This summer we’ve been having a bike ride every weekend, for the most part. Today was a high of 80 degrees and overcast, which for those of you following at home, is insanely cool for July in St Louis. We loaded up the bikes and biked Grant’s Trail, which isn’t terribly shady but didn’t matter today: I didn’t even need my sunglasses! It was a lovely ride and I forgot to take even a single picture. My legs are getting stronger but my rear end was still sore by the end. We did about 16 miles round trip.
Right at the end we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race, and while I had been apprehensive about it and thought Biden was being railroaded, this gave me hope, and I hope you all feel that as well. We need some hope!
After that we got lunch and stopped by our old house to set out some things for bulk pickup. We are still in the process of clearing it out and fixing a few things up to put it on the market. Louie has been working on some trouble sections in the walls.
Wallpaper that had been covered up. So pretty! But I’m sure there was a good reason to cover it up…(or not, haha.)
I’ve been playing Fiddler on the Roof and yesterday also had a lovely wedding out in Weldon Spring.
A beautiful setting for the wedding ceremony! Strathalbyn Farms Club in Weldon Spring.The building for the cocktail hour was built around an old cabin from the 1820’s. Very cool!One of two cats we saw wandering around.
This is the onstage fiddle for the Fiddler on the Roof. It doesn’t make a sound but the actor actually does know how to play the violin!
I have a bunch of performances this week plus Gateway Festival Orchestra on the weekend as well as one wedding to play. Student wise it’s probably my lightest week of the summer: only 21 students! Things are winding down and soon we will be in Sweden! I’m sure I’ve mentioned, but we are going to Sweden, Finland, and Estonia soon, just Louie and I. I am super excited and looking forward to eating seafood and potatoes, along with who knows what else. I think it will be a lot of fun and really interesting.
Have any readers been to that part of the world? Have you done any biking recently or seen Fiddler on the Roof?
I haven’t felt as drawn to type here…the world is a mess right now, and things are feeling really scary.
But here we are! The summer…I have to say, since I am not returning to my early morning school job in the fall, I am not dreading the fall in the same way I was the last two years or so. Summer has ended up being quite busy with work anyway, with 30-40 students a week plus some gigs. Not as many wedding gigs at this time, but plenty of musical theater gigs, and it’s been a lot of fun.
We’ve had time for some bike rides and plenty of evening events. Last week after getting home from visiting my family in Chautauqua, we went to several jazz shows, a musical, a wine dinner, and an opera.
A jazz show over dinner at Evangeline’s in the Central West End. I work at Wash U with the guitarist, Vince Varvel.And then to the Blue Strawberry for Kendrick Smith.The Little Mermaid at the Muny with my friend MarieCarmen with Union Avenue Opera: I absolutely adored this performance!Wine dinner at the Whittemore House. The food was terrific, and I loved the wine and mead as well.
It was a lot of busy nights! Sunday then Louie and I loaded up the bikes and biked from Augusta to Defiance, ate lunch in Defiance, and biked back.
We stopped to pose with this beautifully painted grain silos, which were painted in 2021.
We’ve been biking every week: it gets awfully hot here for hiking and Louie was pushing me to bike with him, so I’ve been plotting out various trails (mostly on the Katy Trail) for us to try together. We’ve enjoyed biking and eating lunch either at the end at a nearby restaurant or at the halfway point. Both have their pros and cons.
Another view of the painted silos
This week has been busy with teaching and getting ready to play Fiddler on the Roof at the Muny. I’ve been having so much fun playing with the group this summer: I’m sure they won’t need me as much next year if they have an audition, and while I’ll take the audition, who knows how it will go, so I’m trying to enjoy it now.
