Ultitude (2025)

13/08/2024

The “Jewel of the Pacific” regains her luster.

At the height of the California Gold Rush, both miners and supplies needed to get from the Eastern United States to the West and there was, at that time, no transcontinental railroad, or a Panama Canal. The option was to “Sail ‘round the Horn” rounding the tip of South America at the Straights of Magellan and heading up the Pacific Coast.

After making this rough passage, the first “civilized” place you came to was Valparaiso and this made it a welcome respite and place to let off steam.

At the beginning of the 20th Century two events occurred that ended the city’s role as “Jewel of the Pacific” the first was a natural disaster, a massive earthquake in 1906 which devastated the city killing nearly 3,000.

The second was a manmade disaster (from Valparaiso’s perspective) as the Panama Canal opened in 1914 rendering the port city obsolete. A period of decline followed as the wealthy fled the city for nearby Vina del Mar or Santiago and the infrastructure began to decay.

In the 1990’s however the city led, surprisingly, by an American poet, decided to restore the city to prominence built on culture not commerce

In re-inventing Valparaiso, the visionaries had several things going for them. First, the city, built on 43 hills sloping down to the sea has a natural beauty reminiscent of many harbor cities. This natural beauty is enhanced by the colorful houses that cling to the hills offering dramatic vistas from either the bottom or the top of the hills and reminding many people of San Francisco with a little Seattle thrown in.

Like San Francisco with its cable cars, Valparaiso has a unique way of dealing with the hills. A series of funiculars carry people from the port area to the neighborhoods up and on top of the hills.

At one time there were 28 different lines of “ascensores” serving the city, now reduced to 12 but like the cable cars an intrinsic part of the city’s mystique.

The second thing going for the city is its cosmopolitan heritage. Valparaiso is not a Spanish city; it is a city built by the many immigrants who came from various parts of Europe. The first soccer team was created by the English, the first parochial school by the French and the first private secular schools by Scots and Germans.

This melting pot of cultures combined with the unique architecture and enhanced by its bohemian and somewhat risqué past makes Valparaiso “Chile’s Cultural Capital”.

Today the city is host to a variety of music festivals ranging from opera to rock and each year over a million people line the shore to welcome in the New Year with a major fireworks display. With the Renaissance has come the conversion of old mansions into luxury boutique hotels, fusion restaurants and, down by the docks, some bars dating back to the gold rush days.

When you add in the wine areas nearby and the jet set resort of Vina del Mar you too will enjoy the sparkle that has returned to Valparaiso.

08/08/2024

The Adamson Legacy…Luxury Conservation in Kenya

Thanks to a Lioness named Elsa and a Leopard named Penny, wildlife conservation went mainstream and the idea of returning animals back to the wild helped slow the depletion of many endangered species especially in East Africa.

The book that started it all was Born Free written by Joy Adamson based on the journal of her husband George.

Joy was born in Austria in an aristocratic family. She left Europe as the N**i threat loomed taking with her a new husband who was both wealthy and a devoted naturalist. On the voyage over she met and fell in love with an Englishman named Peter Bally who was heading to Nairobi to work at the museum as a botanist.
She eventually married Peter and settled in Nairobi.

George was born in India where his father worked training troops for a Maharajah. George was sent to boarding school in England and at 18 went to Kenya to work on his father’s coffee plantation a life that did not suit him.
He secured a job as a game warden which was more to his liking.

He met Joy and in 1944 they were married. Twelve years later, in search of a man-eating lion he came upon a lioness and her cubs. The lioness charged and he had no option but to shoot her but did take the cubs home to Joy, the youngest of which was named Elsa.

When it was time to introduce Elsa back into nature, Joy chose a rocky outcrop in Meru national park which was the site of George’s original campsite and is the location of Elsa’s Kopje today.

This luxury resort made up of only eight cottages offers stunning views and elegance. The camp is considered the best location to view rhino in their natural habitat.

As you enjoy sundowners overlooking the valley you are reminded of the images of Joy and Elsa on a similar outcropping nearby. The book, Born Free, and its two sequels inspired the movie and George Adamson served as animal trainer on the film. The books made them celebrities but while Joy liked the limelight George was indifferent and they began to lead separate lives.

Joy took on a new project and book with Penny, a Leopard who she raised and released in Shaba another game park. The book was titled “The Queen of Shaba”.

