Navigating Mexico City

.

Off-the-beaten-track aficionados, Gary and Lorraine have a blast while beating the crowds in the largest city in the Americas. 

No crowds in the world's second biggest collection of people? 

Yes, we are fully aware of the irony of such a claim.  In a city whose traffic jams are second only to Cairo, whose mass transit system is overloaded, and whose status as national capital means all manner of unwilling pilgrims must come here to get business done (as in Paris, London and Rome, but less efficiently than in the first two), avoiding crowds seems impossible.  But wait, there are ways...

1.  If you need to go someplace, Uber over.  We all have our opinions about the "disruptive" influence of Uber and Lyft (and yes, the IPO tanked), but they have changed life for tourists here.  Our longest ride (over an hour) set us back 6 US dollars, with a generous tip included.  Cars were seldom more than 3 minutes away when ordered, and were clean, with friendly drivers who (of course) knew exactly where you wanted to go.  No trying to hail a taxi, no negotiating fares, no cash required, no confusion about destinations.  And no crowds.

Side note:  yes, the rental bikes and scooters are also here.  Don't take them - riding in a car in this traffic is scary enough!

2. Visit with Frida.  Frida Kahlo's house (El Museo Frida Kahlo) amply demonstrates why she is a true modern day Mexican hero, persevering through every imaginable adversity.  The house not only shows how she and Diego Rivera lived, but showcases a wide range of her art, and a few interesting pieces from his cubist period.    Before you go, make sure you watch (or watch again) the film "Frida" with Selma Hayek - it is close to life and will give you important context.  Given its status as a virtual national shrine, Frida and Diego's house is incredibly popular.  You can buy tickets online, but don't think that will help you avoid the line that runs down the street.  We got our timed tickets for 11:00, but I wish we had chosen a half hour after opening instead - we waited about a half an hour before getting in.  The only people who managed to jump the queue were a tour group with an umbrella-carrying leader, so that might be worth looking into.

After your visit, Tostadas Coyoacán in the indoor street market a couple of blocks away would be an excellent stop, and a show on par with Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Find them on Yelp or Tripadvisor, but for heaven's sake, ask someone directions when you get into the market, or you'll never find them.  Ingredients for the tostadas are piled high like miniature volcanic mountains in front of you, expertly assembled by young chefs who alternate their responsibilities with cajoling passers by into stopping for a bite.  My favorite was the ceviche (and I suffered no ill effects afterwards!).  Yes, it's a bit crowded, but it's fun, and they can always find you a seat.

3. Take the boat.   The canal boats (trajineros) of Xochimilco, in all their faded glory, are a rich example of Mexico City heritage.  Recalling the ancient pre-conquistador history of the city, they represent the commerce in fresh farm goods that was carried by boats through a massive system of canals into the increasingly populous main city of the Mexica people.  Take one of the brightly colored (and slightly down at the heel) boats on a weekday in May, as we did, and you may be the only people on the water, as your gondolier quietly poles his punt through the remaining canals.  Various snacks and drinks are available from other boats you pass along the way, but you are also welcome to bring a picnic, and, if you like, your own music.  On the other hand, you might find yourself coming around a bend and encountering a small mariachi band tuning up on another boat in preparation for your passing.  For the right propina (tip), they'll cruise alongside your boat and play you some fine music.

Keep in mind:  the embarcaderos where you hire the boats are about an hour outside of town by car, and they accept only cash (500 pesos/$30 per hour). More cash is useful if you want to buy food or hire musicians along the way.  The boats can easily accommodate 8-10 people, and bringing along a picnic would be a great idea - a picnic table runs down the middle with benches on either side).  While we had a very quiet and restful "no crowds" experience during the week, we are told that it's party time on Sundays, when Mexican families head out to the canals for family picnics and parties.

4.  Watch politics and art collide.  Diego Rivera's murals in the Palacio Nationale are outstanding examples of his work and a clear view into his politics.  The main work, which graces a grand staircase,  chronicles Mexican history from prehistoric times, through the brutal invasion of the conquistadors, up until the communist worker uprisings that so inspired Rivera, Trotsky, and all of his other friends in the Party.  Other murals capture key aspects of Mexican life and history, such as the pyramids and canals of Moctezuma's day and the tribal wars that cemented the rule of the Mexicas before Cortez.

