Paris in pictures

Gents at the market

I spent a half day in Paris while I was there a little over a week ago behind the lens of my camera (even more than usual). The difference this time? I had a professional photographer peering over my shoulder at every shot, critiquing, offering suggestions and asking questions (did you mean to have the half of a flower pot in the picture?). This half-day workshop was a fabulous way to see Paris, one of my long-time favorites, in a new way. It also opened my eyes to some of the tools I’m not using on my camera (I’m an ‘auto’ setting shooter most of the time). I see now how much more I have to learn and how much practice I need, but I did like a few of my shots from the day. Here are some  favorites:

Bicycles leaning on stairs

Marais sidewalk cafe

Lampost in Place du Vosges

Cafe patron, Place D'Aligre

Violinist, Place du Vosges

Fresh produce at Marche Place D'Aligre

Rediscovering the Art of Travel

A Marrakech street

Alain de Botton says in The Art of Travel, “Few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling somewhere else. But the reality of travel seldom matches our daydreams.”

In the three weeks between deciding to go to Morocco with my friend Tracy and actually boarding the plane my daydreams certainly soared. AFRICA! ran on repeat in my mind. I imagined and read about and looked up photos of the exotic allure of Morocco. I checked out CDs of Moroccan music from the library and read Paul Bowles. After all that buildup it wouldn’t have surprised me to be disappointed upon arrival, a bit like the letdown when you finally see Stonehenge – it is what it is. But from the moment I stepped off the plane under the pounding sun the thrill never left.

Men in Djemaa el Fna

Paul Bowles says “If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.” I had thought Europe was different from home. Morocco was an entirely new world. It’s an assault on all my senses and a test of my reflexes. The scent of mint and cumin compete with diesel fumes. Scooters bearing families of four buzz by within millimeters of my elbow – I leap out of the way, careful not to trip on the uneven cobblestone or step in front of that horse or donkey whose clip-clopping hooves can’t be heard in the hubbub. The call to prayer tries to rise above the melee of the souk proprietors calling me to their store, the trill of the snake charmers and the little boys asking where I’m going so they can lead me there for a few dirhams. Behind it all is often a throbbing drum. And constantly my eyes try to take everything in. How many places can I look at once? I’m drawn to the intricately ornate doors, the pattern of the archways, the gleaming treasure heaped at every step. Most of all I look up – up to the sun filtering through the reeds that provide blessed shade, and to the thousand and one lanterns that I so want to take home.

Mint tea

I wonder aloud to Tracy how long before the sights and sounds and smells are just part of your life, and not something to stop and take in. I can’t stop exclaiming (to myself and out loud) about every single thing I see, smell, hear and taste. And just when I’m lulled into complacency as I sip a refreshing and sweet mint tea I remember – I’m in AFRICA.

Morocco is not just as advertised – it’s over the top more. The men in striped djellabas walk hand in hand, the veiled women speed by on scooters, the sea of human and animal traffic never stops. We return again and again to the pulsing heart of Marrakech, Djemaa el Fna. By day the square opens up to the sun-washed blue sky stretched tightly over us. As the sun sinks to the echo of the muezzin from a dozen mosques the already vibrant square leaps to frenzied life. Henna tattoo artists and brightly-clad clinking water sellers give way to night. The cacophony that would overwhelm me elsewhere energizes me here. Smoke pours into the gold and rose tinted sky from the sizzling food stalls. Orange juice vendors call to us, groups of musicians scattered here and there compete with one another for paying onlookers, and we push our way through the throngs.

I returned home Friday night and yesterday Brian smiled happily as we sat together in the living room so far from my adventures, and said “It’s like you never left.” But even though my henna tattoo is fading, my blisters are healing and my sunburned skin is back to normal, it’s not like I never left. I had only daydreams of Morocco before I left. Now I need only bury my face in a bouquet of mint or taste a cumin-infused dish and my daydreams meet my memories.

Djemaa el Fna at night

See my Morocco

Here’s a terribly shaky five-minute look at my trip to Morocco.

Selem from Marrakech

I guess a sign of an amazing trip is a blog gone silent. We’ve been busy from the first morning call to prayer till we collapse in our little beds in our riad at night well after the final muezzin.  There have been too many magical moments to begin to describe right now, and I’m only taking a second, but here is one from yesterday, taken on the beach at Essouria.

Riding camels on the beach in Africa!

The best of travel: do stuff or buy stuff?

At a cooking class in Tuscany

I’m working on trip budget and planning for the great  Tracy and Dana in Africa! trip and have run into a question of priorities. Even using miles to get across the ocean and Holiday Inn points in Paris, I can’t swing both *doing* stuff and *buying* stuff.

I don’t mean to sound like a shopping fiend obsessed with “things” — it’s not that. But I do love to bring home treasures that will remind me of my travels. We cook almost every day with our copper from France. The oil lamps hanging over our kitchen sink take me back to Rhodes, and stirring dinner with the hand-carved spoon from the guy in the Turkish hillside makes me smile.

