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May

Touching the Pyramids

Sometimes life throws nice gigs at you like the other night, when I spent a night at Mena House Oberoi , Egypt’s classic grand hotel, for a review for UK website Travel Intelligence.

The hotel’s celebrity list reads like a who’s who of all worlds – Roger Moore stayed here when filming The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), John Travolta opened Egypt’s first disco here back in 1972. Omar Sharif has been a regular as was Egypt’s (and the Middle East’s) most famous singer, Umm Kalthoum, who dossed here each month and now has a suite named in her honour.

Royalty and diplomats include the Aga Khan, Prince Philip, Spanish kings, Saudi princes, Thai princesses, and King Gustav of Sweden, a noted archaeologist, whose name also hangs on one of the hotel’s suites. Winston Churchill stayed here while orchestrating the North Africa campaign in WWII, while Jimmy Carter helped broker peace between Egpyt and Israel from the hotel in 1979.

Charles Heston used to ride a horse into the gardens every afternoon after filming the Ten Commandments, and on a slightly less noble note, an Australian soldier was arrested for running through its halls naked chasing a woman when the hotel became the HQ for the Australian army during the First World War (word has it the army turned up with a baby kangeroo in tow). The soldier defended his nudity saying the army rulebook says not to wear uniform when engaged in activities deemed unfit for its honour.

Every hotelier has their fingers crossed that Barak Obama will stay when he visits Cairo in June – most likely he will stay at the embassy or one of the city’s many palaces – but he could pop in for tea and to see the treasures of the original hunting lodge which is now the hotel’s Palace wing, its furniture inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl, the massive chandliers and corridors of pale grey marble.

The real reason you’d stay at the Oberoi in Cairo is for the reason show in the pic: this is a shot from my room. Take a look out the window, people, at that hulking great beast. Yes, it’s the Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), one of the three Great Pyramids of Giza, so close you could spit on it. If you wanted. Of course I don’t want to. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the mummies and much less the Egyptian government.

I lolled around by the pool (see pic 😉 and had my first proper curry in three months in the hotel’s Moghul Room, which won best hotel restaurant in Africa by Conde Nast, and is reportedly the best Indian restaurant this side of Mumbai. Richard Nixon has sat at its restaurant’s tables and I reckon he also enjoyed the naan, which, friends, was memorable and made me miss serious Indian food. Thai food is forgotten, I’m on the hunt for the perfect Indian curry now…

The other great thing about the Oberoi is the golf course, at 110 years old, the country’s oldest. Golf freaks, beware the green monster before you view the next pic! Suprisingly, the green rates are seriously low, less than A$15 for a hotel guest and $40 for non-members. The only others on the course this morning were a few delighted Japanese guests.

The course is just across the road from the hotel, which is also a two-minute walk to the ticket office of the Great Pyramids, where touts try not too hard to lure you onto a camel, horse or into a carriage.

Which brings me to price: of course you want to know how much it costs to stay at the Mena House. Sure it’s not cheap. It’s a five-star hotel, and the rate card on the hotel counter reads E230 for a double room in the Palace wing with one of those jaw-dropping views of the Pyramid., which has stood here for 46 centuries.

May

Conversations from the Haut-Savoire, France

Conversation 1: We had walked around the beautiful Lac e Montriond till we reached a bustling restaurant populated by way too many blonde children wearing pink.

Adam: I don’t think I’ll drink. I’ll just have a beer.Me: You’re becoming French, Adam.
Conversation 2: Emma, having once again managed to smear her face, up to her eyebrows with pain au chocolate. Leah: Adam, do you think our children eat too much chocolate? Are we bad parents?Adam: Leah, they live in France. Another aside: when I first arrived in Milano it was grey, raining and I was lost. Well, it’s raining in Milano and nobody speaks English. I couldn’t even begin to think in Italian, my head was full of Arabic.

So when I was looking for the hotel this afternoon, I asked a man from Fayoum, south of Cairo. We had a very nice chat (aiwa, bil Araby) but he didn’t know where the hotel was. But the girl from my own suburb of Misr el Gedida did… So in the first day in Italy, I spoke more Arabic than Italian. The trip ended in a multi-country hop from the Haut-Savoire (France) by car to Geneva (Switzerland) by train to Milano (Italy) and finally by the bumpiest flight to Cairo (Egypt) where the naughtiest boy alive, four-year-old Ahmed slowly spat on my laptop bag during the flight. All done avec grand bagages. My arms are considerably longer as a result.

May

Boyzone plays Tuscany

Is this the most perfectly Tuscan pic? Aside from the crappy sky. There was a ladder, an old bike and a low-slung chair perched against an olive tree. Hello, is there a Vogue stylist walking ahead of me? I thought, as I hummed my way through Boyzone’s hitlist (ok, so there IS a downside to solo walking).

Other highlights included the thermal baths at the hilltop village of Bagno Vignoni (population 53), where 40-degree waters gushed from the hillside into the public pools or, if you were a tad more posh, the Hotel de Terme, with its newly built bathhouse, all glass roofs and walls, so you could bathe in sunshine and waters designed for soaking thighs weary from schlepping up the hill to get there. No wonder it was a hot spot on the old pilgrim route to Roma.

