Travel in the English Countryside: Part 3

On our second full day in England, we left Canterbury after visiting the cathedral and drove to Dover. After John took this stunning photo of the White Cliffs of Dover and the English Channel, we left Dover and drove along the southern coast of England to Rye then to Brighton.


Rye is a charming town, once walled and gated against her enemies. We had lunch of hot soup, bread and cheese at a local eatery then walked the cobblestone streets before heading off to Brighton.

Brighton is of course a beach resort town for Londoners. The rocky beach was not very appealing to us. Also it was May, so not yet tourist season.

Winchester '73: (1950)

The third movie in my Essential James Stewart marathon is Anthony Mann's Winchester 73. Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters, Stephen McNally star along James Stewart who plays Lin McAdam. McAdam wins a prized Winchester 73, one-in-a-thousand, rifles in a shooting contest. Before he can claim his prize, it's stolen by his closest competitor in the contest. What follows is his quest to reclaim his prize rifle and also to accomplish something more. For the first half of the film, it seems we are watching the story of the rifle by following whose hands it passes through. At the mid-point we learn that McAdam's course involves more than recovering the rifle. It involves revenge of a certain sort.

Stewart is great as Lin McAdams, keeping his dark side under wraps as he helps those his path crosses in pursuit of his goal. He's knowledgeable, tender, understanding, but never veers from his quest for revenge and reclaiming his prize.

This is a great Western from the team of Stewart and Mann who collaborated on four films after Winchester '73: Bend of the River(1952),The Naked Spur(1953),The Far Country(1955), and The Man from Laramie(1955)

Twitter

We're doing it! For now...

John is jgriffo. I am GlobalCandace. If you twitter and would like to follow or be followed (sounds all stalker-y, doesn't it?), let us know at Twitter.

Note: I have posted my Tweets in the sidebar. Yes, I'm boring.

Big Love

I'm currently finishing the Season 2 dvd of Big Love, an HBO series which is in its third season. The primary stars are Bill Paxton as the husband and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin as his three wives. Yes, they are polygamists.

The first few shows of Season 1 were of course the set-up, and I must say I was not hooked. In fact, I left the series for awhile, but after hearing a Bill Paxton interview on "Fresh Air," I decided to pick up where I left off. Now, I am hooked.

Season 1 deals primarily with how this family of multiple partners navigates the home-side and the public-side of their entwined lives in a suburb of Salt Lake City. It also introduces us to The Compound at Juniper Creek which is an enclave of polygamists who live under the direction of the Prophet, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), on property two hours away from the suburbs into the desert of Utah.

Season 2 ups the ante as Bill branches out from his business as owner of a big box store into providing video poker machines to shady gambling businesses in the Southwest. This move is complicated by Roman Grant who had the idea first.

Throughout the series, we learn more about how the wives keep the peace, make trouble, manage their shared husband, and deal with their personal histories.

I'm a Little Vegemite! (almost)

I applied for Aussie citizenship today! I'll be a dual citizen of the US and Australia. I'll have two passports. I'll travel in country and out at will. I will be cool. Hurrah!

Great Article...Worth a Read

While listening to the Slate Culture Gabfest (if you're into podcasts and things cultural then you should be listening also), I heard an endorsement for this article The Itch by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker. It's a grand example of accessible technical writing. Also, it's interesting and informative. You should read it!

White Hunter Black Heart (1990)

(click to enlarge)

For the first film in my Essential Clint Eastwood marathon, I watched White Hunter Black Heart. Eastwood directed and starred in this feature. Some of my Filmspotting board members call it Eastwood's best directing and acting performance. While I may prefer my Eastwood as a grizzled son-of-a-bitch over the arrogant snob he portrays in White Hunter Black Heart, I can't fault Eastwood's performance. The film is based on a novel which is a thinly disguised account of John Huston's trip to Africa to shoot African Queen on location at a time when very few films were shot outside the US. Eastwood's character becomes sidetracked from film preparations by his determination to shoot an African elephant on safari. Eastwood plays Huston as a man of passion and self-indulgence, humanity and selfishness, brilliance and stubbornness. In a great scene from the film, Eastwood deliberately picks a fight he knows he will lose with a white racist in an exclusive African club. As he staggers away from the fight, he states the central theme of the film: sometimes you have to volunteer for losing causes or "your guts will turn to pus."

Valentine's Day

Our usual beautiful, sunny Perth was overcast and humid yesterday so instead of heading to the beach for Valentine's Day, we headed to the hills. Just 45 minutes from our house, we were on the Chittering Valley Wine Trail, a winding loop through the Darling Ranges. Of the eight wineries available to us, we made it to three. Our first stop was Stringybark Winery where we were disappointed as the cellar door was shut, the staff readying for a crowd of Valentine's Day diners at their restaurant. Our second stop was at Western Range winery. We briefly visited with the server and tasted several nice whites, including a late harvest white which we enjoyed enough to purchase a case. It was not too dry, not too sweet, but just right for pairing with Thai, Indian, and seafood, three of our favorite indulgences.

