No biting the personnel

This spring we went back on vacation to Japan. I didn’t get to write much about our trip but we did, finally, sort thru our pictures. You’ll find them here.

Months ago, S signed up for the Vineman race, a half-ironman distance triathlon in the Sonoma valley north of San Francisco. Throughout spring, she trained hard only to injure herself 2 weeks ago. While the race was out of the question, we still had the airline tickets as well as the car and the hotel reservations.

So it was that on Sunday morning I was enjoying a flight of wines from St. Francis Winery while sharing with S a pairing of salami, pate and cheese. From our table we gazed first at a magnificent garden then at the vineyards and the Sonoma landscape.

Without a doubt, this turned out to be one of the more enjoyable long-weekend excursions we have done in a while. In all, we visited eleven wineries over a few days. In order: Korbel, Opus One, Peju Province, Beaulieu, Alpha & Omega, V. Sattui, St-Francis, Benziger, Domaine Carneros, Beringer, and Robert Mondavi. In years past, I have visited the Lake Chelan, Wenatchee, Yakima and Okanagan wine regions. None compares to Napa and Sonoma.

These two valleys take wine tasting from a vacation for your nose to a full-blown adventure. Remember that S does not drink. Alcohol smells awful to her. Even then, as the chauffeur, she had a blast this time. Here?s why: many of these wineries (check out these pictures of Opus One and Beringer) have gorgeous mind blowing architecture; Benziger?s tour of the winery was fun, instructive and cheap; there?s good food (e.g. Zazu and Cindy?s Backstreet Kitchen) in both valleys; the Culinary Institute of America’s West Coast campus is in St-Helena; etc.

Mostly, we had four long days of sun in a gorgeous setting.

A few things stand out:

1. My nose cannot appreciate wine of more than $45. Anything beyond that is wasted on me, at least for now.
2. The most I paid was $25 for a glass of a recent vintage of Opus One. At $160 a bottle, this is not a wine I?m about to taste again anytime soon, unlike others. I did not buy a bottle. Tastings on average were $5 to $10. Robert Mondavi had a reserve flight for $30, which we skipped.
3. The average pour is 2 fl. oz. Some wineries poured as little as 1 fl. oz. while a few poured 4 fl. oz.
4. 2 fl. oz. isn?t enough when paired with anything.
5. Our least enjoyable visit was Alpha & Omega. Being next to famous names does not mean you can charge $45 or more for a wine that does not taste any better than the average $20 bottle.
6. While the staff in a restaurant might encourage you to take highway 12 to get from Rohnert Park to St-Helena, the fastest way is this.
7. Lunch on Friday was at an In-n-Out burger joint. Now we understand why ex-Californian coworkers are fascinated by these fast food spots. Best fast food we had in a long time. Fries tasted of potatoes; can you believe that?
8. No, we did not go to The French Laundry or to Bouchon.
9. S cheated on her employer and deprived a youth of a chance to read. She bought the latest Harry Potter at Borders in Santa Rosa on Saturday morning. She got one of the few non-reserved copies.

While we did see the fog swallow the west coast at Bodega Bay, we did not see the Petrified Forest or the geyser. These are among the many reasons why we will no doubt return next time we want to get out of town.

P.S.: Thank you to Wendy for cat sitting Truffles and Kucci.

P.S. #2: We have finished the book: long live JK Rowling!

[I wrote the following a long, long time ago. Sadly, hell is on a vengeance trip at work. I am only now wrapping up our trip.]

We are on our way back at Copenhagen’s gorgeous airport: hardwood floors, modern Ikea-like-although-in-Denmark furniture, a 7/11 with real fruit juice and plenty of processed food with unreadable labels. In short, it has no Starbucks but has a lot more class than SeaTac.

We spent the last 2 days with E in and around Geneva. His current apartment is great. We wish we had that much sunlight in our place in Seattle. It reminded us we need to BBQ more often. Saturday we drove out to Gruyères, where real Gruyère comes from, for a 3-hour  leisurely walk in Switzerland’s farmland.

After which we drove out to the local cheese museum and strolled through the village. The event of the afternoon was coffee at the HR Giger Bar right across from the museum to the artist, creator of the Alien creature. It is completely out of place for this scenic village.

