THE SECRET TO A GREAT ADVENTURE

Hubby keeps asking me where I want to go on our next big adventure, and I keep waffling around. First it was Tuscany. Then it was Quebec. Now I'm thinking we might just have to go back to Paris, even though we've already been there several times.

"Why?", you may be asking. Well, our greatest travel adventures seem to have occurred after I stumbled upon a novel that takes place in that part of the world -- especially when it's a novel written by a foodie. And, hoo-doggie, have I ever stumbled upon a Parisian treasure trove! The book I am reading is The Library of Light and Shadow, by M.J. Rose. It's too early to know whether I will love the novel itself, but what I found inside is priceless, nonetheless. The story hops back and forth between the main character's past and present -- a past where her first love took her on a "secret tour of Paris -- every spot chosen for her enjoyment and delight." First stop? No. 34 Passage du Désir, a chocolatier, where he purchased one small sack of chocolate-covered orange peel. Back outside, he opened it and pulled out a piece.

" 'Open your mouth, and close your eyes. Don't bite on it at first, just let it start to melt. There's an art to eating fine chocolate.' I did as I was told, and he fed me. My body reacted to the delectable citrus and cocoa flavor and also the intimacy of the act. Once the chocolate covering had melted, I chewed the candied peel. Before I could open my eyes, Matthieu leaned forward and kissed me..."

I told my hubby we really need to go back to Paris so we can follow the path of their secret tour, and do everything that they did. Everything. Only problem? This mythical tour took place in the 1920s, so I have no way of knowing if any of these places are still there. My hopes are high, however. When I see the amount of detail the author puts into her descriptions, I have to believe these are places that she has actually been to herself.

Speaking of epic adventures, remember this little travel journal?

Remember how, when I finished it, I felt compelled to send it out into the world, just to see what happens? Well, guess who got an email yesterday from Art Journaling Magazine, saying it has been selected for publication in an upcoming issue?  SQUEEEEE!!!
 

THE TRAVELING TEA PARLOUR

A food-truck-tea-parlour? Only in Austin!

I'd been following the news of Austin's latest food truck phenomenon, Bundrick's Traveling Tea Parlour over on East 7th, for a while now, but had not yet gone to check it out. So, when daughter Alexis suggested that we celebrate Mother's Day there, I was like "Hay-ill Yeah!" Of course, we woke up to less-than-stellar weather predictions on Sunday, but did we let that stop us? Heck no! We just grabbed a couple of umbrellas.

You've heard the expression "You had me at 'Hello' "? Well, in this case, they had me at Harney & Sons -- a whole window filled with their amazing tea selections!

She just made that darling sundress, which will be a great transition dress after Goober arrives, herself!

Lex decided to try their White Peach, served in this queenly pot...

but I couldn't resist trying one called simply Paris -- a fruity black tea with vanilla, caramel and a hint of lemony Bergamot.

Both were exquisite!

You can order nothing more than a cup of tea if you choose, or you can add something from a generous selection of a la carte treats. You can also order the "cream tea" which is a pot of tea, scones, butter and jam.

However, if you want to go whole-hog to celebrate a special occasion, as we did, then you really need to call ahead and reserve a table and the "Afternoon Tea" service, which will look something like this.

We started with four kinds of sandwiches...

including the traditional cucumber, an herbed goat cheese, tuna on toast, and best of all, almond butter and honey on pumpernickel!

That was followed by two types of scones. We each chose the mini strawberry scone (To die for!) and took the plain scone home with us.

The final tier included two fruit tarts, two macarons, a lemony thing, and a miniature Italian Cream Cake. Half of that went home with us as well.

I think it may have sprinkled on us at some point, but we were having so much fun, and the tables all had such nice big patio umbrellas, that we barely noticed! All in all, it was just about the "sweetest" Mother's Day ever.

P.S. Speaking of sweets, in case you are worried about Lex and her gestational diabetes, her doctor said that her numbers are so consistently wonderful that a little splurge on a special occasion would not hurt. I just checked in with her, and they were well within the normal range when she got home and tested them. :-)

HUBBY'S ART, AND THE PASSING OF A GENERATION

I'm heading up to Dallas today for an uncle's funeral, so you won't be hearing from me for a few days. Uncle Jay was the last of my mom's siblings to pass away, even though he was the oldest of the four. He was a postman back in the days when they actually walked their routes. Just goes to show what fresh air and plenty of exercise can do for you. Sadly, both parents and all of their siblings are now gone. Know what that means? It means my siblings and I have officially become "the old folks." Kinda freaks you out, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share some of Hubby's art for a change. He has always loved photography, and has a great eye for composition, but what he loves even more is the "mechanics" of photography, and all of the related equipment. When he moved to Singapore right after college, he went on a bit of a shopping spree, buying all kinds of camera and stereo equipment. After we got married and moved to a little beach bungalow in Indonesia, he proceeded to take a billion sunset photos, then bought all of the equipment to develop and print the photos himself. He set up his darkroom on a board over the bathtub!

