Regency Romance Walk

I only had a limited time to visit London with DH. He was willing to see whatever I wanted to see on our sightseeing day. I searched the web, took recommendations from my sisters and fretted over the tube stations and our possible routes into the city. What to see? You cannot see it all in a single day, so what were the primary sights I wanted to see?

I started to think it over and I realized that my idea of London is really based on the fiction I've read about the city. When I narrowed it down to that, I ended up thinking only of Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and Regency Romances. After a quick look at the map, I decided on the Regency Romance Walking tour of London.

We took the subway down to Green Park. In most Regencies, the hero and heroine walk in Green Park and ride in Hyde Park. A quick look at the map showed that in addition to those two parks being close, St. James Park and Buckingham Palace were all in the same area. So, that's where we started. We skirted St. James Park and walked through Green Park. There are tree shaded walks, gentle hills and on a rainy February, very little traffic.

Green Park is the smallest of the three parks and Buckingham Palace sits right on one of the corners of the park.
I didn't see the queen. I didn't stand around and wait for the changing of the guards. There didn't seem to be a point to it... it was raining. It was cold. We kept moving.

I had to explain to DH why I wanted to walk through these parks and a little about the books I'd read that featured these parks as settings. As I chatted about them, I looked around the paths and imagined the characters strolling, flying kites or witnessing balloon ascensions.

When we got to Hyde Park, it was a completely different feeling. Where Green Park is shaded walks with narrow trails for strolling, Hyde Park is big open green spaces. You can imagine horses galloping in the early morning and carriages filled with ladies and gentlemen parading around during the fashionable hours of the afternoon.

After touring the parks, I dragged DH along the roads in town, looking for street names I recognized. I found Oxford, Brook, Bond, and Germyn Streets; Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square.

I painted a verbal picture of the dandies shopping along Bond Street. It didn't surprise me that Bond Street is still a big shopping district. Oxford Street still has plenty of traffic and is lined by high end businesses and glamorous store front shops.

While I walked through all these streets, trying to imagine what they looked like during Regency times, it was fun to see what they were like to today's society. These are vital parts of the London landscape filled with commerce and trade.

Walking down one street, I happened upon a jewelry store that advertised that they'd been in continuous business since Regency times. The windows were filled with jewelry that could very possibly have dated from that time. It was stunning. Stones of all colors, fitted into elaborate settings that included necklaces, bracelets, earrings and broaches. There were hair combs, hat pins and tiaras. All of them had that weight and presence that you don't get in today's mass produced stuff.

I was charmed by my Regency Romance walking tour of London. Even chilled, damp and tired, I'm still glad we were able to do so much in one day's visit. And I can only thank DH for being patient with me, and being such a good sport. Of course, now he thinks he knows the plot of every Regency Romance ever written. It will take a little while for me to live this down--but it was worth it.

--Sandee Wagner

An English Pub

There's a really good reason why the British Empire spread halfway across the world. I'm convinced.

The folks from the UK that we've met are smart, engaging and hard workers. With just a short exposure to the capital city, I didn't know if my opinion would be changed, morphed or enhanced.

After spending a couple of evenings in English Pubs, I now know that my opinion is right. We had dinner last night in The Pilot. It's not a traditional English Pub. It's the next generation of genius. It's a small, local establishment. That's the expected--and normal--pub. Instead of a dark, close environment, we found a light, bright restaurant and bar. It was filled with the yuppie work crowd, and as the evening progressed, a few older people filtered in.

We enjoyed a perfect drink, a gourmet meal, and a lovely atmosphere. The walls had larged framed mirrors which reflected light around the dining room, and the floor was filled with antique oak tables and banquettes.

We grabbed a seat by the back door. We overlooked a patio area filled with tables, shaded by large umbrellas and fitted out with outdoor heaters to make it comfortable to the smokers who kept it hopping. The waiter rushed past and apologized for the fact that the kitchen wouldn't be open for another 30 minutes. It seems they had a private party being served and the kitchen wouldn't be able to focus on individual orders until the crowd was all served. Since we were there for the evening, we agreed and just ordered a drink.

