Month: July 2009

New England fare

After finishing up in Newport, John drove on to Hyannis, MA. He’s been doing all the driving lately because the bridges are really high and numerous around here. The Pell Bridge leading into Newport is really, really high and rates on the Maryscarymeter up there with the Bay Bridge leading into Annapolis, MD. (Top bridge is the one going into Charleston, SC)

Since it is our anniversary eve we wanted to have a nice dinner eating something that is traditional to New England. We went to the Roadhouse Cafe in Hyannis and had baked scrod with a cracker crumb topping, baked potato and veg. We started with a beef carpaccio. We each had a glass of champagne to start with and shared a bottle of Steele chardonnay. It was all really yummy. The fish was just so buttery and gelatinous. Yay for cold water fish! We got a complimentary dessert to celebrate our anniversary and the whole dinner (except for the foil wrapped potato) was a great success!

This morning we got up early and walked to the cute Red Bank train station to catch a train to NYC. I continue to be impressed with how pretty Red Bank and the whole Monmouth County area is looking. Maybe when you are a kid growing up you just don’t notice or don’t care. But I can really see why people would want to live here. Not me. But other people.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

We took a cab from Penn Station to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s about 50 blocks and the cab driver did a masterful job jockeying his way through the really heavy traffic. The Museum is way too large to see all of in one day. We decided to concentrate on Early Renaissance art, Netherlandish genre painting, Rembrandt and we added a little Egyptian art at the end.

Paintings by Rembrandt

There was a whole room filled with the glowing paintings of Rembrandt.  [And by the way, the neighboring rooms had a number of Vermeers, the most famous of which is the Woman with a Water Jug.  But I preferred Portrait of a Young Woman nearby.  It’s a riff on his Girl with a Pearl Earring (of novel and movie fame), but with a more characterful (i.e. less beautiful) subject.  — John]

When did they forget how to paint?

This painting was a revelation. It is from the 2nd century. AD. In Egypt the cultures of the ruling Greeks and Egyptians had melded and the Greeks were being mummified. A portrait of the deceased was placed in the linen wrappings. This is of a freed slave. When you think of the faces painted in the 13th and 14th centuries, they are not nearly as lifelike as this young man’s. I found this amazing.

Currying favor

Tonight we went to Siam Garden, a restaurant which had gotten good reviews locally. We looked on the menu for our favorite dish from Sri Thai in Dublin. It’s a dish that is fried tofu, eggplant, onions and basil in a yummy sauce. We didn’t see it but there was a dish that had fried rice with tofu and basil. We said to the server, “Hi, we’re from CA and we have this dish at home that has fried tofu in it. I see you have fried tofu on your menu, could you put it in this dish?” No. “How about eggplant?” No. Okay. So just bring it the way you make it and John will have the spicy vegetarian curry. Both dishes were so spicy that it was hard to taste anything else. In addition to having Thai chilies in them , they also had pickled jalapenos sliced up.

New rule: Never go to a Thai restaurant that has Siam in its name.

And no more Thai food until we get back to California!

The trouble with living in a place is that you tend to not visit its historical landmarks. I decided that today I would treat John to the best of Monmouth County starting with the Twin Lights that look out over Sandy Hook and the entrance to the New York Harbor. We did a lot today and I’ve sort of shortchanged everything. I am hoping John will read this and flesh out all my entries.

[Lighthouses are really cool and this is one of the coolest of all.  Many firsts here since the first version in 1828: first use of Fresnel lens in the US, first electric lighthouse, first experiments by radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.  It sits on the highest Eastern coastal bluff south of Maine (200 ft.) and its light could be seen 22 miles out to sea. The view of New York was exceptional today.  –John]

One twin

The trouble with the Twin Lights is that they are too far apart to fit both of them in the picture without rolling down the side of the cliff. So, trust me, the other light is just to the right and looks exactly the same.

[This the 1862 version of the lighthouse.  The earlier version was just two towers without the connecting building.  –John]

No salt, radio

We stopped at Gus’s Restaurant in Manalapan, NJ for a little lunch. Truly I did not eat all the food pictured. This was the blandest matzoh ball soup ever. It also had strange fluffy matzoh balls.  [Maybe this is because Gus’s is really a Greek restaurant.  Perhaps Greeks do not salt their matzoh balls just as the Tuscans refuse to salt their bread? –John]

Ecumenical meal

After the matzoh ball soup we sampled Gus’s spinach pie with filo crust and Greek salad.