Mike and David's Adventures

About a 30 minutes’ drive west from our hotel is the end of urban Miami and the beginning of the Everglades. We took a 90-minute airboat tour on a lovely sunny January afternoon. 

The airboats, just like those we remember from TV (Gentle Ben!), skim across the water and grasses. The captain and tour guide told us to use the ear-protectors to keep our caps from flying off in the wind. Even with the protection, we could hear and feel the grass slide beneath the hull. (Skimming over the open-water tracks, the flat grasses and even the tall grass curiously reminded us of snow-mobiling over tracks in powder snow last winter in Sweden.)

The guide explained that the Everglades marshes are fresh water. It is only rain water that fills this vast expanse. A healthy collection of thunderstorms can raise the water level by as much as four feet in a day. On the other hand, if the usual summer thunderstorms fail, the earth dries and cracks. The alligators and other wildlife retreat to waterholes.

Within a few minutes of leaving the starting spot, the guide slowed and then stopped the airboat. There, half-submerged, was a big black tranquil alligator. The guide fondly called him George. In general, adult alligators steer clear of each other. If they get too close to each other, often they will fight until one retreats.

As we continued on, we saw alligators everywhere. Can you imagine: Over the expanse of the Everglades (about 800 square miles), there might be a big hungry alligator every 100 feet of so. Not a place for a casual stroll.

At one point, an oil-black bird, a grackle, lit on the rail of the airboat right in front of us. We were sitting in the first row, so the grackle studied us intently, with head turns right and left. The guide reached into the field of water lilies, plucked up a big flat leaf, and extracted from the stem a worm. Grackles love these worms and know when the human will get them some. Mike held out the worm at his fingertips. The grackle swooped in immediately, and he left Mike’s fingers intact.

At another grassy glade, purple gallinule birds gathered around us. Beautiful colors, both male and female. They adored the water-lily worms as well.

Throughout our course, herons and other marsh birds took flight as the airboat approached. They were far more cautious than the alligators, grackles, and gallinules.

In a pond area sheltered by grasses, bushes, and cypress trees lives a friendly soft-shell turtle. The guide seemed to love visiting this fellow. The turtle had lost a leg at some point, possibly bitten off by an alligator. A long slender fish hung around with the turtle. Expecting a hand-out from our guide, the turtle joined us for a while, and his fish friend followed along.

We really enjoyed being out in this landscape and among its residents on such a beautiful winter day. 

There’s more to Barcelona than Antoni Gaudí.

As a visitor to Barcelona, you can’t miss the celebration of the architect Antoni Gaudí. All tours visit the Sagrada Familia, the Casa Battló, Park Güell, and many other Gaudí-designed buildings. All the souvenir shops are filled with Gaudí-inspired objects.

But Gaudí, while an unequaled genius, was one among many expressive modernisme architects and artists who flourished at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in Barcelona. Another was Lluís Domènech i Montaner. 

At the turn of the 20th century, the catalan choir association Orféo Català commissioned the design of a new performance hall. They chose the most prominent architect in Barcelona at the time, who was not Gaudí. It was Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Construction was completed in 1908.

For the people of Barcelona, this was a time of great industrialization, economic prosperity, social change, and Catalan cultural resurgence. The founders of Orféo Català sought to celebrate Catalan choral music and to support ordinary people in the working neighborhoods of industrial Barcelona. The singers in the choirs of the Orféo Català were ordinary people, not paid professionals.

The performance hall is squeezed in the midst of the textile-workers district. Still today, you can’t get a long view of the facades because of its tight location. Instead, its artistic exuberance reveals itself in glimpses and around corners.

Barcelona’s modernisme style is an explosion of classical, natural, regional, art nouveau, gothic and just plain creative elements. You feel the pride of Catalonia’s uniqueness. Forms and colors from nature react to the challenges of industry. You see the hands of artisans and artists in the mosaics, carvings and sculptures. 

