place2place

rue st laud salon

 There is nothing better than having someone else deal with my hair. In France. Also, Stefan needed a haircut since the last one was the result of a midnight lice scare, (there were no lice, but I started hacking at his hair to make sure.) The salon had a turntable and a crazy mix of vinyl. Queen, Jacques Brel, Gainsburo, Dvorjak...it was fun to hear the needle going around and around when the record was over, I hadn't heard that sound in a long time. Can I come to Angers every time we need haircuts? 

good grafitti town

 
 

portugaland

Walking to the cento historico part of Lisbon today, Stefan announces he can count in Portuguese: onze, douze, thirteen-say, fourteen-say, fifteen-say...I think after Russian we all have this bizarre sense of being able to speak the language. If scuzi, isn't polite enough, how about, pardon? Limondada? Rosa? Grande? Beeg? Okay!

After touring like rock stars yesterday and going no where but the hotel bar and falling in love with boots at the mall, today we ventured to the old part of a very old town.

We saw a glove store that's been around a couple hundred years.

(That's Stefan wanting desperately to not go in.)

Then we went to a candle store that's been around since 1789.

Stefan says Lisbon reminds him of Portland + Budapest, I say add in a little San Francisco:

he likes hummers

This story has a better ending than the Lake Tahoe baby bat we found impaled on our car antennae. In Davis, Philippe and Stefan were playing basketball and after making five or ten baskets, discovered that the thing clinging for its tiny dear life in the net was a baby hummingbird. Mike and Tanya spent half the day driving the bird to a rescue center where they fed it with the teeniest eye-dropper imaginable and workers there said they thought the hummingbird would be fine.

cartwheels

limontour beach

as the sun goes down in front of me

 

Our friend Bev's place in Trinidad is killing me. After spending my entire 20's here, I haven't been to Humboldt County in nearly twenty years. Today, me and the kids were the only ones on Luffenholtz Beach. The Co-op, the Arcata plaza, hippy chic, KHSU--the college radio station where I worked--still the best radio station in the world, the beach, day after day of no fog, ribs at Larrupin with my parents, our friend Jesse's hand drawn notes all over Bev's house, highway 101, the rocks I know by name, green hummingbirds in the honeysuckle by the door. All of it. This is the town where I dreamed the life I have with Peter now. This is my home--or one of them anyway--and these are my peace-sign-wearing people. Flickr set of the house and beach here.

time of my crazy life

This is how the brainwashing started: "Fly to Dulles and we'll pick you up for the show in Virginia Beach, free concert on the beach." Then it intensified: "The next day we'll drive you to the show in Chapel Hill, in a college town, tiny venue." Then, V says, if you go I'll go. "I can't spend $1000 to fly from Russia for David Cook shows. That's insane." Then I remembered these vouchers we got last year that are about to expire. What if I could fly to the east coast for FREE? Hotel and all other details totally taken care of by MJ, the cruise director. Oh. em. gee. I'm only human. I can only resist for so long. Peter didn't seem to think it too outrageous an adventure for me to pull off.

Drove to the airport with one of the biggest, stupidest smiles on my face ever. Spent a couple days running in the sand at Virginia Beach and hanging out with friends. My friend V spotted a guitar tech from David Cook's crew at the hotel. (She realizes her level of insanity revealed in that statement, you don't need to point it out to her.) After dinner on the beach with my friends, we ran into David Cook in the bar on our way out and got to say hi. My friend only had to buzz my shock collar a few times. 

Then V stayed up all night to get us tickets for seats for the next day.

The tickets said the gates opened at five, but at four, a friend called to say the doors were open and people with ticket numbers higher than ours were going in. We threw down our mascara wands and ran from the hotel. The venue is two miles away and I'm ready to sprint, the shuttle bus that takes you there is mind-bendingly slow. I flag down a car and ask the driver if he'll drive five women down the street. He's amenable and we fall into the car. "I was on my way to pay my bar tab," he tells us. "Why did you chose me?" he said, sort of fishing for a compliment. "Because the car in front of you was a Volkswagon Bug?" I said. He was so adorable V almost forgot about David Cook there for a minute.

A friend had saved us amazing seats, and from the sixth row it was an easy walk to the bottom of the stage. 

The Virginia Beach show had been terrific. But the second show, in a teeny college-town bar, outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was beyond wow. We were at the stage. I was behind V and she said she could see the lead guitarist's individual chest hairs. It was the last night of the tour, David was drinking beer on stage and to me, he was in a better mood than the night before, looser, more talkative, more relaxed. He was deeply into each song and he was...transportive.

I am proud to say I am not the one that fainted, but someone did, which just proves that he can kill people with his singing.

After the show, I asked the guitar tech for a guitar pick and he gave me two. I gave one to V. Now I'd know that guitar tech anywhere.