On the weekend, the Palacio is empty of bureaucrats, and gets very few visitors, so you have the place almost to yourself. A helpful local told us where the unmarked entry door was (at the left of the building as you face it from the main plaza).  On a Saturday when the nearby streets of the Zócalo were packed with people, we waited for a couple of minutes in a line of 5 people, surrendered an ID for the period of our visit (entry is free), and walked in.  Bilingual tour guides ply the queue, but we found the complete English and Spanish descriptions of all the murals to be quite adequate.

5.  Refresh and dine.  The downtown area (Zócalo) has any number of dining options (including a Michelin star or two), but we'll recommend two with reasonably good food, reasonable prices, but to-die-for views. For lunch, try El Mayor, a roof garden with a spectacular view  of the pyramid ruins in the center (Templo Mayor). There is a formal restaurant, which often has a wait list, but also a bar with tapas and light food that has a huge capacity, so you seldom need to wait.  If you're lucky, you'll arrive just as someone leaves a table at the edge, which you can quickly snag and get a truly uninterrupted view of the surroundings.

For dinner, the rooftop of the Gran Hotel de la Ciudad de Mexico is the perfect place, looking out over the plaza, the cathedral, and the Palacio Nationale, all gloriously lit for the night.  We had the extra drama of dining during a crashing thunderstorm, making the scene all the more compelling, but, thanks to the awnings overhead, we never felt a drop.  Reservations are taken, but apparently are seldom needed on a weekday.  And you have the bonus of enjoying the hotel itself on your way up, a stunning example of art nouveau design that might look more at home in turn of the century Paris.    You might well be inspired to pull the waiter aside at the end of a romantic meal and ask, "avez vous un chambre?" (Or, more appropriately, "tienen un habitacion?"). Well, Mr Bond certainly enjoyed the place, however briefly, in "Spectre". 

6. Finally, pick a good neighborhood. While upscale hotels with their knowledgeable concierges can get you every experience you're after, we prefer to get more intimately connected to the city.   Our Airbnb was in beautiful La Condesa, which borders the equally wonderful Roma (now famous thanks to the eponymous film). It was convenient to many destinations, especially the anthropology and art museums, and had a wonderful neighborhood feel, while still being relatively quiet at night.  Parisian-style cafes lined the tree-lined streets, and the rosé wine and craft cerveza flowed freely in a wide range of bars and bistros.  And because the streets were usually filled with people, you felt quite safe - we certainly never had a problem.  We'll be back, that's for sure.

A Ryokan in Santa Fe or Zen and the Art of Road Trip Maintenance

Leave it to dynamic duo and No Crowds reporters, Gary and Lorraine, to find a Japanese-inspired, hot springs mountain hideaway, ten minutes from downtown Santa Fe. I so want to go.

Yes, Gentle Reader, we know.  Santa Fe, in the southwestern high desert of the US, hardly qualifies as a “No Crowds” destination.  After all, it’s been mentioned prominently on “Grace and Frankie”, so clearly the secret’s out.  Not that it is without attractions:  a lively arts and culture scene, great restaurants, the wonderfully weird “Meow Wolf” installation, and the architecturally magnificent open-air opera house, to name a few.  The influence of that most recent famous resident, the American modernist Georgia O’Keeffe, is everywhere.

However, today’s story is about Ten Thousand Waves, an inn and spa built and run in the Japanese Ryokan tradition, high in the hills surrounding the city. In fact, it’s almost a doppelganger for my favorite ryokan in the world, high above the city of Kyoto. (Note:  sadly, Ten Thousand Waves does not have traditional rooms like the one in Kyoto where you sleep on tatami mats on the floor – an oversight that should be corrected).  We managed to snag an evening here thanks to a recent cancellation (everything usually books up weeks in advance.).  

Our evening began with an excellent meal at Izanami, the Japanese/southwestern fusion restaurant, which takes pride in never serving sushi.  The dishes were as creative as you might imagine, from mushrooms we had never heard of, to Wagyu filet mignon that we seared on a hot river rock delivered to our table, to a grilled avocado with a soy reduction sauce. The wine list included sixty odd types of sake, and amazingly, our waiter was knowledgeable enough to tell us about the differences in flavor, production and aging.

