Deliberate Deplorable and Disgusting: 3D
I recall, that long ago I set out to plot for you my passage through Europe with special reference to the three D's, Drinking, Dining and Defecating. Though I may have mentioned these in my ramblings I recognise now that I never concentrated on these important, I may say essential, aspects of daily life and I set out now to rectify this omission.
As all Australians now know Bangkok is the capital of the country with the world's freshest and I dare say finest cuisine. Of course the food was splendid. The drinking was international, Heineken, Becks, Peroni etc. I didn't try any Mekong Whisky this time though not only because I'd had enough before. As for defecating it is probably unfair to others to judge on the basis of such a short stay but adding this to my substantial previous experience of that town I have no hesitation in bestowing my five star rating as befits such a civilised part of the world.
I wish I could be as positive about London which I had been raised to believe to be if not the cradle of civilisation at least the babysitter. With a penchant for meats, pies and other baked goods immediately familiar to our Australian appetite I was disappointed by the quality or lack thereof. It seemed that people sustained themselves on third rate pizzas and curries reserving scotch eggs and black pudding for special daring events. The local ales and lagers are deplorable, undrinkable, fit only for animal consumption. This is highlighted by the locals almost complete abandonment of the local drops in favour of the previously mentioned internationals and Fosters which judging by the signage has a large market share.
It would be nice to give them one out of three but unfortunately when I went underground where most pub and restaurant locate their WCs I was always reminded of the age of this city. The smell of death and defecation could not be cleansed by water which flows happily down but struggles, indeed ponds and swamps with up. The worst facility of the whole trip was at a pub in Camden where it seemed even the locals were so repulsed that they could go no farther than the door to relieve themselves of their loads. I'm sorry, minus one point five stars. I wouldn't blame you for not reading on but it may hearten you to know that it never gets worse.
Galway was little better though not so underground not such an urban mass. More rural where the water ran free in massive volumes. I don't recall anything to disgusting and the pub culture provided ample availability of venues as it does in London and Sydney. Guinness saved their stakes on the drink front, no one would argue with that but the food was deplorable. Fried chicken wings, Pizza and cottage pie sounded good at the first pub but when we discovered this to be the staple of all, at any time of day, well yeck! All that Guinness and not a beef an Guinness pie to be found. Two and a half stars is the best I can do and that probably owes a lot to ancestral bias.
In Paris we first began to understand that we should not go without going. The absence of pubs meant that the facilities were far fewer and less public. Alongside this we were introduced to the continental habit of enquiring in face of an order for alcohol if sir/madam would like water. With or without gas it was always an appropriate question and always answered in the affirmative. I thought they could have asked would sir/madam like to go at the point of bill paying, such a reminder would have been welcom, but perhaps they thought it might be ambiguous and unrewarding.
I don't recall much about Paris cuisine except for a delightful luncheon at the foot of Montmartre and even then I don't recall what I ate except that it wasn't chicken wings or Pizza. On the drink front I was left to wonder just what the Parisian got off on. Champagne cost just what it cost in London or Australia where we have excellent imitations for a great deal less. Is Parisian pride in their Champagne so great that they don't care that they cannot afford it? Don't they know that it's only the first drink that counts? Do they only have one drink? Are they all lost in a haze of Absinthe? I don't know but I'll give them a generous two and a half also.
Only a fool would be optimistic of the sewerage systems of Venice. If water could be persuaded to flow upward it would have been here that it's gullibility was exposed. Despite this I found no particular problem in this city so devoted to tourism. There was an unmistakable funk in the atmosphere but this was well modified by the freshness of salt spray. The food was unimaginative and unmemorable, the drink international and average. Two stars.
Luca on the other hand, the home of Puccini, is well above sea level and obviously naturally drained. Our accommodations had excellent bathroom facilities and the most complex window joinery details I have ever witnessed. We were always invited to drink water with our wine but had to rely on our own recognisance to relieve ourselves of the same before leaving behind the opportunity. The alternative of course was to order another drink at another venue and thus gain access to their facility but you can of course see how important it was to stay ahead in this regime. It's probably partly due to this that in spite of many delicious meals elsewhere, we established here for the first and only time a local. The Luccadrento (easily located if you have a compass) in the piazza San Ferdiano just north of the famous piazza Anfiteatro.
Obvious other influences were the discovery of Prosecco, clever Italy's answer to Champagne, Aperello which when mixed with Prosecco and Gin produced a delicious late night revival, and the Welsh boys, gay or not who proved excellent company into the early hours of the next day. You can see that I'm going to give Luca top marks for drink and I'm pretty partial to the food also. With no complaints about defecation which owing to the semi rural; nature of the environment could in an emergency be taken care of easily, by men at least, behind some tree, Luca will receive four stars. Congratulations Luca.
Amalfi would change my opinion of all that came before. No problem with plumbing here where our perfectly drained cliff side accommodations was the first to presented us with a bidet. This proved a very useful rinse tub when the local laundromat turned out to be closed for three weeks due to a death in the family. Without any defecation problem, the only real tribulations were with inclement weather and the attitudes local bus drivers. We soon realised that the best way to deal with this was to escape rain squalls in local restaurants where we dined economically on pizzas so delicious I'd never thought possible. Even the local bus stop cafe featured this delight though not with the frequency we would have desired.
