Category Archives: Travel

Your Guide to the St Louis Symphony European Tour

As many of you know, my husband Chris plays viola with the St Louis Symphony.  You may or may not know that the St Louis Symphony is about to embark on their first European Tour in decades. 

They are playing concerts in London, Berlin, Luzerne, and Paris.  I will be flying out to meet him in Paris.  I will see the final tour concert there and then we are sightseeing in Paris for a week.  Needless to say, we are excited.

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(Pounds, Euros, and Swiss Francs.  Chris’s per diem money.)

In addition to the tour-related stress and anticipation in the Frantillo household, the internet is abuzz as well.  Several symphony musicians will be live-tweeting the tour, including my friend Jon.  You can (and should!) follow them on Twitter:

Jon Reycraft, trombone (@reycraftian), Jennifer Nitchman, flute (@jennynitch), Celeste Boyer, violin (@celesteboyer), and Diana Haskell, clarinet (@dihaskell).  They’ll be using the hashtag #slsotour so you can follow that as well if you are twitter saavy.  I also recommend you follow @slso, @adamcrane, and @eebsworthgoold for more tour and symphony information.  And of course I’ll be tweeting as usual—if you like my blog, you’ll enjoy my twitter account. (@hannahviolin).

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What if you aren’t on twitter, you ask?  You can also follow the Symphony on their facebook page instead, follow their Tour Blog, or perhaps read about it on other news sites.  This is an interesting article about the tour that you can start with, and here’s a link to "Cityscape", a local NPR show, on which a couple of the SLSO musicians talk about the tour and especially the Proms.  (Being invited to play at the Proms is a HUGE honor.)

Here’s the tour concert schedule:

September 4, 2012 (London, Royal Albert Hall)
David Robertson, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
BRAHMS:  Tragic Overture
BEETHOVEN:  Violin Concerto
SCHOENBERG: Five Pieces for Orchestra
GERSHWIN:  An American in Paris
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms (I made this into a direct link to the concert info rather than the main proms site)

I believe that this concert will be broadcast on the internet—it’s at 7:30 pm London time, so you should be able to figure that out for your own time zone.  (Unlike the Olympic coverage, you may need to listen to it live though someone on the facebook page suggested it would be archived for a week.)

September 5, 2012—Berlin (Musikfest Berlin 2012 at Berliner Philharmonie)
David Robertson, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin

ELLIOTT CARTER:  Holiday Overture
BEETHOVEN:  Violin Concerto
SCHOENBERG:  Five Pieces for Orchestra
GERSHWIN:  An American in Paris

http://www.musikfestberlin.de

September 6, 2012—Lucerne (The Lucerne Festival, Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern)
David Robertson, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin

IVES: The Unanswered Question
BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto
SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1

http://www.lucernefestival.ch

September 7, 2012—Paris (Salle Pleyel)
David Robertson, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin

BRAHMS:  Tragic Overture
BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto
ELLIOTT CARTER:  Holiday Overture
GERSHWIN:  An American in Paris

http://www.sallepleyel.fr

This one at Salle Pleyel is the one I will be attending.  I can’t wait!

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Oh, and tonight is the "Rally Concert" at Powell HallLet’s all join together and wish the Symphony a "Happy Flight!"

(Disclaimer, will not be attending because I will be teaching children to play the violin instead.)

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(Gift from Chris’s mom—neither of us speaks French, so I guess we’d better learn quickly!  Luckily Chris already speaks English so he’ll be okay for the first tour stop.)

Boulder

I am just stopping in to tell you that I’m having a wonderful time on vacation.  Isn’t it grand?  Don’t you wish that YOU were on vacation? 

And you say, Hannah, weren’t you already on vacation? Well, kind of.  I was moving and taking a break from teaching but now I am actually on vacation.  You know, the kind where you fly somewhere, and rent a car and the rental company takes complete advantage of you by charging you for the supplemental insurance even though you told them you didn’t want it, and then later when you call tells you you’d have to return to Denver to fill out new paperwork (Yes, I’m looking at you, Payless Rental Cars, and I won’t ever be looking at you again, because that is a lousy precedent—if my husband says NO don’t try to sneak it back in.  And then don’t be an ass on the phone.)

