lairdandjonelle

Today was kinda a loser; we had to go to Shiphol for our covid test and to find out new situation since Icelandair transferred us to KLM — it took almost 2 hours at KLM travel support before our number was called to talk to someone, plus more money to get economy plus with them since that did not transfer from Icelandair. Oh well. And, sadly, we won’t have a stopover in Iceland to run to the duty free shop to buy Wild Gin — bummer, that! But we get into New York a little earlier; we have reservations at the TWA hotel (at this point, what’s does it matter that it is an expensive hotel — convenience is everything!), right next to Jet Blue for tomorrow’s final trip home (well, almost final, we still have to drive from ABQ to Santa Fe probably after midnight). I hope Patrick and Alison, you read this so we won’t freak you out when we get home.

Yesterday’s final day (Day 7) at Floriade didn’t disappoint — we saw a couple of gardens we hadn’t seen, a couple of lovely put-up-in-a-day vacation homes, a very avant garde immersive art thing and a lovely exhibit of what will happen to the Floriade grounds — I want a plot there! There are ground plots and there will also be houses built quayside and floating houses (all 3 bed/2 bath) that will be for rent. Everything has to be built to their green standards, but there are no restrictions on architectural style — that could be interesting. We talked to a couple who already live in the memory care building — they had the coolest side-by-side two-person bike; three wheeler, I think, two sets of handlebars, but only one attached to the front wheels (you know that was Laird, not me, who noticed that, right?). The first two (or second two? — the two above the ground floor) stories are already occupied; the building is five stories. It comes with its own beautiful, walled-in raised-bed garden area, all planted and looking beautiful. If it all comes to fruition, it is going to be an amazing city district. Alexandra, as a city planner, you really need to come see this — you have until Oct, the 6th I think.

One of the gardens we saw was a chakra garden. There were “art” poles that started with red and went in a semi-circle around to purple, I think. Around them were flowers planted in corresponding colors, very cool. Another garden had the vacation homes, one was up on enclosed struts, that held solar batteries and other utility-type stuff (they were locked so we couldn’t see in), basically one triangular shaped room, half of which was raised cushions that serve as bed/couch/lounge, and the other half dining table with a kitchenette and then a small oblong bathroom in back. That one was all made of experimental, or at least alternative, building materials. The other one, much bigger, was a more traditional house that had been future-proofed. Nice size open kitchen/living room, small bathroom, a very small kid’s bedroom (mostly taken up with twin bed with an attached high bunk (sized for a very small child) and whatever was underneath it; then a bedroom that was big enough for bedside tables, queen bed and closets. We had seen a little village of tiny homes earlier in another part of the park, but these were the only ones that were furnished, which made them much more interesting.

I would tell you about the immersive experience — sculptures that were “asparagus men” (don’t know what the artist called them, but they were asparagus with hands and legs, one holding a briefcase) — then three animated films by three different artists, but I’ll be damned if I know what was being conveyed. I get (well, not “get” — I read) that they were artists’ interpretations of relationship between nature and humans in the new world that is coming as a result of climate change (????) — will humans and natures come closer or further away? The questions were asked “How will nature change in the future? Technology is massively changing our planet, and our relationship to nature is hanging in the balance due to climate change. What can we expect? Will nature and technology become more and more alike, perhaps? Will we get to the point where humans have to wonder how wild nature can become? Is there actually still a place for humankind? In the exhibition NaturAlly: Wild futures, 5 artists present challenging future visions for the wilderness that awaits us. They discover new worlds, investigate new life, and merge with the fierce nature that is taking charge once more. . .or is even taking over our planet.” I understand the questions; I just didn’t understand the answers.

So, we will have to do more pondering in the months and years ahead as humans hurl themselves into the end wall of Manifest Destiny — will we still be shouting, “We have dominion, dammit, we have dominion, God gave us dominion over everything!” when we crash into that that wall? Floriade was a bit of a bright bit of hope in the bleak possible future. I just wish we knew that there were American futurists/scientists/thinkers/planners with the kind of spirit and verve and ideas that were displayed here.

I’ll download some of the vacation home pics to Jonelle’s computer and send them along in a separate blog post. Of course, we owe you all a bunch of pictures. I’m finally figuring out how much picture editing I can do on the phone itself before uploading to the computer and then to the blog. Stay tuned.