Characteristic materials of the mosaics of the modernisme style are broken ceramic, stone and glass. The broken pieces were less expensive than whole elements, and they allowed the construction of sinuous curving forms.

The lobby and entry stairs hint at the exuberance of design awaiting you in the main hall.

Natural light fills the hall. 

The architect designed the space for choral performances, not orchestras or operas. The choral society wanted light and openness. Even with the building’s being squeezed between workers’ buildings, the architect filled the hall with light from great windows on all sides, and through an astonishing drooping glass ceiling. 

The iconography of the art in the hall connects the cultural heritage of Catalan composers and performers with the greats of the Western tradition.

The sculpture to the left of the stage shows a famous Catalan composer of the time and illustrates one of his hugely popular songs.

Balancing this Catalan expression is the sculpture on the right, with Wagner and his valkyries. This pairing says that Catalan musical culture is the equal of the best of Europe.

Eighteen muses from around the world overlook the stage. Note the creative combination of two-dimensional mosaic forms with the emerging sculptural torsos. The Catalan flag holds the center. Catalan culture at the center of the world, and connected to all the world’s musical heritage. 

Beyond all the history and meaning, we just find this place beautiful. The fertility of art, craft and design wraps you up. It is amazing that all this is just one room.

Here are more images of the design details. Enjoy!

Our guide from the Palau de la Música Catalana brought as much exuberance to our tour as the architect did to the hall. Splendid ambassador for this remarkable place. 

Once we had decided to make a road trip to Venice, we realized that along the route was the Italian Piedmont wine region of Barolo.

We had enjoyed Barolo red wines in the past: lovely rich and aromatic wines, usually pricey, so only for the most special occasions. Maybe they would be less expensive at the source! Since we were going to be traveling with two wine-loving friends, we created a two-night one-day stop in the region. We knew nothing detailed about this wine region and its wines. By pure coincidence, the dates of our visit were the start of the annual white-truffle festival. We arranged to take a day-long wine- and truffle-tasting tour.

Marco was our host and tour guide. His family has raised grapes and made wine in this region for generations. Marco and his brother — both in their mid-30s — are the latest generation to manage the family business.

We stayed at his family’s very comfortable B&B. It is set amid their vineyards and next to their family home.

Marco, being a wine producer himself, overflowed with detailed and fascinating knowledge and experience.

While there are a number of grapes grown in this region, three varieties are prominent: dolcetto, barbera, and nebbiolo.

Up until about a generation ago, dolcetto was the grape most cultivated. The local economy was generally agricultural — not just grapes — and not particularly prosperous. Vintners were primarily farmers and produced wine for their own consumption. Dolcetto yields drinkable wine immediately, no aging needed. Farmers couldn’t afford the time to hold and age wines, and what customers there were couldn’t afford more expensive wines.

So what changed so that now high-quality exportable wines are now produced? In some part, innovative Piedmont vintners saw the rise of Tuscan wines and started to experiment.

Tuscany had something crucial that the Piedmont did not: an aristocracy who owned the land and vineyards. They could afford to travel to see how the French make wine. In the Piedmont, these were just poor farmers, who couldn’t afford to explore and learn. And there was competition between farms and villages, rather than a tradition of cooperation.

With Tuscan marketing and changes in mind, at least one forward-thinking Piedmont vintner ventured out to France to see how the French make such notable wines. The story we were told goes like this: The maverick went to Burgundy. He showed up at a winery, and asked to see how things were done. By chance he met the owner who was in his sports car on the way out to his other house in the French Riviera. The Italian was taken aback by such a show of wealth and fine living. He thought, we aren’t doing this right. These French know how to produce good wine, while also enjoying a fine life.

In the 1980s, a number of these innovative wine makers, including Angelo Gaja, pushed forward. They shifted the focus from the dolcetto grape to nebbiolo and barbera grapes. Nebbiolo grapes are the heart of Barolo wines. Wine from Nebbiolo grapes can be harsh in taste when the wine is young. The innovators developed aging approaches that yield lovely smooth complex wines.

