and watching an American football game in a beautiful city.

What I Like About Paul Smith

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I like shopping and I actually prefer going to shops rather than surfing online.

As I get to travel, I am probably spoiled for choice.

One of my favorite shops is Paul Smith in London. I started going to Paul Smith in the late 1970’s. I loved the shirts and shoes from the very beginning. It was a sort of cool, edgy, and a very “Londony” look. As I was living in the States, it was a way to keep myself in tune with England!

So, all those years ago and still, I go to Paul Smith when I am in London. I love the tiny street in Covent Garden called Floral Street where the store is located. Everyone is helpful, trendy, and more or less my sons age! Actually my son who lives in Washington DC, always asks me to buy him a shirt whenever I am passing through. He even pays me back!

This past Christmas, I bought him a couple of shirts as a gift. However, one of them, as he later discovered, still had the magnet attached and had escaped the alarms in the shop. So the present wasn’t a present but rather a pain! With no Paul Smith shops in DC or Boston, I knew I would be in London soon so I popped in armed with photos of the unusable shirt. I chatted with a nice sales guy who had the deputy manager, Alex Sivyer, come down. He assessed the situation, said, “Here’s what we will do. Buy a shirt today. It’s on us. Bring the other one in whenever and well take the magnet off. 2 for 1!”

And that’s why I shop in Paul Smith. I wish every store could be like that. Great ethos, great people, and everyone obviously likes the guy who owns the place. Hats off to Paul Smith. It’s not just about the clothes. It is about the attitude and the culture towards the customer!

Oyster Card

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Oysters are amazing and I love them.

I even know how to shuck them pretty fast – something that I picked up from a mate of mine that works at Legal Seafood in Boston. When I travel to London, I love the rock oysters. They are not farmed, they are briny, super delicious, and quite deep.

Oysters are most famous in towns like Colchester and Whitstable so it is no surprise given the English obsession with oysters that they chose to name their metro card the “Oyster Card.” Believe me, when you are travelling in London, your life depends upon this card. It is your ticket to ride on the underground and the double decker buses. Think of it like this – London is a huge city with over 8 million people and geographically it covers an area of 1,580 square kilometers. The subway system in England is the oldest one in the world and reaches out way beyond the center of London and into the rural hinterland. Nowadays, every bus accepts the Oyster Card which means that you can jump between the superfast subway network and a super cool Routemaster bus. If the traffic is getting crazy, abandon ship and head down to the subway. If the subway stop is too far or inconvenient, grab one of the many buses that fly by you on the street. The stops are well marked and very civilized. As for getting in from the airport, the subway system delivers you right into the center of town from Heathrow.

With the Oyster Card, the discounted fare will cost less than £6.

Essentially, the city becomes yours!

But here is the deal with the Oyster Card – you must put a deposit down of £5, but when you leave, you return the card and receive that money back. Whatever you have left on your card is shown clearly whenever you put your card down on the yellow entry/exit pad. They are easy to top off using cash or credit. Given the high cost of the subway in London, if you are there for one day I would probably invest £25 in an Oyster Card and use it up the kazoo. It is not cheap but it beats the alternative. Happy travelling!

Raining Cats and Dogs in London: Umbrellas, Then and Now

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London weather is a strange phenomenon.

As blue as the sky is at any moment in time, there always is at least a 50% chance that the weather will turn for the worse. Furthermore, it will almost certainly end up as rain! Then it stops and starts and rains some more.

In England it rains – so much so that English people have a national obsession about the weather. “How’s the weather love? Bit hot today. It hasn’t stopped raining. We will need an arc if it carries on like this.” They even have words for varying degrees of rain. Spitting (yes, spitting!), drizzle and rainy spells (as if it’s some magic trick)! Cloudy with a chance of…some rain. Not rain but some rain!

I was thinking of this the other day while I was walking through Covent Garden and had to stop at the store Muji, a place where I always buy great pens, to grab a reasonably dependable short umbrella. Fact is that you simply cannot be without an umbrella in London. The whole city is geared towards terrible weather (there even are signs inside of the Underground stations telling us to shake our umbrellas Outside of the station in order to avoid slippery surfaces) and in stores people leave their umbrellas at the umbrella parking space by the door. Truthfully, if you are armed with a short umbrella which you can stick in your pocket, you can kind of go anywhere. It is a liberating feeling!

This got me thinking about umbrellas in general.