If after dining it still seemed that our heads would be wet we would adjourn to bars where patrons grateful for our cosmopolitan presence would give up their best chairs and tables from which we, unused to their drink now pay later system, would drunkenly leave, bill unpaid, to peals of embarrassed laughter all round. It was thus fortified that we found it no hardship, even in a persisting drizzle, to ignore the arrogant bus drivers and experience the thrill of walking home along the dangerous romantic Amalfi coastline.
So you see I am forced to give Amalfi five stars and recognise in the foreknowledge of what is to come that I am going to have to amend the old five star rating system. Lucky for me there are many more and if you doubt this then take my challenge to go somewhere dark one evening and attempt to count them.
Rome was as close to the pleasure dome that Kubla Kahn decreed as anywhere I've been. Quite aside from It's extraordinarily well recorded history and institutions as old as this history it has a marvellous modern, Fellini style. Against this background I want you to imagine our spacious marble floored accommodations on the grand V. Princ. Eugeina just off Vittorio Emanuele park and only a few blocks from Roma Termini Rome's rather grand Central Station for those who can't understand the lingo. Sounds good eh but the best is yet to come in the shape of a menu that any literate Australian can read with wines including the afore mentioned Prosecco ever so accessible. Yes in the event of the outbreak of a third world war there are few places I can imagine better in which to draw ones last scorching breath.
Rome's worst was a sumptuous feast presented with panache by waiters who seemed to find in my entertainment their raison d'être. If there were blocked sewers I never saw or smelt them. I noted that the Romans exposed their ruins to the blazing sun potentially turning even the catacombs into a wholesome environment. London might like to look at this formula as opposed to their build over policy. Oh wait, I forgot, no blazing sun.
Rome has to get nine and a half stars and I don't know why not that extra half , or how ever many in this new and as yet unlimited environment, except perhaps for the sense of authenticity a half point adds. I loved Rome.
Perhaps the Italian experience made me over confident for when I arrived in Seville I hit a wall. The wine was the best part of my first meal and I think it was beer. I have recollections of deep fried still raw chook, chicken would be too kind, and confusion. I had a clear recollection that the answer to the Question "What's the food in Spain like?" was always "um great, they just serve it with drinks". Unfortunately I didn't properly comprehend this message. I kept going to bars/restaurants and ordering food from menus I didn't understand, when I should have been ordering a glass of the house special and enjoying the learning experience, not to mention the cuisine that would accompany it.
IN Seville I knew I was surrounded by Paella, Albondigas and all those other yummy tapas dishes along with wines, especially my favoured reds, to match any I had known but I couldn't figure the combination on the lock. I remember wandering on a 'food crawl' I suppose, well hung over after our long night out on photography shoots with Kell and Cat, but never finding the perfect cure. The bar with the water mist came closest but not for its food nor the excitement of being photographed for the local paper. Who knows, maybe we were being snapped as before shots for a local medical or cosmetic journal.
It was on this morning that I had my worst ever WC experience at what looked like a respectable cantina. Things had obviously become frisky the previous evening as the strike plate for the barrel bolt was missing along with the portion of architrave it had previously been attached to. Add to this inconvenience the fact that the timer on the light come exhaust fan in this otherwise dark as a dungeon environment was operating on a fifteen second cycle, hardly enough time to get your pants down bearings. Without light emitting to warn outsiders of occupation or a lock to keep them back from their constitutional morning cycle I was forced to try with outstretched arm or foot to hold back the barbarian horde. Not the calm one needs to conduct morning ablutions I assure you.
It wasn't till our last day in Grenada that we finally learned, at Jack's telephone urging, to merely order wine for breakfast and delight in the accompanying tasty curry. Yes Curry, these are cosmopolitan people. Of course with only one day to experiment we went too hard and poor Alice deposited most of this days food and wine into the toilet of our delightful en suite compartment on the train to Barcelona.
I'm Giving southern Spain a fuzzy three and a half to four and accept that some of the blame for this low score rests firmly on my dumb tourist, should know better, shoulders.
The first tentative meal in Barcelona was neither all good nor all bad. The half bottle of wine I had to accompany it proved my theory. The first glass was like kerosene, the last was bliss. My overall recollection of wining dining and defecating in this wonderful city, without reference to non existing notes, will score it well. I do recall a sumptuous hour long paella outdoors on the Ramblas on the afternoon of our departure. Overall I think this modern entertaining city has everything that the only rivals I have any knowledge of, Sydney and Melbourne have and much more. I'm giving it seven stars and now you know where I place my own home on this gauge.
From here it was back to London and what more can I say? Well I suppose I should mention my visit to Harrods where for the sake of research I had to visit the WC. The first thing I noticed was the congestion of others researching this topic, it was at least as popular as any other part of the store. I was impressed by the hyper cleanliness and general polish provided by the white gloved frock coated attendants. I was equally delighted by the linen and selection of colognes, at least a dozen.
On the other hand I had to wonder what it was like for the Sheiks smoking their hookahs outside the cafes across the road. Did they too experience the stench of death and rot in underground WCs or were there here enough white gloved cologne dispensers to spare them that inconvenient memory of their fate?
posted by O'Keefe Family @ 2:36 PM
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