In Missoula

Our first dinner in town just had to be at Iza, an Asian restaurant I discovered online that offers two Indonesian dishes.  I can't tell you how difficult it is to find Indonesian cuisine in the U.S.  Our next opportunity will be in Paris later this summer.  But I digress.

On the right is Rendang Daging, a beef dish (but in Montana, it's buffalo), in a delicious distinctive Indonesian red sauce, somewhat spicy hot served with rice and a cucumber salad. The cucumbers are intended to cool you off.  It's "Yummm!" all the way around.

On the left is Nasi Goreng, a rice dish...the rice buried under the topping.  Another wonderful sauce.  We added the tofu which fit right in.

Another food thing.

Dinner the next night at one of our two "must-dine" restaurants in Missoula turned into a Why-We-Love-Montana story.

The restaurant, Ciao Mambo, serves wonderful Italian. We told the hostess it's our third annual visit. We were seated; the server was ready to take our drink order. We mentioned that Cold Smoke was our all time favorite beer (available only in western Montana) but since we were dining Italian, we'd each have a glass of Chianti.

Only in Montana would the server see to it we had both.

Susanne's dinner was certainly picture-worthy, a veritable clam tower topped by a sprig of rosemary.

My linguini dinner with a red clam sauce was delicious but pretty ordinary photo-wise.

The other "must dine" place is the Pearl Café; considered the best restaurant in Missoula.  The owner is Pearl, of course.  We stopped by to make a reservation with her for Saturday evening, before a milonga.  We can walk to both.

It turns out our apartment is right in the middle of many things.

Near our apartment was a food truck & music fair.  There were college kids determined to register new voters.  (Missoula is home to the University of Montana Grizzlies.) This young lady greeted us on arrival.  Note her stick-on; very straightforward.

Here's Susanne asking for several stickers for us.

Her organization is Forward Montana; actually, a serious minded group.  For a link to their website, click HERE.

We are seeing lots of ink here.  Sometimes it make no sense to us ancient folk.  Take this pretty blonde who has a skull at the base of her neck in addition to one arm-full.  She'll get to the other arm when she has the cash.  Think of what all that money would be worth in 40 years when she'll need it if she stuck it into a Roth IRA now.

We did the Missoula Art Museum, contemporary art, that is.  We really resonated with this piece, done as embroidery, entitled "What Lies Beneath".  We're all the same once the skin is off.

Among the goofier pieces is a muzzled Montana steer plastered with shoes.  The meaning escapes me.

This poor fellow appeared lost & was searching for something.  Susanne offered him some comfort but his personality seemed a bit wooden; he said nothing.

 You know how some folks think Asians look alike?  This artist codified it. The piece is titled: "All Look Same", artist Beth Lo.

The next piece sat at the entrance; Susanne loved it, especially how the tires seem to dip below the support.

OK, we'll move on.  I can sense you're bored.

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Tonight's dinner turned out to be a bit of a bust.  There's a nice restaurant on the ground floor of our building.  Our landlord put a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge as a welcome gift.  The plan was to crack open the bottle, get a bit looped, then stagger down the elevator to dinner.  I figured there's no such thing as a DEUI where E = Elevator.  Got to the restaurant, seemed to be not busy.  The host said he had alot of reservations & showed us what was left.  Not a decent table in the lot.  Scratch that.

OK, quickly configure a plan B.

Return to the apt., break out the leftover Indonesian, throw together a salad & have at it...we did.

Still needed dessert.  We hit the street and found a place, had a dessert assortment on a board, sort of the dessert version of charcuterie.  Forget to take a pic, dammit!

As we're walking we discovered that Friday night in the Missoula summer is the time for all the vintage car owners to cruise up & down Higgins, the main drag.

I couldn't resist taking a few shots; here are some of them:

Note how most of the drivers brought along the whole fam damily.  Not only that, but the street and bridge were lined with spectators.  Two pics.

The man's shirt was interesting.  The last word is "ride".

OK, enough for this post.  See ya later!!

Butte to Missoula

We did a bit of sightseeing in Butte, formerly a bustling copper mining town 80-100 years ago.  Its population was double what it is now.

We went to what turned out to be a cheesy re-creation of a mining town.  All we could do was peek into various buildings that were locked up tight.

A grade school from East Helena (Helena is the state capitol, about an hour away) was having a field trip... blue shirted kids everywhere.

Susanne was peering into the Chinese laundry which brings me to a bit of history.

It's hard to go to any town in the northern Rockies and not find a history of the Chinese immigrants, brought here to work in the mines & on the railroads.  Of course, the mines eventually played out & the railroads were completed, but the Chinese were still here.  They found work starting laundries & restaurants and were very resented by the locals.  Last year we did a walking tour of Bozeman & saw this history all over again.

