Idyllic LA

Sometimes I feel like my soul has a muscle-memory for Los Angeles. As if, by failing to pay close attention and keep defenses up, I could get lured into the rat race that birthed my parents and thereby lose my way back home to the cool, rolling hills of Northern California.  It is precisely because LA has its charms that I have hardened my heart against her wiles, insisting I felt more at home just about anywhere else, including Delhi, half a world away.  Going to school at Berkeley has put me in close proximity to several die-hard Angelenos, and after a lot of kibitzing and regional trash talking, one of them finally called my bluff and offered to put the city's money where her mouth is.  Armed with an "I'll never live south of Monterey" chip on my shoulder, I headed out to La La Land for the Labor Day weekend.


After a quick SJC to BUR flight, I found myself quickly ensconced in a lovely, loaned Hollywood studio, right in the shadow of the Capitol Records building.  For dinner, we headed to Yamashiro's for sushi and sake.  We sat in a lovely garden courtyard, but the restaurant itself has commanding views over Hollywood and Downtown LA that are to die for - well worth a return visit.  I've learned that life in LA doesn't wind down early, so after dinner, we headed out to a late showing of The Help at a very posh theater in Hollywood (supposedly the highest-grossing in the country - likely due to the $16 tickets) and then wound down our evening listening to music and shooting the breeze until 3am.  Not a bad start to the weekend.


On Saturday we headed to Runyon Canyon to hike with the fit and fit-to-be-seen.  The views over the city were beautiful.  I'll never get used to not being able to see blue ocean nor completely clear sky, but you can't deny that the weather and sites are pretty spectacular. Brunch is, as always, the best meal ever, so we headed to Bottega Louie for an amazing meal of clam pizza, eggs scrambled with burrata, salad and mimosas, topped off by truly spectacular french macaroons - the salted caramel and Earl Grey are to die for. Replete with brunchy-goodness, we rounded Saturday afternoon out with a little homework and a nap, before heading out to dinner and drinks at The Federal Bar in Noho.  Another great day - score two for the LA team.

Sunday dawned as beautifully as her predecessor, so we drove along the beach to Malibu and wound our way up to the Getty Villa to take in the sights.  After a yummy lunch on the deck, we meandered through the museum, taking in the Roman artefacts and the lovely garden, and then topped it off with iced coffees and a tete-a-tete in the outdoor amphitheater.  In the evening, we headed to the heart of Hollywood and the Kodak theater to see Cirque du Soleil's newest production, Iris. It was hands down my favorite Cirque show, maybe my favorite theater production, to-date.  Phenomenal.


The best part of Labor Day weekend is the bonus Monday and we put it to good use.  What would a trip to LA be without a visit to the Magic Kingdom?  I hadn't been in years, but with Park Hopper passes in our hot little hands and a Starbuck's breakfast under our belts, we hit Main Street with a vengeance.  What's a winning recipe for a a great day at Disneyland? Read it and weep, my friends...

1. Fast Pass Indiana Jones
2. Ride Pirates of the Caribbean
3. Ride Indiana Jones
4. Ride the Jungle Cruise
5. Fast Pass Splash Mountain
6. Fast Pass Big Thunder Mountain Railway
7. Make lunch reservations at the BBQ place behind Big Thunder Mountain
8. Ride the Tea Cups (and deflect your partner's attempts to make you puke)
9. Have an amazing BBQ lunch (so, so good and with live Country music to boot - shoot y'all...)
10. Ride Big Thunder Mountain
11. Ride Splash Mountain
12. Fast Pass Space Mountain
13. (Jazz hands down Main St. and across the plaza to California Adventure - you cannot walk through Disneyland without wanting to treat it like a stage!)
14. Fast Pass Soaring Over California
15. Re-fuel with a slushy and ride California Screamin'
16. Ride the swing carousel
17. Ride The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (and try not to crush your seat mate's hand in a panic)
18. (Head back to Disneyland to cash in the Space Mountain Fast Pass)
19. Kill the time until Space Mountain riding Buzz Light Year's Astro Blasters. Have so much fun you run around to the front of the line and go again, trying to beat your score.
20. Ride Space Mountain
21. Ride the Matterhorn
22. Ride It's a Small World
23. (Jazz hands back to CA Adventure)
24. Ride Soaring Over California (A-mazing!)
25. Realize you could make one more run on California Screamin' and make a dash for it - last ride of the day.
26. Get dinner, drinks, and rest those tired feet in Downtown Disney before heading home. Oh, and don't forget where you parked....Perfect, perfect day.