Alright, everyone within the reading of my fingers, GET PLANE TICKETS, HOTEL RESERVATION AND A PASS FOR THE FLORIADE — you have until October, but you really, really need to come see this! Every day, we find something new that just blows us away — we are so astounded at the thought/design that went into this place! You need to come see it, you need to come support the kind of forward thinking that is involved in this! Today, we discovered the Flevoland (that’s the province that Almere is in) building, discussing their agriculture; apparently it is sort of the breadbasket of Netherlands. They had a virtual reality experience of being in a hot air balloon, flying over the province, showing off its special attributes, fishing, agriculture (like the World Potato Capital — who knew???), cities — it was AMAZING. Neither of us has had any experience with virtual reality and we were gobsmacked. We don’t play any VR games, so it was all new to us. I was surprised at the number of wind machines, not just in the sea, but on land as well. We were so enchanted, before we left, we went back for another go at it.

The whole place was pretty empty of people — don’t know whether it was because it was Sunday, the last day of the holiday or because it was dark skies and very windy and cold, but I felt so bad that there were so few people — you all need to come! We came to have another go at the magnificent meal at The Dutch! — it was just as perfectly fantastic as the other time and I had pretty much the same things as last time, except for the parsley ice cream; didn’t need more of that — definitely not as good as rye bread ice cream!

Well, we have made some progress in that we have gotten the pictures transferred from our phones to the computer. Now we just need to get them to here. But I had too many glasses of wine, so it might not be tonight. Maybe Laird — he’s the technology in this relationship. I’ve included three pics sort of at random. The first one is of the floating trees — planted in buoys salvaged from north sea service. I managed to put labels on the other two.

Well, really, anyone can chime in: tell us how to download phone pics to computer — Laird thought he knew but isn’t having any luck. Iphone to HP.

OK, first thing we did yesterday was to go back to the Innovations building and read everything there that was in English. They had a poster of Endangered Foods: coffee, potatoes, bananas, avocados and fish — that was a sad-making exhibit to say the least. The food exhibit, called Bistro In Vitro — speculative cultured meat dishes that might be on our plates in the future — is one of so many examples at the Floriade of future thinking — in this case, forward thinking on drugs, I’m pretty sure, ’cause wouldn’t you have to be stoned out of your mind to think up celebrity bites???? They were exploring different ways to manufacture food (let’s not call it food, let’s call it “nourishment” (and I definitely mean the quote marks!)) through different processes that don’t involve land and whole plants and animals. One way is the use of stem cells. Someone thought up “knitted meat”, a way to make extensive strings of meat muscle fiber not limited by the size of an animal. They actually cultured a “meat thread” made from long strands of muscle tissue and, on a special knitting machine, crafted a deep red meat thread into a steak — looked like hamburger meat to me, but it was formed to spell out “MEAT” 2″ high and 5″ from one continuous strand at least 50′ long. Another idea is to make cheese in a stainless steel “cow”. See-through sashimi, looking like a transparent lotus blossom, is sashimi grown without blood vessels, nerves or organs — they say “a nearly invisible meat with a pure, delicate flavor. The transparent fugu sashimi has been developed from meltingly tender bluefin tuna, but is even fattier and tastier than the original tuna.” Hmmmmm. The invitro oysters were very weird looking indeed. Also shown were dodonuggets, made through advanced genetic sequencing and tissue engineering from a dried specimen of a dodo in the Oxford university natural history museum — “taste what the first sailors ate when they visited Mauritius in 1598”. Brilliant thinking, all, really, but still creepy as hell. Other ideas: making plane parts out of mycellium; making leather out of mangos, with less processing, energy and waste, and no toxins, than current practice; replacing dyes with seaweeds, on and on. Laird knows more about the building materials in the next building. Incredible advances in innovative building materials…

YAY, our second fantastic memorable meal! A two-star Michelin chef created the 3-course menu with wine pairings. First, a glass of prosecco to welcome us to the table. First course, I had Jeruzalem (Dutch spelling) artichoke with Dutch shrimp and belper knolle (?? the menu showed a flower symbol next to the item) ; Laird had tenderloin tataki with chimichurri on top, turnip, pear puree on the bottom and snowpea shoot garnish. Second course, I had sea bream on top of asparagus and tandoori butter sauce with the cutest sweet potato art, a little oblong of potato with three small piped mashed sweet potato “hats”, with delicate pea shoots; Laird had Dutch (golden) asparagus with pearl barley, egg yolk and ponzu flakes. Third course, I had parsley ice cream (more like sorbet; I like rye bread ice cream better), lime and bay laurel; Laird had cheesecake with white chocolate, strawberry and basil. I think I’m beginning to like white wine again — all three that I had were amazing. Laird liked his, too. What a great way to spend a couple of hours!