We are visiting my sister Leslie and her fiancé Peter, and our friend Dave, who are all at the Colorado Music Festival, which is in Boulder, Colorado.

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Initially I thought, I don’t want to tell my readers we are out of town.  You worry about safety and that kind of thing.  Robbery.  But our new place is a lot more safe and secure than any of our previous houses have been…so I am not worried.  Besides which I’ve been showing off on twitter and instagram…so…

Anyway, I said I was just stopping in.  We got into town yesterday, had lunch at Illegal Pete’s, shopped and walked around in the afternoon, dinner at the West End Tavern.

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Leslie and I outside the Laughing Goat, which is evidently Boulder’s best coffeehouse.  The vanilla lattes were good.

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Posing with what I think of as the Boulder Boulder.  I don’t think that’s what it is called, however.

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Then…(and this is huge for this St Louis girl)…it started to RAIN!  And it rained, and it poured.  And we got a little bit wet, which was fun at first, and then I remembered why rain is annoying.  But it was a really nice change from NOT having any rain.  (That’s some quality writing, right?).

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This morning Leslie and hiked up to the Royal Arch.  This is a crappy photo because the light was difficult, but that’s me at the top.  Interesting fact about hiking:  going down is easier than going up.

I’ve taken a ton more pictures, but I have taken most of them on my regular camera, and I forgot to bring the USB cable, so I’ll share them later.

 

Summertime and the living is easy

I realized I’ve got a lot of trips happening in the next few months!  Boulder, Boston, Paris, and Phoenix.

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The other day I was saying to Melissa how I was excited about my upcoming travels, especially as I hadn’t been anywhere in a long time.  Other than South Carolina, you know, I haven’t been anywhere in like a year.  Well, other than our honeymoon, Miami and a  Caribbean Cruise.  Okay.  Seriously.  My life.  Not too shabby.

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(neither is her life)

Okay, readers.  Here’s the deal.  If you were in Boston and had one morning/early afternoon to sightsee on your own, where would you go and what would you do?  And then, if you were in Paris with your husband for a week, where would you go, what would you do, where would you stay?  Basically if you could plan that trip for me, that would be awesome, as I have other stuff to worry about…

I’m kidding.  A little bit.  Part of the fun of traveling is the planning and anticipation.  Except when you are doing so MUCH traveling, that you don’t know quite where to begin.  Phoenix and Boulder are fine as those are visiting friends/weddings/etc.  Boston is for a wedding too but I want to take advantage of sightseeing too since I’ve never been.  Paris…is going to be glorious.  But I’m tired, and overwhelmed by life, and we are moving in under two weeks and there is tons to be done.

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Oh, and today is some sort of holiday.  Fourth of July I hear.  Do they celebrate that everywhere or just here in the good ol’ United States?

There’s an ongoing joke between my friend Sarah, Chris, and then I’m involved even though I wasn’t there.  A few years ago (I believe it was the summer of 99, actually…somebody correct me if I’m wrong) Chris and Sarah were tooling around on the Fourth trying to find somewhere to eat lunch in Cleveland.  They went to Einstein’s Bagels, but it was closed.  However, there was a crazy homeless lady walking around, and she looked at them and yelled “HAPPY F***ING FOURTH OF JULY, EINSTEIN’S!!!!!!”

Ever since then on almost every major holiday, we send each other a barrage of text messages to the same effect.  Today, since we FINALLY (lolz) all have iPhones, there is a group message thread happening.

The Purple Pig

I just got home from Chicago a little bit ago.  I hate all those things you have to do when you return home—pick up piles of mail, unpack, figure out the funny smell, clean the cat litter, feed the cat, pet the cat, etc.  I used to travel a lot more than I do now between work and being a long distance relationship, and those things have always annoyed me.

But, let’s talk about my last day in Chicago.  Karen and I didn’t have any real plans, so we headed for Michigan Avenue to do some shopping.  We didn’t really want to spend much money shopping as we’d been spending ridiculous amounts of money on going on, so after a bit we decided to go bowling.  She had only been bowling once before in her life and wanted to try to improve.