What we have now with the Syrians is just a replay of the Chinese in the 19th century.  It seems worse now only because of the 24/7 news cycle.

Moving along...I love old cities and in the west there are plenty of them.  Butte has many with wonderful old buildings.  Back when Butte was at its peak, there were lots of banks.  Those buildings still stand, but are re-purposed.  Here's just one.

Susanne found this window display; very appropriate.

Buttte was home to a fabulously wealthy copper baron, William A. Clark.  No relationship to Clark the explorer.  We took a tour of his mansion, built between 1884 & 1888.

The hour tour was crowded & didn't lend itself to taking pics without people in them.  Mr. Clark got into many businesses, successful at all of them.  And his name stuck in unexpected places.  Clark County, Nevada (of Las Vegas fame) was named after him as well as a town in the mining region of Central Arizona...Clarkdale.

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On to Missoula!  From Butte to Missoula is a straight shot on I-90.  But there's a side road, Highway 1 that runs from Anaconda to Dillon, thru Philipsburg.  Well worth the detour.  On one side trip there are mountains, forests, meadows & lakes.  It gave me the opportunity to take a shot I call "Cloud Shadows" that play on the mountains.  And those clouds are typical in Blue Sky...puffy, cottony things.

Here are the melting snow capped peaks we see all over MT as we drive through.

Right outside Anaconda is the world's tallest smokestack.  Anyone who's been around Arizona for awhile knows two things:

1. Anaconda is a copper mining company that's all over & has been around a long time.
2. These abandoned smoke stacks are everywhere that copper was mined, then smelted.  The attached smelter is long gone but the stack lives on.  There's also one on the road to Prescott.

Note the snow peaks peeking out beyond the near hills.

Susanne & I just love these old Montana towns with the 19th century buildings lining Main Street.  Here's Anaconda's main drag.  That's our black 300C on the right.  Way up at the head of the street looks like a church.

 We checked it out.  Nope, it's the county court house.

We press on.

I've said before, there's nothing prettier than a high mountain lake.  Here are two shots.

On to Philipsburg, named after a German immigrant mining engineer, Philip Deidesheimer.  Founded in 1867, the town celebrates its 150th anniversary this week.  The founding fathers wisely took Herr Deidesheimer's first name for the town, population now less than 1,000.

Stopped by the local coffee house, had to take a pic of the tip jar.

Here's a corner at the primary intersection.  Primary cuz it's the only one with a flashing red light.  This is a no-traffic-light-town.

Here's the county jail built in 1896, still in use as the jail & the sheriff's office.

In our chat with the locals, several suggested we look for the noose in the tower.  There it is, by golly!!!

The local museum, closed when we were there, of course.

Susanne chatting with one of the folks getting ready for the big celebration tomorrow.

They insisted we pose with their crazy cut-out prop.  Whaddaya gonnado???

OK, off to Missoula but as we were approaching the interstate a large herd of Model A's was just getting off.  I had to get a shot; this is only about a third of what was there & still coming.

Finally got to Missoula and our apartment.  Here is my shot out our window of what the landlord promised...right on!

And just below us was a festival of some sort, complete with a swing band (brass, woodwinds, the lot) playing all the swing era favorites.

 OK, we've got a toe-hold on Missoula so I'll quit here.  More on the town later.


 

Montana Bound

Left Scottsdale Saturday morning after solving a minor glitch with the rental car.  Initially chose a Nissan Maxima, but the outlet for the GPS didn't work, so we swapped it for a Chrysler 300C.  Wow...what a fabulous highway cruiser, big & comfortable! The interstate speed limit is 80mph in Idaho & Montana. This puppy scoots along nicely with the cruise control set at 83mph.

But I'm getting ahead of the story.

We zipped through Arizona, around Flagstaff then north through Cameron & Page.  Got into Utah, and lost an hour, (they pay us back without interest when we return) through the desert then called it quits for the day in the little burg of Beaver, UT (no jokes, please).

Headed out Sunday morning, driving through and around the Salt Lake City area, the worst part of the trip.  Even on Sunday, it was two hours of congested 5-6 lane freeway, big semis darting in & out, other Interstates joining & leaving.  Aren't they all supposed to be in church???

Finally got into rural northern Utah and on into Idaho.  Stopped in Twin Falls for the night.  Right across from the hotel was a Famous Dave's BBQ.  Had dinner there; very good for a chain...ate at a FD's in Bozeman last year.

Got up Monday morning and zipped through to Butte, easy-peasy.

They call Montana "Big Sky Country"; I've already said that it is.  But this morning, beginning the three hours drive south of the ID/MT state line, it wasn't Big Sky.  That only happens when you're actually in MT.  (A piece of trivia: At this place, the continental divide forms the ID/MT border...that's why it's so irregular.)

