An archive of the Travel Tip of the Week website
On the Campo di Fiori in Rome we came across a concept we’d like to see catch on world wide: cane parking. Outside a shop on the square, there was a convenient hitching post to park your dog while you went inside to pick up some wine and cheese….
A single candle burns in the 16th century gothic Eglise St. Merri.
Photograph by Clay Doyle
San Francisco’s newest museum building thrusts one of its oldest institutions into the 21st century, with the latest in sustainable architecture and green technology…
My most recent travel article, on the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, appeared in the May 2009 issue of The Advocate. If you missed the print edition, you can read the entire article on their web site at:
http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid76378.asp
Added 12 September 2009: The original text of the article is reproduced below:
Nature and Nurture
San Francisco’s newest museum building thrusts one of its oldest institutions into the 21st century, with the latest in sustainable architecture and green technology.
A field of native California plants rolls across a plain of undulating hills—hovering high above the ground in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Supported largely by glass walls, the “green roof” is only the most surprising of the many striking features of internationally renowned architect Renzo Piano’s new building for the venerable California Academy of Sciences.
The Academy, which houses research and educational facilities and a vast collection of scientific specimens as well as the Kimball Natural History Museum, the Steinhart Aquarium, the Morrison Planetarium and more, was formerly housed in a hodgepodge of 13 buildings built in Golden Gate park over the course of 20th century. The park location was chosen after the Academy, founded in 1853, lost it’s original building and and most of its collections to the 1906 Earthquake and fire.
The new building grew from San Francisco’s second major earthquake, the 1989 Loma Pietra. While the museum remained open until 2003, structural damage from the quake presented the opportunity to reinvent the Academy in a totally new, unified, and revolutionary building.
The Academy selected Pritzker Prize winning Architect Renzo Piano, designer (with Richard Rogers) of the revolutionary Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and numerous other museums, to create a new structure that is not only an artistic landmark but also reflects and reinforces the mission of the Academy.
“The Academy’s mission is to explore, explain, and protect the natural world” according to Executive Director, Gregory C. Farrington, Ph.D. The result is a structure that is not only visually striking but is also the world’s “greenest” museum. The building has earned a Platinum rating for for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), making it the largest sustainable public building in the world, incorporating, among other features, solar energy panels and a passive cooling system.
“This museum has always worked on three levels – displaying the collection, educating the public, researching the science. The spirit of this new building is to announce and enforce this complexity of function,” Piano explains.
The long lines waiting to enter the building since it’s opening at the end of 2008 likely have as much or more to do with the awe-inspiring exhibits inside as the environmentally friendly structure however.
The main floor, an enormous rectangle of glass and limestone, houses the Morrison Planetarium in a giant opaque sphere, and a four story rainforest in a sealed transparent dome, on each side of square glass courtyard. Exhibits on the main floor are a creationist’s nightmare: the evolution of species is thoughtfully and clearly explained in series of very visual exhibits illustrating natural selection and biodiversity. The second main floor display is devoted to the effects of climate change and habitat destruction.
Interestingly, favorite sections of the old buildings have been incorporated into the new museum to delightful effect. The neoclassical African hall, with it’s classic dioramas of taxidermied animals has been preserved—with a twist. The main window now contains the Steinhart Aquarium’s collection of live South African penguins, swimming and waddling in startling contrast to the stuffed creatures. Other parts of the original buildings have been preserved to great effect as well, including the 1934 entry colonnade, the Foucault Pendulum, and the playful brass seahorse railings of the original aquarium building.
The aquarium itself now occupies the entire basement of the new structure—an underground, underwater fantasia of 38,000 living creatures. Twenty-five feet high and holding 212,000 gallons of water, the Philippine Coral Reef is one of the deepest exhibits of live corals in the world; while the 100,000 gallon Northern California Coast tank highlights local sea life. Other exhibits feature a walk beneath a glass bottomed Amazon lake, tanks of delicate jellyfish, a hands-on tide pool, and a swamp housing the aquarium’s famous decades-old Albino Alligator.
And high above, a rooftop viewing platform provides a close up look at the amazing living roof.
Finally, the building also features the Moss Room, a gourmet restaurant open for lunch and dinner, featuring local, organic, and sustainably raised produce, sea food and meat—addressing the one question not answered elsewhere in the museum: how does nature taste?