No, we did not get to eat fondue or drink mulled wine while in Switzerland. E tells me these are winter delicacies. We also learned that the Genevois do not buy as much Evian as the French since Evian, the town and the water source, is right on the other side of the lake and, the story goes, Geneva’s tap water comes from the same source.

Here are a few more things we noted on our trip. I’ve written a lot about food (so says E) as it’s a simple way of commenting on the local culture, and because we’re food junkies.

Therefore, a few other topics, starting with lunch.

Provincial France really does stop midday. Most stores close for 2 hours around noon. A few days ago, on our way back to Geneva, we stopped in Annecy at E?s advice. This picturesque town on a lakeside has a gorgeous waterfront park where the tourist info center recommended we eat a picnic. With a few minutes to spare, we scoured the old town for artisanal bread, a few salads (shrimp salad, taboulé and cured meat) from a caterer owned by a Meilleur Ouvrier de France and fruits (olives and cherries) from the morning’s public market. A little while later, having enjoyed our meal, we walked back for pictures only to find everything other than restaurants closed.

In contrast, many restaurants are only open for meal times. They close after lunch, often reopening only at 6:30 PM or 7 PM. Those who remain open proudly advertise “service non-stop.” While people eat late, they enjoy grabbing a drink after work though. The Brasseries fill up between 5 PM and 7 PM. Since eating and drinking are two different activities, many establishments reserve the best seats for customers eating. One in Nice went as far as to ask us to move to another table 3 yards away when we changed our mind from drinks to food.

Radio is interesting. There is plenty of foreign music, mostly old 80s rock, playing on the radio. Since we often drove in and out of reception of stations, we kept switching up and down. By the end I was wishing for a “find me the next station currently playing music.” I got to hear the title track from the latest albums of both Manu Chao, who was near Seattle at that time, and Pink Martini, a Portland-based band which I?d seen live at the Symphony a few years ago.

Provence’s yellow is for real with terra cotta colors showing up everywhere - it goes very well with the amount of sunlight the area receives. Some of it is “Made in France.” Some is not. Still, the color does brighten up everything and we were missing it by the time we got to Geneva. We thought of buying ourselves another glazed yellow olive oil dispenser.

One bored evening in Marseille I listened to three back-to-back shows of Dragnet. It convinced me that once a North-American cop show, based in LA and featuring Mexican Spanish and LA gang slang, is translated in French, it no longer has any gritty edge. Seriously.

French backcountry roads are gorgeous and great to drive although meeting another car head-on with only a few inches to spare while driving 110 kph (70 mph) is stressful. Now that we are back, we are shocked at the width of road lanes in Seattle. There is hope while we wait for another Evergreen bridge for SR-520. With some adjustments, you could easily add in a car lane and a bike lane.

In closing, a few interesting random pics. The first is from Annecy, the second is from Aix.

[6/12/2007 - Edited for Mark]

Provence-10Originally uploaded by Fizzz

Our trip is over. I’ll wrote more on it later but, for now, I’d like to spend some time on cars.

Our rental car was a diesel Fiat Sedici. This was not what I reserved but the rental agency upgraded us for free (without asking though). It was a big car by local standards and it was too high for my taste however, it was enjoyable to drive. FWIW, it came in at 43.61 miles per gallon on the highway. Diesel is cheaper in France at 1.08 € per liter (USD 5.83 per gallon) than gas 1.35 € per liter (USD 7.87 per gallon). In all, it was a cheaper car to drive than what my Celica in Seattle.

Travel books and shows will tell you that renting a car has consequences to think of. After this trip, I agree.

Our two-week rental was ~640 USD but that is only part of the cost. Compared to North-America, you never have to take a highway in France; there is always a country road to take you to your destination. However, if you chose the scenic route, you would slow down every few miles to go through a village. Taking the highway would be much faster. It would also be costlier. We spent ~150 USD on highway tolls.

Everywhere we stopped, we had to pay parking. If you have looked at the pictures, you have seen a few shots of cute town places. Many of these have underground parking of two to six stories deep. Overnight parking, which was required since there is no street parking, in these underground bunkers, cost us between 12 USD and 37 USD a night.
In all we drove ~2200 km (~1375 miles) including many on gorgeous and curvy scenic roads. Even with good mileage, we spent at least 250 USD on diesel and 8 USD on gaz.