The rain yesterday was pretty crazy: we had some flash flooding and were super surprised by how much rain was falling. I had to get groceries in the middle of it: in retrospect I probably should have waited for the rain to stop, but my weather app said it would, so I headed out and then instead of stopping it got worse! I did make it home safely but there were a few sketchy moments. Good thing climate change isn’t a real thing and instead it’s just really strange that now we keep getting all this extreme weather, huh? I’ve also realized that the weather apps are simply unreliable and are fairly useless for anything except perhaps telling the temperature. They pretend to know when it will stop and start raining, but it sort of feels like gaslighting since it is practically always wrong. Why tell me it will stop raining in 7 minutes when that is just wrong?
But I digress. As I nearly always do! Cat time!
We have a great cat sitter who always takes tons of pictures of the cats interacting with various toys she brings. I’m always sad to leave the cats, but I know they are in good hands and probably enjoy having the house to themselves for awhile too, as long as their basic needs are met. They have each other too! I’m sad to think of leaving them while we are in Europe too, but I’m sure they will be fine…
Louie and I prefer to visit many different places in the summer: we know people who always do the same thing every summer with their families and it has never been our thing. Yet, we find ourselves visiting Chautauqua for the fifth year in a row, because it’s a lovely place, but it’s also a place we can go hang out with my niece and nephew and sister and brother in law and relax!
Though, when you are dealing with a 5 and 9 year old, relaxing isn’t as much of a thing as you might like. I’m just going to give you some of the highlights of what we did.
We had dinner out at a place called Pine Junction. I recommend the coconut shrimp!
We spent some time at the library on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. This lion tried to keep us from entering. My nephew really enjoys seeing the library, but he also loves riding the elevator in the library and pretending he doesn’t know it is an elevator and being surprised every time we get to a new floor.
I brought a few gifts, and the biggest hit seemed to be a game called “Cats and Boxes”. I recommend it!
One day Leslie, Louie and I did some kayaking. It was harder that we thought it would be!
Louie had the single kayak and was much more skilled at using his.
Some of the lovely homes overlooking the lake.
We went to Westfield one morning for brunch at the Parkview Cafe (sadly no picture of that, which is sad because Louie and I live in a neighborhood called Parkview), and their claim to fame is that Lincoln got a letter from a young girl who said he should grow a beard in order to win the presidency, and then he did, and visited Westfield later and met the girl. The story is printed on the mugs at the Cafe and then we noticed there was a park on the corner commemorating all of this.
At Westfield, Mr. Lincoln greeted a large crowd of ladies, and several thousand of the sterner sex. Addressing the ladies, he said, “I am glad to see you; I suppose you are to see me; but I certainly think I have the best of the bargain. (Applause.) Some three months ago, I received a letter from a young lady here; it was a very pretty letter, and she advised me to let my whiskers grow, as it would improve my personal appearance; acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so; and now, if she is here, I would like to see her; I think her name was Miss Barlly.” A small boy, mounted on a post, with his mouth and eyes both wide open, cried out, “there she is, Mr. Lincoln,” pointing to a beautiful girl, with black eyes, who was blushing all over her fair face. The President left the car, and the crowd making way for him, he reached her, and gave her several hearty kisses, and amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd, he bade her good-bye, and on we rushed.
Louie and my niece reenacting the statue which was of the meeting. It seemed like a pretty big deal for something small, but I guess you make a statue when you can!
We watched Jurassic Park live in concert. I guess I hadn’t seen Jurassic Park in a long time, and it was a much better movie than I recall–have action movies gotten so much worse lately? Or perhaps it was always pretty good and it was the sequel that was bad? In any case, the music was too loud sometimes but we really enjoyed the evening.
My niece is in an opera this summer and we saw part of a rehearsal. She is in Hansel and Gretel as part of the children’s chorus and this was the rehearsal where they starting adding in the staging to the music. I’m sorry we won’t get to see the performance.
We had been doing some nice photos and some silly ones, and evidently nobody understood which was which.
Selfie at Bemus Point. I bought new sunglasses on this trip (I really needed a pair as my “good” pair had broken and I had been wearing a very scratched up pair) and I like the look of them!