The museum is located at 55 Music Concourse Drive in Golden Gate Park. It’s a short walk from the 9th Avenue N-Judah streetcar stop. Admission can be guaranteed by purchasing tickets online at least 24 hours in advance. Phone: 415 379-8000. www.calacademy.org
A friend of my sister recently wrote:
Do you know of any cheap but clean/safe hotels in Amsterdam (specifically, safe for a mom and child alone)? I want to get a hotel in Amsterdam for a couple nights to avoid all the train riding back and forth from my friend’s house in the Hague but money is very tight so….some inside info would be great! My friend in the Hague never really seems to go to Amsterdam; perhaps you can help?
Hi
I haven’t stayed in a hotel in Amsterdam for quite sometime, but I’ll try to give you some help.
My favorite hotel is the Ambassade (http://www.ambassade-hotel.nl/) great location, rooms, service etc, but it might be more than you want to spend. Hotel prices in Amsterdam have risen quite a bit since the introduction of the Euro.
I think the NH chain of hotels in the city are good values for larger hotels with elevators, etc.
You might also check out the Lloyd Hotel (http://www.lloydhotel.com) along the eastern docklands; they have rooms in all price ranges and it’s rather a fun place. A short tram ride from the historic center.
A brand new hotel that might be good for you is the Citizen M Amsterdam City (http://www.citizenm.com/) it’s adjacent the WTC train station (NOT centraal Station) which you can get to by direct train from the Hague. It’s brand new, seems really nice and cheap. It’s in a quiet residential neighborhood, but the number 5 tram will take you to the museum quarter and the city center.
If you go to hotels.nl you can compare prices and possibly find a good deal. There are lots of great little hotels along the canals if you don’t mind the steep dutch stairs. Best places to stay would be along the Western or Southern canal belt. This is the most picturesque part of the city, and it’s central yet quiet. Hotels between the Central Station and the Dam can be nice, but the nightlife there can be noisy and perhaps a bit seedy for a child, though the whole city is quite safe. Find a hotel that meets your budget, check the location on google maps, then go to the hotel’s website to check it out and see if you can book it even cheaper directly.
Also, if you don’t plan on staying out very late in Amsterdam, you can easily get from the Hague (either Den Haag CS or Den Haag HS stations) to Amsterdam on the intercity trains which run quite frequently. The trip takes about 45 minutes. The The train system is excellent so you may also want to visit Haarlem, Utrecht or Rotterdam as well. You can check the schedules online (in English at ns.nl. By the way, you can get to Delft from Den Haag by city tram.
Clay
“It would be easier,” I remark, “To have lunch with Jacques Chirac.” We are standing outside the Pilier Sud, at the entrance to private elevator to Restaurant Jules Verne. Our way is blocked by a pleasant but stern young man, clad in all black, with a radio headset. It is a near impossibility to make a reservation at Jules Verne, the luxury restaurant on the second tier of the Tour Eiffel.
“Three months in advance” is their standard reply…and even then…I finally had a friend who works for the French Tourist Office in LA make the reservation…to her slight annoyance, as even for her it required multiple phone calls and faxes. It’s somewhat ridiculous…Le Grand Véfour, Le Cinq—great, three star restaurants—booked with a simple fax on our last trip to Paris. Anyway, even after going to such great lengths to extract a reservation, and a fax from the restaurant confirming such reservation, the Jules Verne insists that you reconfirm the reservation the day before. OK, slightly annoying, but not unheard of. Except that they never answer their telephone. Call, call, and call again, and all you get is a multi-lingual message telling you that all lines are busy and please try again in a few minutes. At the prices they charge, you’d think they could hire someone to answer the phones…or outsource it to a call center in India or something. Finally we sent them a fax. But, of course something has gone astray…our table has been canceled (and given to who I wonder, considering the difficulty of making a reservation and the impossibility of reaching them by phone. Have they a list of stand-ins at the ready?) Calls are made from the elevator desk to the restaurant upstairs; someone comes to confer with us…I wave my confirmation fax (bearing the imprint of the French Tourist Office) and Logan explains the multiple unanswered phone calls. Still the young man in black bars our entry to the private elevator lobby, snicker though he did at my comment about lunch with Jacques Chirac. Clearly this is a commonplace occurrence. Someone in authority explains that they had tried to call our hotel, unsuccessfully, that morning, and then—finally behaving in the manner one expects from such a restaurant—says, but of course we will take care of everything, please come up…