As good as the meal was, the high point of the evening came next, at the spa next door. We checked in and were issued our kimonos and ushered to the changing /shower rooms.  Once ablutions were complete, our host led us to the real No Crowds experience - the private Japanese garden I had booked for the two of us.  She introduced us to our huge spa pool, waterfall with cold plunge pool, and sauna, all for our exclusive use, and then left and locked the door behind her.  As the night cooled and the stars came out over our garden, we realized that the zen attitude here was having an impact, and that we really needed a break from the craziness of the news and the world in general.  Not only was every aspect of the operation designed to instill calm, but the management was prescient enough to make sure there was neither wifi nor cell service available in the spa.

If you plan on visiting Ten Thousand Waves, book ahead.  Their website details each of the themed private gardens (as well as public women’s and coed spas) and allows booking of them as well as hotel rooms, massages and treatments, and restaurant reservations.  As latecomers, we were not able to get an outdoor table, but I would highly recommend this, giving you a chance to dine on a deck suspended over the valley below.  As for me, I have acquired a nicely shaped river rock and some grass fed beef tenderloin, to keep us going till we’re able to return.

Skip the Crowds - Cruise the Alaska Marine Highway Instead

When No Crowds began, the idea was simple - focus on ways to escape the hamster wheel of global tourism. This article from No Crowds reporters, Gary Ransom and Lorraine Carulli does exactly that, outlining how to experience America's last frontier authentically, comfortably and without crowds.


Alaska is a money machine for the cruise business. Passenger numbers are up each year. Liners of all sizes, including the “panamax 2”(largest vessel that can use the new, widened Panama Canal) are being repositioned from various parts of the world to ply the Inside Passage. Thousands of passengers wake up in Juneau, or Ketchikan, or Valdez and to their delight, discover they can disembark to one of the massive cruise docks, rather than wait for their turn to take a tender to shore. The towns are set up to cater to the instant crowds, and shore time goes smoothly, even if your bags are checked on returning to the boat, in case you tried to sneak some landside booze into your stateroom. An entire industry has even sprung up to manage those absent minded cruisers who miss their sailing and must be put up overnight, then flown by charter aircraft to the next port of call. Back on the boat, sailing past hundreds of miles of wilderness, watching icebergs calve from glaciers, and maybe getting a distant sighting of some wildlife, passengers get a taste of “the last frontier”, as the Alaska license plate reads, without having to leave the safe confines of their city on the water.


Now compare this “all crowds, all the time” experience to the Alaska Marine Highway. It’s an official highway, because this ferry system is the only way to move your car between most towns in southeastern Alaska (including the state capitol). Our choice was to leave the car behind in Seattle, and take the ferry as passengers without a vehicle, which is a very good deal. We started our ferry ride in the little town of Gustavus, where we had arrived by air a few days earlier to stay at the charmingly retro Glacier Bay Lodge and tour the magnificent bay, nestling the shoreline in our small tour boat to see wildlife on the land (bears) and the water (orcas, sea lions, puffins), as well as getting scarily close to the calving ice wall at the foot of the Margerie glacier. Glacier Bay is big enough for many of the cruise ships – 90% of tourists who visit the bay never set foot on land – but those massive vessels are unable to get close to land or glacier to view the full magnitude of nature at work. For obvious reasons, only two of the big cruisers are allowed in the bay per day.


You buy a single ticket on the ferry system that covers your entire trip, then get off when you want and spend as much time in each town as you choose. The first ferry ride was a relaxed afternoon on a small boat – maybe 150 passengers and a few cars – landing us in Juneau in time for dinner. Juneau is a wonderful, and rather improbably state capitol, which handles the cruise passengers with ease, and then becomes a really interesting place in the evening, after the last cruise ship has sounded its “all aboard”. Shops, unbelievably fresh fish, and 150-year-old wild west saloons, complete with saloon girls and piano players, complement newer technologies like wine bars and microbrew pubs (try the Husky IPA from Alaska Brewing).


Our second and final ferry ride was, in a slightly larger boat, the overnight to Ketchikan, through the Inside Passage. We stumped the unbelievably cheap $150 (!) for a “stateroom”, which consisted of two bunks, a full bath and shower, and a closet. Bring as much food and drink as you want (ice and microwaves provided), or check out the cafeteria and bar. For those backpackers willing to go economy, the choices included stretching out across 5 seats in the lounges (sleeping bags allowed),capturing a chaise lounge in the open air, but heated, solarium, or pitching your tent on the open boat deck. That’s right, pitching your tent. Of course, free showers were available in all public bathrooms.