In that same area today is another luxury resort appropriately called Joy’s Camp since it is built on the site of Joy Adamson’s tented house in Shaba National Reserve. This camp offers ten luxury tents and unsurpassed game viewing.

In 1980, Joy Adamson was killed by a disgruntled employee close to the camp in Shaba and George pledged to continue her work. In 1989 at the age of 89, George was working at yet another camp in Kora when he intervened with some Somali poachers to protect some German tourists and both he and two assistants were killed.

Their legacy lives on however, in their foundations, their books, their commitment to the animals of Africa and the many individuals that they inspired to take on an active role in conservation.

06/08/2024

Montparnasse… A people watcher’s paradise in Paris

While there are numerous Parisian neighborhoods to claim your attention and affection, you may want to try Montparnasse for its combination of cuisine and ambiance. If you want to immerse yourself in Parisian life you can do worse than to select an outside table at La Rotonde at Place Pablo Picasso which sits at the intersection of Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse.

As its name suggests, “Parnasse” is a Mount and you are at its peak, albeit a relatively low one. In the center of the intersection the statue of Balzac by Rodin stares down at you, a reminder that this area was the haunt of artists between the two world wars.

In days gone by, a café filtre was the drink of choice for people watching but today a glass of wine or beer is equally appropriate and lasts longer.
The ideal time to come is the late afternoon allowing time to enjoy the fading sunlight but also having the pleasure of seeing the lights come on along Boulevard Montparnasse.

For the most part these lights are from the numerous bistros and brasseries that line both sides of the street.

Unless you have made other plans this is the area to dine especially if you like seafood. If you tend be slothful you can stay at La Rotonde by standing and walking inside and you will not be disappointed. The seafood is excellent especially the fish soup but I particularly like their steak tartare following the soup.

“Chacon a son Gout”, as they say. For the mildly energetic you can cross Boulevard Montparnasse, making sure to watch out for the trams and the cyclists, and try Le Dome another good choice. Focused exclusively on seafood, Julia Child was a regular.

Just down the Boulevard is La Coupole one of the Brasseries FLO collections of iconic restaurants. It was actually started by the previous owners of Le Dome back in the 1920’s and at the time was the largest brasserie in the city.

Downstairs is a dance hall where at various times Josephine Baker, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were known to “shake a leg”. Hemingway reportedly stayed upstairs in the bar. The food is excellent, especially the lamb curry, but the noise level tends to be high.

If you have athletic tendencies you can continue to walk to the other end of the Boulevard to Montparnasse 1900 a Belle Époque gem but make sure you look your best since the entire restaurant is covered in mirrors on both sides of the room.

Regardless of which restaurant you select you will not go far wrong especially if you love shellfish and seafood. An added plus is the presence of metro stations at either end of Boulevard Montparnasse providing easy access from all areas of the city. Maybe I’ll see you there!

01/08/2024

Love and Betrayal at the Taj Mahal

For the first time traveler to India there is no more important stop along the way than Agra and the Taj Mahal, a testament to the love for his wife Mumtaz Mahal by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan. While it is certainly impressive there is an equally impressive, and, in the opinion of some, more impressive edifice located less than two miles away across from the Shah Jahan Gardens.

If the Taj Mahal is a testament to everlasting love, then the Agra Fort is a testament to power and inter-generational conflict. The fort, also known as the Red Fort because of its Red Sandstone façade, was the seat of power of the Mogul Empire during the 16th and 17th Centuries. The dynasty was established by Humayun whose tomb is a major attraction in another Mogul city, Delhi.

His son Akbar declared Agra to be the capital and he began work on the creation of a fort to guard the city. Built on the banks of the Yamuna River, the walls cover about a mile and a half and stand 60 feet high with a moat running around the three landward sides. It was basically a military location until Humayun’s son Jahangir came to the throne.

Instead of a fort, Jahangir saw the complex as a home for the Royal Court and set about creating palaces within the walls while the lesser nobles built palaces outside the walls and along the riverbank.

At one time there were up to 500 buildings within the interior’s 100 acres. Most notable today are the Jahangir Palace, the Khas Mahal also known as the Marble Pavilion and the Hall of Audiences adorned with a myriad of arches where the Emperors’ would sit on the Peacock Throne and listen to their subjects’ requests.

Jahangir also built the Muhamman Burj (or Tower) an octagonal tower that was a favorite of his favorite wife. Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan and here’s where the plot thickens as they say.

