Kristin Janz

It’s been almost a month since Donald and I got back from our honeymoon, and I’m just getting around to blogging about it now. Donald has already written about it here and here.

In case you haven’t read Donald’s posts, I should start off by saying that we took an overnight flight to Rome from Boston on Tuesday (May 10th), and arrived in Rome early Wednesday morning. I think Donald may have gotten a bit of sleep on the flight over, but I didn’t.

We spent 7 nights in Rome, staying at the Hotel San Pietrino in the Prati neighborhood of Rome, north of the Vatican. I liked the location, as it was far enough away from the Vatican that it wasn’t crowded and touristy. There was a great coffee shop across the street where I could have my morning espresso or cappucino and a pastry, and a gelato shop a few doors down. I found the hotel in the Lonely Planet guidebook, and I agree with the authors that it was “a fabulous choice”, but have to disagree most strenuously about the “comfortable beds”. I don’t think I’ve slept in a harder bed since my trip to Japan, where I mostly slept on not-very-thick futons on the floor. Donald liked that the hotel had wi-fi.

We ate lunch at a place called Hostaria dei Bastioni, just outside the Vatican walls. In fact, you can see the walls in this picture, behind Donald.

You can see the walls on the right-hand side of the picture, across the street from the restaurant

The restaurant was okay, but nothing special. Despite what Donald implies in his post, I don’t insist on eating only at restaurants I found in a guidebook. I do think it’s good to have a destination in mind when you’re going out to eat in a strange place; then, if you find something that looks better along the way, you can go there instead. Also, if you’re in a very touristy area where most of the restaurants have big menus out front in 4 different languages, it can be good to know where else to go instead. Restaurants in Rome can also be kind of expensive, so the guidebook was helpful in identifying places that were more moderately priced, since I kind of wanted to have a reasonably decent sit-down meal at least once a day, rather than just grabbing pizza or a sandwich whenever we got hungry, and Donald kind of wanted to not spend over a hundred dollars on each of these meals.

In any case, I did find this lunch restaurant in the Frommer’s guidebook, which tends to have better restaurant recommendations than Lonely Planet, though they’re still kind of hit or miss, especially in the “inexpensive” category.

Speaking of guidebooks, this was my first international vacation since getting a Kindle, so instead of lugging around big paper guidebooks (or photocopying selected pages), I bought both the Frommer’s and Lonely Planet guides for the Kindle. The Kindle editions are definitely better than trying to carry around a thick guidebook when you’re already trying to find room in your purse for a bottle of water, a camera, a wallet, a wrap for the evening in case it gets cold, and maybe an umbrella, and your husband doesn’t want to carry any more of your stuff in his backpack. However, the maps in the Lonely Planet guidebook are completely useless in the e-book edition, whereas they’re somewhat useful in the paper books (you still need to buy a more detailed map of whatever city you’re in, especially if it’s a city like Rome with confusing streets). Of course, the Frommer’s maps are useless even in the paper edition, so no change there. The Lonely Planet e-book is better organized overall (the Frommer’s doesn’t even have a Table of Contents! For shame!). But I found myself using the Frommer’s more, not just for restaurants, but also for more useful and detailed information about various attractions. (Lonely Planet is better for hotels though, if you like to stay at cheaper places like we do.)

After lunch we went to the Pantheon.

You can't see the dome part too well from here

The streets around here are very narrow and confusing, and very crowded, as this is the historic city center, full of tourist attractions. On my last trip to Rome, I spent quite a bit of time wandering around in this area, getting lost, seeing whatever I happened to come across. But Donald’s not quite as much of a fan of wandering aimlessly through strange cities, so we didn’t do that as often on this trip.

We had walked to the Pantheon from our hotel, but on the way back we decided to take the metro. I dragged Donald past the Trevi Fountain on our way to the metro. It was sort of on the way. And it’s famous.

