We recently had a four day weekend and we decided to go to Milan and make a side trip to Lake Como.  It was my first time going to Italy and I wanted to see some sights and at the end of the day I just wanted to see what the food was like.

Here are some pictures from my iPhone:

Il Duomo, one of the largest cathedrals in the world.  It is crowned by seemingly innumerable pinnacles and spires while its facade is a speckled, mosaic of marble.

This was probably the craziest thing I saw.  A statue of St Bartholomew, who is shown skinless, draped in a length of his own pared flesh signifying the tradition held regarding his martyrdom.

In Milan, is a famous cemetery.  It is a forest of tombs, graves and sarcophagi decorated with sculptures and structures of the eerie and somber kind.  The pictures speak for themselves.

On to the food:

Milan is known for offering aperitivo, a buffet of fresh foods, such as pasta, pizza, crustinis, meatballs, salami, cheese, olives, roasted vegetables, and so on all covered for the price of a drink, be it a glass of wine, a cocktail or a coke.  I really loved this concept (who wouldn’t).

This perspective is what I call FPE (First Person Eating).  We ate at a spot called “Peperino Pizza & Grill” and got an amazing lunch menu deal.  A whole pizza, mineral water, and espresso for 8 euro flat.

This was my favorite meal of the trip, at a place called Obika, a mozarella bar.  To me, this was a perfect plate of food: crumpled heaps of charcuterie, grilled endive, marinated vegetables, roasted potatoes, sweet, tangy cherry tomatoes and the star: buffalo mozzarella.  It was just a plate of flawless, complementing bites of food, all puncuated by briny flays of mozarella.  Each fleck is raked away by knife and fork, dismembering shreds of milky, white interconnective tissue and forked in along with a myriad of tastes and flavors.  It was a joy to eat.

Because we heard that Milan was not necessarily filled with normal “touristy” things to do, we took a side trip to Lake Como.  We traveled by train and took a ferry boat to Bellagio.

Days before our trip the dust had (literally) just settled.  Milan airport was closed due to ash clouds but opened the week of our trip.  As you can see, the view from the sky was gorgeous.  I was truly amazed at home green this country was.

Whenever we experience unusual climates or unexpected weather, we seem to come up with clever names to explain the phenomena. For example, when I first moved to So Cal, windy days were attributed to the “Santa Ana winds”. They were to blame if your allergies acted up or if a grass fire was difficult to contain. If the day was overcast, it was because of “June Gloom”, although LA always seems to have June Gloom (or is just smog?). El Nino is to blame for rainy weather, and high temperatures? Global Warming.

For two days in a row, I experienced some really crazy weather. When it began, I was kind of startled and my colleague gave me a nod and said “Oui… Les Giboulées de Mars”, literally “The Thunderstorms of March”. I can only describe it as a sudden, unexpected burst of beating winds and rain, buffeting hail, and the release of violent thunder and lightning. Surprised Parisians are hiding for cover, things are flying in the swirling air or blown to the ground. Taxicabs suddenly have no problem finding business. Then, as swiftly and abruptly as “Les Giboulées” began, it passes through, revealing a clear, azure sky, air as cold and crisp as brushed steel, and a blazing, postdiluvian sun. The streets are blinding, with every watery surface reflecting unfiltered rays of light. As soon as the eyes adjust, everything looks sharper and more vibrant. This moment of contrast reminds me of just how stunning something as simple as blue skies and a blazing sun can be. While something like the Eiffel Tower is an amazing, graceful work of art, to be amorously stared at for ages, God’s artistry is greater to an imperceptible degree, to be enjoyed until the end of time.

Though I dread the downpour of another “Giboulée”, it might be worth it just for a chance to experience the clarity after a perfect storm.

When I first started working in France I became acquainted with “Le Handshake”.  This is a daily work ritual in which you are obligated to shake hands with everyone in the office in your room or work area.  When the shaker gets into work, before he’s had a chance to settle in, he proceeds to meet with everyone in the room and other adjoining work spaces to shake hands.  He is usually interrupting whatever task or conversation a person is in the middle of when he offers out his hand and says ‘bonjour’ or ’salut’.  The shakee stops what he’s doing and shakes the hand very lightly with maybe just a single pump.  The shake is very slight, short and gentle, unlike the it’s American counterpart which is supposed to be firm and vigorous.   In America they say a good handshake is a key to career success.  In France, the handshake is key to social acceptance.