Watching from our stateroom, we enjoyed sunset and sunrise on the island-dotted passage, and shortly after we turned off the wider route taken by the cruisers, we were suddenly in the midst of a huge pod of humpback whales, cavorting, blowing and breeching all around us. The view from the stateroom window was unbelievable.


Being the only mode of transportation for locals, the ferry stops at towns along the way, rather than plying nonstop to its destination. That’s a feature, not a bug. At one of those towns, whose population was primarily Tlingit, we felt privileged to almost be one of the locals. Having steeped ourselves in Tlingit culture and traditions over the previous week, we knew that tribes and individuals greeted travelers (historically in canoes) with a chanting song, especially when the travelers were returning members of the tribe. At this ferry stop, a full retinue of locals had appeared, with drums, to serenade three ladies clearly returning home on the ferry from Juneau. The call-and-response from travelers and villagers continued through the docking process, followed by whoops and hollers as the families were finally reunited on land. Very cool – we were touched.


If you go, it is possible (although a bit confusing) to book your own ferry tickets, either as a passenger or with a vehicle. We chose to work though Viking Travel in Petersburg, who specialize in ferry-based vacations, and also handled scheduled air, hotel and floatplane reservations for us. The ferry system is very extensive, going as far north as Anchorage and covering parts of the Aleutian chain, and you can take it all the way to or from Bellingham, Washington if you choose. The ferry schedule for the summer is posted each year in January, so check it out. Remember, most routes are not covered every day, so timing your trip to catch the right ferry to the right place is a bit of an art. But you will love it.

A Winery Runs Through It

No Crowds is back - and so are No Crowds reporters Gary Ransom and Lorraine Carulli. These never-really-retired international consultants are now travelling the American landscape and this story, ostensibly about Kalispell, Montana, says a lot about the American spirit and makes me want to head for Montana.

Our Kalispell story begins a few years back and a few miles away, in Bozeman (AKA the Big City). Meredith and her twin sister were both in the pre-med program at the University of Montana. Their dad was a doctor, their grandfather was a surgeon, and, modern times being what they are, the girls were expected to follow in the family tradition. In particular, their science achievement had been exemplary, so they were obviously good material.

But fate intervened. The summer after aceing her MCATs, Meredith took a job at a Bozeman wine bar (I’m guessing it was THE Bozeman wine bar), and discovered a completely different application for her skill in chemistry – she fell in love with wine.

Fast forward to 2018 in Kalispell, an old west town situated, as the guidebooks say, squarely on the continental divide, with mountains to the east and west, still snowcapped in July. Host to the somewhat aspirationally named Glacier International Airport, Kalispell has a fine National Park 30 miles to its north and the crystal clear waters of Flathead Lake 15 miles south. It’s in the process, as the local paper writes, of being discovered.

Meredith is now the owner and proprietor of Tailing Loop Winery (tailingloopwinery.com) out on Highway 35 just at the edge of town. Her voice and bubbly energy seem out of scale for her compact frame – she could command the attention of an audience of 500 without a mic – so everyone in the winery gets entertained by it, whether that was their plan or not. Meredith is an energy machine behind the bar, spinning stories and finding out where people are from and what brought them here.

As we work through our flights of wines on offer, we strike up a conversation with the couple next to us at the bar – locals who are thrilled to have a winery in town. The wife, sitting closest to us, asks where we are from, and replies “oh, Florida”, as if describing a nasty intestinal flu she has just recovered from. But then she brightens and congratulates us on discovering northwestern Montana. I feel that she would absolutely not be surprised if I told her that, after a week here, I had called my realtor back home and told her to sell the place and everything in it, and send us the proceeds so we could buy our cabin in the woods. “We see that a lot”, her husband would say, tapping the bar for emphasis.

Tailing Loop has a décor that can only be described as a cross between Cowboy Shabby Chic and A River Runs Through It. There are sepia-toned drawings of cowboys and saloon girls (each one armed with fly fishing tackle, rather than weaponry) by a local artist on the wall, an event room dominated by a massive buffalo head, and a front porch that appears to be stolen from the set of “Longmire”. Everything is raw, unpainted wood, with varnish slathered on where appropriate or necessary.