At the point where they had to serve the big private party, they had to prop open the outside door. Then a parade of waiters and waitresses ferried food out, three or four plates a trip. The whole time they went back and forth, the door was propped open letting in a cold breeze. About three times, some other diner stepped over to the door, intending on closing it. I kept stopping them, telling them that the wait staff needed the door open until they got the whole party served. It stayed propped and they got the food served.

When they were done serving the big group, they got our order. Then the original waiter squatted down by our table and apologized at great length about the bother of having the door open. Then he tried to pay for our dinners. Really. It was the nicest that anyone has been to me in a restaurant in six months.

I had a lovely dinner. Salmon grilled to perfection atop a bed of fresh green beans, grilled tomatoes and steamed purple potatoes. DH had a traditional chicken pie. It was all beautifully presented and not your average bar food. Lovely. Brilliant. All the adjectives that the Brits use to describe the best stuff.

I can see having a place like this in the neighborhood and becoming a regular. The prices were reasonable and the food excellent. In the US, all we have in the neighborhoods, on the street corners, is fast food places. The English Pub is a much better alternative. Better than a drive through. A slow stroll down the block, a leisurely drink and nice dinner, waited on by attentive, thoughtful staff. A big win. These are the people that almost took over the world. Really.

--Sandee Wagner

Kew Royal Botanical Gardens

Today, I left my hotel room and walked a mile and a half down the road to Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. It was cool and a little overcast, but no rain was forecast. So I decided that today would be a good day for a long walk through the park.

Kew Gardens is way too big to do in a single day, or a single trip. I had no chance of seeing it all, so I decided to do a tactical strike and just skim the top. I was a little worried that it wouldn't be fun because it's a cold February for the UK. How pretty would a garden be on a day like today? The answer: real pretty.

I totally underestimated how interesting a garden can be when the green stuff is just bursting out of the ground. There was snow on the ground just weeks ago. Today, the crocuses were flooding the ground beneath naked tree limbs. The light was just right.

There were still some leaves on the ground and most of the trees were just beginning to bud out. And all over the gardens, in swathes of color, tiny flowers were bursting up out of the green, green grass.

Full disclosure: I'm not much of a gardener. I don't like to spend time with my hands thrust in the soil, coaxing life to grow. I get sunburned and overheat in the bright sunlight. That said, I want a nice yard and I adore looking at a well planned garden. Just because I don't want to DO it, it doesn't mean I don't like it.

Kew Gardens has been continuously cultivated for over 250 years. Part of what makes it charming is that visitors are encouraged to walk on the grass, climb the trees and enjoy all the growing things. Not pick the flowers, mind you, but you are not confined to the walkways.

Throughout the giant property, there are greenhouses devoted to specific collections. One of the biggest is the Princess of Wales Conservatory which was hosting a Tropical Extravaganza. An orchid show. All month long.

I felt like I won the national lottery. I love orchids. I've never owned one. I know you have to work at keeping them healthy and getting one would be a guaranteed slow death for one, so I've avoided them. I used to have two employees who raised orchids as a hobby. They talked about it all the time. Did you know that they clone orchids? It's quite a passion for a lot of people. I know enough to know that I don't need to own one, but I dearly love to look at them. The Tropical Extravaganza was colorful, fragrant and glorious.

They displayed the orchids on huge pillars. Combined colors were cultivated on towering heights and different varieties mixed together. I could have spent hours just trying to decide which ones were my favorite. There were huge blooms, tiny blooms. Hanging baskets, wall mounted clusters. More orchids than I've ever known existed.

It was fascinated and beautiful. If you want to see ALL the pictures I took, check this out.

Some of the other highlights of the visit were the Palm House and its formal gardens and guardian statuary and the Davies Alpine House and the Rock Garden.

Like I said, you cannot see it all in a single day. All I could do was skim the big stuff and keep my eyes (and my camera) open to capture all the sights I could see.

Combined with the three mile walk getting there and back, I spent the whole afternoon toddling about, admiring the greenery. I lost count of the number of groups of school kids and 'explorers' wearing red hats doing specific tours. It was a great day to be out and about.

--Sandee Wagner

Toppling Governments

I don't mean to do it. I promise. It just happens. Maybe it's karma.

Back in the 70's and 80's, my parents traveled extensively. They planned all year for the trips that they'd take over the long summers. Once they retired from teaching school, they traveled year round, going any where that interested them.

