Vladimir Kagan's Blog

The Flight of the Snowbird - Part 2

 

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH – THE TOUGH WILL TRAVEL

And so this writer heads for the hills of Switzerland and Italy

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, May 30, 2014

 

Where once shapely stewardesses helped while-away the dreary hours of the night, flight attendants of all ages, sizes, and gender have replaced them… Attractive is no longer the operative word.

Even Business Class is not much more than a cattle transport. Menus are pretentious: printed in oversized folios - the cuisine exquisitely described in florid language. In reality the fare is comparable to cafeteria food. The appetizer consists of a chopped salad; the main course is predictably over-cooked meats or pasta. Eloquent cheeses are a sliver of inconsequential blue and Swiss. …There is a plethora of stainless silverware, enough, to start a collection. With the return trip, you have collected enough for a setting of six.  

Last year I moaned about Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic… this time my gripe goes to Swiss. Have you seen their advertising? If it’s Swiss it’s got to be good – or words to that effect. The A330 is a nice modern airplane designed with a minimum of flourish. In Economy they have squeezed eight seats across, in Business it is graciously only four. However, here is where my plaudit’s end. Seats are clustered into pods that are arranged in a checkerboard pattern. Alternating: one on the isle the other behind a cubicle-console. Those unfortunate to be located on the inside are obliged to slither through a 12” passage to their seat. Storage pockets, in the seat in front of you have been replaced with a useless niche for menus, a headset and perhaps a hairbrush. Under the seat storage has been usurped for the reclining chair to be able to open into a flat bed. The seats are narrow. The bed feels like a prison-cot.

Once you have slithered into your seat, there is a disappearing tray-table so efficiently concealed, you need a flight attendant to open it… a telephone handset with all the bells and whistles that provide the entertainment (I spent half the night trying to figure out how to log in and finally gave up in desperation. When you’re flying business you don’t want to appear stupid so you don’t call the flight attendant for help) Lights are turned off (not dimmed) all that’s left is a fiber-optic reading light and there were still five hours of flying to destination. 

Do I look like President Obama alighting out of Air Force One? - It's just our little jet taking us to Pisa

 

After a restless night of flying, we land in Geneva and are instantly whisked off by private jet to Pisa and from there to Forte dei Marmi in Tuscany, Italy. Forte dei Marmi, in season is a noisy, overcrowded watering hole on the Mediterranean. Aficionados like it at all times, but for us spoiled Nantucketers, the beach hardly matches our concept of a beach. Non-the-less in the off-season, there is not a soul there… it is ours alone and the hundreds of beach chairs are empty as a far as the eye can see.  Naturally, the food is divine. Petra Santa, a small ancient town in the foothills of the Apian Alps is just a few kilometers away. It is where Carrara marble is quarried and Michelangelo sculpted his famous David. It is a magnet for artists, shoppers and foodies.

 

The empty beach at Forte Dei Marmi - Italy 

Our Victorian hotel has been carefully restored and sits in a lush setting of trees and shrubbery that are ready to burst into bloom. We are conscious of a European tradition: Each year, the plain-trees are given a poodle-cut! It’s called pollarding. New growth is carefully trimmed away in the fall; the branches are left barren with naked clusters of knobs, which burst into an umbrella of greenery each spring. In America we think it akin to docking a dog’s tail…cruel to animals and trees. I think these trees are elegant lining a street for mile upon mile. And then there are the tall pines trimmed of their new growth until they reach a height of fifty feet or more at which point they fan out into a sculptured parasol… In this paradisiacal setting we overcome our jet lag.

 

My sister Tanya on her 85th birthday - breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Apian Alps

 The pollarded pines outside my hotel room

The Birthday Cake - Tanya with some of her great-grandchildren blowing out the candles

Ristorante Il Vaticano in a wine cave in Pietrasanta with me pigging out on a steak-bone

Tanya with her her older brother and her Italian daughter Vicki  

Cathy,Tanya's artist daughter, horsing around with me

 

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The Return to Geneva and  Italy

 

Three days in paradise was hardly enough before being whisked back to Geneva. Geneva is old hat – my home away from home. 

There is nothing jaded about Geneva - elegant turn-of-the-century architecture. A traditional Gate House to anold  estate - now a public garden
A mile of pollarded trees along the Lake and the celebrated bronze horse overlooking the lake

 

....But life is full of surprises. A family friend decided to have a formal wedding in his bride’s ancestral home: Torino – seven year’s after their first marriage! For the second time in one week, we go to Italy! Five hundred miles round trip in one day! … It was fabulous, through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, under majestic snow covered mountains to a lovely garden wedding and a spectacular sunset in the Alps.

