Okay, maybe (just maybe) my husband and I watched too many episodes of the TV show “Resident Alien” before we set out on our trip to France, but bear with me here. There are pigeons that walk among us as humans. Somehow, they have managed the art of taking on human form. I don’t think that, like the resident alien Harry, they want to eliminate all humanity. To the contrary, judging from those still recognizable as pigeons, their goal is to devour all the croissants in France. Or perhaps even all the food of every kind.
They may think they’ve mastered the art of appearing human, but we have seen through their disguise. Just look at the feet. As the pigeons grow ready to take on human form, their feet get more and more red.
Those that are very red . . . well, they might just be seated at the table next to you at the café tomorrow morning, ordering croissants.
You can tell which so-called apparent “humans” are actually resident pigeons by looking at their feet. Still red! It’s a clear giveaway.
I don’t think we’re in any danger. There’s plenty of croissants to go around. But if the pigeons ever learn to disguise the color of their feet, who knows what they will do next? Run for president?
Once upon a time, I got a masters degree in architecture, and then I went to work for a well-known and well-respected architect and urban designer, Lou Sauer, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Sauer was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, and he spoke passionately about the need to teach architects good urban-design principles. In one conversation, he said he had assigned a project to his architecture students to design a building to be located in the central quadrangle of the Penn campus. It was a “trick” project because the right answer, according to Sauer, was not to put a building in that beautiful iconic space at all. Only one of his students got it right, putting the programmed spaces underground and leaving the quadrangle more or less as it is. “When you give a person a hammer, all problems look like nails,” he lamented (or something to that effect), “but sometimes they’re just not.” I’ve never forgotten this lesson, for it applies to so much in life, not just buildings.
However, after all these years, I’ve finally seen another solution to the problem of putting a building in an iconic open space that is arguable better to leave untouched. An uncompromisingly modern building in a beautiful classical environment best left unspoiled. For I have seen an invisible building.
My mind is still reeling a bit from this. Was it a trick of the sky and the time of day, the weather and the angle of approach? The building happened to be along a route that my husband and I walked getting to and from our hotel. It can be seen a bit better from another angle and another time of day, but it’s still tricky.
Architecture where the game consists in blurring the tangible boundaries of the building and rendering superfluous the reading of a solid volume amid poetics of fuzziness and effervescence. When virtuality is attacked by reality, architecture must more than ever have the courage to take on the image of contradiction.
Well, I’m not entirely sure what all that architect-speak is about, but I do know that this building makes me laugh in delight. And there’s a lesson here, too. It’s always worth looking around the corner for an unexpected answer to a problem. You just might find it.
Ribe was the far point in our planned trip through the Danish countryside, almost 300 kilometers from Copenhagen. But our goal was to see some of the Danish countryside outside of Copenhagen, and Ribe was worth the effort to get there. At well over a thousand years of inhabitation, Ribe is the oldest settlement in all of Scandinavia. It’s also lovely, as is the countryside along the route. The clouds were magnificent, and so was the pristine farmland with nary an electric line in sight. Approaching Ribe, we got a sense of the delightful experience that awaited us.
But we were feeling frazzled and stressed, or at least I was. Why? It involved an electric car we rented from Hertz that had a fairly short range. “Don’t worry, they’ve got electric chargers at almost every gas station,” said the rental agent at the counter in Copenhagen. “You can just use your credit card.”
I’ll be as brief as I can in summarizing the woes of this car. Enough to say that your credit card will be denied unless you’ve downloaded an app for that charger (and maybe even if you do have the app). That there are many brands of chargers, and each requires a different app. That you cannot download the app “on the fly” unless you have internet on your phone. That I do not have internet on my phone while traveling abroad. And that although the chargers exist at many gas stations, they are not affiliated with the stations, and the attendants know nothing about them and can’t help. Fortunately, the very nice Danish customers at other chargers nearby will help, and after two painful charging experiences, we arrived in Ribe. There, we were completely unable to charge our albatross car at three separate charging locations.
But this blog post is not about that. It’s about the charming town of Ribe and the curative properties of the magical Wadden Sea.