From that point on, all is pleasant. A sweet boy lifts us to the second étage in one of the tower’s uniquely slanted elevators; we can see the young and the vigorous clambering up and down the stairs as views of Paris flash in and out of sight between the steel girders. We are offered an aperitif in the bar, but already they have a table ready for us. It’s a small table…too small really for the theater of food the restaurant requires, but it is right at the window, on the best side of restaurant. All of Paris is below our table: Sacre-Coeur on its hill, the Place de la Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe, the roofs of the Madeleine and the Opera, the expanse of the Louvre, and, in the distance, the distinctive towers of Notre Dame and the brightly colored tubes of the Pompidou Center. Directly under us, on the platform below the restaurant, tourists admire the view. It is spectacular, as promised. Inside, the restaurant is all black and grey and leather—very eighties. It seems a bit, well, too eighties, though in mint condition. Logan admires the china, white with black geometric accents, eighties too, but handsome. I find the black stemmed wineglasses less successful. We have glasses of Veuve Cliquot vintage rose (€29 a glass!) Logan promptly knocks his over—25 euros spilling into my plate and lap—fortunately protected by my napkin. Fortunately our only mishap. Service is efficient, professional, but no better than most Paris restaurants. Food is fairly excellent. The à la carte menu is shockingly expensive—50 starters, €90 entrees, and up. But there is a very nice “businessman’s” lunch menu for 55 (the only thing not translated into English—Logan finds this very cunning). He and I have a starter of haddock prepared three ways: a soup that is almost entirely fish flavored air—really good; haddock tartare, and a little spinach and haddock tartlet. Abbie has a terrine of foie gras and oxtail—terrific. They have lamb for the main course—they proclaim it excellent. I have quail—deboned for the most part, and stuffed with foie gras. It is excellent. We drink two bottles of wine, a white and a Bordeaux, neither particularly expensive. Dessert is a sablé with strawberries, with custard and ice cream; and a lemon thing that Abbie had. Various little candies and cookies and truffles are brought to the table, of course. The wine waiter is cute. After lunch, we wander downstairs and out amid the milling crowds for the view of Paris from the open platform. Logan buys another cheap souvenir Tour Eiffel to add to his odd little collection. We make a waiter open the back door to the Jules Verne for us, so we can take the private elevator down. We are about the last lunch guests to leave the restaurant. The crowd was largely American; a few French people. What can I say? The view: extraordinary. The decor: fair. The service: good but not outstanding. The food: very good. The price: the prix fix lunch is a good value. Otherwise for the money, I’d go to Le Cinq, hands down.
Excerpted from Clay Doyle’s Journal, Anecdotes from a French Spring, 2005
Online booking, now available via their website may make getting a table easier…. Clay, 2009
My friend Dave, in Berkeley, recently asked:
Hi Clay,
I have friends going to Venice in 2 weeks. Could you give me a short list of 2 or 3 restaurants that you have liked there. I know you have found some special ones.
Thanks, Dave
Our best meal in Venice recently was at Antiche Carampane, a hard to find family-run restaurant in San Polo frequented exclusively by locals. The menu changes daily and is based entirely on what they find that morning at the market, so it has a somewhat limited menu composed almost entirely of local fish, shellfish and vegetables, all brilliantly prepared. The atmosphere is very friendly, and the owners will basically tell you what to eat. If you are not picky, you will have a great meal. The atmosphere is lively and fun and even the desserts are great. It’s quite moderately priced given the quality of the food—and that it’s in Venice. It’s small, and reservations are essential. It’s also quite hard to find, so you’ll need a good map. As Venice addresses are useless you’ll be wandering some fairly deserted residential alleys and squares until you find the Calle de la Carapane. When you’re sure you’ve missed it, just go a little further, and there it is.
Other favorites in Venice are San Marco, a stylish restaurant with excellent food and a good wine list, centrally located on a small street called Frezzeria behind the famous piazza; and Vino Vino a casual and inexpensive winebar/restaurant (on Calle della Vesta, no credit cards) near La Fenice opera house.