Tuesday morning came around more quickly than I wanted it to, but I have no right to complain.  What a great weekend! I will always be a NorCal girl at heart, but LA staked out a claim on my loyalty and affection that I won't readily disavow in the future.  I will have to work hard to top my LA friends' superb suggestions and program of activities, but I'll do my best to represent my part of the state as admirably when they come up North.

East Bay Treats for LA Guys

Some of my nearest and dearest buddies are occasional coast-flippers. For those who are bold enough to cross the Northern / Southern California boundary with verve, we proffer an incentive: the best eats in the East Bay, bar none. At least four of my favorite foodies would concur, but feel free to go local and 'ejumicate' me.


View East Bay Treats in a larger map

Every day is "Friday!" in Kauai

There's no place like Hanalei, Kauai for getting away from it all. Peter, Jaime, Lauren and I spent ten days celebrating Lauren and Peter's MBA graduation, new career opportunities for Jaime, and partying in anticipation of new jobs starting later in July. It was great to see the Montgomery and Parks familys, and generally get some R&R away from the busy world of work and school.

Fun things we did:

• Ziplining! with Kauai Backcountry Adventures
• Hiking to Hanakapiai, Ho'opi'i Falls, and almost to the Alakai Swamp (darn that mud)
• Kayaking up the Hanalei River with Kayak Kauai - Lauren and I learned we don't have very good rhythm
• The Smith Family Luau - lots of fun with 500 of our closest friends ;)
• Sunset pu'pus on the beach x 2
• Pink floaties with dual cup-holders, roadie cocktails, and Lauren in the best Aloha get-up ever
• Snorkeling at Tunnels
• Tidepooling at Secret Beach

Yummy eats:

• Duane's Ono Char Burger - a must for post-flight lunching, but don't be in a rush
• Hukilau Lanai - our first night of vacation, after airport pick-ups
• Duke's barefoot bar for a yummy lunch and drinks straight out of a pineapple
• Tropical Taco and BYO beers for a casual lunch in Hanalei
• Kauai Grill at the St. Regis - our fancy night out
• Pau Hana Pizza in Kilauea - my favorite lunch of the trip; smoked Ono pizza...SO good
• Waimea Brewing Company for an all-appetizer dinner, hoo-aah!
• Olympic Cafe in Kapa'a - a full bar and a lunch of humungous proportions, everything a hiker could want
• Kountry Kitchen in Kapa'a for top-tier, greasy spoon breakfast; our goodbye to paradise

The beginnings of an unofficial soundtrack:

Sung by the mixing spoon brigade, in a kitchen or Charger near you...

• Friday, Steven Colbert & Jimmy Fallon
• Nightswimming, REM (for pu'pus at the beach)
• Somewhere Over the Rainbow, IZ
• Just a Dream, Nelly
• Stay, Sugarland
• Forever In Blue Jeans, Neal Diamond
• America F*ck Yeah
• Music of the Night, Sarah Brightman & Michael Crawford (because Lauren knows all the words, dammit...)
• If I Were A Boy, Beyonce (because Peter loves man-hating divas)

Firenze, la Fior di Italia

Bistec a la Fiorentina

Memory has begun to fade, but I'll do my best to do justice to lovely Florence.  After a very pleasant Eurail trip from Rome, we arrived in Florence and walked through the center of town to our hotel, Hotel Monna Lisa. This lovely little boutique hotel is really more like staying in a well-to-do family's townhome than a proper hotel. It's a calm oasis in the middle of Florence with furnishings that are unique and shabbily genteel, and a lovely atrium in the breakfast room with a view to the back garden.  Florence was my favorite city in Italy on my first trip, and this jaunt only confirmed my preference. I love Florence.  The cobbled streets, choc-a-block with chic shops, art gallerys, churches and museums are a pleasure to stroll through and the myriad food options are all amazing.  I could spend endless afternoons wending my way around.  This trip, we got more of an inside scoop from Mom and Dad's neighbor, Amy, who was studying abroad while we were there.  She introduced us to two of the best gelaterias in Florence, Carapina and Grom, which were so good that we made sure to go at least once a day while we were there.  I highly, highly recommend the crema di vin santo at Carapina, but everything was excellent. For dinner, Amy took us to Il Gatto e La Volpe for excellent pizza, pasta and some of the best house made balsamic vinegar ever - if you go, definitely try to pack some home, it's amazing. Another night, we took a bus to the residential part of Florence and had one of the biggest steaks I've ever seen - the waitress brought it out for Dad and I to approve before we ate it. You have to love bistec a la fiorentina - more meat than an American can handle!  I took Mom and Dad for the prerequisite trip to the top of the Duomo, where we had beautiful views out over the city.  The one-armed-bandit photo I took of me and Mom is one of my favorite from the trip.