One part of the process is to age the wines in giant wooden barrels from Croatia, sometimes for 6 years and longer. The giant barrels mean the wine has less contact with the wood than if the wine were in traditional-sized barrels. Since the nebbiolo grape starts with tanin and edge, the less wood influence there is, the better. They now use a combination of concrete tanks, stainless steel, and wood barrels. And some vintners are currently experimenting with terra-cotta amphora, just as the ancient Greeks and Romans used.

Barolo wines come from a very specific bit of land in the Langhe region of the Piedmont. Other nebbiolo-based wines include Barbaresco, Roero, Gattinara and Ghemme. We had assumed, ignorantly, that Barolo was a type of grape, when in fact it is a precisely defined region within Langhe.

Among the specific rules for creating and marketing a Barolo wine is that the wine must spend 18 months aging in oak, then 18 months aging further as the vintner wants — wood, stainless steel, concrete, etc.

We visited the Langhe region in mid-October, only a few days after Marco and his family had completed this year’s harvest.

Marco helped us read the land by looking at the vines. These hills are composed of distinct areas of clay and of tufa, which is a kind of limestone. The clay holds more water than the tufa; the tufa is a less nutritious medium, although it drains well. Newly planted vines do better in the clay. Vines planted in tufa have to struggle to grow. They develop very deep roots to find the water they need. The vines that work hard tend to produce grapes that are better for making good wine. You can read the vineyard’s soil through the leaves and density of growth: lusher foliage signals tufa soil.

At one of the wineries we visited, they had just completed construction of new facilities. They had excavated into the hill for one of the buildings. They left exposed the cross section of the soil, including strata of clay and tufa.

Marco told us about his family’s experiences and challenges on their hillside vineyards. Snow in winter is necessary because it gives the water time to soak into the soil. Heavy summer rains don’t help. They need to install drainage pipes beneath the vines to carry off excess water. However, one year recently, heavy rains followed right after they had planted new vines on some steep slopes. The vines and the top soil slid down the hill; they needed to start over.

Climate change is not abstract and theoretical to these wine producers. During the last 30 years, they see the changes. Summer are hotter; winters provide less snow. It used to be that southern and western slopes were best. If the changes continue as they have in the last 30 years, in coming decades, the best exposures may be east. It used to be that vintners would trim leaves away from the grapes so that the grapes could warm in the sun, creating more sugar. Now, they retain the west-facing leaves to protect the grapes from the harsh sun, and instead expose the grapes to the gentler east sun.

As climate change progresses, vintners will need to replant grape varieties on different hill slopes. Zones that currently don’t produce the best grapes may become tomorrow’s stars.

Oh, and we had the pleasure to taste some Langhe and Barolo wines! Marco took us to three wineries: a small one, a medium-sized one, and a large one. That way we could explore some differences.

Funny how wine-tasting leads to wine-purchasing. In our two years in France, so far, we have learned that non-French wines are barely available in France. Our mission in the Langhe and Barolo region was to find some wines that we enjoy, and surreptitiously drive them back home. But we probably will now have to drink them with the curtains drawn, secretly savoring these luscious Italian tastes.

PS: At each restaurant, shaved fresh white truffles were available, priced per gram. We were told that a warm, relatively neutral dish works best for the the delicate truffles. Options included a sunny-side-up fried egg, pasta with a bit of butter and cheese, a melted delicate cheese with artichoke stems, and steak tartare. To our surprise, the one we liked the most (and I mean, REALLY liked) was the steak tartare. While the truffle aroma is in itself strong and distinctive — and fabulous — other tastes and aromas easily overpower it. The clean aroma and taste of the tartare allowed the truffle to take center stage. Each inhale was deliriously wonderful. Sorry, we have another snobbish addiction.