The three restaurants mentioned by every food writer in the world are all excellent, but also extremely expensive. The very formal Da Fiore is great, but you may not want to drop the 200 Euros per person it will cost you to eat there. Likewise the equally delicious and famous Al Covo. Fiaschetteria Toscana is my current favorite among the three, being slightly less pricey. All offer expansive menus, multi-lingual staff and excellent food—for a price.
If you have time to take a day trip out to Torcello (a very pleasant boat ride in good weather), one of my favorite restaurants for a long, leisurely lunch is Osteria al Ponte di Diavolo. Great, typically Venetian food in a lovely outdoor setting between the boat dock and the oldest church in Venice. A little expensive, but worth it, and again reservations advised.
It’s worth visiting Do Mori, one of the oldest bars in Venice, for a drink and a few excellent cicheti. This stand up establishment, tucked away on the Calle die Do Mori on the San Polo side of the Rialto Bridge is a stand up affair, and open only during the day. Nearby there are several similar bars offering cicheti and wines by the glass.
Notable too are a number of new, very stylish and modern bars and restaurants that seem to be popping up around Venice, indicating that the city is more than simply a museum. You’ll encounter them in out of the way places, but Aciugheta (on the Campo Santi Filippo e Giacomo, between San Marco and San Zaccaria) is a nice central place for a drink and cicheti. They also operate a stylish new restaurant with only five tables (on the same square) which serves very good modern takes on Venetian food.
I will also recommend the guidebook Venice Osterie (in English) though you’ll probably have to pick it up in Venice itself at the Mondadori Bookshop (Salizada San Moise, in the haute shopping district off Piazza San Marco.) By the way, there is a very stylish cocktail bar behind the bookstore, one of the few that is open late in Venice, but drinks are rather expensive. If you still want to drink after dinner, I’d suggest a walk to the Campo Santa Margherita and the cheap and lively bar Margaret Duchamp.
In addition to the above, I cannot stress enough the value of simply wandering around the farther, tourist-ignored reaches of Castello, Cannaregio, San Polo or Dorsoduro around lunch time, where you will encounter wonderful little restaurants catering to local residents and workers, and serving up simple, delicious food at absurdly low prices. Poke around and go with your instincts. In these non-tourist areas you’ll also find great places for coffee and drinks (try the Spritz Aperol, a local favorite) at rock bottom prices—the Venetians love their coffee and drinks.
Despite the economic downturn, there’s still plenty of glamour in downtown Los Angeles. At Rivera Restaurant in downtown L.A. the good times are still on, with a glamorous, uber-designed setting, beautiful waiters and delicious food. The tapas-style menu encourages sharing, and the food is both creatively tasty and artistically, if ironically presented.
Above: a chile relleno stuffed with Burrata. Left to right: Black Cod, Duck Leg Confit, Dark Chocolate Torte—cute and delicious. With exotic cocktails and good Argentine wine.
A recent rainy day forced us inside at the Alcove, where seating is quite limited. As a result, we were privileged to sit very close to a birthday celebration consisting of four women and one very gay boy in Ugg boots.
After breakfast, my friend Eric transcribed this approximation of their conversation, in the manner of an online chat.
Gayboi: “My friend saw Christina Aguilera pole dancing at a club. So. He took her picture. Then he sold it for $22,000.”
Birthdaygurll: “I could never, like, do that. I mean follow people around just to take their, like, picture.”
Gayboi: “Oh no. he was just AT the club. And then took her picture.”
Birthdaygurll: “Oh well that’s different. OHMIGOD! Did I tell you my boyfriend loves my naked feet?”
MatronLady:“Like he has a foot fetish?”
Birthdaygurll: “Well I donknow. I mean he likes to see my feet like naked and is always, like, asking me to take of my shoes. He just loves them”
MatronLady: “Oh”
Birthdaygurll: “He is always wanting me to paint my nails. He asked me to, like, paint them white”
Gayboi: “So you couldn’t tell you had toenails or something?”
Birthdaygurll: “I guess. Like I asked him if he wanted me to paint them with white out and make them that color. He said I guess. And then I was like no way, ohmygod. Then I asked him if he wanted me to paint them pearly-shiny white. He was, like, YESSSS!”
Gayboi: “oh my was he really like a puppy like that. Did his eyes really get that big”
Birthdaygurll: “They did. I haven’t done it yet cuz I can’t figure out what color to paint my fingernails to match. I mean, like, when I go to yoga people are going to see what color they are and I don’t want them to look like totally different”
Gayboi: “you should just do them French.”