What is the story with umbrellas? Where did they come from and how did they evolve into what they are today? Funny enough, the basic umbrella was invented around 4,000 years ago and even appears in ancient wall drawings. The umbrella was made with paper and used as a shade from the sun. Hence, the name umbrella which comes from the Latin word umbra meaning shade. Leave it to the Chinese to figure out a way to wax the paper umbrella and lacquer them so that they can be used for both sun and rain. Then we fast forward a few thousand years to the 19^th century when James Smith and Sons Umbrella Shop opened in London in 1830 to serve middle- to upper-class people a parasol for the rain. Working classes used their cloth caps or just got wet! The shop on 53 New Oxford Street is still there selling high end umbrellas to tourists and wealthier clients alike. England even invented a word that is used everywhere today – brolly.

So where was my tiny umbrella from Muji made? Muji is a Japanese store and my pens most certainly are made in Japan – but you guessed it, my umbrella has gone back to its roots and is made in China. This likely is also where every single short version umbrella in any city sold by any number of people comes from. When you dash into a store or buy an umbrella from a guy that just happens to show up because it is raining (and let’s face it, you need it), remember that he is simply following a 4,000 year old custom practiced over the years and built to perfection for an English climate. But if you fancy a high end experience, go to James Smith and treat yourself to the real deal – a brolly for the ages.

London Theatre

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Every time that I go to London, I try to see a play. Last time I was there, I went to The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the indoor Globe theatre. I saw Shakespeare’s Cymbeline . It is still playing actually. At the Wanamaker, there is no electrical lighting inside of the theatre and only candles and candelabras on pulleys. It is classic London Theatere: good old Elizabethan fare served up on bare sets with traditional music in the background. Catch any performance there if you can. It is like no experience I have experienced.

This time, I was invited by a friend of mine, Lee Curran, to go see a play at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square. Lee is the lighting director; a “creative artistic type” that lights up much of London and Stratford with his art. The play was Linda, a play by Penelope Skinner and starring Noma Dumezweni. She plays an award-winning business woman promoting beauty products while facing the hypocrisy of how beauty is marketed to women. This was a play originally starring Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City fame but she pulled out with just a week to go before preview. Noma stepped in out of the blue, out of nowhere really, and pulled off one of the greatest tour de forces in acting. Talk about a crash course in learning lines. She was amazing, as was the play.

For me the real buzz was that I got to sit in the tech box with Lee high above the performance and watch the play through his critical eye. That was a first. It felt a bit like being in the cockpit of an airplane next to the pilot. We saw the next to last performance of the play. I got to meet the star and even got to grab an Indian meal afterwards. A truly perfect night in London.

Holidays in London

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The funny thing about the holidays in the USA is that everything seems to begin around Veteran’s Day. The Christmas music starts to rear its ugly head and while decorations do not go full-in until the week around Thanksgiving, there is that sense of a relentless march towards the big day. It is the holiday season after all– Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas – it just requires a couple of months to sell its various brands. But what it does not need is global warming which seems to have happened while we were all sleeping, driving our diesel and gas cars, ignoring calls for solar and wind power and maxing on our air conditioning use. Now, as I sit in Boston, watching somebody skateboarding by in a t-shirt, I wonder if I will ever see snow again!

On the other hand, London seems to embrace Christmas like no other place. It has the people (lots of them), every street in the center is full-on lit up with beautiful or funky lights, there is the huge Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, and big bonus, no sun and it gets dark so fabulously early that the entire city is in nighttime glow most of the time. It’s cozy! While there is absolutely no snow ever to be seen and lots of rain, it somehow feels Christmassy. It is probably because London has so many shops and every shop has a Christmas window and everybody walking around London seems to be holding bags that indicate they have been shopping. There are pubs on every other corner jammed with revelers and the occasional jolly drunk and all of the restaurants have Christmas menus in addition to the usual a la carte stuff. This place full-on celebrates!

So grab a Christmas cracker, put your paper crown on, grab a piece of Christmas pudding or mince pie, or even go to Pret-A-Mange (the popular take-out place) for a Christmas lunch sandwich – yes, Christmas lunch complete with stuffing can be contained within two pieces of sliced white bread! While you are at it, grab a bag of Christmas crisps and then take the kids to see Father Christmas and a Pantomime. It’s the most popular entertainment over the holiday period. I grew up on them. Based in history on 17^th century Commedia dell’arte characters, panto means to imitate all in Greek. Everyone has fun, kids laugh, men dress up as woman and woman as men. Shakespearean really! Although it’s mainly for kids, it’s huge! It involves music, topical and saucy jokes, and slapstick comedy and is usually based on a fairy tale or nursery story. Plus everyone gets to go to the theatre!! Good for the soul!

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