All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.

Food

I know it’s Tuesday but…(now I’m hungry, are you?)

October 2, 2012 hannahviolin Leave a comment

Weekend update…I had a very busy but fun weekend. Friday night Chris and I were going to cook but we got lazy and went to Frazer’s instead. We hadn’t been there in awhile and it is always good. I had Duck confit (one of the specials—Frazer’s is ALL about specials) which reminded me of France (le sigh.) Oh and this tasty looking salad.

It was a Pear Endive Salad. Very delicious! Why did I take a picture of my salad but not the duck? I guess that’s just how I roll.

Saturday was a full day of teaching (makeup lessons and a class) followed by a wedding. After that I had plans with Melissa to go to Farmhaus Restaurant. I had wanted to go for awhile but hadn’t found a good time. According to the website they don’t take reservations for less than four people so we had to just walk in. Luckily we were able to get two seats at the bar (very tiny). We split everything except dessert and drinks. (You all know I don’t share my drinks.)

The menu changes daily—you can see the date in the corner.

Cotechino. The greens were delicious too—maybe that’s a sign I need to eat more vegetables? Or, more likely, they were drenched in animal fat and thusly, delicious.

Crostini—these I think were my favorites!

Nachos—yeah I got fancier with this picture.

I tried the Hipster Princess and Scratches Lemonade. It seemed that Scratches was the bartender.

This was a peanut butter mousse with chocolate around it. It was very good, but Melissa’s pecan pie with root beer ice cream was better. Oh well.

Sunday I had more teaching followed by a concert at First Presbyterian of Kirkwood.

Amazing stained glass window back drop. I guess the picture is a little blurry, huh? I’ll try to take a better one next time I’m in there! The concert went well. Finally Sunday evening I just relaxed at home with Chris. I bet you were worried 😉

Oh and Monday night was Pho Grand:

SO yummy!

Tried any good restaurants lately?

Paris, Travel

Paris Day 7: The Sacred and the Profane

October 1, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

I know it’s been a little while, but I wanted to finish my Paris trip recaps.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6:1 and Day 6:2 if you’ve missed the previous posts.

I was sad for our last day in Paris. We decided to do a few different things but not pack the day too full so we’d have time to relax at the end of the day. We decided to go to the Musee Jacquemart-Andre based on a friend’s recommendation and then to do the guidebook’s Montmartre Walking Tour which included the Sacre Coeur Basilica AND the Museum of Erotic Art (We thought it would be a nice contrast.)

First we had to make a few stops, including at the Pharmacie because I had a slight cold and needed some medicine. I did online research about how to tell the pharmacist I had a cold, but luckily she spoke English. (In France, you don’t just buy the medicine, they ask about your symptoms and your allergies and give you what you need.)

The day was going to have a variety of metro rides and connections. I had written all the directions out on a paper, and we were “prepared” for a bit of trouble navigating the streets, as I’d been having trouble all week.

This museum is a private house that belonged to a couple who were avid art collectors in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. At times their yearly budget for art exceeded that of the Louvre! The phrase “theirs was a marriage of reason” was used at one point. What do you think that means?

We used the audio tour as recommended and it was very interesting. No photography was allowed inside the house, but it was an amazing mansion with great art, and possibly our favorite museum. It isn’t covered by the museum pass, which was fine because ours had run out.

After the tour we took the metro up north of the city to Montmartre. Well, to the north part of the city that is. We had our first metro problem—we ran to catch the train and after we just barely made it on we realized we were on the wrong train. No big deal though, we just got off a little later and transferred to another one. (Generally I found the metro system amazingly eager to navigate. Europe. Rocks.)

The Basilica is on top of one of Paris’s only hills (which really makes me want to run the Paris Marathon—imagine how flat it must be in comparison—who wants to sponsor me for this?) and so was naturally quite crowded. It’s in a slightly more seedy area of town than we had experienced so far on our trip, but it wasn’t bad, and it was jam packed with tourists. (Weird combo: seedy yet really touristy—it’s like the Myrtle Beach of Paris?)

You can climb up a ton of stairs or take the funicular up. I was sick and was pretty tired and out of breath so I insisted on the funicular—you know ordinarily I’d have been running up and down the stairs. The funicular cost a metro ticket but I felt was worth it under the circumstances.

I think Chris was tired of having his picture taken.

Anyway, after we rode up the hill we were starving and needed to seek out lunch.

Quite the view!

I’m a little annoyed that THIS was the only picture of me in view of this view. I guess Chris was tired of taking pictures of me by this point too…or simply tired of me? 😉

We found a little cute Italian place nearby. We were a bit apprehensive, but it ended up being GREAT.

Delicious meat and cheese plate, delicious pizza. We never got used to how much delicious cheese you get on a cheese plate in France! And for less than cheese plates in the US.