I’ve found that this ritual is regarded as an essential part of the French work culture.  Though you may not know the person’s name (they never introduce themselves either) professional etiquette requires the handshake.  If you are walking through the hallway and see someone you haven’t greeted you must shake his hand.  If you enter the office or see someone and don’t shake hands it is considered rude and insulting.  If there is a group of people talking you must impose on the conversation and shake their hands — it would be rude not to.

What’s considered the greater offense is if you greet and shake hands with someone more than once in a day.  If for whatever reason you do that, you are met with a flinch or sometimes a glare.  To shake someones hand twice in a day is a grave error, signifying that you do not remember greeting the person earlier and that you have not acknowledged him.  I have done this a few times mostly out of reflex and am always met with a reluctant and often times confused second handshake.  The French are very intentional about only shaking hands once. If I greet someone a bit later in the morning or day, sometimes I can see a slight strain on their face as they search their memory to confirm if they have shaken my hand or not that day.

For whatever reason, this daily tradition is amusing to us non-French and we talk about it or joke about it quite frequently.  I think deep down we’re all self-conscious about it,  worried if we offended someone and wondering if we shook enough hands.  If the handshake wasn’t enough to occupy my mind, there is also the the French cheek kiss/pecking greeting…and a new set of rules of etiquette and engagement I need to learn, but I’ll save that for next time.

Laduree, the one place in Paris synonymous with fine pastries, especially the macaroon.  The high quality ingredients, the beautiful presentation, and the intricately designed packaging, Laduree reminds me of Tiffany, but with desserts.  I’m sure, like Tifanny, one can get some pretty good macaroons elsewhere, but with Laduree, you’re buying a great product, but more importantly, you’re buying the name…

This is the box that the macaroons come in.

Here’s a close up shot of the macaroons, a marriage of smooth crispiness, soft sweetness, vivid colors and flavors.

Four boxes ready to take a first class flight back with me from Paris to LAX.

Things have been smooth so far, because we are mostly interfacing with English speaking people.  The biggest headache by far has been the language barrier.  While the Eiffel Tower probably defines the typical Paris experience, the Tower of Babel defines mine.  If you are not familiar with it, the Tower of Babel is a biblical story in an ancient time where all the world spoke only English but God found it fit to “confuse” the nations and have them all speak different languages.  For example, if you took Spanish, soup is sopa, whereas soap is jabon.  In English “4″ is just the number 4, but in Chinese, the “4″ is the number 4 and also means death.  Things are just as crazy here in France, for example, the movie “It’s Complicated” is titled “Pas Si Simple“, which interpreted back in English is “Not So Simple”.   Apparently, when the Tower of Babel fell, God struck the word “complicated” from the French lexicon.  The biggest pain is when we are ordering food, which is a huge problem because the only reason why we came to Paris was to order food… and order lots of it.  Unfortunately we can’t read half of the menu– it might as well be scribble scrabble, and when we finally do order we’re so nervous of getting it wrong and being unintelligible that it tends to ruin the first half of our dining experience.  The waiter is confused, we’re confused, I mean how hard is it to get some plain tap water?

My worst encounter by far was at a nearby Korean restaurant, which for me is like being in a foreign land within a foreign land.  The menu was in Korean with French captions.  I had the brilliant idea of ordering in Korean, triumphantly rattling off the names of dishes I know.  I felt like I was doing her a favor, but now she assumed I could speak Korean, so she said something to me and I replied back in broken Korean.  By the look on her face, I knew confusion was in the air, so I repeated myself but got absolutely no where.  I did the second best thing and attempted to speak to her in my dilapidated, non-existent French.  As her face grew more and more puzzled, I could tell that this vertiginous conversation was spiraling out of control so I did what any red blooded American would do: speak to her in English.  She took one last befuddled look at me, and asked someone else to wait on my table.  Once we are all settled down, French lessons are definitely going to be a priority.

Snapped a paparazzi shot of Helen while she was busy reading the menu.  Good thing she got her new glasses – I’ve never known anyone else who pores over a menu so intensely, studying each entree to look for that perfect dish.  The highlight of the meal was the carpaccio.  One rose colored sheet of beef, topped with capers, Parmesan cheese, and basil rolled tight like a cigar.  Great choice, H.