He had actual darkrooms in our first couple of houses, but then came babies, and our first video camera. After that, the digital age. Lucky for him, he discovered that he enjoys manipulating his pictures in Photoshop just as much, if not more than, he every enjoyed printing and developing them. Here is one of his latest projects, using a photo he took in the Latin Quarter of Paris a few years back.

I made him frame this one, and hang it in our dining room.

RIDDLE ME THIS...

Stumbled upon this book at the library the other day and decided to give it a whirl, primarily because it involves two of my very favorite things -- Paris, and time-travel! I'm only a third of the way through it, but loving it so far, and getting quite the history lesson regarding the French Revolution. I'm especially excited because it seems to be dealing with an issue I've been grappling with myself. I can't seem to wrap my head around why, no matter how many revolutions occur in how many countries, we always seem to end up right back we started -- like a crazy pendulum that follows the same arc, over and over and over. I'll let you know if I get any answers.

There's one thing I do know for sure. It's books like this that keep me coming back to YA fiction, over and over and over!

A MOTHER-DAUGHTER ADVENTURE

My friend Pam posted this week about the wonderful little apartment in Paris -- near the Eiffel Tower and Rue Cler, my favorite foodie street -- where her family goes to stay about once a year. It got me to thinkin', about the time I offered to take my daughter to Paris, and she turned me down! I realized that we hadn't done a mother-daughter getaway since I took her to look at colleges, and here she is 31, and fixin' to get hitched! So I made the offer again. And she turned me down again -- but with a legitimate reason this time, since the wedding itself was going to use up all of her vacation. Soooo, I told her to think of someplace fun that wasn't so far away, where we could go for a long weekend. Guess what she came up with?

One of the top foodie towns in the country, and totally walkable, with everything close together. Almost European, in fact. Surrounded my water -- and dolphins! Squee!

Years ago, when I still took Southern Living magazine, I tore out a bunch of articles about Charleston. Fortunately, they were still in my files, so I've already been making lists of things to do and places to eat. Now I'm off to the library to check out some books set in Charleston -- one of my favorite things to do before heading to a place I've never been. It gets me in the mood!

Now Hubby and son Austin need to start planning where they want to go for a father-son getaway, before Austin's nuptials the following fall. Let's just hope they don't choose something like Burning Man. My hubby could get into waaaaaaaay too much trouble there!

JUST ONE DAY

I ran out of things to read recently and, by chance, picked up a YA book called Just One Day at the library. I'd been hearing good things about another book by the same author, Gayle Forman, called If I Stay, which I believe has been made into a motion picture.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the book was pretty much about me! Well, teen-aged me, anyways -- the good girl, who always did what her parents and teachers expected of her. The me who got to go on a "once in a lifetime" trip to Europe with her Girl Scout troop, but was ashamed to admit, even to herself, how disappointed she was in Europe-as-seen-from-a-bus.

Fortunately for our heroine, she, like me, meets an Adventure Boy, who whisks her off to Paris for "just one day', and she discovers just how exhilarating it can be to let go of the reins now and then, and to make the most of life's little "accidents." She finds out that, sometimes, getting lost is the best thing that could possibly happen to you!

Our heroine says:

"It's funny how on the tour, we often saw sights like this as we whizzed by on a bus...I'm driving by them now too. But somehow, it feels different. Like, being here, outside, on the back of this bike, with the wind in my hair and the sounds singing in my ears and the centuries-old cobblestones rattling beneath my butt, I'm not missing anything. On the contrary, I'm inhaling it, consuming it, becoming it."

There's even a scene in the book where she takes a job at a cafe in order to earn money to get back to Paris. She is back in the kitchen scraping dishes and loading them into "Hobart", which is precisely what I was doing when I met my own real-life Adventure Boy -- the one who once took me on a month-long jaunt through Europe with no tours, no itinerary and no reservations. Just a tattered copy of Europe On Ten Dollars A Day.

If you're interested in hearing more about my tutelage in the art of "Slow Travel", you might want to hop on over to my other blog, Miss Becky Goes Abroad, which has become the repository for all these tales.

à bientôt

I'm off on a brief get-away to France this week -- mentally, if not physically -- thanks to a couple of books I just happened to stumble across in the "W" section of our local library.