Overall we had a lovely visit. Not pictured: time in the hot tub, walking around the farm land where they live. Lowlights: waking up early with the kids and sometimes a 5 year being a little whiny, but super cute and loving as well. The 9 year old was definitely more mature than ever, very skilled on the violin and piano, worked great with her little brother, and they both seem to be having a great summer! My sister and her husband are busy running around doing more than one job each and keeping the house running.
We got home then, and I got to truly sleep in yesterday: I slept till 9 and it was absolutely glorious. I always love spending time with my family, but it is also wonderful to get home. Oh! We got Taco John’s on our drive home, which was good. We like to get bean burritos and potato oles and then put some potato oles into the burritos to add texture and flavor. Delicious!
This summer is flying by! Truthfully, I’ve been busier than ever, which has contributed to the frantic feeling. I’m finishing up the second week of playing a musical at the Muny (for non-local readers, this is an outdoor amphitheater which does musicals all summer: it has been running for 106 years and is the largest outdoor amphitheater of its kind in the US. )
I have played two shows so far: Les Miserables and Dreamgirls, and it’s been a lot of fun, but late nights! The shows start at 8:15, so depending on how long the show is, I’m not getting home until after 11:30 sometimes, and then I need some time to unwind. It’s the complete opposite of my schedule during the year (which is no longer, though, I keep remembering and feeling free about the fact that I don’t have to get up at 5:30 am in the fall again). I’ve also been teaching and playing some weddings and such, so it’s been a full work schedule.
We did have time to do some biking. It’s usually too hot to hike in the summer here, plus the bugs can be really bad, but biking is easier in the hot weather (you make your own breeze, sort of). We’ve done three segments on the Katy Trail this summer, making an out and back with lunch either in the middle or at the end. Yesterday was our longest in awhile, over 19 miles round trip. I’ve been getting more used to being on the bike.
This was on a particularly hot weekend…yesterday was much more pleasant temperature wise and we even enjoyed our lunch sitting outside on a patio. Summer is more pleasant with lower humidity.
It’s been a fun month: Louie and I saw 3 operas together (he saw one more without me) and we did the bike rides. I had a pretty social month too, catching up with a variety of friends and seeing lots of people and chatting with them at gigs. Playing out more means seeing more people, and I’m friends with so many of my colleagues. We had some nice dinners before the shows and I have had a lot of lunches out.
Oh, and I realized I never shared about earlier in the month either: we went to a wedding (daughter of Louie’s boss) and had a lovely time.
And the cats are well: we got them a new hammock on their tree.
It IS a 4 part series! The whole trip was about 9 days, and we really got into the vacation feeling, where you feel like you can’t quite remember what “real life” was like and you are just sightseeing and following people around.
So, we left off having gotten to Philadelphia.
This was the view out of one of the windows of the hotel.
It would have been nice to really sleep in, but sightseeing awaited, and we had made arrangements to meet my brother for coffee and breakfast (at least for us), so we met him in the morning and went to a place called Elixir, which was near the hotel (and we had been in the past). It was excellent, and Louie and I enjoyed an almond croissant, some sort of savory cheese pastry, and cappuccinos.
After that we met up with Louie’s dad, Richard, and walked to the Barnes Museum. It’s a museum that is all a collection from one man’s house, and it’s really fantastic.
It was a pretty nice day temperature wise, but the weather seemed to be threatening rain.
The rooms of the museums are filled with art, and arrranged mostly how Barnes had them arranged in his home, so works from different periods and different artists are all side by side. I enjoyed it, though I always feel a bit ignorant when it comes to art.
It did start raining at one point, which of course didn’t affect our museum enjoyment, but then when it came time for lunch we decided it was a good reason to simply eat at the museum cafe. This was no hardship as the food was delicious.