Shopping in Istanbul

Marrakech (not to mention Paris) is a dream for this kind of shopping experience.  The spices! The lamps! The carpets! But I’m not travelling these thousands of miles to bring home trinkets. I want to take a hammam, to venture out to the mountains and valleys near Marrakech. To take a cooking class, and in Paris a photography workshop. These experiences add up to no dirhams or euros for a goodie from the souks or from a Parisian shop.

So I’ll sigh as I pass the heaps of tempting goods. And I’ll remind myself that the 20kg weight limit on EasyJet means I couldn’t take it home anyway. And I’ll take a million pictures, and write about every experience, and that will be my treasure.

Wow, so I’m going to Morocco!

''American ladies five foot tall in blue ... Would you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express"

Dana and Tracy in Africa?

This is what I asked Brian when he encouraged me to take advantage of the serendipitous occasion of my friend Tracy going on a work trip to Marrakech during my work furlough. The last time Tracy and I travelled together we ended up in a Montmartre police station filing a report on my stolen purse.  But hey, when someone says, “hey you should come to Morocco,” I’m not one to say no.

It took a few days to decide, and I was ultimately swayed by Brian’s support and the super helpful guy at Delta who helped me wipe out our Skymiles account. He couldn’t get me anywhere near Morocco, but hey, I can get there from London, and a chance to pop into Paris for the flight home? Oui!

So here I am listening to Marrakesh Express on repeat and wondering how the heck I’m going to plan this trip in three weeks time. Brian and I were planning to go there this fall, so I have all the books and bookmarks, but wow — this is on fast forward now. Speaking of Brian, could I ask for a better guy? Cheerfully letting me wipe out our miles *and* our travel fund so I can go to Africa?

OK, off to find a riad and a Sahara expedition

All on board the train …

Sorry I haven’t written

I am neglecting my blog. What can I say? Twitter tells my tale. But I’ve been busy. I still write 3 times a week for FoodConnect, and I’ve been picking up some other projects. Have a look, won’t you?

A new online magazine, The Expeditioner, published a story on my  Hidden Kitchen dinner in Paris last year.

I’m working on a series for Louisville.com on how we’re spending our payroll stimulus at local business:

Keeping the stimulus money home: Good Dogs & Co.
Each week Dana McMahan will spend her payroll stimulus at a local business. This week it’s a frou-frou dog collar.

Keeping the stimulus money home: Sugarbaker’s Classy Consignments
Each week Dana McMahan will spend her payroll stimulus at a local business. Up first, a bargain shopping expedition.

And after many years, the travel site BootsnAll now pays, so I’ve run my first feature article there — a photo feature on the markets of Europe, with another coming out soon on Paris off the beaten track for foodies.

I took on an assignment for Viscape to write ten 300-word destination reviews — fun, but a challenge to dredge up memories from trips pre-blogging.

Then — no money for this but it was cool — the Pittsburgh Post Gazette used several of my photos from my farm share last year in their special section on CSAs. A collection of four made up the top half of the page in the print version.

In between all this I’m scrounging around looking for other publications that might shell out a few bucks for my words or pictures. My next assignment is to cover a super secret Supper Speakeasy. If only they could all be that awesome. :)

So, sorry I haven’t written, but if you’re interested in what I’m saying elsewhere you can follow me on Twitter. If you already do, you knew all of this!

My dog is smarter than your honor student

One smart puppy

Maybe not really. But Alba is showing us this week just how smart she is.

At our first behavioral training lesson this week we learned to use “separated distance corrections.” In English that means Alba learns to associate something bad with the things we don’t want her to do. We accomplish this with a stern ‘NO’ and tossing a penny-filled can near her. She immediately stops the behavior so we praise her and call her to us and praise some more. So she learns picking up socks from the floor is bad, but we are good. It’s the can that’s scary, not her family. Pretty clever. And like with Pavlov’s dogs she’ll soon associate NO with scary.

Michelle the trainer asked us to do ’set-ups’ twice a day for two weeks in which we create a situation where Alba can misbehave. Leave a sock on the floor, the dishwasher open, an inviting piece of toilet paper dangling from a table. Well, it’s been just a few days and Alba is too smart to keep letting us set her up. A dirty sock on the floor? If she has to walk by it she veers as far away as she can. In fact, anything out of place she’ll now avoid.

It’s fascinating to watch — you can see her brain clicking away as she makes decisions about what to do. We’re going to have to get more creative to find ways to set her up. May be time to buy some lunchmeat for the first time in my life.

Joining the club

Well. One hears about furloughs incessantly, along with salary freezes and layoffs. And though it comes as absolutely no surprise, it does feel a bit different when one gets the news that it’s landed at home. I got the notice yesterday — we’re on a mandatory week-long furlough at work in mid-May and there will be no wage increase until (at least) 2011.