Yes, gaz.

On our second to last day, we stopped at a highway station to fill up. I nonchalantly stepped out of the car, chose from the 3 handles in front of me and started filling up the fuel tank of a diesel car with gaz. Luckily S jumped out of the car and stopped me quickly enough that I had only pumped in a gallon. This was still a major problem: gaz cars do not run on diesel; diesel cars do not run on gaz. The manual says so crisply within the first two of its more 200 pages of instructions. It also says that, should this horror come to pass, one should have the fuel tank emptied. Worse, should the engine have been started and should some of the wrong fluid have circulated through it, the engine will need to be purged, an expensive proposition. I grumpily walked to the counter and informed the two attendants.

I knew there was something wrong when they looked at me and laughed: one gallon of gaz diluted in more than ten times the volume of diesel would not be a problem. “It happens often,” they said.

So… what do you do? Do you trust the attendants or the manual?

I walked out. Filled up the rest of the tank with diesel and drove off. That evening at E’s place, I spent two hours googling for the right answer. Interestingly there isn’t one, however many have reported that if you keep on diluting the gaz with diesel (e.g. refill the tank with more diesel when it’s ¾ full) everything works out ok. The engine might stutter a bit at times. It did so a bit the next day as we drove around Switzerland but it never had any noticeable misbehaviors.

In all, renting a car for this trip was an expensive and stressful proposition. I really did enjoy taking the train and bus throughout Japan last fall. While we could not go everywhere we wanted, which is ok since we didn’t know enough about the country anyways, the cost difference easily made up for the pains of our vehicle this time.

So last night’s car hunt was only one more car related issue for this trip that we easily took in stride. For you see, I left my car parked on the street a few houses down from our home. In the past, I might have left it at work but, this time, I needed it to get home before the trip. Those houses I parked my car next to aren’t there anymore. Within the last two weeks, they were torn down as part of our neighborhood’s reinvention. The lots will likely host very nice townhouses by the end of the year.

To tear down a house, you need big toys, the kind of toys that hate to circumvent small cars. The city of Seattle must have placed the special no parking signs the day after I left for it towed my car 10 days ago. The citation, towing and storage fees amounted to an additional 320 USD.

Sigh… cars.

P.S.: and I have not even written about the cost of keeping S’s car at the airport during our trip…

Provence-44Originally uploaded by Fizzz

I’ve uploaded our pictures from our trip to France. They’re currently classified by region with the tags giving a bit more information about the locations. S may update the tags in the next few days.

To see the photos as a slideshow, you would click here.

Provence-7Originally uploaded by Fizzz.

Food was the main reason we chose to vacation here. S has a huge respect for this cuisine. It’s certainly one of the hardest to muster. Thus, having surveyed book after book, she figured the best way to appreciate it besides another dinner at Rover’s would be to come here. Here are some notes from our experiences eating out.

French cookbook cuisine and French cuisine are two different things. Brasseries are very popular. They serve simple fares: steak frites, salads, etc. We have yet to find one with French onion soup on the menu. For take-out lunch, baguette sandwiches are the norm. Unfortunately, the options don’t include paté de campagne but saucisson-beurre, fromage de chèvre, etc.

“A Vietnamese restaurant with a Thai chef that makes good sushi.” People here, like elsewhere, enjoy the cuisine of others: Asian, Döner Kebab, Italian, Tex-Mex, Irish pubs, and North-African cuisines are well represented. Since I’ve never found a rotating spit in Seattle, I was happy to satisfy my kebab craving. True, most Asian restaurants combine multiple cuisines, which shatters their credibility for us. While I’m sure there are plenty of very good foreign-cuisine restaurants, guide books tend to keep their tourists in the touristy parts of town.

What saved us from eating Pho one night in Avignon was the hotel receptionist who happily referred us to a tourist joint on la Place du Palais des Papes with a great French onion soup. That’s when we gave up and decided that the French cuisine of S’s cookbooks would be found, in towns, only in the same place other tourists would go to, and pay a premium for. While she still complains that these meals are not quite as good as what we eat at home, we have generally not been disappointed since. Her plat principal for last night was a leg of duck.

