My wife once said this to my 23 year-old son about his budding relationships ….

“Before you make a commitment to the girl you think you might want to spend your life with you should travel together.  When you travel you replace the responsibilities and hassles that can weigh you down in every day life with the excitement of navigating through different cultures and foreign lands.  If you don’t get along in circumstances when you’re relaxed, happy and wide-eyed with wonder then you likely never will”.

The second and third sentences in that quote are actually my expansion of Jacki’s point.  Jacki doesn’t talk like that, especially to Nick.  She and Nick are on a less verbal mother-son wavelength that I can only try to reduce to writing.   Nevertheless I like to think that Jacki is, of course, thinking about our relationship when she says things like this and that would be heartwarming … if it were true.

Here’s my version of the theory about travel and relationships:  women will find out everything they need to know about men when they travel with them; therefore, traveling with a man allows a woman to more easily adjust to the stupendous compromises they must make when she actually has to live with one.

I should however point out that it’s on the woman if she is deceived in judging a man by how easy he is to travel with …  let’s bullet point a few examples of potential misunderstandings:

• while traveling men frequently use separate restrooms so it doesn’t matter if they don’t put down the toilet seat,
• while traveling men have to keep their all stuff in one small confined space, namely a piece of luggage, and not scattered all over the house,
• while traveling men can’t spend hours watching ESPN.   In Thailand anyway.   Here it is important for the woman making the call on a particular man to take note of what he actually does spend hours watching while in Thailand.
• lastly, travel is an enterprise in which you divide the planning and research and then the everyday decisions about where to go and what to do…  equally !        ‘ppllllpphhttt’  … ( whoops that was me spitting up orange juice through my nostrils).  The only thing I do in preparing for a trip abroad is pack my own clothes  …  using the helpful list Jacki gives me.    About packing:  Jacki’s luggage is a marvel of forethought and organization.  She employs plastic bags with air valves that you can sit on to reduce the volume of, say, the down coat she will bring to Maui just in case it cools off.  She also uses these little zip-around mesh containers that divide your stuff into alphabetical categories which fit like puzzle pieces into her luggage which she then organizes by country;   so if she wants her umbrella in Uruguay, there it is.       Me ?  What I pack depends entirely on the size of the luggage piece I choose.   I have two choices at my disposal:  the small gray one which holds just enough to go to the gym for the afternoon;  and the big maroon one which holds more than enough to invade Normandy.  I usually choose the big maroon one which I pack until it is full.  It will then weigh in around 75 pounds what with the dartboard and lawn chair I packed because I had the room.  I too sit on my luggage, not to economize volume but to get the zippers to engage.   Here is a packing tip for guys:  roll everything into tight balls as it saves space.  The only problem is that you won’t recognize your own clothing rolled-up because it does not look like it does at home stuffed into dresser drawers or piled up on the closet floor.  You will likely have to unroll it all find the Red Sox t-shirt you want to wear to the Louvre.   It is unlikely that you will then re-roll everything after you have opened your luggage for the first time; consequently for the rest of your trip the inside of your bag will look just like your closet floor, actually making things much easier to find.  The mess your clothes will be in after opening your bag the first time also makes it more likely you will leave articles of clothing behind unnoticed in various hotel rooms thereby lightening your load.   I call this organic packing.  You can learn more on my travel website as soon a Jacki gets it up and running.

Back to relationships.  While traveling women still get to make all the important daily decisions.  In a foreign land men must be completely okay with this concept because they generally have no idea where they are or how they got there;  and remember it’s your wife who knows where your return airline tickets are at all times and therefore how you are going to get home … to watch ESPN.

Disclosure: I am expanding this latter point to include all men even though I am referring to me because I believe I am generally correct

Before I leave this subject once and for all I offer these two photographs to support my conviction that the design of the Eiffel Tower was directly influenced by French Lingerie.

Now …  see what I mean !?

Read Julie’s post on travel as a “relationship test drive”!

I have several Grand Theories about things and one of them is that wherever the French have been in the world they transform the cuisine.  I have been to a few of those places:  Vietnam and Laos, the old French Indochina.   Thailand by association.  French Polynesia.  Montreal.   Even New Orleans.   All great places for food  …  and bread.   I would bet that if the French had invaded your home town a hundred years ago and then they were inevitably driven out by say, the local PTA,  you would nevertheless be left with three French restaurants and, for the next century, all the townsfolk would be walking around carrying baguettes under their arms.

I had high expectations of dining out in Paris.  It is true that every restaurant in which we dined was loaded with charm and ambience;  but really, anytime all the people sitting around you are speaking French while you eat, that’s ambience,  n’est-il pas ?

Here’s the thing about the food though,  if you’ve cleaned up your diet brace yourself to be confronted with the likes of  …  ‘confit’, duck preserved in it’s own fat then cooked in its own fat and served with potatoes cooked in the same fat;  or terrine, a cross between fruitcake and spam;  or cassoulet, a casserole stuffed with white beans and the meat of whatever on two or four legs happens to be wandering around the backyard.  And don’t even talk to my wife about foie gras and the latest outrage among foodies,  The Goose Inquisition.  This is Crusader food.   You actually are introduced to forcemeats.

The first French cookbook dates back to Louis XIV …. Le Cuisinier Royal so that you know I actually researched this.   Its revelation was the joy of cooking with pork fat.  It was then updated in 1712.  Not since apparently.

Lest you think I am le rube,   I know I am being flip and ignoring the refinements that followed from the influences of iconic French chefs like Marie-Antoine Caremel,  Escoffier  and, later, the nouvelle cuisine of Paul Bocuse.  The evolution was away from heavy sauces and more reliance on the natural flavors.   Americans like me, who keep on-hand an arsenal of stuff in bottles and shakers to dump on food before I taste it,  find nouvelle cuisine dishes …well, subtle.

“Hows your meal”.

“I don’t know  it tastes like … fish.”

“It is fish”

“How do you say    ‘Got any lemon pepper’ ?”

When you studied American history did you learn who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s chef’s were  ?  The French know this kind of thing.

This is just the salad (yes, we started with the salad).  Looking closely you will see  two rounds of warm goat cheese (le chevre) , only slightly smaller than hockey pucks,  but much tastier  …  but then I ever eaten a hockey puck prepared by a French chef.

From my luggage, recently back from Ibezia, I sprung my faux oil-skin belted trench coat inspired by the Pink Panther movies, which I will wear to the Eiffel Tower with my new pencil-thin moustache.

I don’t know about you, but I never thought that much of the Eiffel Tower. I actually grew up with the Eiffel Tower in my living room. When I was a kid my Aunt Helen brought back an Eiffel Tower statuette from Paris where she lived in the 1930’s, a time when the Nazis were in town. They hadn’t invaded yet, but they did come to shop, alongside, apparently, my Aunt Helen. Her mini-Eiffel Tower gift to us kids was silvery so right away the wrong color and it sat forever on our nic-nac shelf, tacky even to a six-year old. It was also boring and not fun to play with, so I never thought much of the Eiffel Tower. I should quickly mention here that my Aunt Helen was not herself a Nazi. Anyway it always looked to me like a big radio tower.

Now I have a somewhat different opinion. La Tour Eiffel is tall, elegant and beautifully proportioned; and while it’s a mass of iron, it appears light and almost delicate. From a distance the mesh of steelwork looks like ? I have to say it … fine lace and frill. Mssr Eiffel was evidently inspired by French Lingerie. The way the Tower gracefully flares at the bottom, it looks like it could stick out a leg and toss its head back. Kind of like … a Parisian woman .

This has to be the last of my posts on Parisian women. Next we move onto the Inquisition.

Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.