My brothers and sisters and I watched them go, and watched governments topple in their wake. They'd travel to some South American country, then weeks or months later, there'd be a junta and the government would be overthrown. I joked around that they were CIA operatives. Who would look closely at American tourists schlepping around with backpacks? It happened so often that we worried about them. Countries destabilized whenever they were near. Something might have happened to them. We had to make them check in with us weekly so we'd know they were all right.

In September of last year, I agreed to follow my husband on an international assignment. We were sent to Tunisia. The relocation specialist who took me around to see houses told me that their much loved president, Ben Ali, had been in power for 26 years. Less than three months later, his government has toppled and Tunisians will hold elections in six months to select a new government.

Last week, we went to Dubai. DH had a meeting there and I accompanied him. Today, a friend send me this news... Dubai has unrest.

Now, I'm sitting in London and my friends are begging me not to ruin the British Empire until after the Royal Wedding. I'm not sure I can control my powers to that extent. It seems to happen without any conscious effort on my part.

Perhaps I inherited the ability to affect governments just by my mere presence. It's hard to imagine how that gene is passed down, but it obviously has been handed to me.

I'll keep you posted on my whereabouts so you can track the effect and make your own decision.

--Sandee Wagner

Mall of the Emirates

Today we played tourist again. We took a taxi to another mall, The Mall of the Emirates. Aside from being anchored by two massive hotels, this mall boasts an indoor ski slope that is operated all year long. It's the silver tube-like projection you can see jutting out of the back in this stock photo of the mall.

If I haven't said it before now, we arrived in Dubai during their annual month long shopping festival. People travel from all over to enjoy the shopping in Dubai. A lot of those people have a ton of money to spend. So, it's safe for me to say that this mall is upscale. Filled with designer stores. And because their demographic is people with money to spend, the entire mall is gorgeous and finished with the finest surfaces.

There's a lot of vertical space. The whole mall feels airy and large, even filled to capacity with a roiling crowd. It sprawls out in several directions and without the mall directories, it would be easy to get lost.

Three full floors with arching atriums and connection points that form central circles with spokes that jet out. It's sleek and modern but it feels lush and rich at the same time. All the floors are beautiful stone and each atrium area has a giant mosaic pattern that has to be seen from over head to appreciate.

I can't count the number of times we dodged to get out of somebody's photo opportunity. We even saw one chick who changed her shoes so that she was wearing designer heels for the picture, then swapped back into her comfy shoes to keep walking the mall. It's an amazing place. And I'm not just saying that because they had a Dairy Queen and I bought a dipped cone.

There was every designer store you can think of, but there were also import shops with stuff from all around the globe. Even some local artisans selling their wares. My favorite was welded sculptures of movie monsters. Some life sized. He had the Predator and an Alien that was bigger than DH. Every tiny detail was worked out with scraps of engine parts, bicycles and chains. If you look closely, you can see wrenches, nuts and bolts. I love to see art made from throw away waste. I'm trying to convince DH that we need the 7 foot tall Predator sculpture. It would make a wonderful Valentine's gift, I'm sure.

But of all the wonders that filled the shops in this mall, the biggest attraction is the ski slope. At the west end food court, you can sit down to lunch and watch the skiing antics through giant plate glass windows.

Kind of interesting, sitting and enjoying lunch while folks are playing at snow sports on the other side of a wall. They had little rides for kids, all kinds of toboggans and even one of the blow up balls you can get inside. They were putting kids inside of it and then rolling it down the bunny slope. All the while, the ski lift was taking serious enthusiasts up the hill so they could shush down the white stuff. An amazing tourist attraction.

When I saw the original pictures of this construction, they were labeled in such a way as to denigrate the builders as being oil rich millionaires with too much money, and not enough sense.

After seeing it, I'm convinced they were geniuses. The folks in Dubai might have made their money in oil, but their economy is not limited to the black gold. When that well has run dry, this stuff is still going to be attracting tourists from all over the region and the world. They have successfully moved from the desert to an oil based economy to a tourism based economy in less than 60 years.
The Mall of the Emirates is competing with a mall that has an aquarium in it. They have a ski slope.