After lunch I think Louie would have gladly spend more time at the museum, but the general consensus was to move on, but to where? Jesse remembered the Eastern State Penitentiary was both nearby and a part of our uncle Ed’s Philadelphia tour these days, so we headed there next.
It was a bit rainy, but not too bad, and most of the tour is inside with an audio guide. It was really interesting and thought provoking, and we learned about the history of prisons in the US, specifically this prison as well as more broadly, and thought about how many people are incarcerated in our country versus other countries as well.
After the tour we walked back towards the hotel and Richard’s apartment.
Me and my brother Jesse
We had a little downtime and just hung out in the hotel lobby while Richard rested and then we met for dinner with Kiyoko as well. We went to a Chinese restaurant which only served vegetarian food, and it was really tasty: we ordered a bunch of different dishes and shared. Nobody went away hungry! Jesse took a train back home after dinner. Louie and I stopped at a nearby dive bar called Dirty Frank’s: we couldn’t resist as our old neighbor’s cat is named Dirty Frank. We had a beer and then headed “home”.
The next morning we had Elixir again, though we tried different pastries, and then met Richard to visit the Mercer Museum in Doylestown. It was about an hour drive, and is a fascinating place, filled with old objects from around the country.
It’s hard to describe, but you walk into a giant room with stuff everywhere, different floors to walk around and items hanging from the center, and it’s just a bit overwhelming. It’s the sort of place you could return several times and never see everything.
I like how this was free from all opiates. Evidently worth mentioning. The pharmacy area was just full of fascinating old medicine bottles.If you look, you’ll see Richard and Louie.
There are chairs and bikes and all kinds of things just hanging from the ceiling.
Anyway, after wandering around for an hour or two, we were hungry, so headed off on foot for lunch. Doylestown has a cute downtown, and we found a nice looking Peruvian restaurant.
My dish had ceviche in it and was delicious, albeit rather spicy.
We went to the Moravian Tileworks next as Richard wanted to buy something, and I ended up getting a tile with a cat on it as a souvenir. After that we headed back to the hotel, and rested up before dinner.
We went to Positano Coast Restaurant for dinner and shared some oysters and other cold fish, and then I had the sea urchin linguine…it was really delicious and amazing! We again ate until we were stuffed and then walked back. It was actually pretty funny: on the walk to the restaurant we ran into some of Richard’s former students and ended up taking pictures with them (they were in town for a sort of reunion!) Small world, as always. It should be noted that while we walked a decent amount in Philadelphia, it was never as much as we walked in New York, and the streets were much less busy.
The next day we again started with Elixir (yes, it was that good and also that close to our hotel) and then mostly walked around. We were going to do a tour of the Masonic Temple, but it turned out that they had a private event there. We walked over to the Library and looked around, joined a rare book tour and got to see some things not normally open to the public, including a stuffed raven that belonged to Charles Dickens that most likely inspired Poe. And then played the theremin for a bit.
We had a late lunch with Kiyoko then, and ate at the Oyster House (mmm shrimp salad sandwich) and then had to head to the airport to fly home.
It was a fun trip: we saw a bunch of relatives, ate some delicious food, walked a ton (averaging 9-10 miles a day in NYC and 5-6 miles a day in Philadelphia), and got to relax after a stressful year of teaching.
It’s also always lovely to be home. The cats seemed happy to see us.
And now I’m teaching, playing Les Mis, eating less delicious food and more just normal food including food that can be eaten quickly, and it’s been a long week! Muny shows get out late (home around 11:30) and then I’ve been having to get up around 7, which was less fun. The rest of the week will be easier though, and I have to say that I’ve been having a lot of fun with the show. Louie and a friend of mine are coming to see it tomorrow night, and I think they will enjoy it.
Wow, per usual, this trip recap series is taking an embarrassingly long amount of time. Current life continues, with teaching, going to see THREE operas, and playing in the pit for Les Miserables at the Muny (very fun!).