Today, we might go into Amsterdam, we’re not really sure. It’s a do-nothing day, so far.

It is as we expected — fantastic! And I cannot believe that I was so lucky as to pick a hotel that is practically next door to the ferry over to the venue — so much more pleasant than a bus trip! I knew the hotel was in the Almere city center, but when we got off the train, I thought that would be the center and I was kicking myself for not booking into the Best Western or whatever US hotel chain was right there (we mostly try to avoid such places, but there it was, 50 feet from the train station) — as we waited for an Uber ride 15 minutes away. But we got to the Leonardo hotel and walked around and THERE WAS THE FLORIADE FERRY (which I hadn’t even read about) — YAY OUR LUCKY DAY!

The Floriade theme is Growing Green Cities. Several of the buildings are permanent and the whole area will become a residential/business/greenspace district of Almere. One that will remain is the greenhouse — 120 THOUSAND square feet that is now displaying flowers, trees, greenery, veggies and fruits — the very best of the Dutch horticultural industry — but what I mostly remember is the fabulous flowers. We will be boring you all with pictures of flowers for months. They have a huge vertical garden, a term that is confusing because it means what we mostly think of as walls of growing pockets on the sides of buildings AND the innovation of growing food from seed to ready-to-eat on vertical frames that move around so plants can get sun/light and nutrients (or maybe just water, not sure — it’s not hydroponics). In front of the greenhouse is a building that is an agriculture-related university and a couple of its sides are covered with our usual understanding of vertical garden — full of FLOWERS! A whole side of a tall building of FLOWERS! The 60 hectares is divided into districts, the Urban District and Hortus Avenue are the centerpieces, then there is Utopia Island, Green Island and the Eco District. The Urban District has most of the 30 international participants’ spaces — China was probably the best garden by far, with lots of gorgeous furniture, fencing, screening and lovely bridge made from bamboo — and, oh, the plantings! Here also are the buildings (probably not permanent ones; built to be temporary and recycled) housing the amazing innovations that particularly the Netherlands have been working on in building materials; making food out of weird things — way weirder than just algae — to feed the masses when climate change destroys much of the world’s farming ability; energy; other climate change coping strategies. What astonished us most about the innovation work is how far the Netherlands (also Germany) are ahead of the US in terms of coming to terms with the future and the need for new ways of imagining life on a heating planet. Maybe there are innovators is US, but we sure don’t hear much about them and they don’t seem to be celebrated much — and what is being shown at this expo really is amazing. We kept wondering what has happened to the US, which used to be the world leader in “future thinking”.

One VERY creepy food example was called celebrity food — made from the stem cells of your favorite celebrities! UGH! We aren’t sure we understood correctly because we were having a hard time understanding the whole exhibit; much of it not in English — but that’s what it seemed to say! If so, it is one innovation I believe I will not be indulging in. I think we have to go back there and look again.

One of the best things about our two days at the Floriade is we haven’t had to stand in any lines and the only thing we’ve waited for is the hop on/hop off “train”, but that’s mainly because it is the slowest transportation in the history of transportation — Laird says it goes about 3-4 miles an hour, but I believe it is much slower. Not that it matters when you’re on it; only when you are waiting for it to show up. We also get a (one-way) ride on the cable cars each day with our tickets, but we never got there yesterday even though we bought a return ticket. We finally made it today.

I am very disappointed that in 60 hectares there are only TWO gift shops, both of which have run out of things I can get in my luggage, so, alas, looking at a gazillion pictures will have to suffice as your souvenirs. (Note: both gift shops have promised to have deliveries Thursday, so J will have at least one more opportunity to get cool stuff. We also found handmade metal coffee cups in the Turkey pavilion and may go back there tomorrow. Not to mention the fact that they have good looking baklava.)

This is now June 15 — we’ve been back two weeks. I’ve finally managed to download and do rough edits for both the Iceland and the Floriade pics. I’ll put in a some of the Iceland pics here. Let me know if you want more.