“But wait”, you say, “you can’t grow decent grapes for wine in that climate!” And you’d be right. Which explains why, several times a year, Meredith and a friend set off on a 12 hour journey through the night to Washington State, and return with a truckload of grapes from three vineyards. The rest of the work to produce the unoaked chardonnay, excellent pinot noir, syrah-based rose, tempranillo and more is done locally. And of course, since Tailing Loop has movie nights on a regular basis where an ancient projector runs spaghetti westerns from the 60s, she would have to have a Montana sangiovese to accompany the Italian cowboys.

But Meredith is still following the science closely, and is watching several experiments with developing grape rootstock that is hardy through the high plateau winter. If they are successful, locally grown wines are only a graft away, and it’s clear that by then, Meredith will have herself a vineyard. She’s already started some vines. Meanwhile, she’s comfortable living over the store (she actually does, along with her guard cat) and building an unlikely business in a fascinating corner of the world. And her mom finally accepted Meredith’s unusual career choice, with one condition – that a wine be named after her, and that it would have the saloon girl on the label.

Fun Times in Dublin with Laura Healy

Almost 20 years ago, I met Laura Jane Sanderson Healy in London outside Puffins Nursery School where both of us had enrolled our darling daughters. The daughters are now at University. Laura and I are still 'bessies' and Laura is still one of the best writers I know.  Herewith, her action-packed romp through Dublin with tons of tips and great ideas. Thanks, Laura for a wonderful post.

Last fall I returned to Dublin, Ireland, after a decade’s absence and had a complete ball. The place was buzzing like I had never seen. My husband of Irish origin was working in his father’s hometown for a stretch, so Temple Bar Hotel in Fleet Street was our boutique oasis in the midst of Bourbon Street-like Temple Bar, an historic, quayside area on the south side of the River Liffey. No Crowdsers would best enjoy life here during quieter weekdays. Tour Temple Bar Gallery + Studios; patronize the eclectic Jam Art Factory and scoop up the colorful animal jewelry (I have the fox brooch and stag necklace) by ARTY SMARTY. Look for alley murals depicting Ireland’s dazzling writers (Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett) and scruffy musicians (Phil Lynott, Bob Geldof); seek out classics, local lit, or cards at The Gutter Bookshop, or join the Socialists at Connolly’s and get your manifesto on. Musicians play in the street and in the many Temple Bar pubs; you will always hear Thin Lizzy’s electric version of “Whiskey in the Jar,”  sometimes detect a stray Cat Stevens’ song, and Trad (Traditional) Irish Music feat. whistle, bodhran, and fiddle is always on the boil.

  The Irish Film Institute In Eustace Street has two cinemas, a library, a film shop and bookstore, and cineastes coffee-klatsch in the center’s cafe and inner courtyard. On a spooky, rainy afternoon shortly after my arrival, I watched Aoife Kelleher’s “Strange Occurrences in a Small Irish Village” about the supernatural happenings parishioners recounted at the then small country church at Knock in 1879. (Disclosure: I was lured to this particular screening having once been assigned out of London to report on a moving grotto statue in County Cork.)

  Truly miraculous to lovers of the stage is the Dublin Theater Festival, which appears religiously every September and was a favorite of my droll, late father-in-law. Husband and I saw three fab revivals: former borstal boy Brendan Behan’s prison drama THE QUARE FELLOW at Temple Bar’s Smock Alley (the renovated boys school-church-Restoration playhouse which began life as the Theatre Royal in 1662 and where Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan premiered their witty plays); Somerset Maugham’s THE CONSTANT WIFE at The Gate; and Martin McDonagh’s THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE at The Gaiety.

  
Good, casual restaurants around Temple Bar are Gallagher’s Boxty House (named after the Irish potato pancake) and Elephant and Castle along Fleet Street, the fun French bistrot The Green Hen on Exchequer Street, and The Bull and Castle by F.X. Buckley, a gastropub/steakhouse across Lord Edward Street from Christ Church Cathedral. We had dinner with my husband’s cousin here one, because it has recently been called one of the best restaurants in Dublin, and two, to celebrate the fact that it was once the family pub called Healy’s. 