"Big Sky" in Montana means the land seems to go on forever.  The mountains are both close and far.  This early in the summer, many of the higher peaks still have snow.  Hard to believe for the AZ desert rats enduring triple digits now.  But to make you feel a bit better, even the San Francisco Peaks had a bit of snow as we scooted past Flagstaff.

We're in Butte til Wednesday morning when we pop over to Missoula (less than two hours drive) & check into the apt. for a week.

I cribbed this shot from the apartment website, a view out our window-to-be from the 7th floor of a 20th century Missoula skyscraper (8 floors total).

For the trivia fans, that's the Clark Fork River, complete with urban rapids.  "Clark" of Lewis & Clark fame.

OK, another cribbed shot, shooting the rapids.  That's our high rise in the background.

More pics later, hopefully mine.

On Traveling (Long)

Awhile back I was chatting with a tango friend who mentioned she recently read an article making a distinction between tourists and travelers.  Tourists want to see sights while travelers prefer to experience places.

Based on that definition, Susanne & I most certainly fall into the latter group.  We visit fewer places and stay longer.  I then pondered...how did I get to that philosophy?

I did not start traveling internationally until I was 30, doing international sales and marketing with Motorola Semiconductors.  The format for that travel (and much to come after) was to be met at the airport by local associates and taken to business meetings during the day and wonderful dinners in the evenings.  On the weekends, sightseeing tours were set up.

For my entire working life, I never really got out of that mode.  I was only able to take about 8-10 days a year of international vacations, in the Spring.  They tended more towards the tourist mode.  Susanne & I did Amsterdam, then trained our way to Paris in the late '80's.  We did New Zealand in 1991, but in that short time, we visited four cities on both islands.  All those trips were in a blur.

Now we like to settle down in a place and explore.  That's usually Paris & western Montana.  Last year we did a cruise to Barcelona & stayed for three weeks.  Lovely city, but not Paris.  Originally I considered two weeks in Barcelona & a week in Madrid, they're only a couple of hours apart by train, but decided against it.  My choice was validated when purely by coincidence, Susanne's step-father and his bride took their honeymoon four days in Madrid & four in Barcelona where we got to spend time with them.  I asked which Spanish city they preferred...it was Barcelona.

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I believe every tourist/traveler has three priorities when visiting a place:

See the sights
Enjoy the food
Meet the people

And each person orders them differently.  Ours are: food first, then people & sights.  What about you?

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I also believe that no matter how often we visit a place, the first time or the 10th time, it simply prepares us for the next visit, even if we choose not to return.

It turns out what you see & do invariably falls into three categories:

There are those activities with a "been there, done that" vibe...nice to see, no need to return.  One trip up the Eiffel Tower is sufficient lifetime-wise.  Hopefully tourists get many of these.

Then there are those experiences that you just didn't get enough of and you'd want to do more if/when you return.  It could be almost anything...a major museum, a neighborhood, a restaurant/cuisine, a person you met that you'd like to get to know better.

And lastly, there are those things you didn't get to at all; you may have just run out of time. You'll to get to them on the next pass, if there is one.

Another reason...as you visit a place more often, you get better at using the available public transportation. We were in Montreal for eight days struggling with a Metro system designed for commuters, not visitors.  It was on day five I discovered their wonderful bus system.  So while we are better prepared for returning to Montreal and Barcelona, there is no compelling reason to go back to either place.

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Those who want to visit many cities during a single trip overlook that each time they change locations, they lose a day.  (Cruises mitigate this somewhat but that's a whole 'nother thing.)  My suggestion...limit your trip to two cities max, fly into one & out of the other, "training" between them.  Airlines understand "open jaw" flights.  An added bonus, going by train means you move from city center to city center.  We added a few days in Munich onto the end of one Paris trip, taking a sleeper/overnight train, an adventure all unto itself.

A couple once told me they were spending three days in Paris.  I asked them how many nights.  The answer was "two".  That actually means they're spending only one full day there.  The other days are taken up with arriving & leaving.

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Late this summer, we're returning to Paris with friends who want to explore the traveler mode.  Good for them!  Susanne & I consider the city of Paris as one big museum with what most call "museums" being simply rooms in the museum/city.  So we love walking the streets where the museum walls so-to-speak are always changing as well as the people wherever you look.  In fact, sitting at a sidewalk cafe and letting the museum pass by us is a favorite activity.  And if we chat up the next table, so much the better.

And we've made friends there.  Hopefully Father McCarthy, the American vicar of the Madeleine church, is still in Paris.  Laurie, my former Phoenix airport volunteer buddy, now living in Paris full time is still there.  We follow her on Facebook.

For us, returning to the familiar is more fun (and certainly more relaxing) than exploring the new.

I've got to throw in a few Paris shots.  These are mostly from trips way back 5-10 years ago.