The first was a great little mystery novel called The Dark Vineyard, by Martin Walker, whose main character is chief of police (albeit only policeman) to a village in the Perigord region, the gastronomic heartland of France. It involved vineyards and the wine industry, genetic engineering, corporate espionage, arson, the Ecolo or Green movement, and a hefty dose of French food and village life. So, of course, I loved it! Best of all was the discovery that my library has several other books from this Chief Bruno series. I already have the next one on reserve!

From The Perigord, in southwest France, I traveled up to Paris and Auvers-sur-Oise, the town where Vincent van Gogh spent his final days. The book is Leaving Van Gogh, by Carol Wallace, and for an interesting spin, the story is being narrated by this gentleman...

Dr. Gachet -- specialist in mental illness and lover of art, whom Vincent's brother Theo had asked to oversee his care and well-being, once Vincent decided he could no longer live in Paris. I'm not very far into the book yet, but am fascinated by what I have already learned. For one thing, unlike most of the other impressionists, Vincent had no formal training in the arts, and had shown no early signs of artistic talent.

He just woke up one day with the belief that "colors, certain combinations of colors, can prompt or express emotion." And so he taught himself to paint, completing more than 2,000 works of art before his death at age 37. He as always been my favorite artist because his work is so, as I love to say, "color-mad". Now I know precisely what that means.

 

 

A bientot! Later! See you when I get back from France.

P.S. Photos of his art were taken from a little calendar I bought in Provence a couple of years ago, and could never bring myself to toss.

ONE THING I LOVE: FRENCH MARKETS

We had a new assignment last week, in my Wild Art Summer class -- one involving summer markets. We were to take ourselves out on an "artist's date" to explore our favorite summer markets, be they veggie, antique, flea, or whatever, to see what inspiration we could find there. My first thought was "Hey, I've got that covered!", since we had just recently returned from a day spent at both the amazing Findlay Market and the City Flea in Cincinnati. However, once I'd flipped through all the pictures I'd taken there, and sat down to play in my sketch book, something strange happened. Instead of sketches from Findlay, I found myself staring at snippets from our Vacation of the Decade in France a couple of years back. Snippets from Paris...

Lyon...

Le Miel en Motte just means honey in mound. Miel Extrait means extracted honey.

Avignon...

and Marseilles.

I think I could fill an entire journal with nothing but market scenes!  For now, however, I had to settle for this simple composite sketch.

Vive la France!

COLOR-MAD FINISHING TOUCHES

It just wouldn't be a T.A.I.R. (Thomas Annual Inspirational Retreat) without several rounds of high-stakes Shanghai!

Well, I'm back from a fun, fun weekend with my two sisters and daughter Alexis.  Lex is an interior designer who had installs to do in Dallas both last week and this, so she offered to just stay in Dallas straight through, if we would all agree to meet up for a big slumber party over the weekend. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it, since we still hadn't heard anything about John's test results, or whether he'd be going back into the hospital, but he sort of shoved me out the door, and managed to survive the weekend just fine without me!

Normally, when we go on a TAIR, we meet up at a fun B&B or resort somewhere. This time, however, we met up at big sister Poodie's new place, since Lex and I had not yet seen it in person.  So, it being Color Mad Monday and all, I thought I would share with you some of the colorful finishing touches that have been added since I posted the first pictures of her redo. The entire condo has sort of a "Parisian Flat" feel to it, what with the charcoal grey walls and soft grey flooring, crystal chandeliers, lots of French Provincial antiques, and touches of black and white, but she has now added bright pops of turquoise, hot pink, and grass green throughout.

Poodie and my mom were both avid antiquers, and though she had to shed most of her collections when she downsized, there are still a few of the smaller ones scattered here and there.

I don't believe I ever showed you Poodie's bedroom and bath.

She went with more muted pinks in here.

See the shower curtain in the mirror? That's where she tore out an old tub/shower combo from the 70s -- an accident waiting to happen for anyone with bad hips or knees -- and replaced it with a spacious walk-in shower.

This little linen cabinet alcove was created my closing off an extra door leading to the hallway -- not something you really need in a  bathroom that you don't plan for guests to use.

Here's my favorite bit:

This statue has been at all the houses we grew up in, as well as each of Poo's houses since my parents passed.

She painted her back fence aqua, transforming an ugly storage area off her den into a magical focal point!

Last but not least, it just wouldn't be a proper Thomas get-together if we didn't scope out any interesting markets or eateries in the area, now would it?

So thank you Dear Hubby, for kicking me out the door, and for promising to call the doctors to check on your results, if we don't hear from them by this afternoon!