Shah Jahan, who liked the good things in life, had a thing for white marble. He also had a thing for Mumtaz Mahal who became his love eternal. She too liked Muhammar Burj and the two of them spent many happy times there until her untimely passing.

Filled with grief, Shah Jahan set out to honor both his wife and white marble and built the Taj Mahal in her honor. Those who previously stayed in Delhi will notice a resemblance between the Taj and the tomb of Humayun, his grandfather.

As if things could not get any worse for Shah Jahan, his son Aurangzeb usurps his throne and imprisons him in the aforementioned Muhamman Burj for the remaining years of his life.

It is said that the first thing he would do in the morning and the last thing at night was stand on a balcony (marble naturally) and gaze on the distant monument to his lost love.

30/07/2024

Evolution…From the Tortoises’ perspective

For many years the world has focused on Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution based on his 1835 visit to the Galapagos Islands. For many of us the impression was of an elderly man looking like the winner of a George Bernard Shaw lookalike contest arriving in the uninhabited islands to discover unique mutations of various animal species. The reality is somewhat different.

First, Darwin was only 26 when he visited the Galapagos and it took him another 25 years to advance his theory in The Origin of the Species.

Second, by the time he visited, the islands’ population particularly the Tortoises had been decimated by pirates, whalers and well-meaning bureaucrats. It would seem only fair therefore to take a look at the evolution of man through the eyes of the tortoise.

Things were going well for the tortoises on the various islands until the mid-16th Century. Although they did not know it, there were variations of the tortoise family on many of the islands but since they could not travel they were unaware of their cousins nearby.

In 1535 The Bishop of Panama stopped at the islands in search of water. He was on his way from Panama to Peru since Peru was the source of the Gold Spain coveted and Panama one of the major shipping points to the old world. The British also coveted the Spanish Gold so they licensed pirates to attack the fleets and these pirates found the Galapagos to be an ideal base for attaching the fleets.

They also discovered that a tortoise could feed a lot of pirates and that they could live on board for an extended period and therefore made an ideal food supply. The first impression of man by the tortoises was not therefore a positive one.

By the end of the 18th Century piracy had declined but had been replaced by whaling and whalers came in even larger numbers than the pirates. One of those whalers was Herman Melville who later wrote Moby Dick. It is estimated that whalers took over 200,000 tortoises from the islands throughout the 19th Century.

In 1832, Ecuador claimed the islands and named them the Archipelago de Colon. A year later a Frenchman established a settlement on Floreana Island and introduced cattle, dogs and goats on to the island. This added to the destruction of the habitat of both the tortoises and other animals. Ten years after Darwin’s visit, the Tortoises of Floreana, Santa Fe and Rábida Islands were extinct. Man had evolved from hunter to destroyer of the environment

In 1935, the first nature preserves were set up and eco-tourism began with FDR being one of the early visitors. Even with the preserves, immigrants were still permitted to settle on the island with Norwegians and Germans being a large percentage. While they lived in peace with the indigenous animals, the introduction of goats and their subsequent escape only added to the habitat problems.

In 1959 things changed for the better as the entire island chain was declared a national park and the Charles Darwin Research Station was established with its intention to repopulate the remaining population of Tortoises and later the iguanas.

It was just in time since there were only 11 females and 2 males of the Espanola Tortoises remaining. Today the research station continues its work supported by the eco sensitive tourists. Today man has evolved into a friend and protector; too late for some but offering a positive future for the survivors. While there are still over 10,000 human inhabitants in the Galapagos, they are confined to 5% of the land mass. The Tortoises are pleased

25/07/2024

A Table at Gundel

Given enough time, writing space and reader interest it would be easy to list a variety of compelling reasons why you should spend time in Hungary and Budapest. It could be the charm of the illuminated chain bridge at night connecting Buda and Pest across the Danube, the wonderful shopping experiences on Vaci and Andrassy Streets or the touristy charm of gypsy violins playing during dinner. If you were to ask forcefully however and say “Give me one good reason why I should go to Budapest!” The one-word answer would have to be Gundel.

Gundel is a restaurant but to leave it at that is to say that The Ritz is a hotel, Harrods is a shop and Porsche is a car. All true statements but sometimes places and things move from entity to icon so that they define the genre. That is not to say that they don’t have their faults or uneven delivery (even a Porsche can get a flat) but a restaurant like Gundel feeds the imagination as well as the stomach.

