Hampton Court

March 21, 2015 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | HISTORY, TRAVEL |

A pile costing many coins and heads...

(TVC’s visit: 2 June 2013) Finding ourselves at a motel near Heathrow with a few hours to kill before take-off, we thought, ‘why not have a look at Hampton Court?’ So we sensibly took a shuttle to terminal 4 of the airport to look for the tube.  This chewed up about half an hour with nil result.  Then we meandered to Henry VIII’s place on 3 buses, wondering at the complexities of our little visit and the varied responses of the bus drivers, their advice ranging from cheery and correct, to non-committal, to the outright hostile. Got there in the…

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Sydney Bookshops

March 19, 2015 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | AUSTRALIANIA, TRAVEL, WRITING & LITERATURE |

CAT PATHWAY No Books Here Please

Lesley McKay’s at Woollhara looks like any other, small, new-book shop.  Yet it has unexpected gems crammed into the teeny tiny spaces. Gleebooks (x 2, both on Glebe Point Road)  is  duller and more mainstream than in its heyday. Sappho (also on GPR) is well worth a visit – 4 floors of carefully chosen second-hand books rub shoulders in tea-table nooks.  Notably there is a particularly impressive room of works on music and scores. Gould’s massive, industrial, mezzanined cavern at Newtown has no discernible order but is still terrific, with a cats’ crawlspace set aside especially. L got some very good Attic Greek language books at…

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Bitings on a Complimentary Basis.

February 11, 2015 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | Annabel Lee, FOOD, LIFE, Restaurants, TRAVEL |

Get your bitings here

In 2004, while staying in a converted monastery in wild, windy, Avignon,  we read an invitation to “bitings on a complimentary basis” at 7pm . In some trepidation we donned evening garb, strung garlic around our necks and descended to  the ancient hall for what turned out to be “free nibbles” and not of the flattering, cannibal sort. The European grip on English translation had not improved by 2013, when, in the train station at Sorrento we read a sign which frightened and confused us.

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Melbourne & Victorian Bookshops

February 9, 2015 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | TRAVEL, Ulalume, WRITING & LITERATURE |

The Varnished Culture attended a book launch and signing in April 2017 and made two important discoveries. First, we rather like Albert Park, once an inner Melbourne ‘burb of faded grandeur, now a plush and trendy nook that is about to out-Toorak Toorak. And the Avenue Bookshop matches that vision – new books, great selection. They’ve sister stores in Elsternwick and Richmond but we’ll stick to Albert Park, thank you. Hill of Content, Hill of Content, Hill of Content. Perched on a real hill, hiding behind the trams and general horror of Burke Street traffic. It always makes TVC smile when we see that…

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Wagner, Verdi and Murano Bugs in Venice

February 4, 2015 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | TRAVEL, Ulalume, WAGNER |

2013 Our train from Naples was not direttissima but it sure was a case of molto ritardo.   An unexpected change in Firenze, back a couple of stops on a local caboose, onward through Bologna and finally, we were emptied out on a water taxi through the Grand Canal to Locanda Vivaldi (Venice being his birthplace).   We dined there on a lovely high terrace overlooking Canal Grande, heroically overlooking the warning note: A volte alcuni prodotti potrebbero essere passati per la catena del freddo which we translated as ‘Sometimes some products might be passed by the cold chain’ which we parsed…

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