It was only a few hours of David Cook, and days with my friends; I'm not sure which was more fun. Really. Walking on the beach, watching an interview that took place two doors down, making fun of David Cook's psychotic fans (not me! I flew from another country to see the show but at least I didn't make a glittery sign about it to hold up during the show), taking a ton of pictures and watching cloud to cloud lightening, and the shows, it was the best, craziest time.

It would be a nutty thing to ever do again, and I can't wait.

best day ever budapest

Let me just say Budapest is ridiculous.

TDY housing, tolerable, huh? First time sleeping in a world heritage site, the castle district of Budapest.

We have to eat these pastries every morning.

Flowers for sale everywhere, lily of the valley, $1 a bunch. So many people carrying bouquets, the metro smells like flowers.

Then you have to look at this architecture all the time.

Even when you have coffee. And then musicians right by your table will start playing Strauss, which is such a bother.

Then you have to walk around the castle walls, then because you are always thirsty in Hungary, a glass of Hungarian wine at an outdoor cafe. Cheers! You gotta come back.

A few more of our pictures of Budapest here.

st petersburgers

Now that I've had a glass of wine and kids are asleep it seems okay, but IS the worst day of travel better than the best day at home? 

The idea was to meet Peter a 20-minute walk away for Japanese food for lunch. Then go to the Yusupov Palace to see where the best friends of the Tsars lived, and to see the room where Rasputan a. drank poisoned wine, b. was shot, c. tried to strangle the guy who shot him, and d. was tied up and dragged to the river. Amid all kinds of elaborate finery.

I had two breakfasts, one before 8:00 with Peter and Stefan, one around 10:30 with Camille and Stefan. We spent most of the first breakfast having a guy come fix the lock of the room because I'm afraid to leave Camille asleep in the room, someone surely will kidnap her into a white slave ring while we are in the hotel dining room drinking lattes. This means we don't have time for lattes. At the second breakfast Stefan eats his 5th croissant of the day.

Around noon, stuffed with croissants, we head towards the restaurant where we are suppose to meet Peter. The streets have no signs, and I wouldn't be able to read them anyway. It's sunny and ski-slope cold. We are underdressed in down jackets. We find a Japanese restaurant, but I'm not convinced it's the right one. We wait, Peter doesn't show, further convincing me we haven't found the right restaurant and we head home. Waiting for Peter at the restaurant, the kids comment that they aren't hungry, hmmm, I wonder why. As soon as we leave the restaurant, they are starving.

I buy them something from a street vendor, what the heck is it? Whatever it is, it's cheap! Around 50 rubles, maybe a dollar fifty. Sausage wrapped in dough and fried. Oh my gosh, it's like crack, the food of the gods. And my kids won't eat it. 

They want to go to McDonalds. I haven't been to McDonalds since last summer (when I needed a really good bribe) except for yesterday. So this is a record for me, supersizing my kids twice in two days. Strangely, it's the nicest McDonalds I've ever been in. In my defense, it's more like a Starbucks. Also, everyone is wearing fur, so that classes the place up somewhat. I, however, do not, in my bright orange ski jacket.

Okay, here's the thing: in St. Petersburg, I'm not only the worst dressed person in McDonalds, I'm also the dumbest. I am so dumb, I can't order at a McDonalds. Why have I not learned the word for "chicken strips" in Russian? Forget Russian! Who needs it? "Happy Meal" and "Mcnuggets" are esperanto.

We head to the Yusupov Palace, the very house of Rasputin's demise. (They also cut off his penis which is now on display in a jar in some museum, but we have to save something for next time.) We walk all the way down the Nevsky Prospect, we walk and walk. It starts to get dark, and really cold.  Right as we are at the Yusopov Palace I chicken mcnugget out and turn us back around. It's getting dark and Stefan's cheeks are bright red with cold. If we make it to the palace, that will an hour at least and it's freezing in the daylight along the frozen canal. And the metro here doesn't have the stops posted, you have to listen for your stop, and none of the stops is Beeg Mak. Sorry kids. 

We fortify ourselves by stopping at grocery store for yogurt, wine, apples and cheese. When people buy flowers here, the florist wraps the flowers so they don't freeze on the walk home.

Peter comes home and tells us that he never made it to the restaurant.

So, what did we learn today? If you come to St. Pete's in February, stock up on fur. It's a sparkly, San Francisco-Portland kind of town, not as full of itself as Moscow. I really like it here. And I can't wait to ride the train back to Moscow. But not until we have lattes in the morning and go the Hermitage tomorrow. I hope.

Some more pictures of us in St. Pete's here. 

ready to roll

The visas came though and we are off to Moscow tomorrow. Today's list: pick up my contact lenses, pay the hotel bill, mail boxes of cereal to ourselves, get into a dispute with ATT over iPhones, buy more guitar picks, pick up an allen wrench so Peter can put his bike back together, return library books. Our air shipment from Portland is already there, so we'll have bikes and familiar bedding and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember sending, but it was five hundred pounds of stuff that seemed essential at the time.