Because the”Incognito” window acts as pretty much a new browser, with no history or cache or cookies, there are some interesting things you can do with it. For example, by launching the Incognito window, you can log onto another Gmail account while still being logged into a different account in the non-Incognito window. This makes sense since this Incognito menu is not supposed to have any session or cookie data from any previous instance of Chrome. Of course, this could have been overcome by logging onto that account using a different browser, such as FF or IE, but if I’m planning to stick with Chrome, then I wouldn’t have any use for the other browsers. One limitation is that Chrome only sort of allows you one Incognito Window, meaning once you open the incognito window, that window will share session data with all of its tabs or “children” windows (if you open up a new window from the incog. window). This means you can’t open up a new incog window and expect to log into a third account.

There are other uses for the Incognito windows. For example, if I am doing some kind of web development I may not want to test it while the browser is full of cache and other session data. Instead of always having to clear out the browser’s “browsing data”, I could just open up the Incognito window and know for sure that what I’m looking at is the latest and greatest.

Overall, Chrome is pretty good. For everyday browsing, I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m definitely not uninstalling Firefox anytime soon. Chrome is just too new and incompatible with lots of technologies. Even writing this blog entry illustrated that (Chrome did not properly render my ‘carraige returns’ in my version of Wordpress). Turn on Firefox, and, voila, everything works fine.

We first went through Sea Cliff and battled the hill there. After that we entered the Presidio crossing through the Legion of Honor. Most of the roads in the Presidio lead to the Golden Gate Bridge if you have just a little sense of direction. We finally made it to the Bridge after a few hills and crossed it. The weather was really typical SF weather: cold and foggy. It was so foggy that we couldn’t see the ocean. As soon as we crossed the bridge, the sun was out (typical weather in the Marin). We decided to go out further to Sausalito and went pretty far. As soon as we all got pretty tired, we turned around back to the bridge. We also copped out and walked up the hills toward the Bridge. On our way back to the Sunset we stopped by The Sports Basement. This was my first time out here. I really wish they had one of these in Orange County. Its huge and the prices are really good and the people were pretty nice.

Here are some notes:

1. It was a pretty good ride. In total we were out for about 5 hours and rode about 30 miles taking a lot of breaks and a long stop at The Sports Basement.
2. The Sports Basement is pretty awesome.
3. The last time I went for a long ride, I noticed my left ring finger and my pinky getting numb. This was probably from gripping too hard. I was wearing gloves this time, but the numbness still came. Fortunately it went away a lot faster this time. This reminds me of something I read on the Bike Noob, where his toe got numb. I’ve only been riding for a few months, so I’m hoping my body gets used to it.
4. San Francisco is known for its hills. This bit of fame never really meant anything to me until the ride. I now bow down to the many hills of SF.
5. Really like riding on slicks.

Here was the route we took:

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Things started off great in the morale department. I had gotten less than 6 hours of sleep that night and worked a full day, but I was pretty excited about the trip. As soon as I got home, I put all of my gear together and started riding in the 85 degree weather. Although it was hot, the ride was pretty smooth. I decided to take a route through the Aliso Creek Trail, just to check it out. On the way to the trail, I stopped at Lake Forest to get two churros for a dollar and fill up on water. This trail took me out to Alicia Parkway, where I sort of got lost because the trail wasn’t on my map. Fortunately I found two other people bicycling and asked them for directions toward PCH. They told me to take Alicia Pkwy. From there I got onto La Paz and made a turn on to Crown Valley Pkwy, which took me to Dana Point. I road down PCH for a little bit, knowing I had about 7-10 more miles to go. At that point it was 8pm, getting dark, and I was pretty exhausted. In the end I sucked up my pride, made a call and got picked up from Dana Point. All in all, it was a pretty memorable ride — I had never ridden 30 miles on my own. I had averaged about 10 mph through this hilly route for a good three hours. Here are a few good things I learned:

1. It is probably not a good idea to commute or do a long ride with knobby mountain bike tires. I could tell that I was losing a lot of speed because of these tires.
2. Don’t ride too late: I left my place at 5pm thinking I’d get there by 7 something. I actually got to my 3 quarter point by 8pm.
3. Don’t fill up on too much ice. Although the ice in my hydration pack was pretty money, a good chunk of it never melted. When I was at El Pollo Loco, I went pretty loco on the ice.
4. Starbucks is a good place to stop at, especially if you need someone to pick you up.
5. Taking the Aliso Creek Trail was cool, but I didn’t have adequate maps for that route, so it was easy for me to get lost and lose more time.

Here is a map of the route I took:

View Larger Map