The famous Trevi Fountain

For dinner, we went to another restaurant I found in the Frommer’s guidebook, this one a Sicilian place called Sicilia in Bocca (which I think means something like “Sicily in the mouth”). I had a fava bean and greens soup, which I liked, and something else I can’t remember. Donald had a seafood salad, and then beef rolls (thin slices of beef that were breaded, fried, and rolled around a filling). I liked the food here a lot better than at the place next to the Vatican. It was also more expensive, even though it was listed in the “Inexpensive” section of the Frommer’s guidebook.

On our walk back to the hotel, I noticed a nearby pizzeria that looked good, and made a note of it for future evenings, even though it wasn’t in the guidebook.

This may have been an ambitious schedule for our first day in Rome, with almost no sleep the night before. But the next day would be even more tiring.

(to be continued)

A few years ago, I got an ice-cream maker for Christmas. I’d really wanted an ice-cream maker, and I got exactly the one I’d wanted (maybe this was because I’d put it on my Amazon wish list). For the first few months, I made ice-cream pretty much every week. Remember that I live in New England, and I got the ice-cream maker for Christmas (though apparently Bostonians have the nation’s highest per capita winter consumption of ice-cream).

However, gradually my initial frenetic ice-cream making pace slacked off, and now I think I make ice-cream maybe once or twice a year. Usually vanilla, to accompany pie or some other dessert for a special occasion. (Donald no doubt wishes I would increase the amount of homemade ice-cream appearing on our table at the expense of, perhaps, vegetables.) I still like ice-cream, and I still enjoy making it. It’s not even that much work. But, other things seem to have gotten in the way.

A glance at the number of blog posts I’ve written each month since I started this blog a little over a year ago might suggest that a similar thing has happened with this blog. 11 posts in May of 2010. 11 in June. 17 in July (a record!). Back down to 15 in August. And down, and down. Well. You can see the stats for yourself. I just got married*, and I haven’t even blogged about the wedding or our honeymoon trip to Italy. I mean, if I can ramble on for pages about a visit to the Tabasco sauce factory, surely I can make time to write about my trip to Italy?

Well, maybe. Probably not tonight though, since I’ve just used all my blogging time complaining about the fact that I haven’t been blogging.

In the meantime, if you’re desperately curious about the wedding and honeymoon, my husband Donald has been way better about keeping up with his blog than I have, so feel free to check out what he has to say.

* This may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t had much time for blogging the last few months.

A couple weekends ago (Columbus Day weekend in the US, Thanksgiving weekend in Canada), Donald and I went to Montreal, driving up on Friday morning and coming back on Sunday (thus hoping to avoid the long weekend traffic back into Boston on Monday, which unfortunately didn’t work quite as well as we’d hoped; others must have had the same idea). We stayed with my friend Rene (Donald’s friend too, now, on Facebook!), whom I know from science fiction conventions. (Rene was chair of the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal.)

The weather was beautiful, if on the chilly side. I hadn’t been to Montreal in a number of years, since my sister Lisa graduated from McGill and moved away (I used to visit her fairly often). I guess it’s hard to notice everything that’s different, when you didn’t actually live in a place, and haven’t visited in a long time. I did notice that there’s significantly more English on signs these days, hot dogs now being referred to as hot dogs, rather than “chiens chauds”. Rene confirmed that the authorities have, in fact, lightened up on French language requirements for signs. Apparently, about 90% of the complaints about English on signs were coming from about 3 people, so it was decided that there was not, in fact, widespread concern about English on signs contributing to the eroding of Francophone heritage.

On Friday evening, Rene cooked some yummy tofu tacos for us, and then we went to see the annual Chinese lantern exhibit at the Montreal Botanical Garden. It was really amazing, and I’m glad Rene suggested it.

On Saturday, we headed out to see Old Montreal, after a stop in the Plateau district for poutine. Lots of walking! Saturday evening, the three of us plus Rene’s daughter went out for dinner to, of all places, a restaurant specializing in Louisiana cuisine (called, perhaps unimaginatively, La Louisiane). I guess the Cajun/Creole food overdose from our recent Louisiana trip had worn off! The food was good, though not quite as good as in Louisiana.

Sunday we completed the trifecta of essential Montreal foods, with Montreal bagels for breakfast (they’re quite different from New York bagels, though, of course, still round with a hole in the middle), and smoked meat sandwiches from Schwartz’s for lunch. In between, we drove up Mont Royal, and walked up to the viewing platform at the top.

