On our second trip to Portugal, we were excited and stressed, nervous and relieved, thankful and enraged, happy and disappointed. While we work and live our lives elsewhere, the long arms of mass marketing are working hard to smooth out the wonderful crags and decadent, dirty corners of Portugal. There are many places to see,… Read More Portugal is always there, changed
Often in the summer, a cloudy marine layer hangs just over the coast of Baja California, marking a tenuous line between the hot, dry air of the desert and the dampness of the ocean, and as the grey retreats to the open sea, in the morning, the inhabitants begin to stir. Roadrunners move along the… Read More Mexico’s Ruta del Vino, Part 1
There is a sometimes disconcerting change that happens to a foreigner who remains in a place long. The color and novelties of a culture, the satisfaction of noticing the small ways of doing things that are different to one’s own, during what Hemingway called the “spectacle stage of appreciation”, are replaced by the an ever-growing… Read More Sitting Still
There is something wholly satisfying in opening a bottle of wine classified as one of the Fifth Growths of the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. It brings with it a sense of entitlement, privilege, and bit of justified snobbery. There is also something therapeutic in the vulgarity of enjoying it, guilt free, well after its… Read More Old Wine on a Worthy Promontory
Casual Notebook 