 

  The author James Joyce is ubiquitous in Dublin, and he and a friend sit forever in bronze beside the cobblestones of Anglesea Street smoking and drinking at the pub bearing that surgeon-writer pal’s name: Oliver St. John Gogarty (“Buck Mulligan” in Joyce’s ULYSSES). The middle name of St. John is pronounced “sinjin,” by the way, so you know, and the pub is at the corner of Fleet Street and Anglesea. One Sunday evening, my husband took me to The Parlour Bar upstairs at The Stag’s Head Pub to see Robert Gogan’s one-man-show “Strolling through Ulysses.” Gogan is hilarious as he “introduces” all the pertinent characters of Joyce’s epic novel in just 75 minutes with one wee intermission; you can buy his officially annotated version of the book — ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE, REMASTERED BY ROBERT GOGAN — to keep from going mad or reaching for the lotuses. Do not take children to this wickedly lewd performance.

  Museum wise, The Little Museum of Dublin is a winner: relaxed and attractively-curated, the donated collection is housed in a fine Georgian house on the north side of the St. Stephen’s Green park. For a small fee, amusing guides take turns presenting the place to you, beginning in the drawing room on the First Floor (up one, in Europe) where you may partake of colorful liquorice candies while you sit on a sofa and listen to the spiel about the most ancient city’s rebellion against a foreign power. The history of the Irish Free State is carefully explained before the small group moves into a room full of cultural treasures including the podium President Kennedy spoke at when visiting town and a wall of celebrity photographs (I loved seeing one in particular of a parading Goya painting —  The Diceman was a performance artist I once saw “sail” as a “ship” down Grafton Street to advertise the old Switzer’s store’s SALE). Upstairs, Irish rockers U2 have a floor of their own.

  Where do paint-splashed studios go when their artist kicks over all the buckets in the room? In the case of Irish painter Francis Bacon, to the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which reassembled the messy thing intact from 7 Reece Mews in London’s South Kensington to Charlemont House, Parnell Square North, Dublin 1. It’s fun (and free) to see, and I loved eating lunch at the gallery’s cafe across from an art-loving grandmother and her little granddaughter. I needed sustenance to spend the next hour studying “The Metronome Bursts of Automatic Fire Seep Through the Dawn Mist Like Muffled Drums and We Know It for What It Is” by Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen for The Hugh Lane's Artist as Witness 2016 program (the quote came from LIFE journalist John Saar, whom I once worked with in New York).

  “During the Cold War, the light automatic rifle — the F.A.L. manufactured by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal in Belgium — was the most distributed weapon in non-communist countries, and therefore named the "right arm of the free world;” however, the rifle appeared on both sides of the ideological spectrum in the various conflicts around the world,” the artist writes. The gallery website explains that his “selection of TIME and LIFE magazines, alongside RTÉ archive footage from Northern Ireland, reveals how both weapons and journalism are entangled in the fabric of our history. He installs the magazines in chronological order and his meticulous editing of image and article provokes a collision with the values of freedom and capitalism as embodied in these publications. This dramatic installation transforms information into sculpture. The pages selected date from the late 1950s to 2016 and present profound political and social upheavals which are repeatedly mirrored in our current news; a devastating critique on the ongoing tragic spectacle of war and its production.”

  I had to look it up, but in November 2013, the Bacon triptych of his portrait painter friend Lucian Freud was the most expensive art ever sold at auction when it was knocked down at $142.4 million at Christie’s New York. That’s one way of bringing home the Bacon. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here are some fun links:

http://www.strollingthroughulysses.com

http://jamartfactory.com/artist/arty-smarty/

http://ifi.ie/st-patricks-cine-concert/

http://www.mylivestreams.com/webcam/live-temple-bar-streaming-hd-webcam-dublin-ireland/10535.html

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/cbooks/stair-en.html

http://www.hughlane.ie

Ai Weiwei - a virtual tour of China

Since 2005, No Crowds has been brilliantly supported by the world's most patient Editor. He fixes my spelling, puts up with my inability to keep to a schedule and is good natured about being dragged to 1001 events that might someday produce a post. After we attended the opening of the Ai Weiwei exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, he strongly suggested I write something about it. My reply: well if you feel so strongly about it, you write it. And so, he did

When the NoCrowds blogster wants you to accompany her to a cultural event, the editor refuses at his peril.  Last week we went to the opening of the Ai Weiwei show at the Royal Academy of Arts.  Having braved rush hour traffic and monsoon like rain, I was less than chuffed upon arrival in Piccadilly.