It pleases today’s palate but creates for you a movie from the 1930’s when the hero has arrived from Istanbul on the Orient Express and is looking for a Ruritanian princess traveling incognito (and probably played by Greta Garbo). They meet at a romantic restaurant set in a park where the waiters wear tails and the women, diamonds. Gundel is that type of place and has the pedigree to prove it.

Located in a park like setting close to the Zoo, it originally opened in 1894 as Wampetics. The restaurant still occupies the same site including the cavernous cellar holding a vast quantity of Hungarian and other wines. In 1910 Karoly Gundel bought the business and changed the name and the menu. With his son Janos, who had worked in some of the great hotels of Europe, they created a menu based on Hungarian tradition with European flair. Between the two world wars it served the elite of Hungarian and even European society. Americans got to know it at the 1939 World’s Fair where Gundel set up a concession to introduce America to Hungarian cuisine

After the war the communist regime took over the restaurant and the food standards dropped dramatically but it stayed open and many of the staff stayed on. With the demise of the Soviet Empire, Hungary regained its freedom. A Hungarian émigré had made a success of the restaurant business in the USA including Café des Artistes in New York City. That man, George Lang along with Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder family bought the restaurant and brought the building and the menu up to their old standards.

While more current menu items are available, they still have a heritage menu that you are encouraged to try especially the Foie Gras in many presentations and a decadent dessert called Gundel Palacsinta which is a crepe filled with raisins and walnuts and seasoned with Rum and lemon zest and served with chocolate sauce. Such decadence does not come cheap but it’s worth the splurge. If however you would like the experience at a lesser price you can have dinner at Bagolyvar Etterem which was an innovation of Lang’s. While still part of the old building this bistro serves authentic Hungarian home cooking. As testament the entire staff, from the General Manager to the wait staff are all women. Regardless of the choice, Gundel is a must.

23/07/2024

Where were the Spanish?
Any tourist or prospective tourist thinking about Rome will always mention the Spanish Steps as a place to meet. While there is a connection to Spain, they were actually commissioned by a Pope, designed by an Italian, paid for by a Frenchman, are eternally associated with an English Romantic poet, two English spinsters and an American institution that unintentionally launched the slow food movement.

Perhaps we had better back up. There was a Spanish connection since the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See was located at the bottom of the hill in an area known as Piazza di Spagna. At that time however the Bourbon Kings of France also ruled Spain. In the sixteenth Century, Louis XII commissioned the building of a church on a site at the top of the hill on the Piazza della Trinita dei Monti as a replacement for the chapel that already existed there. Despite delays the church was finished in 1585.

At the beginning of the 18th Century a French diplomat named Etienne Gueffier bequeathed funds to build a stairway between the French financed church and the French–run Spanish Embassy. One of the plans called for a statue of Louis XIV at the top of the staircase caused consternation to the Pope, and that, along with the fact that Gueffier’s nephews successfully sued for half his estate delayed the project until 1723. It took the intervention of the Pope before an Italian architect was selected. By 1725 however the staircase was complete comprising 137 steps broken up into twelve separate flights.

To balance the style of the church at the top of the hill, Pope Urban VIII, in the early 17th Century, commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create a sculpture. Supposedly the Pope had been impressed when the flooding of the Tiber caused a fishing boat to be left high and dry on the Piazza and this inspired the Fontana Della Barcaccia or Fountain of the Old Boat. Now the Spanish Steps connected the two. During the 19th Century, a visit to Rome by the English aristocracy was part of the Grand Tour of Europe. It also attracted the Romantic poets of the time, many of whom were also well-connected. On the right hand side of the stairs on the Piazza is a house where John Keats spent his last months and died. Today it is a museum dedicated to Keats and the other romantics and also a shrine for English majors on high school graduation trips.

Close by is Babington’s Tea Room founded in 1895 by two ladies of good family to meet the refreshment needs of English visitors. When the Tea Rooms opened, tea was only sold in pharmacies so the tea room met a need and still exists to this day. It has always amazed me why anyone would crave tea cakes and scones in Rome, but there it is. Last on our list is the American contribution when on March 20, 1986 McDonald’s opened in a landmark building near the steps. This raised the ire of one Carlo Petrini and inspired him to start the slow food movement in 1989. If the British can have their scones, however, why can’t Americans get a Big Mac?

Ultitude

13/08/2024

08/08/2024

06/08/2024

01/08/2024

30/07/2024

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23/07/2024

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