Oliver looks happy to be back in Canada, even for a short visit

Donald in front of the Montreal skyline

On a science fictional note, Worldcon chairs apparently all get a display copy of that year’s Hugo Award (these are kind of like the Oscars for science fiction and fantasy; though I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t already know this reads my blog). The rocket is always the same, but the base is different each year. As we were packing to leave, Donald glanced at it, displayed on its shelf, and said wistfully, “I want one!”

The way back from Montreal to Boston goes almost right by the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream factory, so since I happened to be driving at that point, we got to stop. Donald was a little annoyed, and even more annoyed about the 45 minute wait in line for ice-cream. Joining a factory tour was out of the question, unless we wanted to wait an additional hour. Hmm, for some reason, a lot more people are interested in a tour of the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream factory on the Sunday of a holiday weekend, than a tour of the Tabasco sauce factory on an ordinary Tuesday just after the start of the school year. Can’t figure that one out….

What's not to love?

Thanks again to Rene for his kind hospitality in La Belle Ville!

I’ve gotten behind in blogging about my trip to Louisiana to visit Donald’s parents, back in early September. But I do keep promising to write about our visit to the Tabasco sauce factory.

Apparently, the entire world’s supply of Tabasco sauce is made in Avery Island, Louisiana (although most of the peppers are now grown in Latin America, since the climate is more stable down there). Avery Island is south of Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, a couple hours west of New Orleans.

Here are a few fun facts about Tabasco sauce:

1) The queen of England likes it. Or, at least someone in the royal family does. See, here’s proof:

God save the queen!

2) Tabasco sauce is made from one particular kind of pepper that seemed to be some sort of obscure Mexican heirloom variety before the founder of the company was given some plants, and started to make a seasoning sauce out of them, in the 19th century. I always thought it was made from habanero peppers. But it’s not.

Carefully guarded from wandering, pepper-snatching fingers!

3) The Tabasco company (actually, I should say the McIlhenny company) used to make a wide assortment of products, including many canned and pickled vegetables. Although you can still get a few, such as pickled okra, in the company store, most of these products are no longer made. They do, however, make a spicy Tabasco dark chocolate–not as good as some of the gourmet chili-flavored chocolate bars you can get, to be honest, but the tin is really pretty.

4) Tabasco makes 6 sauces: Original, Green (from jalapenos), chipotle, habanero, garlic pepper, and sweet & spicy. Green is a bit milder than original. Garlic pepper is even milder than that. Habanero is much hotter! Chipotle and sweet & spicy are actually less intense, and can be used directly as a steak sauce or dipping sauce. (I bought samples of all of them in the company store, except for original, because I already have some at home, and green, because I see it everywhere in the grocery store.)

5) Habanero Tabasco contains banana! I didn’t realize this before I tasted it, so I like habanero Tabasco. I don’t think you can taste the banana.

I guess there are all sorts of facts about how Tabasco sauce is made and bottled, but honestly, I didn’t find them as interesting as shopping in the company store, and these random factoids I’ve assembled. This is why I’m a blogger instead of a real journalist. Anyway, in case you’re curious, they take the peppers and mash them up with salt, and let the mash age in old whiskey barrels until it’s ready to be strained and mixed with vinegar. The salt they use comes from the Avery Island salt mine, also owned by the McIlhenny family (Tabasco is still a family-run company); Avery Island is the peak of an enormous underground mountain of rock salt that would dwarf Mt Everest if the two were lined up.

Oh, and the peppers are all hand-picked, because they haven’t been able to invent a machine that can tell when they’re properly ripe. The field workers are given a red stick, and they’re supposed to hold that next to the peppers to make sure the colors match before they pick them.

If you go on the tour, they give you a couple of very cute 1/4 oz bottles of Tabasco, one of original and one of green (you can also buy these in the company store; also the tiny bottles of the other flavors). You also get to watch a rather hagiographic 10-minute movie about the McIlhenny family and the founding of the company, but the hairstyles and clothes looked like they were from back in the 90s. Then you walk past a long window through which you can see the bottling plant.

