TEXAS: SAN ANTONIO

Actually, Dave, we rented our car at Thrifty (and swore to never use them again, but that's another story), but we are impressed that you "Remember the Alamo!" 

Here are a few more shots from our weekend in San Antonio, Texas, where EVERYTHING is big, including this cup of fruit, marinated in lime juice and chile and bought at a somewhat seedy drive-through Mexican joint:

. . . and where everyone is a cowboy, even the kids on the playground, making Bob and me covet the beautifully-tooled, pointy-toed boots we see on everyone's feet.

In Texas, bike riders don't "get off" their bikes, they "dismount":

Apparently, Texans have even created their own system of spelling:

Sign at Texas Pride Barbecue, the restaurant housed in an old gas station and pictured in my last post.

I really wish I could be in Texas at Christmastime.  I'd love to see this sweet ride all lit up and cruising down the highway:

Bob and I had lots of fun on a food tour today, which started out at a restaurant with a very creative way of advertising itself:

This figure foreshadowed our guide-led stop at five different restaurants in a three-hour period.

The first photo on my last post was the famous Alamo in San Antonio, a former Catholic mission and fortress and site of the famous pivotal battle in the 1836 Texas Revolution, the battle in which both Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were killed by Santa Ana's army.

We've seen four other missions in the last couple of days, and have loved their crumbly architecture and beautiful lines. All of them are operating Catholic churches.  They are like and unlike the California missions: like in their basic form and the layout of the grounds, but unlike in their more advanced state of crumbling disrepair, isolation, and lack of grandiosity:

 

 

 

 

 

San Antonio is one of the prettiest cities at night I've seen, even in the steady drizzle we've tolerated the last two days. The most famous place to stroll at night is The River Walk, where we have walked the last two nights (but neglected to take pictures). However, there are plenty of other beautiful places at night, such as the Alamo itself (see my last post), and these two buildings:

The view from our hotel window

San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest continuously functioning religious community in Texas and the oldest standing church building in Texas

We will spend part of tomorrow in San Antonio, hoping for slightly better weather, and then we are off to . . . ?

WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE THE CANNONS?

Here are two clues:

 

NORWAY: VIGELAND SCULPTURE PARK IN OSLO

It has been over six months since we returned from our trip to Russia and Scandinavia, and I still have a few more posts about Norway that I need to get up before I am finally done.  In "The Old Days" we would gather our photos and notes and create a trip scrapbook, and the mess on the kitchen table would motivate me to get it done.  You would think that the ease of using a computer would make digital scrapbooking a breeze, but as Martin Luther King noted, "All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."  No mess = No impetus to finish.

Well, I always tell my fledgling student writers, "Don't tell me what you are going to write about, just write!" And so, back to Norway.  Last July, I wrote a post about Oslo, the city and the churches, after the horrible shooting at a youth camp there. Now I am finally getting back to the many other beautiful sites of the city and the countryside.

One of my favorite places in Norway was Vigeland Sculpture Park. The park contains over 200 granite, wrought iron, and bronze sculptures of the various stages of human life, all of them created by one man: Gustav Vigeland, a Norwegian who lived from 1869-1943:

Vigeland is well known and much loved in Norway. Never heard of him? Chances are you have seen one of most famous works: The Nobel Peace Prize medal:

This ornate gate marks the entrance to the park:

A wide swath of neatly manicured lawn focuses all attention on the sculptures ahead:

It took Vigeland only twenty years to populate the park with his 212 sculptures.  They are all nude and somewhat block-like, purposely lacking the muscle definition and proportion present in Renaissance sculpture carved hundreds of years before, and yet they somehow capture a great deal of movement and beautifully depict the rich emotions of everyday life.

*Warning: By American standards, these are not G-rated sculptures.*

One of my favorites: an elderly father and his adult son. I loved the tender depictions of men.

In addition to these statues, there is a series of whimsical fountain sculptures with various figures playing in trees,

Around the base of the fountain are some wonderful friezes, again depicting different stages of life:

Children coming to earth

Death will separate even the most devoted of lovers

Poignant sculpture of two old men

If I had had a child with me, this pose would have been irrestible.

The most famous sculpture in the park is the 46-foot tall Monolith Totem, covered in 121 figures, all climbing towards the sky, a representation of man's reach for the spiritual and divine.

It took three stone carvers fourteen years to transfer the design from a plaster cast made by Vigeland to the stone. Vigeland died a year before its completion.

LOS ANGELES: BOTTEGA LOUIE

Bob and I have been crazy busy for the last few weeks, and we decided it was time for some fun.  Andrew invited us to Los Angeles to join him and Lauren for lunch on Saturday at one of LA's hot new restaurants, Bottega Louie.

Food? LA? Andrew and Lauren?

YES!

Great murals on the way to Andrew's apartment in Koreatown.

Lots of Korean stuff in Koreatown. 

I love driving around in downtown LA.  It makes me feel so cosmopolitan.  It is actually not that intimidating, especially on a Saturday afternoon.  It is nothing like, say, New York City, especially with Andrew and Lauren doing the navigation.

We ended up at a trendy, European-style restaurant Andrew knew about: Bottega Louie, located on the corner of 7th and Grand, just a block off Wilshire Boulevard:

 The kitchen was wide open to the large dining area, and there were dozens of chefs and waiters frantically buzzing all over the place:

We had an assortment of dishes that we shared around, including clam pizza, lamb porterhouse, grilled octopus, and trenne pasta with rib-eye and black kale.  However, my personal favorite was the order of portobello mushroom fries with herbed aioli sauce for dipping.  The fries tasted a LOT better than they look:

But wait.  I forgot the dessert!  At the end of our meal, the four of us shared a chocolate souffle with a custard creme sauce.  Delish.

 And on the way out, we just had to stop in the Louie Bakery and buy a few of these amazing (and amazingly expensive) pastries:

 

 

 

Are six pictures of dessert overkill?  Nah, I didn't think so either.

After we got home, I looked up this restaurant to see what others had to say about it.  I was surprised to learn that it was the #1 restaurant on Yelp for 2011--not just in LA, but in the entire United States.

Wow.  I feel so avant-garde.

Thanks, Andrew and Lauren!  Where are we going next?