Approaching Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe on route to the tunnel

 
Tunnel Entrance in France              Tunnel Entrance in Italy

After driving 20 minutes in the longest tunnel in the world, we emerge in Italy

 

The bride and groom with their three children as flower girls and ring bearer

 

The mother of the bride with the bride's sister

 the Family Mansion high above Torino

 

On our return drive we pass ancient monuments, architecture and spectacular scenery 

A
Monuments on the road leaving Torino

A lone fortress Castle that guarded the steep passage along a gorge of the river flowing southward from the Alps to Torino and Milan

Ancient terraced vineyards cut into the steep face of the mountains on either side of the highway

Sunset as we approach the Italian side of the Mont Blanc Tunnel

 

There's more to come! 

Next: Onward and upward to the Swiss Alps

The Flight of the Snowbird

Migratory Birds Fly North - and So do I

Copyright Vladimir Kagan May 27, 2014

 

DAFFODIL DAYS ON NANTUCKET

 

After a long cloistered winter - housebound and often without access to the outside world for weeks on end, Nantucketers get itchy. By the end of April, they are in need of some diversion. The Chamber of Commerce came up with a solution: the daffodils are in full bloom, it is a rite of spring, let’s celebrate!  They decreed that on the last weekend of the month, rain or shine, year after year, was to be a holiday and they called it “Daffodil Days”. In truth, there is no sign of spring except for the “daffies”… the trees are bare and it can often be downright chilly. In the twenty years that I’ve participated, it snowed once and had been marred by rain on several occasions. And so it came to pass, that this year it rained. But the daffodils flourished and the people came dressed as daffodils and wore yellow in commemoration of the yellow tuber.

 
my granddaughter Mallory and Chris Eitel my "Wing Man" looking into my Model T

Special events are created to celebrate the weekend. A classic car parade, followed by feasting on the backs of the car called a “tailgate picnic”. These elaborate tailgate picnics are judged by judges… not for their tastiness but for their cleverness in celebration of the daffodil. If you follow in the judge’s footsteps, you might be able to sneak a dip into other peoples’ picnic and steal a morsel or two….

P.S. There was no picnic this year - rained out!

    

my little buggy - no time to decorate - but faithfully in the parade every year for 20 years

There is also a flower show organized by the garden club ladies. This is a particular nice event on a rainy day as it is held indoors. Restaurants are open and everyone is happy to see and be seen so early in the season.

"Daffies" at the flower show

paper daffodils made by the elimentary school children

 

This annual rite of spring, however, is short lived; after the cars and tourists have gone, Nantucket recoils into its winter slumber for another two months.

 

my pond and trees are barren except for a few miniature daffies breaking through the ground

 

 

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NEW YORK’S SECOND CITY SYNDROME

 

New York has become a “Second City” not because of its outrageous new mayor, but because it is doing its darnedest to become the art capital of the world. Admittedly Christies and Sotheby’s sell a lot of art and buyers from around the world flock there each spring for a feeding frenzy.

New York’s art dealers have smartened-up and also want a piece of this action: Why not an Art Basel New York? Miami has successfully kidnapped the genre, why not New York? Along with dozens of art events, tent shows, recycled vacant real estate, New York is vying for its rightful place in the art world.

 

For the design world, we have had ICFF (International Contemporary Furnishing Fair) for 21 years. But like the Milan Salone Di Mobile, what happens off-site is often more important than the events inside of the Javits Center. Collective2 Design Fair, is in its second year and is the brainchild of Steven Lerner, a New York based architect and interior designer, turn design impresario.  He has temporarily transformed the cavernous ground floor of the once magnificent, but now obsolete Moynihan Post Office building and turned it into a hip design showcase. Not to long ago it was where all the mail was sorted by hand. The building has a grander future: it is to be converted into the NEW Pennsylvania Railroad Station.

   

from scrolls to screens to chicken coops - it was a darn good show

Opening night at Collective2 was so crowded you couldn’t see the exhibit. (New Yorkers are see and be seen people). This event is a great alternative to Design Miami for those not wanting to deal with the crowds and nightmarish struggle for hotels, places to eat and taxis…. Art Basil Miami was still better than its New York counterpart, but that won’t be for long… Basel in Switzerland still trumps them all, but if you love New York, you’ll love the new art scene.

 

Follow my migratory flight path across the ocean to Italy and Switzerland in my next post!