The pink stuff is everywhere. I understand it is cheap and flavorful but we did not come to Provence to eat farm raised Norwegian salmon. Especially when the fishing season for Alaska’s wild salmon on the Copper River started one week ago and Seattle is going gaga over it. Given that we are driving next to the Mediterranean Sea, I was surprised and saddened to see so few of the local species advertised.

It’s not like we live in Texas. We ate fresh local seafood twice. The first was paella and a fricassee in Nice at Chez Freddy. The meal was reasonably priced by our west-coast standards and had us wondering why, oh why, we can’t find decent paella easily in Seattle. Our second was bouillabaisse at the Brasserie des Catalans in Marseille. Their fish stock in the bouillabaisse was mind blowing. Being shown the fish we would eat before it went off to the kitchen was a nice touch, reminiscent of eating crab in a Chinese restaurant.

Wow… that takes guts. As I mentioned, we’re not the only tourists. We’ve heard a fair amount of French Canadian, Italian, German, Mandarin, Japanese and some of those Scandinavian languages that I can’t distinguish between. There is a shift though from a few years ago: we’ve seen large groups of Chinese but twice now we have encountered 2~3 young Japanese women traveling together. Even without a guide, you’ll find them poring over menus outside restaurants. While the waiter at Le Fetiche last night appeared to cherish teasing the young women at the table next to us on their use of broken English instead of proper French – a sarcastic humor that was lost on them – they successfully ordered bouillabaisse, white wine and crème brûlées. They seemed a bit dumbfounded as to why they had to ask for spoons, which the waiter conveniently forgot to bring, to eat the soup and were surprised when a second dish of fish showed up afterwards. S and I, probably like a few of the other tourists near that table, left wondering what warnings the Japanese travel books include for France.

Anyways, more later.

Provence-20Originally uploaded by Fizzz.

We are in and around Provence for two weeks. May, it turns out, is a great time to visit. The weather is in the 70s and 80s with clear blue skies but the tourists have not all yet arrived. There is a lot to be said about France and the French, therefore here is a partial list of our notes:

Ooooh, he’s carrying a baguette! So said S early on as we were eating from an outdoor terrace in Lyon and a man walked by heading home with a baguette under his arm. Yes, we are in the land of croissants, good bread and too many baked goods to name. On average, there is one boulangerie every street block. The better ones have the artisan label, which indicates that the store makes the goods itself. In such a store, it is common for customers to qualify the baguette they want. For example, S likes hers bien cuite, a wish for a firmer crust.

Bonjour! Au revoir! S has started reading Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong in which the authors explain the importance of these two expressions. Politeness here demands that, as you enter a store, you say bonjour and, as you leave, you say au revoir. It is also true for other public facing individuals such as tollbooth employees or the staff of museums. To skip bonjour will get you a very cold stare and poor service from the individual. In short, it is the complete opposite of small U.S. stores, where you can enter and browse silently.

Wow, they drive fast. France has a network of highways. These gigantic roads link the major cities. While the terrain varies a lot more here than in the U.S., these roads are built the same way: wide with easy curves. On sunny days, the speed limit is 130 kph (~80 mph). Traffic flows at 140 kph (87.5 mph). Compared to North America however, drivers religiously pass only on the left and always merge back afterwards. As a result, I’ve yet to get stuck behind a slow car for more than a few seconds. On the drive back from Nice to Marseille yesterday, I topped 160 kph (100 mph). I was passed. Then again, we passed many scooters barely doing 40 mph in the rightmost lane.

Wild and crazy poodles are overrunning us. The French love small dogs. They constantly walk them, most often without a leash. They speak to them as if they were kids; maybe even on a friendlier tone. They use them to start conversations with other dog owners. They travel with them. Plenty of hotels welcome these four-legged friends. They let them poop almost anywhere and often do not pick-up afterwards…

Anyways, more later.

We’re in Vancouver this weekend. S is off to run the marathon while I’m catching up on work and planning our upcoming vacation. We were last here a winter long ago. We’re staying at the same hotel on Robson Street. Last time I didn’t like the neighborhood. I remember hearing, up in our 20th floor room, a loud verbal disagreement down on the street not long after the bars closed. This morning, a few hours ago, not long before the sun rose, someone pretended to be a ourang-outang.

