At the Blue Lagoon in Iceland

JFK to Paris-Orly airport on BA’s Open Skies all-business class airline is a great way to get to Paris on the cheap to a smaller airport. I paid $650 for a one-way ticket. You sorta get what you pay for. It is basically a 757 with a business class seat used more for domestic flights so it is a bit cramped, but it is only a 6-7 hour flight. You can get lie-flat seats for a more traditional price. Consider bringing food on board, especially if you have dietary restrictions, but I think that most people don’t really care much about the food. There is no lounge at JFK but the gate is decorated with cushions by a company called Zaftig (yiddish for portly). When we arrived, I saw that Obama’s press flight was departing the same airport that morning to Washington. 

VERSAILLES – From Orly it was a 60 Euro taxi (about 25 minutes) to the Trianon Palace Hotel on the grounds of the Versailles gardens. The hotel was recently renovated and is very nice; it is a great weekend place to go just outside Paris, especially since you can walk the grounds of Versailles and enter the Chateaux through the gardens from the hotel; you should purchase entry tickets from the hotel concierge in advance to avoid the lines – although you can also avoid the lines by going to the  tourist office near the main gate which hardly anybody seems to know about. Rooms 307 and 309 overlook a sheep’s meadow and there is a connecting room as well for families who need it. On the 5th floor, you can see the Chateaux of Versailles. Dinner and breakfast at the hotel were fine but not special although their version of french toast which was brioche with almond-filled cream was memorable; Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant on the property is closed on Mondays so I missed it as I was there on a Monday. Also, Versailles is closed on Mondays as well. So I walked around the town; not much to see but it is a pleasant town and bigger than I expected. City Hall is a nice building. It rained virtually the whole time I was there. At Versailles, it took me about ½ hour to see the main rooms; go see the gardens at the very back of the site behind Marie Antoinette’s cottage. It is a good walk or shuttle ride there but if you go all the way to the rear corner of the property you will see a very pretty little old-fashioned group of buildings built around a little lake. In the Chateaux just off the regular round of apartments and rooms is a big hall with lots of huge war scene paintings spanning I figure a good century of such art; it is one of the best rooms of such art anywhere. Get a passport ticket for the whole property. I spent about 2.5 hours on the site as a whole. 