You kind of have to see both of them to believe it. It truly is a tourist's heaven.

Oh, and I want one of these.

--Sandee Wagner

Well Dressed Muslim Women

Our flight back to Tunis got cancelled. We're rescheduled, but we ended up with an extra day in Dubai. What to do? Well, the hotel sends free shuttle buses to the three big malls, so we hopped on one that has an aquarium and decided to make a day of it.

The Dubai Mall is about a fifteen minute drive from our hotel. By shuttle bus, making a few stops, it took considerably longer. We got there and walked in to a gorgeous, three story mall that is huge by any comparison. Inside this mall, they even have a Galleries Lafayette like the one in Paris! The whole place is upscale with lots of imported designers and recognizable brands.

Now, I'm not much of a shopper. I like a bargain, so the expensive designer stuff is really out of my price range. I treated this like a window shopping and people watching opportunity. One of the things I noticed that is really different from Tunis is the number of women who do the fully covered Muslim traditional dress or abaya. In a lot of cases, this includes a face covering that leaves only the eyes visible. In Tunis, a lot of women chose to wear the hijab, which is a scarf that completely covers the neck and hair. These are mostly color coordinated with their outfits, which cover their skin to wrist and ankle. It's a lot different to see women swathed in flowing black with only their eyes peeking out.

For some reason, I thought of ski masked robbers bursting into the stores, and "reach for the stars" kept echoing through my head. Thankfully, I kept that an internal monologue and didn't frighten the shoppers.

Let me just say, when the women were wrapped in black cloth, and their menfolk were wearing the galabiyyas, it seemed fair. It didn't seem right for the women to be covered with only their eyes peeking out and the guys walking along in tight jeans, muscle shirts and flip flops. Oh well. I'd better get used to the disparity.

Part of what makes this mall interesting is the two traditional areas. There is a Gold Souk that houses a bajillion jewelry stores. It's styled to resemble an authentic souk and the architecture is gorgeous.

You'd think the shiny, sparkling things displayed in the windows of the shops would distract me, but this part of the mall was truly magical. Gorgeous carved plasterwork. The colors were earthy and rich. The mosaic floors were intricate and flowing, rich with color and symbols. I can't say enough for the person who designed this and envisioned the final product. It is visually stunning.

After spending a little time rubbernecking my way through the Gold Souk, we called it quits on the mall and headed off to catch a taxi. We were directed to the Arabian Quarter to find the cab stand.

The Arabian Quarter is an entire section of the mall that is devoted to traditional dress and high end purveyors of same. So if you want a abaya, these are the stores to shop. What I found most interesting, is that these are traditionally very thin, all black fabric. So every woman looks exactly alike. But these stores have found ways to edge, trim and bedazzle these coverings in such a way as to make them unique.

The store next door sold only the headscarves.
Each one was colorfully edged. Most were bejeweled in such a way as to be distinctive. Some had just the corners encrusted with gems. Some had cuffs and seams colorfully dotted with shiny things. The rules require modest dress. They don't require everyone to look the same. Or at least, that's the way it's being observed at this mall.

One of the things that DH noticed was that in groups of women all swathed in abayas, it was easiest to tell them apart by their handbags. And boy, did they carry some expensive handbags! All you purse nuts out there who have dreamed of owning a Coach, Dolce&Gabbana or Gucci bag, or some other designer with sky high prices, then this is the mall to cause you angst. They are everywhere. I've given it some thought and if all you ever show the outside world is a flowing black covering, then you deserve a really expensive handbag.

--Sandee Wagner

Night Out in Dubai

Most of you who know me have an inkling that my life is unsettled lately. We fled Tunis in the face of the civil unrest and spent a couple of weeks in Paris waiting out the ugliness. Now that Tunis is considered safe enough for the guys to go back to work, it's still a little dicey for a woman alone. So, instead of leaving me behind in a house that's been broken into (and not reinforced to make those windows secure), DH has decided that I will travel with him. The new house has no land line, Internet or TV. I am not allowed to drive the company rental car. So, being stuck in a house with no communication and no wheels is not attractive to me either.

This week, I've been enjoying Dubai with DH. He's had four all day meetings. Each evening, he returns and we've had a quiet meal and settled down for the night. Last night, he was invited out on the town by a coworker who lives in Dubai.