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I am not a good bowler either.  (Today my right arm is ridiculously sore from two games…).  By the end of the second game my thumb had gone numb, and at one point I was worried I had reinjured my right shoulder.  Bowling was fun, but perhaps not the wisest choice. 

Next we hit up the Hancock building.  There is a restaurant on the very top (95th floor), and we got a couple drinks and enjoyed the view.

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It was nice for a bit then some clouds (?) came in and the view was ruined.  We decided it was time for dinner!

Off to the Purple Pig we went!

Evidently there aren’t any restaurants in Chicago where you just order your own food, so once again we went to a tapas (small plates) style restaurant.  The waitress thought this was unusual but we had her ticket 😉

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Prosciutto bread balls, calamari, fried deviled egg, and ham/egg on toast.  Not pictured was the beet and goat cheese salad and the squid with fingerling potatoes.  And the sparkling wine.  I decided it was a sparkling wine day.

Dinner was delicious, especially the calamari salad, and we decided to book it over to the Navy Pier to ride the Ferris Wheel.  We ended up riding the Ferris Wheel and a swing ride.

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I think Karen was starting to get the hang of the "take pictures for the blog" thing that I do.  In any case the rides were fun, and I felt so wonderfully touristy.

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What is this?  Does anybody know?

We then decided it was dessert time.  Off we went to a place I can’t recall the name (Bin 36)  Delicious desserts and more sparkling wine—I had a wine flight of sparkling whites, and Karen had a different flight.

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Last we decided to go a jazz club called the Green Mill.  There was a $4 cover (only!) and the singer was really quite good.  I can’t recall her name.

And that’s it!  I drove back this morning and have a few students shortly.  I’m EXHAUSTED.  But it was a great trip overall, exactly what I needed, and I’m super glad I was able to go.  Thanks Karen!

Avec

Last night it was finally time.  It was time to go back to Avec.

The last time I visited Karen (with Chris that time) we went to Avec for dinner and it was one of the best meals I had ever had.  I was eager to return to see if it would be as good as I remembered. 

We went after Karen’s concert.  Like I’ve said, she plays with the Grant Park Festival Orchestra.  The orchestra plays their concerts at Millennium Park.  The concert was Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, a Bach Cantata, and Faure Requiem.  I am not a huge fan of choral works, but it was a good concert.  I felt a little overdressed for the show as I was wearing a new dress I bought at Nordstrom Rack last week (in preparation for our night out) but I would rather be overdressed than underdressed.  The weather had finally cooled off a bit so it wasn’t too awful sitting outside. 

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After the show I met Karen backstage and we headed off to Avec.  When we arrived there was about a one hour wait for a table (well, for part of the long, communal tables) so we waited in the little bar area outside.  We split a few different kinds of wines, ranging from a sparkling rose to a tempranillo.

Finally we were seated!  Just so you know, the main thing we wanted were the chorizo stuffed dates wrapped in bacon.  Last time we were there I had these, and they are the sort of food one dreams about, not just once or twice, but repeatedly.  Avec is a tapas restaurant, which means you order a variety of smaller dishes and share them with your party.  Since it was just the two of us we couldn’t go as crazy with the ordering as we would have been able to with a larger group, but we were able to try a few new things as well.

We started with a salad of pickled beets, brussel sprouts and something else.  Then came this excellent "whipped brandede" which is a type of fish.  It came with several pieces of toasted bread on the side to spread on it.  We had also ordered a salmon dish, which was the weakest thing we ordered.  It was with risotto, and the lemon flavor was entirely too overwhelming.

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When you order tapas, they don’t all arrive at once.  It’s pretty fun because they just show up and you eat it, then sometimes you wait a bit.  It takes a certain attitude to eat at a tapas restaurant, in my opinion.  In any case, at this point in the meal we knew all that remained were the dates and the focaccia with ricotta cheese and truffle oil.  In other words, saving the best for last!