Ribe has been inhabited for some 1,600 years. I think it’s safe to say that none of the houses we saw this month has survived since that time. But still, the town changes slowly. Here are two pictures of the same spot ninety years apart.
Some of the houses do show their age and look to be, well, maybe three or four hundred years old. Maybe more. They seem right for a town that’s as proud of its long history as Ribe is. All in all, the effect is unmitigated charm.
The residents are welcoming. Open gates lead to charming inner courtyards. For example, the Bladt-Hansen family welcomes visitors to their backyard, with a view over the gardens. A café and shop in the same structure face the street. Here’s a link to read about their house and its history. On this page, you can also see the commercial side of the property, and how they have restored it to a look similar to the one it might have had when it was built–over five hundred years ago.
Thank you, dear family, for giving us a peek inside!
Fortunately, the friendly hotelier in the lovely Kammerslusen Hotel outside of Ribe allowed us to hook our electric albatrossvehicle up to an outdoor electric outlet.
I’d like to add here that, in addition to a sparklingly clean room with a view of the river Ribe Å, the Kammerslusen also offers an excellent dinner menu and great Danish hospitality. Surprisingly (to us, anyway), it’s not within walking distance of the town, an attribute we generally look for. Instead, it’s located well withing the Wadden Sea National Park, a large nature preserve of marshes and tidal flats that borders (and extends into) the North Sea.
We climbed the protective dike along the coastal marshlands and got a close look at the lock at the mouth of the river. I gained a whole new respect this day for the sheer beauty of this seaside terrain.
The next day, we knew with certainty what we had to do. Thanks to the Kammerslusen, we had enough charge to get to a Hertz counter, where we traded in the car for a car whose fuel we could pay for with credit card or with cash.
It’s a lovely island. Enchanting, beautiful, windswept, and enduring all at once.
Its name is only three letters long, and apparently I can’t pronounce even one of them correctly. It’s spelled Ærø. To my ear, that sounds a lot like “Air-rue” [with the “r” trilled slightly]. But try as I may, I can’t seem to tell about it to anyone who actually lives in Denmark. The conversations go like this:
Me: “We visited this really great island. We liked it a lot.”
Danish person: “Oh? What island is that?”
Me: “Ærø.”
Danish person (with a squinty-eyed, puzzled look): “Uh… where?”
Me: “Maybe I’m not pronouncing it right. It’s spelled with that letter that looks like an A and an E combined, then R, then an O with a slash through it.”
Danish person (with a broad smile of recognition): “Ah… Ærø!”
My linguistic failures notwithstanding, I loved the name with its alluringly foreign letters. And I loved the island even more. Its soul is sailing the seas, and its heart is on the land.
Seafaring is particularly evident in Marstal, the largest town on Ærø, from the building of large wooden ships to the small details on the buildings.
The ferry from the mainland town of Svendborg arrives in Ærøskøbing, a delightful town of cobbled streets and colorful houses.
Everywhere, there are hollyhocks and roses, and many of the windows seem to be made for passers-by to look in as well as homeowners to look out.
Outside of the towns, the island has its beauty as well. Sea and sky and land come together very harmoniously on Ærø.
The MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) museum in Hobart, Australia may not be the weirdest museum in all the world, but it has to be in the running. Created by billionnaire David Walsh, a math genius who made his money playing the odds, this museum has to be a much better contribution to the world than spending his billions on, well, many of the other things that other billionnaires spend their money on. And let me say right off, Huzzah Mr. Walsh!
How to describe it? First, it’s built into a cliff underneath some existing buildings, cut into the solid rock. If you’re interested in architecture, this interview is worth reading. Also, you have to take a ferry to get there, and you know it’s going to be strange the moment you walk inside.
And it gets stranger after that. Yes, there’s artwork, old and new and new-mimicking-old. There are entire installations. There’s music to experience it all by. There are jazz musicians creating new music real-time on the spot. There are artists creating paintings real-time on the spot. There’s a restaurant and a winery, too. And it’s still being built.