PARIS –I visited Paris a year ago after having not been there for about 5 years and remembered how much I liked it. So I resolved to return and dedicate a few days to seeing some of the beyond-the-basics Paris this time around. Door to door to a hotel in central paris is 30 minutes at 45 Euros. I went straight to Galleries Lafayette for 3 hours of shopping. Nearby to my hotel Brighton on the Tulleries gardens is Hotel Crillon on the Place D’Concorde; a 3 course dinner there is 205 Euro in the fine dining room. I passed in favor of a 3 course dinner at one of the top brasseries for 59 Euro. Chez Dumonet is a taxi or metro ride away and did not disappoint after being labeled as Andrew Harper’s (the travel writer) favourite bistro in Paris. I ate at the counter as there were no tables open and I had come in without a reservation. Tel. 45.48.52.40; closed Sat/Sun. Nightfall in the gardens; always see something interesting. Tonight it is a 30 year old computer scientist who was practicing his wu-shu and swinging among the trees in the gardens in the dusk. He told me he was a gymnastics freak who needed to get out from behind his desk. My room 410 is a nicely renovated spacious junior suite room with a terrace overlooking all the important sites in Paris – from the Eiffel Tower through the National Palace to the Louvre. Hotel breakfast has 4 kinds of bread, 2 types of fresh juice, 2 cheeses and a cheese plate, fruit salad and a bowl of fresh fruits and dried fruits, nutella, eggs, meats (I didn’t know what they were since I don’t eat it), croissants, toast packets and white bread, 5 kinds of fresh jelly, butter, hot chocolate, yoghurt and cold cereals. I am only writing this down because it seems this hotel puts out just the right amount of food. Museum Nissim de Comando is in a house that had lots of art in it; it belonged to a sephardic jew that did well in life. An offbeat thing to see. Also Jaquesmart Museum in another restored house with lots of art in it. Both are in central paris and are easy to see museums in a more authentic parisien setting. Walked to Au Printemps department store for more shopping. Found out this trip that the French don't like to use handkerchiefs and prefer Kleenex; stores hardly sell these accessories anymore. They had nice children’s dishware from Villeroy & Boche and Trembimbi either there or at the home store of Galleries Lafayette; I don’t recall. BonPoint has beautiful children’s clothes – very authentically French and there is a full store on Rue Royale just off the Place D’Concorde. Petit Bateau has a store on Rue Tranche, by the way (Behind the madeline church and it is the continuation of Rue Royale). Also near the Madeline is a famous toy store Nain Bleu where the gift-wrapping is lovely. MikiHouse has great stuff for kids too on Rue St. Honore. There was a 50% off sale at MikiHouse when I was there but generally the big sales come at the end of June in the department stores and I was a few weeks too early and nothing was really reduced when I visited. For dinner went to a kosher restaurant Chateaubriand which is a bit of a trip on the metro to either Malsherbes or Wagram station plus a good 15 minute walk; the food was served beautifully but the meat was tough; I get better at home. If you go, order poultry. It is in an unmarked place so call before you go. On the metro, there was a 3 piece band playing in the subway car and they tend toward accordions here. The minimum for a taxi is 6 euro; metro is 1.60 euro or 5.80 for a day pass. Visited the Jewish Museum of Paris; OK to see but I noticing that there is no modern jewish art in any of these museums. The world ends with the Holocaust and the creation of Israel. How about some art just depicting daily life for people now such as a painting of a kid sitting with her grand-daddy at synagogue? Marriage Freres is a tea house with some serious cakes; it is basically behind the Hotel de Ville (City Hall). A decent stroll away after such a snack brings you to Berthillon just behind the Notre Dame Cathedral on rue st. Louise and their chocolate ice cream is superb. Both of these places are institutions. From here it is a 30 minute walk back to the hotel; can go faster with the metro of course. Come later in June for sales, carnival rides in Tulleries gardens and better weather, unless you don’t mind highs in the 60's and drizzle – actually, I was fine with it. 45 minute taxi to CDG airport and then 1:10 flight to Milan’s Linate airport (save over 100 Euro in taxis and a lot of time by going to Linate instead of Malpensa). Another 20 minutes and 16 Euro will get you from Linate airport to the center of town.

Milan & Lake Garda, Italy – Park Hyatt is perfectly located right off the Galleria near the Duomo and this hotel is in the running for top city hotels of the world. A guy ran down ahead of me to open the door when I was locked out; the concierges (ie: Luca) are great and they really look after their guests. Room 611 is a terrace junior suite with a terrace with the Duomo in the background. The rooms are oversized with modern but sensible architecture and furnishings and a huge bathroom.  On the American Express Platinum program you get $100 worth of food credit so I passed up the restaurant downstairs whose menu I didn’t really like in favor of room service served on the terrace which was a hotel brochure moment lacking only the presence of my wife. Breakfast at the hotel is fine but nothing great.  I walked into La Scala opera house as people were leaving a show; it was recently renovated. Looks nice enough. Went to Roggieri on the piazza duomo for clothes; have to take what’s left; the best time to come he says is late March. Rinascente didn’t have a lot for kids but it had nice housewares and they are redoing some of their departments. This time it was better than what I saw in Paris. It seems that from year to year you get lucky either in Paris or Milan. On the flight from Paris to Milan it seemed that everyone was wearing a tie and jacket. FILA doesn’t have all their collection in one store anymore; you have to go to 3 different places – one store on Corso Buenos Aires has their nightwear but the same stuff is in the Rinascente; another store has their athletic wear and that is rather far away from the center of town. Found a Chiccos store near the hotel on corso matteoti 10 which is very good for children’s wear; Del Mare 1911 had good items for me this time.Chiccos is also on corso Buenos Aires, as is Brum and Iana for kids. Serapian has a new store on via Spiga but it is better to go to the outlet store a 10 minute taxi drive away on via Jomelli; more affordable and sensible merchandise there. Carnivale de Venice has reportedly relocated to 8 Largo Augusto, telephone 02.760.20871 in Milan. 