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I’ll just say that the dates did not disappoint.  I ate two of them and was incredibly happy. The focaccia was fantastic too (we had had that before as well) but I was SO full by that point that I only ate a little bit.

All in all the meal was overwhelming fantastic.  We have even debated returning tonight, but we’re going to try something different. 

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Oh look, a creepy photo of me!  I had to squat next to her for the photo, that’s why I look creepy.  Promise.

So, after Avec we decided to head to a place called The Violet Hour owned by the same people (we thought they needed more of our money) for after dinner drinks.  Karen had been before and really enjoyed it.  When we got there, however, there was a really long line to get in.  Generally I am not the sort of person who cares enough to wait in lines (except when on a cruise, amiright?) but I was in vacation mode so we stuck it out.  We needed to digest a bit anyway.

We finally got inside and had a few drinks.  It was really nice and chill…weird to have such a long line like it was a club versus more of a speakeasy 😉

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Finally it was time to go home.  We opened the door to leave…and it was completely pouring rain and the road was a like a river.  Naturally the car was 6 to 8 blocks away and our umbrellas were…naturally…in the car.  We panicked a bit.

Karen finally came up with the brilliant idea of asking the bar for a plastic bag.  We knew our clothes and shoes were fine with water, but we were concerned about our purses and the contents of our purses as well (phones and wallets).  They gave us a large trash bag and I threw the bags in, tossed it over my shoulder like Santa Claus, and off we went into the ridiculous downpour.  We were squealing the entire way, and the roads were crowded with people attempting to get home or back to their cars.  It was awful to be completely soaked, yet it was also hilariously exhilarating!  The roads were seriously flooding but we finally made it back to Karen’s apartment.  What a night!

Tonight we are thinking of going to "The Publican" which is yet ANOTHER restaurant owned by the same people…also I’ve been to Blackbird in the past.  Yup.  That’s how I roll.

Today has been a lazy day:  slept in, brunch at Eleven City Diner, and a manicure.  Karen has another concert tonight, but it’s the same program I saw last night.  I’ll probably head down with her and poke around the area, or maybe just read outside or something.  Let’s hope it doesn’t rain too much more!

How is your weekend going?

Sightseeing in my own city

I have lived in St Louis for around three years, so it’s not like I’m a native.  However, it’s always nice when people come in from out of town because then you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do.

My parents are visiting and I wanted to show them some of the St Louis sites.  But my dad had the idea of taking a riverboat cruise—he saw them on his bike ride yesterday and thought it looked like a neat thing.  We had all been up in the arch before (and had no desire to do so again) so it seemed like the perfect St Louis activity.

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Great view of the arch!

We considered renting a four person "bike".

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I didn’t get a picture but all four of us piled into the vehicle to see how it would work.  My head hit the yellow awning unfortunately, but the concept is fantastic.  Another time.

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The water level is very high.  We learned that they had actually been closed for 45 days until a couple of days before because the road was slightly underwater.  The normal parking lot was completely underwater.

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Finally it was time to board the "Tom Sawyer."

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Overall it was a great tour!  I had (obviously) never seen that side of St Louis, and I do love being on a ship.  I would probably go again if I were with people who wanted to (Leslie?).  Our captain pointed out all of the barges on the river—we suspected that he secretly wished he were a tugboat captain.

After the tour we decided to go to Forest Park.  I gave my parents the tour from the car and then we tried to go to the Art Museum.  The parking was a disaster, so finally we parked at the bottom of the hill by the Grand Basin and "hiked" up the hill.  It was less fun than it sounds, but I finally got to see the Art Museum.  My mother was impressed by all of the famous paintings there, and I think we all enjoyed it very much. 

Oh, and we saw larpers!  Can you see them?  I didn’t want to get too close for pictures.

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We made a reservation at Trattoria Marcella for dinner.  I had the shrimp risotto and it was fantastic.  We also split the mushrooms with polenta fries. 

All in all it was a wonderful day! 

Oh, and I got a wedding dress yesterday ;)  I don’t get to see it again until December 1 or so!  But it’s gorgeous :)  (Yes, I just threw that in at the end.)