I suspect I’m laughing it off this time because without the clouds, the rain and the early darkness, the city is a lot livelier. What a difference spring makes.

The diversity of cuisines is still as amazing: brunch yesterday was dim-sun at Sun Sui Wah; dinner was at a Japanese diner followed by a slice of cake at True Confections (on the recommendation of M). On the block across the street from that restaurant were a Mexican restaurant, a Korean restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant, an African restaurant, and an Italian Gelato shop. Across from our hotel is a konbini, which is open from 11 AM to 2 AM and sells fresh onigiri.

The diversity of ethnicities is more striking than before. Everywhere we go we hear Japanese speaking people, most of them young professionals. Last time it was Cantonese speakers, which are still as prevalent. There’s a fair number of Koreans and I’ve heard some French, in addition to the ubiquitous charming British accent.

We’re enjoying this city. Our conclusion yesterday, as we were eating our sponge cake looking at passersby, was that we were looking at passersby… people of different background, races, ages, and many dress codes. We saw a Buddhist monk quickly shuffling is way somewhere, couples window shopping, and many others, like us, looking for a place to eat. We were crowd watching, a rare activity in Seattle.

It’s contest season in Toastmasters. Fall is for the Table Topics (impromptu speaking) and the Humorous Speech contests while spring is for the Evaluation contest and the International Speech contest.

This last one is my favorite of the four. The written rules are simple: 5 to 7 minutes with substantially original material. However, to win, you have little choice but to have content that will interest the audience. Most, but not all, aim to inspire. To reach their division contest, like the one I organized on Friday and the one I attended on Saturday, they must win their club and their area contests.

Over the last few days, I listened to a number of speeches. One of the most memorable explained how extraordinary people are ordinary people doing extraordinary things, a simple message with an incredible delivery. Another used the speaker’s own gastric bypass surgery to discuss how life is not always greener on the other side. There was also the young man who reminded the audience of the importance of carefully selecting one’s obligations. Becoming a salary man may mean no more travels to New Zealand for a while.

My favorite one remains that of a young Japanese woman who explained her career path. She titled her speech “no women bathroom.” In her youth, she had dreamed of becoming a pilot only to learn that the flight university could not admit her, it had no women bathroom. This unfortunate reality, and the advice of her mentor, prompted her to go study in the U.S. for college. There she earned her flight certification. The story continued with her struggle to earn her permanent resident status, which American airline companies require of employees. More than ten years later, she is a flight instructor at the U.S. school and a corporate pilot on weekends. There are still less than 60 women corporate pilot in Asia.

Yes, you do hear some wonderful, personal stories in Toastmasters this time of the year.

Spring has arrived in Seattle. While it’s still cold at night – temperatures have neared 0 C – the last few days have been gorgeous: goodbye to dreary clouds and hello to the Olympic range. In a few weeks, I’ll probably see Mount Rainier on my daily commute.

On Friday, we headed off for a lazy dinner at Tutta Bella in Columbia City, on Saturday afternoon we visited Ranch 99 in Edmonds and on Sunday we strolled through the UVillage and the Ballard Farmers Market. Our favorite creamery was selling an older tomme. A few stands down S bought fresh foraged fiddleheads, the first time I have seen her want “rabbit food.” Finally, as we stocked up on ground meat and bacon, we heard the best chicken in town would be back in a few weeks along with the sign-up list for Thanksgiving turkey. This year, we’re lining up.

In short, all of this made a great enjoyable weekend to cap off the month of March. This is good since, during the same period, I twice took out candidates for a “post-interview day closing dinner.” I have another one next week. In 7 years, I have had only one candidate who did not like the city by the end of the evening. The fun of this past weekend reminds me that, beyond my sales skills, the city stands on its own. That is a good thing for my conscience.

This makes me wonder what to think of this report by the Mercer Consulting group. Seattle is the 49th best city to live in the world. Geneva is 3rd, San Francisco 29th and Tokyo 35th. Geneva???

Go Canada though: Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Calgary all make the list, in that order.

P.S.: Yes, yes, I know. I’m presenting one-sided arguments about the fun of wandering a city while shopping, for groceries mostly.