Our three days in Iceland were too short, particularly after TWO red-eyes and a whole day in JFK — we finally went to the TWAhotel and got a day tripper room for about 4 hours. Expensive, but at least we got to lie down for awhile and take showers. We haven’t been able to talk ourselves into getting an overnight room on the trip back; it will be over $500, a very silly price for a night, but it IS right next to the Jet Blue terminal. This vacation is so expensive, by the end $500 might not have the shock value it does now. But let’s talk about Iceland: All of you, pay attention: start planning NOW — it is fantastic. You will love it. Yes, it’s expensive, but worth it. Just looking at it is happymaking — it’s gorgeous! We didn’t do anything we had planned to do, like doing the circle tour or the Blue Lagoon (Laird didn’t bring his bathing suit), but we walked around in the city center and did the hop-on/hop-off bus, so we went to the Perlan — guess I would describe it as a geology/natural history museum — learn about Iceland’s making, volcanos and earthquakes, flora and fauna, habitation, northern lights, etc. — went to the whale museum, very informative, but kinda a dud. What we did best was find the Old Iceland restaurant, where we had one dinner and one lunch of some of the best food ever! OMG, Louise, Alexandra, Sandy, Pam, all you other gin drinkers, we have to get Wild Gin by Og Natura — it is THE BEST! Really, it is. I had it in a gin and tonic and then had a cocktail of Brennivin, Iceland’s aquavit, mixed with crowberry liqueur, fresh lemon juice and a splash of rhubarb liqueur cocktail, another OMG — and bjork, a birch tree liqueur (who could even imagine drinking a tree could be soooo gooood?!?) And the food! We had two three-course specials: appetizers of cured salmon, pickled cucumber, dill mayo, rye bread crumbles and smoked trout roe and an extra appetizer of scallops done some spectacular way; then, lamb ribeye and slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, baked parsnips, fried potatoes, beetroots, parsnip puree and demiglace (Laird); and filet of cod, herbs and garlic mashed potatoes, carrots, parsnips and champagne sauce (me). Then brownie (not chocolate), which was roasted oats, toffee, roasted nuts, vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Laird had an after-dinner Iceland coffee, which was birkir and coffee with sugar whipped cream. Really, my eyes crossed at the first sip of gin, and Laird joined in on the first bite of salmon and they didn’t undo until we got back to our apartment. The meal cost over 27,000 kroner, which is somewhere over $200 — maybe higher than the Compound, but probably equivalent to Geronimo’s? What makes it all so astounding is the absolute clean taste everything has — for lunch, we had traditional lamb soup, with rye bread and gorgeous butter — our first encounter with how everyday things taste so different there, so clean, with everything coming from unpolluted soil and water. (We’ll try to put pictures up later; there are computer issues, of course.) Next day, we meandered down towards the harbor and stopped at a cafe for brunch of wild mushroom soup and sourdough bread — again with the remarkable butter. We maundered some more to the hop-on/hop-off and went the whole route, so got a nice idea of Reykjavik. The old houses are lovely, but the apartment buildings are butt-ugly. Most houses have a siding on them that seems like a composite material (of what, no idea) and that siding comes in a multitude of colors; also lots of gingerbread, but not painted like San Francisco. The way they cram houses together is reminiscent of Santa Fe eastside, I assume combination of family property division and living on an island. There are about 366,000 people in Iceland, about 1/3 live in Reykjavik proper; 2/3 live in Reykjavik-suburban Reykjavik. Lots of the island is pretty inhospitable to civilization — great for hiking or adventuring, but not so much for town-building. The most recent national park comprises 14% of the total land area of the country.

Our next great food taste was rye bread ice cream, which is, beyond all expectation, quite delicious. We also went back to Old Iceland for lunch on our last day, but neither of us can remember what we had, just that it was wonderful and we felt so smart to have discovered the place. L ordered something modest for entree to have room for Mama’s rhubarb cake.

On Sunday, we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the airport. I still don’t know if there are any airlines other than Icelandair that flies there because that one has such an overwhelming presence. I can’t remember how long our layover is, but I hope we have time to go to the duty-free shop so I can buy some gin and brennivin to bring home — and maybe something with crowberries. Apparently, every single one of the 29 Icelandair destinations takes off from 7:00 am to 8:00 am. The checkin line was about 200 people long and took about 30 minutes from entry to checkin. Had a flatbread sandwich of egg and bacon. Sounds weird, but was quite good. We can’t even criticize our catch breakfast. Iceland food is magnificent.

Next story, the Floriade, which we did today.