I think my favorite part of the tour was the self-guided visit to the company store, as I’ve already hinted. In addition to the products I’ve already mentioned, I bought a Tabasco apron, because I’m always spilling food on my clothes when I cook. They have free samples of all the sauces, plus Tabasco ice cream!

If you don’t think a visit to the Tabasco company store is worth such a long drive, never fear, there’s also the Jungle Gardens! These are just down the road from the factory. I think they’re also owned by the McIlhenny Company, but I’m not 100% sure (and too lazy to Google it and find out). The Jungle Gardens are sort of an arboretum built up around a migratory bird sanctuary (lots of herons and egrets). And they have alligators!

Do you think they like to be petted?

There were initially only one or two alligators, but as we stood there taking pictures, more kept swimming over

This is the biggest alligator we saw

Donald thought that perhaps his mother and I weren’t taking the alligator threat seriously enough, but really, we were being quite careful, and keeping our distance. And we didn’t poke at them or anything.

For tourists who don't have Donald to remind them

Between Avery Island and Lafayette, they grow a lot of sugarcane. It looks like this:

Sugarcane fields on the way back from Avery Island

Hard to believe that refined white sugar comes out of these plants, isn’t it!

On the drive back, I was playing around with my camera settings a bit, and kept getting Donald to pose for pictures.

Old-fashioned Donald!

Since we were driving right through the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country, we couldn’t leave without sampling some Cajun specialties. All along the highway, you’ll see signs advertising boudin and cracklins. Boudin is a spicy sausage made of ground pork, rice, and a bit of green pepper. Cracklins are basically fresh pork rinds, without all the preservatives that you’ll find in the ones at the convenience store.

It tastes better than it looks

Yummo, as Rachael Ray would say. Yes, those are indeed deep-fried hunks of lard.

It was a long day, but a very enjoyable trip!

On September 8th, Donald and I went to Natchez, Mississippi for the day. It was nice, but maybe not exciting enough for its own blog post. One of my main reasons for wanting to go was so I could check another state off on my “visited” list. Then on the 9th, Donald and his mother and I went to Baton Rouge, the state capital, where we saw some cool museums. On the 10th, we drove back to Houston, and stayed overnight with a friend of Donald’s from college, and her family (thanks again to Joya for hosting us!). And then on the 11th we flew back to Boston.

Okay, that was a very anti-climactic penultimate paragraph. But this has been a very long post.

This post isn’t entirely about spiders. However, I have to say, if they have spiders like this in Georgia, Kira’s comment about how spiders would keep her away from camping is a lot more understandable. When I talked about big spiders in New Hampshire, they were nothing like this one! Yuck!

Look at the size of that thing!

On Monday (September 6th; i.e., Labor Day), Donald and I went to see Rosedown Plantation, one of the antebellum plantation sites in the area where his parents live (St. Francisville, LA). Many old plantations have been replaced, over the years, by heavy industry–chemical plants and the like, between Baton Rouge and the Mississippi state line. But some of the old properties that have the big houses still standing have been turned into museums, open to the public.

Rosedown is quite beautiful, with extensive gardens. We did get caught in the rain briefly; I noticed that it was very common in Louisiana to have a brief thunderstorm sometime between 2:30 and 4:00 pm, but then it would clear up. (I guess this is only the case during the summer; I don’t remember it happening last time I was in Louisiana, for Thanksgiving.)

A view from the side of the house, sort of sheltered

The house, with live oak trees on either side, Spanish moss hanging down

A view of some of the gardens, from the house

On September 5th, we drove from Houston, Texas to St. Francisville, Louisiana. St. Francisville is about an hour north of Baton Rouge, and I guess about an hour (maybe less?) south of Mississippi. The Mississippi River runs right by it.

The drive was pretty uneventful. We saw a lot of signs for boudin and cracklings (or cracklin’s), going through Cajun country. Boudin is a spicy pork and rice sausage. Cracklings are basically pork rinds, only fresh-cooked, not the preservative-laden ones you get in those little plastic bags. We also saw a lot of signs for “adult superstores.” And those signs that say “Still a Virgin? For Help, Call [X].” No one we know can figure out what those signs are about. What sort of help are they offering? Do they have anything to do with the adult superstores?