From the hotel it is a 15 minute taxi ride to the train station; for a few euro you can get someone to porter your bags to the train track. On the express train, it is 45 minutes to Brescia and then another hour by taxi (90 Euro) to Gargagno township and the Villa Feltrinelli hotel. This is not the most magnificent hotel I’ve ever seen but it is perhaps the best hotel I’ve stayed at. I’d been drawn to this property by the listing in Andrew Harper’s Collection that said that this hotel is consistently one of its members’ favorite properties. The villa is the real thing and it is beautifully decorated, every inch of it. Mussolini stayed here during World War II guarded by the Nazis. Service is above the standard and all sorts of little things matter, right down to the little flowers placed in various places around your room, rose pedals put into your bathroom toilet in perfect formation every evening and the toilet seat handles (never saw either of those before), the pens and stationery on your desk, the carefully written notes placed by the concierges confirming every item. I was in the Muslone junior suite with a view of the gardens, the restaurant terrace and the lake. They have an extensive satellite “Sky” TV system with hundreds of channels (but no CNN!) including those of many countries. That weekend the world was watching the Iranian election. Al Jazeera’s English channel is improving; less propagandistic and more an alternate voice worth hearing. I had a nice restful weekend there; took a boat on the lake to see a countess’ castle on an island about half an hour away; you can get a massage in the lemon garden; have gelato on the terrace; dinner either on site or in town. Dinner at the hotel offers the option of getting small size plates; that is a good option since they give you so much extra food items beyond the items you order that it is best not to order too much. I also noticed that on the second day, they stopped sending me savoury items in favor of sweet items, probably noticing that I prefer the sweets. It is pretty good that they take note of preferences and adjust accordingly. There are only 20 rooms here so I guess they can keep track of it. There are lovely flowers and trees all over the grounds and it was fun just to walk around like a bear smelling everything. Management is always around watching everything. There are 90 on staff for 40 guests and the place was over 90% full when I was there. Free minibar, honor bar and laundry; they charge a good amount but don’t nickel and dime and I think this is very smart hotel practice. I never have gotten over the fact that while Karen and I were staying at the Villa D’Este we went to take a walk in the hotel gardens, asked for a bottle of water and were charged 7 Euros for it. This place is much less commercial and much more hospitable; they would never do that kind of thing. Over 50% of their guests are Americans but I saw Russians, British and other Europeans. There is a heated pool, something that Villa D’Este didn’t have, but here is no dancing which is something Villa D’Este did have. Walked into the nearby town (10 minutes); there are restaurants there where you can have dinner for 1/4th the price of the hotel and it is a nice authentic little town with very little to do but certainly pleasant. 

From the hotel it is a 75 minute ride to the Verona airport; took Lufthansa to Munich and then to Copenhagen. Flight amenities worth noting featured a combination fork and spoon (one side is a fork and the other is a spoon). It’s amazing how Munich is only a few hundred miles from Milan and how different it feels in the airport there. In Munich airport, they put out free food and coffee/tea for people flying. So much more civilized....