My reaction? I’m just glad to be one of the lucky people in this economic disaster that still has a job. For now anyway. We learn at the end of this month what the really big news is. The furlough and wage freeze are only the first course of this particular meal. The amuse bouche, really. Much more drastic measures will be decided and implemented in three weeks.

But assuming I’m still employed in May, I have ten days leading up to and including Memorial Day in which no work must take place. No email, blackberries or cell phones. This will be the free-est “vacation” I’ve ever taken, as work concerns won’t be at the back of my mind.

Lazing away a day in Santorini

Of course my mind immediately turns to ways I might spend that time. I know one thing. I don’t want to fritter it away on tv and Facebook. nor do I want to spend it like I would a vacation (though it’s tempting, remembering some lovely hours spent lounging like in the picture).

I’d love to volunteer, but the options are dizzying. Brian isn’t too keen on anything overseas, and though I bristle at the notion that he’d tell me what I can and can’t do, I can’t argue with the free Southwest ticket and Holiday Inn points he’s handing me. I just need to choose a cause that’s important to me and finagle the arrangements to work with my free travel options. I wish there were a Match.com for volunteers. I’ve hit the big volunteering websites and am more lost than ever. I want to tell a search engine “here are my dates, I care about food issues (like availability of healthful food, awareness of local food options and education about nutrition) and I have to go somewhere Southwest flies” and get a nice neat list of options. Lazy, I know. But I’ve got some time.

In the meantime, I can’t help but wonder what I might do with my time if I were to lose my job. I hate that I’m old enough to say this, but if I were younger, I might try something like my friend Erin’s student is doing. Natalie is applying for an internship with STA and dreams, like me, of traveling the world. I’m all for helping fellow travel addicts, so do check out her application video and leave some comments and ratings. And let me know if you hear of a chance like this for the 30-something set!

New rules in the doghouse

Even when she was a puppy Alba preyed on Truffle

We booked an appointment with a dog behaviorist when we reached our wit’s end with Alba recently, and met with her tonight. Michelle is her name, and her background is in psychology and animal behavioral science. Because I majored in psychology, much of what she said was familiar. I’m certainly no animal behavior expert though, and was fascinated at to learn about what’s going on in our puppies’ brains.

I wished I had taken notes during the hour and a half, so I’m jotting down some things now In no particular order, here’s what we learned:

Poor little buddy. Michelle said if Truffle could have packed up and left home he would have been long gone.

Alba’s behavior toward Truffle is predatorial. She treats him like prey and if we don’t stop it, she will seriously hurt Truffle. We are to continue keeping them separated for now.

Alba is smart (very bright!), sensitive and anxious. She tries to control everything in her world and this stresses her out. Everything she does — the ‘mouthing,’ the pawing, the barking, the growling,  is about her taking control of her environment.

She is fearful of almost everything. 4 months is the cutoff for socialization in puppies. We brought her home when she was a little more than 4 months. It’s clear she was never socialized. She’s very over-reactive to, well, pretty much everything. She is not a dog that can be boarded. When you need to control everything, a kennel is the worst possible place because everything is out of your control.

We have not used the right training processes. When she hops on the couch as soon as I leave in the morning, it’s because she never learned couch=bad. She learned mom on couch=bad. Duh. She associates *me* with punishment, not the behavior she was doing to garner it.

She doesn’t get nearly enough exercise. She’s a sled dog. Cooped up in this little house with nothing but a 14 pound Pomeranian to terrorize, she’s bursting with energy. Michelle recommends a treadmill, not only for the exercise but also for the mental stimulation of trying to stay on the track. As well, we have got to get her to a dog park to let her run and wrestle.

Dogs don’t have concepts of fairness like people. Alba doesn’t go to bed at night and yearn for us to let her on the couch, or wonder why we love Truffle more.

We’re going to have four private sessions with Michelle and both dogs. She’ll also work on Truffle’s manners. The focus on the first two sessions will be behavior modification through sound aversion. Then we’ll go on field trips. after the 4 sessions, we may do some additional group classes.

A tired dog is a good dog

Our homework will include socialization with people. So friends, watch out. I may ask you to interact with Alba puppy-style. (Stand next to her and don’t make eye contact. Give her a treat when she sniffs you.) We also have to reinforce *everything,* every behavior.  “Good girl” every time she approaches without nipping and pawing and “NO!” if she follows Truffle or does anything else we don’t want. And there are some new rules, like no Alba on the ottoman.

And happily, Michelle pet sits in her home. As a hopeless traveller, I was beyond disappointed to picture a future of never going anywhere we can’t take a 50-pound heavy shedder. I’m glad to know we have a safe place to keep her. And I’m glad we can make home a safe place for our Truffle again.