Our third stop was at Briery Estate. The owners Christine and Ron met us at our car, welcomed us onto the veranda of their 90 year old farmhouse overlooking their vines and fruit trees and started pouring wine for us from their broad selection. We tasted 12 wines and they have five reds which we didn't taste. The one which caught my attention was a varietal I have never tasted, never even heard about, furment. Furment is a late harvest Hungarian vine producing a white grape which is an excellent host to botrytis, the noble rot, hence the pure, slight sweetest of the wine. Briery sells it under the label Fermento. Cheese tray pairing will be sublime. We also bought the Briery 10 Year Old Muscat Liqueur, of course. We never taste a great muscat that we can pass up. To complete the case, we bought several light rosés and a heavier velvety rosé, a dry grenache, a viognier, and a chenin blanc.

We arrived home in time to walk to the beach for the sunset. It was a perfect day for us.

House M.D.

We started watching House M.D. last night. It's better than we expected it to be. Basically, it's Sherlock Holmes in a lab coat except Hugh Laurie as Gregory House doesn't really wear a lab coat. So here's the thing...he's really good at what he does and what he does is investigative medicine, trying to solve the mystery behind why an individual is very ill, a mystery no one else can solve. Add to his intelligence, acerbic wit, arrogance, anti-social proclivities, and an addiction to Vicotin, and you have a very interesting character. Dr. House also relies on his team of young gun medicos who are the sounding board for his profundity. One of this group is House's Dr. Watson, or in this case, Dr. Wilson, played by Robert Sean Leonard who may have the best hair in TV.

Traveling in Dubai, UAE, part 5

As Westerners who traveled in Dubai in May of 2005, my husband and I found out a few details of travel there which I'll share here in part 5:

It's hot! True, it's dry heat, but it blows over you like air from a furnace. You will enjoy the cool malls, buses, and restaurants. Take your swimsuit for the hotel pool. Swimming in the gulf is allowed, but restricted. Tourists can use only small parts of the public beaches. If you really want to swim in the gulf, stay in a hotel on the gulf that will have a private beach access. Otherwise, use the pool. Most hotel pools have a bar. It's a good way to spend a hot afternoon. It's just as hot at midnight though.

How you dress is really up to you. I chose to wear pants and shirts, not shorts or sleeveless or halters or very fitted tops. I saw a few foreign women dressed in fitted tops, but none of the local women dress in that way. Take a cover-up to wear over your swimsuit when walking through the hotel to the pool. If you leave Dubai for another emirate, you may find much stricter clothing requirements.A typical souvenir is the shisha. These water pipes or hookahs (or bongs) are used to smoke fragrant steam. There are shisha bars everywhere. People lie about on sofas with the shisha on a low table between them. Each person has his/her own mouthpiece, but they share the shisha-produced steam. It's a social occasion.


Textiles in Dubai are marvelous. They're easy to pack to take home so great for souvenirs or gifts. The street markets are arrayed with lovely textiles hanging overhead across the alleyways. In the colorful markets on Cosmos Lane and Al Fahidi Street in Bur Dubai or the streets of Satwa the textiles are a bargain. Most of the shops close around lunchtime, so get there early in the morning or late afternoon. The two main textile shops in Bur Dubai Souks are Meena Bazar and Rivoli. There are many tailor shops in Dubai so you could have the textiles transformed into shirts, skirts, suits before you leave. Many have one day service.

If you can afford it, the best souvenir is a rug or carpet. They are amazingly beautiful. If you think you may fall in love with the carpets while you're in Dubai, take the measurements for the area from home with you. The rug merchants will ship to you anywhere in the world. We found carpet stores in every mall. Perhaps there were carpets in the street markets, but we didn't notice them there.

Other souvenirs include coffee urns, dates, nuts, models of Bur el Arab, Arabian chests, daggers, Bedu jewelry and carvings .

This post links to this previous post.

Word of the Week...3

Canard

Say it cah nard; accent on the second syllable.

Literally in French a canard is a duck. In English (the language I speak), canard is a false or unfounded report or story; a groundless rumor or belief. Also a canard can be an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of the supporting surface.

Reading the Classics

My next classic is Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. I have never read anything about the book or any other book by this author, so I have no preconceptions about the text. I know from the book jacket that the main character is Isabel Archer, an American, and that it's set mostly in England and Italy. Since I've traveled both England and Italy extensively, I'm hoping that I learn more about those locales as I learn Isabel's story.