They chose to take us to a shopping area that is co-located with the Burj Al Arab hotel. This shopping center is a huge, rambling complex full of upscale shops and shiny things. It is designed to be like an old souk or medina only brand new.

We walked through the shops and looked around. Bought some Starbucks coffee beans to carry back to the Tunisian friends who can't get coffee in the stores.

The stores have a riverwalk area and boats cross the water to ferry folks back and forth to the Burj Al Arab hotel. It's pretty spectacular at night. The lush landscape is dotted with palm trees that are all lit up with white fairy lights.

We went to the Left Bank bar and had a couple of cocktails. Any restaurant attached to a hotel can serve alcohol, so you have to pick your nightspot carefully. All I can say is that I enjoyed two frosty adult beverages and my conversational skills were not impaired.

Then we went on to The Meat Co for dinner. It's a real steakhouse that a Texan can love.

We shared dinner with two of DH's coworkers and one of their spouses. A lively crowd with great conversation. From our table on the terrace, we looked out over the water and saw the hotel lit up in the distance. The Burj Al Arab is an impressive part of the cityscape. The light show is fun and interesting. Every half hour the color cast up its height changes. On the hour, a sparkling array of lights shimmers all over its surface giving a glittering lightshow that takes your breath away. Such fun.

I enjoyed my dinner with friends. An evening out on the town in Dubai gave my life a feeling or normalcy that was absent for so long. Trolling through shops, a nice Cosmopolitan, and a rib eye steak. It doesn't take much to make me happy.

--Sandee Wagner

Pigs and Eating Them

Living in Muslim dominated countries has some interesting side effects.

Some are expected, some are not. I find that I miss pork products like crazy. Being denied something makes you obsess on it beyond your normal attraction. When I found the 'infidel meat aisle' in Carrefour, I was thrilled. It has pork and so I was able to buy some to cook once we lived in a house with a kitchen. At the Berges du Lac, if you ordered something with bacon, you got some weird tough meat that was burned beyond recognition. Kind of like ordering well done meat in a swanky restaurant, they ruin it to punish you.

When we got to Dubai, we ate at the hotel restaurant. It said right on the menu that they served no pork products. So, I was expecting more of the same. But last night, DH had a dinner meeting so I ordered room service.

The room service menu had a different variety of food stuffs on it. One was a club sandwich that said "pork bacon on request." So I ordered it.

Now, I've eaten at Hugo's in Claremore, OK, so I know that you can get too much bacon. There is a threshold that can be crossed whereby you receive way too much of a good thing. I was expecting a 'little' bacon on a "classical club sandwich" that the a la carte menu promised.

Instead, I got a sandwich that looked like a club (see the layers of bread) with the crusts cut off like a kid's meal. And dumped on the top of the plate, like a last minute addition, or a garnish, was a bunch of bacon.

It was a little off-putting. So was the addition of fried eggs with orange yolks as a layer in the sandwich. I expected the bacon IN the sandwich, not ON it. But, guys, bacon is bacon. So I munched my bacon garnish while I ate this very strange sandwich. Instead of any kind of sliced meat, it was made with chicken that had been hammered into thinness and then fried up. That and the fried eggs was the 'meat layer'. It had some very sad lettuce and shredded cheese to complete the sandwich filling. Strange. Not quite a classic club, but it was tasty enough. Should have been called a chicken sandwich or chicken and egg sandwich, but that's marketing.

It does make me wonder about who's cooking in the kitchen though. This is a five star hotel. In the entire city of Dubai, I haven't seen what I consider to be a 'local' working at anything. In every service position, there are Asians, Indians and Bangladeshi. I've chatted up all the hotel staff and none of them are from the UAE, they are all here on work visas.

So, where does this chef come from? Inquiring minds want to know. My best guess is Indonesia. It makes sense based on the fact that most of them are Muslim, and the workers appear to lean to ones from this part of the globe. The chef is Muslim--for sure--based on his treatment of the tasty pork products.

I won't order this one again--not because of the bacon, that was super yummy--but because there is a ton of other stuff that looks good and I want to try it all. If I find something else with pork in it, I'll have to try.