Mom and me, from the Duomo

The Uffizi Gallery remains one of my favorite spots in the world.  If I could curl up in a chair with a good book in the gallery overlooking the Arno, with it's lovely whitewashed ceiling and delicate hand-painted detailing, surrounded by Boticellis and the watery sunlight streaming through windows that have begun to weep with age, I might be happy forever.  It has to be one of the world's most impressive collections of art, but it's also just a beautiful space in the world, and oddly cozy in its own way.  From the Uffizi, we took a stroll through the Piazza della Signorina and made a stop at Rivoire for the famous hot chocolate -- possibly the best in the world, if you ask me. Our art tour of Florence ended with Michelangelo's spectacular David.  The statue always makes me wonder about the boy who inspired it and the sculptor who was so fascinated by him; David and his Goliath seem the lesser subjects of the work.

You cannot leave Florence without some retail therapy, so we tried on gloves in every color of the rainbow in the leather market, bought chocolates for Dad, lovely ruffled opera gloves and a python clutch for me, and introduced Mom to the wonders of Missoni scarves. A return trip to Bartolucci secured wooden music boxes for Niels, Cordi, and Ronin, plus a fair bit of entertainment for all of us 'adults' as we wandered through the shop testing them all out. There are endless joys behind the tiny shop doors and through the alleyways of Florence. Rome was charming and not to be missed, but if you have one stop to make in Italy, perhaps in all of Europe, make it Florence - you will never regret it.

Rome, if you want to...

After a summer filled with PSA scans and surgeries, bad boyfriends and yucky prerequisites, the Mackh family was ready for a break. We decided the eschew our normal, lovely Thanksgiving for a vacation abroad. Mom almost didn't let us go because she was sure that my MBA-stressed brain couldn't handle it, but we did all right. I decided that Italy was the most digestible, and Rome and Venice were still on my list of places that I need to see, and soon. I also thought my history-buff dad would LOVE Florence and all the glories of ancient Rome, so off we went.

I was so pleasantly surprised by Rome. I feel as though with the Vatican at its heart, Rome has a tendency from the outside to seem immense, as though its reach is endless and one would become lost there. While the city does have modern-day sprawl to it, the heart of it operates like a bustling village. I suppose it helped that we were there in the shoulder-season, but really Rome was lovely, welcoming, and easy to meander through. Our first day, we didn't make it much farther than a late lunch and the Piazza del Popolo before jet-lag won, but it was still great fun. And we had this amazing torta di ricotta with dark chocolate shavings on top that, in itself, was worth the price of the flight. We got a little lost in the park, as we wended our way back to the hotel, but who's complaining? The moon was full and the storm clouds made the perfect Gothic backdrop - very Ides of March, heavy with foreshadowing (don't worry, we made it home).

On our second day, we tackled the Vatican, which was beautiful. Work never quite goes away, so I was madly text messaging my peer from the top of St. Peter's, which must be sacrilege, but I made it out, so perhaps all is forgiven. The Sistine Chapel, is swathed in low-light loveliness and hushed whispers. It is hard to imagine the years it took to perfect each gesture and symbol in the intertwined figures. Surfeit with art, we wandered back through Rome to the Piazza Navona and had a late, late snack in a cafe there. About halfway through the meal, a Chaplin-style clown set up shop in the center of the piazza, making fun of all comers. He was hilarious and soon had the whole crowd rolling with laughter. It was idyllic, and so not the way that Americans spend their evenings...just lovely. After our snack, we wandered through the Pantheon, which has been a temple to so many faiths, and listened to musicians playing in the piazza outside. I could truly live in a city with this type of culture. After the obligatory coin toss and wishes and the lovely Trevi Fountain, we ate dinner at Colline Emiliane, near our hotel and the Piazza Barberini. Everything was excellent, but the show stopper was my dessert: torta di ricotta, laced with amarena cherries, and crowned with a crumbly top...seriously one of the best desserts of my life; I must try to figure out how they made it.

Day three was all about Ancient Rome. We walked from our hotel to the Victor Emmanuel memorial, with it's amazing views of the city, and then went on to Colosseum. It did rain on us a bit, but the interplay of the storm clouds, shot through with the occasional rays of sunlight, did tremendous things for the ruins. It is amazing to think of the culture (and mayhem) that emanated from this tiny locus of Roman life. After Ancient Ro

me, we wandered through Trastevere on a somewhat fruitless search for restaurant that one of my friends recommended, and listened to part of the Mass in Italian in the local church. After a long walk back to our neighborhood, we had a yummy dinner at a local family restaurant and crashed early in preparation for our train to Florence in the morning. All in all, I really loved Rome and would go back again in a heartbeat. The people, history, and food were all amazing. We had an absolutely lovely time.