Weirdly, when you photograph Tuscany, with its crumbling stone, washing strung outside the windows and old-fashioned signs, it looks so poor. But those leather boots and hand-crafted cheeses will strip your euros from your pocket faster than you can say ‘artisanal fromagerie’.

The landscape was all green, lush rolling hills often cloaked in a veil of rain (let’s not be picky here, it had to get green somehow), and rows of Roman pines that had me thinking back to the opening scenes of Russell Crowe’s house in Gladiator. Tacky, I know but your mind plays with your mind when you’ve many hours alone.

And the trip couldn’t go without a mention of the Eurostar from Florence to Milan, which hit speeds of 300km/hour, with barely a jiggle.

PS other hits from the Tuscan mental soundtrack included Jimmy Barnes’ Cheap Wine and the War of the Worlds soundtrack. A tough one to sing along to, but consider it achieved.

May

High life in France

Turning far north after Tuscany, I had a couple of days in the Haut-Savoie town of Les Gets, close on the French side of the the Swiss border. Will it surprise you to learn landscape is absolutely, chocolate-box spectacular?

Mountains rise steeply from the collection of villages which number 500 in the off-season, but still manage to sustain three hairdressers and four boulangeries or bakeries. You’d think the locals were fat and well-coiffed, but this long weekend was pretty quiet, and most of the people we met were English, so I can’t report back.

When they are in town, the locals (originally drawn from just three families and includes the surname ‘Bastard’, proving the old design motto that anything said in French sounds better) can choose from the reputedly sticky-carpet venue of igloo, the Dublin bar or even Le Boomerang Bar, reportedly run by an Australian (no, really!).

The regional dishes of the Haut-Savoie would also lend you to believe the population is a capillary away from heart failure – the fondue is a big pot of melting, winey cheese in which stale bread is dipped (great for small kids, despite the open flame beneath the pot), while tarteauflette is a mix of sliced potatoes sprinkled with bacon and smothered in local cheeses which include Reblochons, Tommes de Savoie and the stronger Abondance.

The find of the decade was the artisanal fromagerie, Fruitere des Perries, shelves loaded with local wine and cheeses.

A short drive up the hill and you can spot the skirts of Mont Blanc, hiding behind its sisters, glacial lakes and the winter photographs show snow up above the windows, making the view from the kitchen window a distant memory…or a beer fridge, if you were so inclined.

May

Didn’t the paparrazi start in Italy?

Tuscan walking tour in a nutshell: So much walking! So much rain! Not enough sit-down time! Too much food!

I would like to think that my eating activities have been balanced by my exercise activities, but I think not. In a classic ‘eating to feel better’ move that could be the US’s motto for the global recession, my spirits were restored after a 22km hike through the Tuscan wilderness and rain with dinner in the hilltop village of Montalcino, trying a local Tuscan pasta, pici, fat, hand-rolled spaghetti strands doused with a wild hare ragu. The alternative was the wild boar ragu.

It’s surprising in such a cultivated landscape there are still so many rampant animals roaring around – deer ran past me, hares sat on quiet roads…who knew I was about to eat them? I also had a glass of the region’s famed 2001 Brunello di Montalcino (7 euro/glass) and tried the 2000 for good measure -putting the miles of vineyards to the test.. If you were to find yourself in Montelcino, I thoroughly recommend the Albergo di Giardino on via Cavour, and the owner, Mario, also has a few self-contained apartments in town as well. There was no breakfast, so it was two brioche (croissants to the rest of the world) and two cappucinos at the bar, where you had to elbow out the road all the old men knocking back shots of red wine to get your breakfast.The hilltop town is riddled with picturesque corners and even more picturesque old people, and walking down its flanks the next morning toward the ancient Roman baths village of Bagno Vignoni, the sun was finally making a show, and I spotted this old guy tending his geraniums. “I am a journalist…” I started in my slummy Italian, before he interrupted. “You want photograph me?” He’s done this before, I thought… then I papparaz’d him.

May

Old gold in Toscano

I now know why Milano Centrale railway station smells like a large urinal: because the toilets cost E1 entrance! We were all titillated with the news that it cost a pound to ‘spend a penny’ in London’s Harrods, but this is not quite the same experience. It even has electronic gates like the metro stations.

The next leg of the Italian trip is a walk through Tuscany. The train journey from Milano to Buonconvento in southern Tuscany was the first day of drizzling rain that miraculously held off during Milan’s design festival, much of which was open to the elements.

Encouragingly, even the locals on the regional train bound for Sienna don’t know the starting town of Buonconvento. Perhaps it really is undiscovered. My scepticism radar is switched on high, though…

Ahhh, lovely, lovely Italy. Blessed is the country that gives hope to those of us plagued by the advent of aging. It’s a land where short, fat old people are papparazzi’d by amateur photographers in the narrow streets.