I don't remember where these two pics were taken from but on a very gloomy day.  The main subject is easy to identify:

From the Hunting Museum (hunting art, hunting weapons & taxidermy), the title of this shot still sticks...Gorilla My Dreams:

Our absolute favorite restaurant, found in a guide book in the '90's.  That's Celine who with her husband Bertrand own the place.  The name means "A doe in the woods"; game is their specialty.

Taken from the top of the Pompidou Museum on another gloomy day, then photo-processed into an lithographic-like piece.

 

This year our apartment is right off Place de la Republic, so this lady will be a familiar sight, just as the Bastille Column was in the past.

The Madeleine Church taken from a favorite sidewalk cafe.  We hope to do a lunch meet-up with Father McCarthy at the very nice little cafe in the Madeleine basement, not known to many visitors but a favorite lunch place for the locals working nearby.

Lastly, an urban picnic some years ago.  We were staying in a hotel, the weather was turning bad so we grabbed some bread, wine, cheese & a couple of patés and plunked down in the lobby.

Trying to live as a Parisian while there means appreciating Paris as the locals do.  Here is a recent blog post by an American living in Paris.  It's the first four paragraphs that count.

Click HERE.


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And then there's Montana.  Last year we stayed in Bozeman for three weeks but popped over to Missoula for two days to return to our two favorite restaurants & catch a milonga.  This year we're doing one week in Missoula, making a new CASA contact there (along with revisiting those restaurants & finding new ones).  Then on to Bozeman for two weeks rejoining our yoga studio, tango community, and synagogue congregation.  Also a stop in to see CASA.

This year we're there over 4th of July and will zip over to Ennis, an hour's drive, a small town hosting a fireman's pancake breakfast, a car show, 4th of July parade and a Lions Club picnic.  If we want to stick around until 6pm, there's a rodeo and fireworks after sunset.   But by that time we'll probably be back in Bozeman.

Thanks to absurdly high pricing from Delta Airlines (more than 2½ times what we paid last year), we're taking an extra week and driving.  

Here are a few shots from our first trip in 2008 taken in Glacier National Park with our then state-of-the-art 5Mp camera.

A patch of snow in July.  Higher up, even more.

An overlook and a car accident memorial.  Not enough megapixels to read the names.

There is nothing more beautiful than being up close to a high mountain lake.  Montana has lots of them.

That's it for now.  Next post in June.

 

2017 Travel Plans

Hi everyone,

This post is a heads up on our travels this year.

Yes, we're heading back to Montana in mid June, spending the 4th of July weekend there...we just LOVE that state.  This year we're doing a week in Missoula (a larger city with a more active tango community and a couple of really great restaurants) then two weeks in Bozeman, still our favorite town.

In Missoula we'll be staying in a condo in one of the classic buildings downtown.  And in Bozeman, we returning to where we stayed last year.

One major change, thanks to Delta Airlines who decided raise fares by a multiple of 2½ times this year.  We're driving to Montana.

Normally we fly, then rent a car for our stay, renting in town to avoid high airport rental costs.  Because it's high season in Montana but low season here, we can rent  in Scottsdale for four weeks for just $75 more than three weeks up north and we drive a Nissan Maxima instead of an Altima.

Figuring in taxi fares at both ends and the airline upgrades and baggage fees in addition to the base fares last year, it'll still be cheaper to add that week even including hotels & meals.  We may never fly there again.

BTW, a travel tip.  Renting a car through Costco Travel costs less than renting it directly from the rental company, in this case Enterprise.

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But the bigger trip is our return to Paris the end of August; haven't been there since 2014.

We're doing something different this time.  We're traveling with another couple we've known for years in tango and renting a two bedroom/two bath apartment together.

As mentioned on the last Paris trip, our landlord for the Bastille apartment sold it so we have to look elsewhere.  We've been eyeing staying in the Place de la Republique area and found an apartment there for four that fits our needs beautifully.

So for about 2½ weeks, we'll be living as locals.  The nearest Monoprix is almost around the corner.

Also we discovered that airfares out of Phoenix over the pond are much, much higher than out of LAX even figuring in the shuttle to get there.  So we're flying Premium Economy on Air France nonstop LAX/CDG for the same cost as basic economy from Phoenix.  Our usual United upgrade to more legroom pays for the PHX/LAX leg.

Some Paris travel info.  RATP, the company that runs the Paris Metro now has an English language, fully interactive Metro map that does everything.  You can find it by clicking HERE.

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Lastly, do you remember that post last 4th of July on the homegrown fireworks in Kansas?  And the fireworks display marriage proposal to step grandaughter Ashton?  Well, moving right along, they're getting married in October & we'll be there!  Not sure if I'll have the time to blog that trip.

That's it for now!