Then it was back to sightseeing.

There was a violin player outside the Basilica. He was a gypsy fiddler and sounded pretty decent.

Quite the view of Paris!

We ran into a couple of friends of ours outside the Basilica after we toured it. Paris is, seemingly, as small of a world as St Louis is!

After chatting a bit we continued on the Montmartre Walk. Now. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was sick or what, but I couldn’t follow the directions and kept getting lost. Finally we gave up and missed several steps and then caught back up, but basically, I have no idea what happened…I’m guessing because, in addition to the regular challenge of Paris streets, we had to contend with steep hills?

My purple pants. Chris was being silly and trying to take pictures of my butt, I think 😉

Cool Paris street view…

We loved the rounded buildings.

We managed to get back on track with the tour in order to see Van Gogh’s old house.

And we saw the Moulin Rouge. Lots of tourists there—this is basically the red light district. And by basically I mean, this is the red light district of Paris.

We decided to go to the Museum of Erotic Art to end our tour. I won’t share my pictures from there, but it was a very interesting (not family friendly!) place. Oh, and I slipped down the marble steps—my feet flew out from under me and I landed on the ground about 4 to 6 steps down. Chris was concerned but he said it was actually quite funny, because I just sighed and said “REALLY?” I remember the pain but mainly I remember being annoyed that instead of slipping I had actually really fallen and made a fool of myself…at the “porn museum” (take that, search engines) no less. Hence, my “really?” I was in shock. Luckily I wasn’t seriously injured—I had been holding on to the railing so I didn’t lose control too much. It was more my pride that was injured, and my hand got a little bruised and my legs and butt were sore the next day.

Anyway, after that I was ready to get out of there (luckily we were basically done) and get back to a nicer part of town. We hopped back on the metro and headed to our neck of the woods for our last evening.

We had a few happy hour drinks before deciding on dinner. We ended up at a restaurant on the Place du Marche Ste. Catherine called “La Marche.”

We liked the menus. We ordered a bottle of red wine and tried to decipher the prix fixe menu.

It was not easy to do, and in fact, I ordered parts of my meal not sure at all what I was going to get. I was feeling adventurous though, and I’m really not a picky eater, so it worked out.

Our meal was okay. I guess we should have gone to a more expensive place (I didn’t think every night needed to be a $$$ meal but I think Chris thought I was being cheap on occasion!) but it was decent, and the wine (as always) was nice, and the ambience was really pleasant. I thought it was a wonderful evening and a great ending to our week.

Night from our apartment window.

I’ll do one more wrap up/travel post 🙂 in case you wanted more! If you have any Paris related questions, please ask!

Teaching

I have the style of a 7th grader

September 29, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

One of my students likes to tease me about my Toms shoes. Mainly because she doesn’t think I need comfortable shoes because I just sit there during the lessons. She wishes I would wear my cow shoes more often. The other day I was telling her about my new Toms which are fuzzy on the inside and she thought that was really ridiculous. Anyway, I explained to her that I was totally going to wear my cow shoes for her, but I wanted to wear my red jeans, and the cow shoes have pink in them…and then I realized we were both wearing red jeans. That’s right. I have the style of a 7th grader. (I think she’s in 7th grade. Maybe it’s 8th grade. Apologies if she or her mother is reading this and I’m wrong!)

That’s right. I’m awesome :) Or at least my students are!

Random thoughts

Friday is the new Monday?

September 28, 2012 hannahviolin 3 Comments

Okay, this is totally one of those "oh isn’t her life hard moments" but I’m just going to whine…I have to work all day today and into the weekend…the issue is all the darn lessons I have to make up from my Paris trip (hence, isn’t her life hard), so I’m teaching several hours each day in addition to weddings and other gigs. This really cuts into my social life.

I decided to make Wed and Thursday as "weekend-like" as possible, since those days I didn’t get started teaching until later in the day. That meant I did a lot of sitting around, watching tv, reading stuff on the internet, and doing laundry.

Anyway, really none of this is interesting to you (or me, really.) It’s been a crappy week and the weekend isn’t going to be much better.

I did have a fun trip to Target yesterday—I picked up the new JK Rowling book. I’ve started reading it, and so far I am really enjoying it. Of course that’s to be expected because firstly, Rowling is a wonderful writer, and secondly, I love British fiction. It’s dark, it’s REAL, and it’s nothing like HP except that it’s well written and has good character development. So far, so good.

It was cooler and overcast yesterday so I figured I’d jump on the "is it Fall" bandwagon. I also got some Thanksgiving decorations from the One Spot—we are hosting this year.

I’m not entirely sure we can handle a candy bowl but I thought it would be an interesting experiment.

I wanted to get under the blanket and read but the cat had other ideas for the blanket.

Just like she has other ideas for my lap than the computer. It’s not easy to blog with a large feline in your lap.