All I had heard about Weiwei was that he was a big deal in artistic dissent.  I thought this is going to be the Chinese “big art” version of Anish Kapoor.  Was I wrong!!  Weiwei, through his montages, takes you on a virtual visit of his country, from the end of the Qing dynasty to the present.  One of his creations is an inverted map of China with a three-legged stool representing Taiwan—powerfully demonstrating the disparity in size between the PRC and its “lost” province.  Another represents the destruction of Chinese cultural heritage to make way for megacities.  He also indicts his government for failing to control corruption, which contributes to a variety of disasters.

In eleven rooms, Weiwei uses different art media to explore the country’s past and present.  Do not be fooled, he is an ardent nationalist who wants China to face up to its glorious past, problematic present and its potential going forward.  His often petty treatment by the Chinese authorities tells us more about their insecurity and unspoken concern that China could be broken up as was the Soviet Union

Until Weiwei, my view of contemporary art was the Impressionists.  They made a big splash disrupting the cosy old boy hold on the Salon in Paris.  Weiwei goes far beyond them impressing us with his use of materials and his commitment to a better China.

Costa Rica's Playa Santa Teresa - Lake Wobegon with waves

Great news.  No Crowds reporters Gary and Lorraine are back. This time in a magical spot in Costa Rica.

Off on Costa Rica's western coast - a hair-raising light aircraft flight and/or hair-raising car and ferry journey from the capital - sits Malpais, home to Santa Teresa beach. Because of its remoteness, it appears that time is indeed standing still, sometime in the 90's. If Lake Wobegon had an awesome point break, this would be it.

In Malpais, everyone has abs that are above average. Everyone has exactly your doctor's recommended body fat percentage - no more, no less. Every woman looks good in less than the average yardage of fabric required for a pocket hanky, and every guy wears only cool board shorts that don't expose his knee. Light tanning is universal, but melanoma is unknown. Everyone is bilingual, if not tri. The main street looks for all the world like a Victoria's Secret/Abercrombie & Fitch runway show, all day, every day.

The ocean is consistently at the same temperature that I keep my pool - refreshingly cool, yet not too cold. Every wave from the mighty Pacific is better than the last, yet none are big enough to hurt you too badly if you're a beginning surfer. Horses canter on the beach at sunset every day. Every restaurant, and I mean every restaurant, has romantic tables in the sand, and gorgeous flipflop-shod servers, who are of course, better than average.

Economists will puzzle for years over the strange economy. Well stocked grocery stores offer all manner of food and alcohol (spectacular sauvignon blancs from Chile, great local beer and dark rum, etc), but the food especially is very expensive. On the other hand, eating great food at a local soda (mom and pop restaurant with outdoor tables) will set you back an average of $10 per person, including wine and beer. Even higher end restaurants are very well priced, and there are dozens. Oh, and order at least one mojito while you are there - for 6 bucks, you will be transported.

And the funny thing is, there are lots of people, but no crowds. Even at sunset (which is a truly religious experience), the beach is only sparsely populated. The longest line we waited in consisted of three people in a grocery store. Every restaurant seems to be perpetually 50% to 80% full, so there is always a buzz from happy diners, but they always - always - have a table for you, regardless of the size of your party.

If you go, a few things to remember.

1. Eat the fish. Red snapper, tuna, and mahi bear no resemblance to the previously frozen, processed and shipped stuff we eat elsewhere. The supply chain runs from the local dock 2 miles away directly to every restaurant in town, and you can taste it in every bite. Sushi and ceviche places abound, and they're safe.

2. Rent an SUV with 4wd. Nothing else can handle the roads that you encounter in the last 10 km to Malpais. You could get a taxi from the local airstrip, but it's very helpful to have a car in town.

3. There are many options for accommodations, from high end resorts to surfer shacks. Research carefully, since price does not always reflect quality. Air conditioning is widely available, but believe it or not, you may not need it. It's comfortable in the shade in the daytime, even with temps in the 90's F, and everything cools down at night.

4. Remember you're in a tropical country. Costa Rica is well developed and cleanliness standards are high - we ate ceviche, salads and raw fruit with abandon, and didn't suffer, but others did. Ask your doctor for a Cipro prescription before you leave, and if you need it, it will cut the duration of a case of "la Tourista" from a few days to a few hours.

5. There are plenty of tourist activities (ziplines, trail riding to hidden waterfalls, cantering on the beach, etc), but be sure to leave yourself plenty of downtime to soak up the local vibe and walk/run the glorious beaches.

6. ...and finally, start working out now! Given how little you will be wearing, you will want to make sure you are above average when you arrive.