Copenhagen, Denmark – Several people told me that Copenhagen is a sleepy boring town and that I wouldn’t enjoy it. I was certain that they were wrong and thankfully I didn’t come home being proven wrong. A taxi from the airport to the center of town is about 20 minutes and fairly pricey at about $50. My room at the Hotel Nimb overlooks the center of the Tivoli Gardens and is decorated in a local style; all rooms are junior suites and it is an interesting boutique hotel at a high level; there were refugees there from the D’Angleterre Hotel which had previously been the “best in town” but which has taken knocks for being past its prime. The Nimb lacks a gym or air conditioning and if you open the window you hear some of the clocks chiming about town, but unless there’s a heat wave it’s fine and the location is unbeatable; it is also right across the street from the central train station. Breakfast is OK ; food is all right but I wouldn’t say I’m nuts over the local cuisine; some of it is weird to my taste. At the hotel’s restaurant, I had tap water and they charged me $5; I was told that this was standard in Denmark in finer establishments. When I arrived on Sunday afternoon, there were bands marching around underneath my window and there was a mockup of the queen in her carriage with horses about. It was as festive a welcome to Denmark as could possibly be. The Tivoli Gardens are a lovely thing to have in the center of a city with concerts every evening under several bandshells and things like laser shows in the middle of a small lake; the place itself is an amusement park for children fused with lots of places for adults to hang out. If you are a guest in the hotel, you have free entrance to the gardens. Traffic signals give you a very small window to cross large streets (one 6 lane boulevard allowed 22 seconds). People are pretty athletic here; bicycles are a real form of transportation and even the elderly are fit. Work ceases at 4pm. Everybody here seems to speak English; probably because not many people in the world outside of Denmark speak Danish. The place is not nearly as full of blonde haired blue eyed people as I thought; it is a rather diverse place with people from all over the world making their home here. I am also told that there is not that much snow here either. The Jewish Museum – as luck would have it, a Jewish taxi driver took me there. There are only 7,000 jews in the country; how many jewish taxi drivers could there be? The museum is small but interesting; the most moving thing to me was a Nazi propaganda video shot of Theresinstadt, a showcase concentration camp, which shows all the people fairly happy and in normal conditions – playing or watching basketball with children smiling happily, knitting sweaters by their bedsides. Many of these people were later sent to other camps to be killed after the film was shot. When you watch the film, you wouldn’t want to be there; if this was considered lovely, you wonder what the reality must have been like. You also know that you are standing there 60 years later watching something you know is false and which you know at the time people believed was a fair depiction of reality. In a way, it is more painful to watch than the films shot of the concentration camps when the allied troops came in to the place and saw what they saw. There are many who don’t buy the historical description offered in this museum as a whitewash of that country’s government. The National Museum is nearby and worth seeing for a good taste of the country as a whole. Goods are more expensive in Denmark than the rest of Europe. Walked along the canal to the Citadel and the King’s park; the Little Mermaid can be seen from the canal or from the streetside. A 45 minute train ride gets you to Helsingor to see Kronbert, a famous castle a 10 minute walk from the station which Shakespeare’s Hamlet was reportedly based upon. Be sure to go underground to see the big statues and the caves and to the Tower for a rooftop view. It can all be seen in an hour. 1 ticket for 120 kroner (roughly about $20) gives you unlimited bus and train travel all around the Copenhagen metropolitan region including this place. A canal tour is a good 1 hour diversion along the waterways and to hear about the city and its history. When you depart the country, be careful at the airport for your VAT refund; it is not clear where to go but it is before you get on the escalators to go to the security check and it is in a hallway between buildings without clear signage. It is a 3 hour flight to Iceland, formerly of Denmark. One way I find useful to get rid of foreign currency, especially of places like Denmark that one doesn’t visit often, is to pay some of the hotel bill with the leftover cash, reserving what you need for the taxi. On a political note, had dinner with a friend who is an embassy position there and he mentioned that Denmark punches above its weight as a political force in the world, primarily because it is willing to put money and people in play to also try and have a seat at the table.