We left off on the train from New York to Elizabethtown (via Philadelphia). We arrived at the Elizabethtown train station and my aunt Connie (my mom’s sister) picked us up. We went to her house for lunch–just a few minutes in the car. Her boyfriend Carl (she has a long-time boyfriend just like I do, haha!) met us and we had a nice time catching up and such. I probably hadn’t been to Connie’s house in this millennium but I remembered it a bit still. She’s lived there a long time and has it decorated just how she likes it and it is very neat and tidy. She had some decor out from her recent trip to South Africa.
After lunch we drove to Lititz to pick up my uncle Ed (my mom’s older brother) for a tour of Lititz. Ed loves giving tours, this has always been his favorite thing (it seems) and he has always been incredibly energetic and full of interesting knowledge. In my younger years we went on tours of New York City and Philadelphia with him. Ed is sick, so his physical energy is low, but he was still as eager as ever to tell us the wonders and history of Lititz.
This factory is where the hard pretzel was invented. We got a tour that showed us how they used to make soft pretzels and the story of how Julius invented the hard pretzel. Ed had hoped his granddaughter (hmmm…my first cousin once removed) was working, but she was done for the day and so we missed seeing her.
Carl holding a bag of horse and buggy shaped pretzels. We would have bought some if the bag were smaller, but nobody in our group wanted that many pretzels!
Part of the tour involved shaping your own soft pretzel. Apparently they then used to bake the pretzels and give them to you, but they don’t do that any longer and they just take them away and give you a small bag of hard pretzels at the end.
After the pretzel tour, we went nearby to the Lititz History Museum where Ed works part time as a volunteer guide, and he showed us through the museum and told us all the interesting things. We learned quite a lot about Moravians, who were the big religious group who founded the town of Lititz. This was all somewhat interesting as I’d never really been to Lititz: my mom grew up in nearby Akron and my grandparents lived there until they passed away. Ed and his wife Twila did too, until they moved into a retirement community in Lititz, and Ed has really gotten involved in the town since then.
The Lancaster Symphony was playing a Memorial Day concert in the park that evening, so we got dinner at the restaurant in the park (burgers and such) and walked around a bit more. Ed needed to rest a fair amount, and at one point a storm blew through, which delayed the concert a bit. But they were able to play after all, and the weather was lovely at that point.
After the concert, we took Ed home and then headed back to Elizabethtown (about thirty more minutes drive). We were exhausted by then so went to bed.
The next morning we met Carl again and went to brunch at a nearby restaurant, the Whisk Cafe. We sat outside and enjoyed the weather and delicious food. After lunch we drove to some viewpoints of the Susquehanna river and took a short hike out to Chickie’s Rock.
We went to pick up Ed again after that, and did a driving tour through Amish farm country while Ed told us all about what was being done to preserve the farming way of life in Lancaster County while development was coming in all around…
Ed only had a few hours to spend with us, so after we did some auto touring, we had to leave him again and head back to E-town. We had an early dinner at T. J. Rockwell’s, said our goodbyes, and then caught our train to Philadelphia, right on time. It was really great to see everybody and spend time together, and I’m so glad we made the trip!
Our train to Philly was uneventful, and then Louie’s dad picked us up at the train station and drove us to the hotel we were staying at, the Cambria. It was very nice and we had a corner room with windows on two sides. (His dad didn’t have room for us but treated us to a hotel nearby his apartment.) We checked in and dropped off our things and then went over to visit with his dad and his wife Kiyoko, who had made some delicious fish soup and dessert. We were a little hungry since dinner was so early, so it was nice to eat a little bit and chat. We finally got to bed closer to midnight, probably (very late for this early riser, but I’m getting used to being less of an early riser and enjoying that.)
Okay, I’ll leave it there and write one more post to finish up our trip. I will try to do that in the next few days rather than wait an entire week! Upcoming highlights: the Eastern State Penitentiary and seeing my brother Jesse.