To illustrate: I’m standing at the atmospheric medieval gates of bucolic Buonconvento’s when the stout backsides and black dresses of two old ladies prove too much, and they are snapped relentlessly by a bevy of tourists at as they chat about the things old Italian ladies chat about – flowers in the church, grandchild one-upmanship, Sex and the City…

The places to go for internet on this trip included a very nice bar in Montelcino that sells the local superstar wine, Brunello de Montelcino, by the glass in a range of vintages. Unfortunately, it also came with the resident barfly, Massimo, who tried to ply me with cheap pro secco and stand behind my shoulder to watch me working. If he didn’t have a few ‘roos loose in the top paddock, I would have smacked his chops.

May

Close encounters

The crush of the design precinct ZonaTortona was so great, it took 15 minutes to walk the tiny footbridge from the railway tracks to via Tortona the other night. The crush was mighty. The man behind me was squished to me a level of closeness normally associated with three dates and dinner.

Never have I seen such an obsession with design. Last year, it was amazing to see some queues into the public exhibitions during Melbourne Design Week but this took it to a whole new level, with hundreds on the streets drinking (but never drunk) and eating panini (that’s Italian for toasted ham and cheese rolls), dancing and snapping photographs of each other.

There are so many art exhibitions and design galleries, one phone company has launched an application just to let you download the day’s events, hence this guy who was having fun posing outside one of the 400-odd events.

Apr

Milan: passion for passion…and fashion

What to wear today: shall I choose the black outfit, or the black outfit? The question asked by a thousand designers in Milan each morning for the past week. Interestingly, the people of Milan are not adverse to uber-bright colour. There were plenty of canary yellow accessories and memorably, yesterday, a woman walked past me in a short black skirt with thick, tomato-soup red stockings on her long legs. They really were the most spectacular red. It was a sight to behold. Girls mix it up with plenty of sneakers and stripy long socks – just by being in Milan makes them edgy, whereas in other cities, they’d be dubbed walking fashion crimes. Boys are immaculately turned out, as is the young Italian man’s want, with perfectly pressed shirts turned up neatly at the sleeve to expose plenty of jewellery, large sunglasses, a coiffed ‘do and a pastel jumper knotted at the neck. The look is complete with the girlfriend’s large handbag. It’s also funny after spending months in such a publicly polite society as Egypt to see couples pashing furiously in any spot they deem fit – say, on the way up the stairs, leaving people behind waiting while they finish exchanging throat secretions. They operate in groups on the metro platforms, everyone’s jaws working simultaneously in the pursuit of romance.

Apr

Conversation from Milan during design week

Conversation1:
Me: Can you suggest somewhere good to eat around here (in the design precinct Zona Tortona)?Design fetishist: Sure Go down via Savona, past the garden full of Dedon furniture, and turn right. Conversation 2: ‘Dark Matter’ by Wyssem and Cécile Nochi. The blackest and most humorous display around, the signature piece of this display of sculptural objects is a biodegradable, 100 percent cashmere body bag, also conveniently available in reusable acrylic. “We are all dark matter,” Lebanese designer Wyssem Nochi told me, in an intense fashion. “And when we decompose, what’s left becomes human consciousness.” Wins points for the most original conversation at Milan ‘09. http://www.wyssemnochi.com/

Apr

Designs on life

You may or may not know, but I’m in Milan at the moment, at the Milan Design Fair. It. Goes. Off. Officially goes off.

There are 400 events on this week, from cocktail parties to art gallery launches. Apparently this number is down on last year, thanks to boring credit crunches.

I think I have second-day blues: I feel totally overwhelmed and have barely touched the surface. Last night, I narrowly avoided putting my drink on a Mark Newson marble table in an art gallery. Luckyyyyyyyy. If yesterday was the day of emerging designers and weird protoypes, today was the big designers: Starck, Urquiola, Jasper Morrison. Had a lot of fun in Edra, Moroso and Kartell.

By the bye…
I loved the Pudelskern rung made from Tyrol sheep wool by a group of young Tyrol based designers. Ditto Chiara Lampignami lights. Gorgeous in an iridescent finish that changes from copper to green to purple. Both are very new on the market, from designers in the design incubator that is iSalone Satellite.

Talking Points
Campana Bros new Cipria sofa in faux fir, like a series of big fluffy marshmallows. EVERYONE was getting photographed on it. So I did too. I will post a link and show you that I am bucking the trend of designer black: how can everyone talk about inspiration and innovation when they are always wearing top to toe black. Today I wore white trousers and a red tunic/blouse and wheeled my red press bag – THE SAME RED. WE MATCHED.

The Him & Her chair, designed by Fabio Novembre for Casamania, takes ‘moulding to the human form’ to a new level, don’t you think?

And finally, Objects for Obama was an exhibit by an American design college, hinged around a series of key words he used in his campaign like Diplomacy, Honesty etc. It was one of the few seriously funny gigs in this massive fair. Nuff said.

HOT WORD: upcycling. It is where you recycle something, but add extra value, like turning a car tyre into a woven rug.

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