Iceland – When the plane lands here at the airport some 45 minutes drive from the capitol city, you feel like you are landing on the moon, especially since I landed in bad weather. On the drive, you see nothing but lunar landscape with rocks, mountains in the background and stuff that looks like lava on the ground. The roads have cul de sacs as exits but the roads go nowhere after about 100 feet, mainly because there is no place to go. About 15 minutes from the airport is the country’s #1 tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon, which is a big blue sulfur bathing spot with hot water, even though it is usually freezing outside.  It is something you definitely want to see if you are visiting. There is a rooftop observation deck and you can see the baths plus the surrounding area. When you finally reach the capitol Reykjavik, you get all the trappings of civilization such as trees, flowers, tall modern buildings, kiddie parks and even parking meters, and the interiors of buildings are quite nice. On the shopping street are plenty of stores including Iana (italian kids wear), 66 Degrees (a local shop with good winter clothes), city hall, parliament. Had dinner at a lovely restaurant at my Hotel Borg called Silver. The country is reasonable these days relative to the rest of Europe due to its weakened currency, but not exactly cheap. Met a relative of a friend and we went to the “Pearl” tower for a panorama of the city, an indoor geyser, saw lots of rainbows, (in the winter, you can see the Northern Lights here), a nice river of salmon, residential neighborhoods, the house where the Reagan-Gorbachev 1986 summit occurred, the port, electrical plant and the maple tree in town that my host’s grandfather planted. It was still light at midnight; in winter there is light for 3-4 hours a day, and I am told that the temperature does not go below freezing often in the winter and that there is not that much snow, due to the Gulf Stream going past this area. Temperatures generally range from 0-20 degrees centigrade during the year. The locals don’t really complain much about the winters. English is almost universally spoken here. The airport is perfectly nice and actually impressive considering the whole country only has 300,000 people, half of whom live in Reykjavik. The water is OK; tastes a bit lava-like. My host was a 60's radical living in Brooklyn who thought she’d have a better life in Iceland helping to set up a more equitable health care system and a paradise for humans up north. Fruits and vegetables are home-grown in greenhouses and not generally imported as you might expect. There is no turn on red lights, which is surprising considering the lack of traffic and speed limits are observed. There is lots of closed circuit TV around monitoring people. About 50 Jews live in Iceland; there is no synagogue and people get together about twice a year on the major holidays for pot luck lunches but with no religious services. This is a place for people with attitude; I saw a car with a Playboy sticker saying “I wouldn’t F*** you for practice.” From NY to Iceland is about 4 ½ hours flying east and 5 ½ hours flying west. Actually about the same as NY to California. Icelandair is a perfectly fine airline as long as you don’t mind the lack of lie-flat seats in the business class. For the duration of the flight, you probably don’t mind. I saved a significant amount of money using it and it is also an option to break up a longer flight. They fly with 757's; in my case the options going Copenhagen to NY were flying SAS for $2,200 with a guaranteed coach upgrade to b-class; Continental for $2,400 or Icelandair with the stopover for $1,300. By the way, SAS really wanted $4,800 for the one-way ticket but with nudging their NY sales office, I was able to get them to agree to sell me an upgradeable ticket for half the amount. I decided to take the stopover because I thought it would be fun, but the moral of the story is that even SAS is negotiable on airfares if you needle them. As for Iceland, I wouldn’t tend to visit there too often, but it was quite interesting to see it once and if I were into outdoor adventure, I’d probably find quite a few things to do there. It is also a significant option if you need to get from certain points back to or from the US, can’t find a decent airfare, have a certain amount of flexibility, and if Icelandair happens to fly out of that city.

Travel Issues – I read this new magazine Monocle which has set itself up as the arbiter of good taste and knowledge of many things in the world. It actually looks like a rather good and timely read and took out a trial subscription; it is managed by Tyler Brulee who is the back page columnist on travel and trends for the FT on Saturdays. I think they should discuss the issue of duvets in hotels. Frankly, I hate them in favor of sheets and blankets and wonder why all these hotels have gone for them. I wake up hot and cold from them. What do you think? I also think that people should revolt against all these credit card surcharges on foreign transactions. I stopped using my Citibank and Amex cards in favor of a Capital One card which has no surcharge; I also use the Capital One ATM card instead of the others because there is no surcharge there either. Paying in cash is also a decent option but I like credit cards so that I can keep track of where I went and what I spent.

For pictures, please click here.