Birthdaygurll: “THAT WOULD LIKE LOOK TOTALLY CUTE!”
MatronLady: “I wanted to ask Jeanne if she was being paid by the word. All her jokes were so long and bad”
Gayboi: “Oh, I know, right?…I still haven’t been paid on that. That jewelry making was so hard the other night. I spent like hours and I was using my teeth and feet and hands and mouth and then like she just took it from me and it was done. In like two seconds. I was so jealous. Like do you do that all the time”
MatronLady: “My hands hurt the next day. I don’t usually make that much jewelry. It was a total workout. Those are cute shoes”
Quietgirl: “They’re new. I didn’t want to wear them in the weather but they are just so cute”
Gayboi: “Oh by the way these are edible too”
Birthdaygurll: “My birthday flowers? Maybe I’ll get hungry later. I have to go to the bathroom. Then we should go.
Birthdaygurll: “Sorry that took so long.”
Gayboi “Would you stop saying sorry already?”
The year 2008 began and ended in San Francisco. So lets consider some old/new highlights of San Francisco in honor of the new year. Favorite old site: the fabulously eccentric late Frank Lloyd Wright Marin Civic Center. Favorite new site: the fabulously eccentric just opened Renzo Piano designed California Academy of Sciences. Favorite old restaurant: deliciously Italian Delfina in San Francisco. Favorite new restaurant: deliciously eccentric Camino in Oakland.
In February it was off to historic Savannah for a week with my sister. I hadn’t been there since the long ago publication of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I credit John Berendt’s book with turning a sleepy southern town into a major tourist attraction—and perhaps saving the city’s historic core.
From there it was a drive up to Baltimore for a visit with my brother and his family.
Then my first trip to South America for a 10 day stay in Buenos Aires. Loved the city, loved the food, and loved the fact that I could afford it! Rent an apartment through www.bytargentina.com (thanks to Marc Leonard for the tip); eat at La Cabrera, La Dorita, Social Paraiso, and the cheese room at the fabulous Park Hyatt Hotel; have a suit made, have a leather jacket made; get a massage. Enjoy the urbanity of this great world city.
We took a side trip to Iguazu Falls. The falls are truly impressive, but it had much more the air of an amusement park than I expected. Apparently the “most visited site in South America” aspect had not registered until I got there!
After Buenos Aires, travel with business colleagues took me to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. I probably would not have gone there on my own—there are very few tourists—but I’m very glad I had the experience.
A day long layover allowed a chance to see the Panama Canal, and a good deal of the Panamanian countryside as well. We put ourselves entirely at the mercy of a random driver at the Panama Airport and were rewarded with a comfortable, reasonably priced, and comprehensive guided tour! I’m not really a proponent of the “see it in a day” brand of tourism—yet neither do I feel the need to rush back to Panama.
Next up was a weekend trip to Denver to see the John Adams opera Nixon in China. We enjoyed the stylishly quirky Curtis hotel and appreciated the public transportation in what is essentially a car-centric city.
I got to spend much of August in my former “hometown” of Amsterdam, researching a couple of travel articles (see the articles below) and visiting old friends.
A quick trip to Paris on the super-efficient Thalys high-speed train, confirmed what everyone has always said about Paris in August—all the best places to eat are closed! But I got to use the new Velib public bicycles—I’m hooked, what a great way to get around Paris.
The rest of the year was spent in California, tending to work, with short trips to Morro Bay and Ventura, and ending up back in San Francisco for the New Year.
I’d keep this to myself, except that word is already out—each week it becomes harder to get a reservation. It’s worth it though, because where else can you get a delicious and interesting three course dinner for fifteen dollars? Throw in a bottle of cheap wine ($10 marked down from the regular $25) and you have a real feast at a price that’s hard to beat. The menu changes every week, and there are no substitutions, so the bargain may not go to the picky eater. In that case you can order off the regular (pricier) menu, and still compensate with the cheap wine. I’m willing to eat anything they offer though, and I’ve only once been disappointed. The food is Italian—a mix of Italian Italian, New York Italian, and a bit of California. On Hillhurst in Los Feliz, Little Dom’s is open for breakfast (also delicious), lunch and dinner 7 days a week. Reservations advised; essential for Monday night. 323.661.0055