While I was teaching…silly Barack, always asking for money. He acts like he’s inviting me to dinner, but then he really just wants money. (Oh, and of course Leslie keeps texting, but not about money. She’s getting married soon and there are a lot of details to discuss…I imagine this texting/calling thing will continue until October 21 and then I’ll never hear from her again…)

Make me jealous: what fun things are you doing this weekend?

Cat, Teaching

Thoughts on students and my cat’s twin

September 27, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

You may recall we have moved recently. I teach out of my house a couple of days, and the younger kids are always most interested in the changes.

For instance, we are renting a single family home that used to be a duplex—only the thing is, because of some city law, the duplex doors must remain. So we have two front doors. The students are FASCINATED by this, and often try to come in and go out a different door each time.

The other day one of my students wanted to wash his hands. I took him down the hall to the bathroom, and he needed help turning the faucet on (a bit too high for little people). As he was washing he looks around and then says, "It seems you don’t live here alone." He seemed really disappointed when I said, "why, yes, I live with my husband." I’m guessing he was hoping I would say, "why, you are correct, I live here with my five year old son who wants to go play with you rather than learn the violin! Why don’t you do that for the next 30 minutes?"

On the way out, this same student looked into our {rather empty as we haven’t yet found a dining room table we like} front room and asked, "Why don’t you have any furniture?"

Funny student stories aren’t limited to my home students though. My school students are equally entertaining.

The other day at my school one of my students came in and said "You look really pale."

Other students always like to comment on my makeup, or if I have something weird (like a large zit) happening on my face, or if my nose is red. I also get lots of comments on my shoes or my outfits generally, or on my hands (fingernail biting and worse…"Why does somebody so pretty have such ugly hands?" a small child once queried). I think what’s most fun about the kids is that they will just ask a question when they think of it rather than worry about the politeness of it—and I do my best to answer. I imagine if they asked something that was really inappropriate I’d let them know, but usually it’s a perfectly good question: "Did you know you have a brown stain on your nose?" while drinking coffee for instance…it’s nice that SOMEONE is willing to point these things out!

What is that cat-shaped blob in the corner?

My friend Valentina posted these pictures on my facebook "timeline" last night. She saw this cat while on vacation in Italy (?). Isn’t that wild how much like my cat this one looks? Even down to the soft rounded tummy, lighter colored paw, and sleeping ability. Thanks for sharing the photos, Valentina (hope you don’t mind I blogged them 😉 )!! I am so delighted by this cat.

Deep Thoughts

Life

September 26, 2012 hannahviolin 4 Comments

We lost a friend to pancreatic cancer yesterday. It was very sudden and shocking. He and his wife had been very helpful in our Paris research, and I am glad we were able to share some of our photos with him when we returned.

It’s funny when you have a blog—how much do you share? You can’t pretend everything is roses all the time. Well, you can—plenty of folks do, but is that fair? To make your readers think that’s something that exists? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

My grandmother is improving every day. That’s really good news. Thank you for your kind words and thoughts.

The problem with pancreatic cancer is that so often it isn’t discovered until it is too late. But two weeks from diagnosis isn’t fair. It just isn’t right.

We went over to some mutual friend’s of Jim’s last night and just hung out. It seems that the older I get, the more often each life experience makes me reflect back on other similar experiences. I thought about how many times I’ve been hanging out with friends or family after somebody passes away, trying to hold it together, chatting about what happened and thinking about the person, but yet also doing other things—watching a game, playing with the dog, talking about other things happening in life. I thought about how many more times in life this will happen too. I think I’m lucky that it hasn’t happened too many times, but will probably become more common as I get older.

And as a musician, there’s always the question, will you play at the service? And the answer is always yes, of course I will.

I think of this Ron Weasley quote often in hard times. (Yes, I’m quoting Harry Potter, that’s how I roll. It’s usually either that or LOTR.) In the Order of the Phoenix, Hermoine is telling Harry and Ron what emotions Cho is going through. Ron says “One person couldn’t feel all that. They’d explode.”

And that’s true. So I’m going to distract myself and share with you some pictures from the past few days. Mostly of my cat. I will finish writing about Paris soon. But not today. I’m good at compartmentalizing, and I’m going to look at pictures that make me happy and think about how glad I am to have known Jim as long as I did, and how I hope that when I get to be his age I have had a life that is even one quarter as interesting as his was.

The most wonderful time of the day: feeding time.

Close up. Sometimes I am struck with joy and amazement that a creature such as this exists.

USAF Band of Mid-America concert in Lafayette Park Saturday night. I misunderstood what we were attending but realized I prefer jazz band to a “band” any day so I was actually quite pleased. The weather was great for an outdoor concert. (Saxophone player on the far right is Derek, engaged to Adrianne, both of whom attended my wedding.)