When we first got to Tunis, we heard the ex-pats there talking about smuggling bacon in their checked baggage to bring it back into Tunis from the UK. I considered local sourcing it before trying to figure a way to bring it in from the US. At least now I understand the fixation on the process. I'm developing the same obsession.

--Sandee Wagner

Dubai For The Win

My DH has to attend a couple of meetings over the next few weeks. The first one is a four day meeting in Dubai. Since things are still sketchy in Tunis, he decided not to leave me behind. So, here I sit in a hotel room in Dubai.

I never thought much about hotels before.

Before I lived in hotels for four months of my life.

Now I have sincere and deeply founded opinions about what makes a good hotel. A year ago, I had no opinion about hotel mattresses. If you asked me, I would say, "You only ever sleep on them for a couple of nights, so what?" But my life is not about sleeping on a hotel mattress for 'a couple of nights' anymore. Nowadays, I stay for weeks at a time in tiny hotel rooms and I find I am emphatically opposed to hard mattresses.

We stayed in a hotel in Paris for two weeks. The mattress was 6" from top to bottom. Like a futon. Really. Hard like a brick. I thought I would be crippled for life before I got back to my own bed.

Now, here I sit in Dubai, less than a week later. The mattress is marginally better. But still not like my bed at home.

So, what's a girl to do about a hurting back with no end in sight to forced closeness with a hard mattress? That's right. Spa Day.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the resort spa here in Le Meridien. I'm having a massage. That's right. A decadent, two hour long extravagance. I'm going to pay too much money in the wild hopes that I will get some relief.

Wish me luck.

--Sandee Wagner

Marketing Faux Pas

Since I've been globetrotting, I've noticed specific distinctions in marketing. There are things you see in Paris, that you'd never see in the US. This jeans ad was bigger than life. Now, first, biting a gal's ass is generally frowned upon in public areas. This is in an airport... where kids walk by all day long. So there's no attempt to be anything other than 'in your face' sexual about these jeans.

In the UK and Paris, there are more television commercials that contain nudity and sexual innuendo. The more risque ones run at night, but still.

In Tunisia, you see some things that are completely unexpected. First, let me preface this by saying that liquor, beer and wine are hard to find. The stores that carry them are few and far between. Alcohol that we are used to being 'cheap' or plentiful is very dear, indeed. I'm guessing it's because they are imported. There is local wine and some kind of fig based aperitif (yech.)

In Carrefour the other day, I decided to buy some rum or vodka for mixed drinks. I should have bought them in the duty free shop in the airport, but I thought we had some at home. Apparently, I've been hitting those bottles, or the looters helped themselves. Who knows? They were down to just a few ounces, so I went into the liquor section to replenish my supply.

In the airport duty free stores, we see all the brands of liquor we are used to and the prices are reasonable; however, in Carrefour, they just have what they can get. Check out this brand of rum. I'm guessing that this rum is not imported into a lot of western countries...

We like some marketing. There are some things that appeal to me regardless of the country of origin.After posing for this picture, we continued our run through the Orly airport and thought about all the businesses we've seen with DH's name in them. There was "Bert's Dirts" in Austin, TX. I had to buy a t-shirt from them to immortalize the business within our family. I bought my son a t-shirt from Jake's Fireworks and I tried to get him a Jake's Burger Joint shirt from Phoenix. It's all in the name, baby.

I know that marketing is not a science. It's more like voodoo or witchcraft. Those people who are good at it, have some kind of 'feel' that others lack. It's hard to know what will catch people's attention and command their purchasing power.

Oh yeah. I bought that rum. That photo is taken in my living room. I had to pay $37 Tunisian dinar for that bottle and it was a third of the price of the only other brand available. So, while I can get worked up about marketing that is detrimental or insulting to some group of people, I have to admit that, for me, price is still the defining reason why I purchase something. I can put a bag over this, or apply some duct tape to the bottle. I could even decant it into something else if I'm feeling offended. I'm guessing the more I drink, the less insulted I'll feel.

Around the world, there are all kinds of people trying to sell a product. If they are able to sell it, they won't change their branding. I guess I know I'm not helping when I buy a product like this, but sometimes you just need a rum and coke. Know what I mean?

--Sandee Wagner