I’m getting over a cold, and have to get up early tomorrow, so I’ll write more later. Stay tuned, to read about our exciting tour of the Tabasco sauce factory!

Here’s a cute picture of Donald with the kitten his parents have adopted:

I did warn him that people with cat allergies tend to be most allergic to gray striped cats

On September 2nd, Donald and I flew to Houston to attend my friend Christina’s wedding. The wedding wasn’t until September 4th, but since I was a bridesmaid, I had to be there early enough for the rehearsal dinner, not to mention all the various sorts of primping that being a bridesmaid requires. Hair, makeup, manicures and pedicures … a few years ago I might have been horrified, but I’ve become much more girly in recent years, and actually own makeup these days. So I actually sort of enjoyed the whole process.

Christina is a friend from grad school, back at the University of British Columbia. We weren’t in the same program–she was doing a PhD in geology, I was doing an MSc in chemistry–but we got to know each other through the graduate Christian fellowship group we both attended (Dwight and Kate, other good friends from the GCF group, were also at the wedding, along with their respective spouses). That was a kind of a long time ago–I left Vancouver in 1998–but we’ve kept in touch since then, visiting each other, and calling occasionally.

The wedding was very beautiful, and quite large. There were about 400 guests. The wedding ceremony was at the West Houston Chinese Church, which Christina attended, and the reception at the Ocean Palace Chinese Restaurant, where we were treated to a delicious 10-course banquet. I’m not sure if I can remember all the courses … there was an assorted cold cut platter (including jellyfish!), shark fin and chicken soup, fried prawns in a sweet honey sauce with honeyed walnuts, Peking duck, a beef dish, assorted mushrooms with Chinese vegetables, lobster, noodles … hmm, okay, I might be missing a course. Not to mention wedding cake. Everything was wonderful! Christina looked beautiful in her dress, too. (I’d post a picture, but I’m not sure Christina wants pictures of herself splashed across the internet.) Christina and her husband Jerry actually had 4 outfits over the course of the evening, during the reception. First they wore typical North American wedding attire. Then they changed into traditional Chinese formal outfits. Then Korean (Jerry is Korean-American). Then evening wear. They both looked great! But you’ll just have to imagine it.

Like I said, there was a lot of primping involved in getting ready for the wedding. I had my first ever manicure and pedicure. I’m not sure I would get manicures on a regular basis. The nail polish was pretty badly chipped within a week, and I was on vacation that whole time, and not really doing much with my hands. I can’t imagine that this would work with my usual routine, which involves a lot of cooking. Not unless I want to be ingesting a lot of chips of polish that flake off as I’m chopping. The pedicure, on the other hand, I’m still undecided about, at least for summer. I usually paint my toenails anyway during the summer, because they look so disgusting otherwise (I won’t gross you out by going into too much detail about my foot fungus). But I end up having to remove the polish and repaint every week, because it chips and flakes so much. And, although it’s been a week and a half since I got the pedicure, my toenails are still looking pretty decent. Better than they look a week after polishing them myself. So I’ll see how long it lasts.

As for the makeup, although I do often wear makeup these days, I’ve never worn anything like the high-test industrial-grade stuff they applied at the salon! They sprayed on the foundation and blush with this little sprayer thing. And I’ve never had my eyelashes curled before. (“I’m going to go with a nice, natural look,” the lady said, before she started.)

All this makeup, and they still couldn't hide the zits on my forehead!

It actually looks much closer to “natural” in the photographs than it did in real life. I guess that’s why they did it that way, for the official wedding photographs, so I didn’t look washed out. But I still think they could have toned it down a little.

Here’s a picture of me and Donald:

This is the only picture in which one of us is not making a silly face, or looking like they want to escape from the other

On Sunday, after attending the English-language service at the West Houston Chinese Church, and sharing a lunch with Christina and Jerry, their families, and other out-of-town wedding guests, Donald and I headed east on I-10 for Louisiana, for the next stage in our adventure.