I’m really a little at a loss for words. Fortunately, I have pictures. So, if a picture is worth a thousand words, here goes.
I see I’ve added a number of photos of pictures on walls. This is an impression that is seriously misleading, and I must correct it. This museum is not about pictures on walls. I mean, it *is* about pictures on walls, but it’s also so much more.
White books, white pagesRoom of crystalsSoft car
Is it worth a visit if you happen to be, say, anywhere in Tasmania? Yes, absolutely. But is it worth a journey? Let’s just say that Tasmania is worth the journey, and so, yes, please don’t miss this unique museum!
It’s confession time: I studied architecture, have a masters degree in it, in fact, from a university that is very serious about good design. And I believe that most modern architecture, particularly the high-rise vernacular of our center cities, is anything but good design.
But Melbourne is different.
Any city where the architecture makes you smile or even laugh, or shake your head in sheer disbelief… Well, that city has to be fundamentally delightful. And Melbourne is.
Now, come on, tell me, doesn’t this make you laugh out loud? Or at least maybe smile, just a little?
There’s something about the sheer modern exuberance of Melbourne that’s positively contagious.
(Yes, the reflective glass really is purple and blue and orange and green.)
And here’s another thing I like about Melbourne’s architecture: There is a certain respect for their architectural heritage. And that heritage is rich.
Often, the facades of old buildings are preserved even after the building is torn down to make room for a modern high-rise. Sometimes, in fact, the entire old building is preserved, and the high rise is cantilevered right out over it.
The juxtaposition is jarring, but also in a strange way, delightful. And Melbourne is fortunate to have preserved these fine old buildings.
Here and there, too, are classic, timeless, and perfectly lovely details.
Of course I’ve always liked waterlilies. Who wouldn’t? But now I think I understand Monet’s fascination with them. The waterlilies at Villa Taranto are heavenly!
These lily pads, genus Victoria Cruziana, are native to the Amazon, were maybe six feet across, the largest members of the water lily family. Someone neglected to tell those flowers that they were supposed to be blooming in June and July, not now. No complaints, though, we were glad that some were still blooming.
Other waterlilies occupied outdoor pools, looking for all the world like they were waiting for Monet to come along and paint them.
When you’re in a place for only a few days… a place where you could stay for weeks and still not see and do everything you might want to… you have to be picky. Villa Taranto was not on our list. Not that we didn’t want to go. Of course we did. But we intended to go to the Borromeo islands, which have their own amazing gardens, and, well, I didn’t want to lay too many gardens, one after another after another, on my patient husband. But the host at our hotel insisted that Villa Taranto was worth the journey and could be easily combined with a short drive to Orta San Giulio, one of (she said) Italy’s most beautiful towns.
So, we went. And we’re glad we did. Villa Taranto could be the most beautiful garden we’ve ever seen. That’s true, even though the day we went there was rainy.
I’m trying not to overload you with pictures here, so I’ve tried to leave out pictures of individual specimens. That last one–that single, lovely tree–is a Cornus Controversa ‘Variegata,’ in the same family as the more familiar dogwoods. It was too good not to include. And, oh, the dahlias! Here are a couple.
I wanted to say that I’ve saved the best for last, but the fact is, it’s all so good there is no ‘best.’ Instead, let me put it this way: I have so many lovely photos of gorgeous waterlilies that they will need a post of their own.
MENO INTERNET PIU CABERNET ANONIMO (SCRITTO SU UN MURO)
I’d trade a bit less internet for a bit more cabernet indeed!
And the restaurant? La Piola Sabauda: vino e cucina del piemonte dal 1966. It’s heartwarmingly authentic with an incredible wine list of Italian wines. One of the most unusual (and good!) meals we’ve ever had–but it was tricky. We had three of the only four items on the menu that have no mammal meat (cows, pigs, lambs, rabbits, etc.). This is definitely a restaurant for meat-eaters.
All this, and it has a balcony, too! As nearly as I can tell, this one hotel room is about 1/4 the size of our entire home… Palazzo del Carretto. (Also, it comes with parking–an apparent necessity in this city.)
