Last Days in Kyoto

In case you were wondering, Cochino kitty was on her own vacation of sorts.  Still in Stockholm, but getting lei'ed and enjoying every minute with her lovely caretakers.

Our nights in Kyoto were spent at The Screen hotel, where each room is individually designed.  Sometimes this can go very badly, but ours was pretty cool--and it was HUGE by Japanese standards!  Our artist was inspired by fog, so everything was hidden behind sheer white curtains.  This is what it looked like when the curtains were drawn.

There was also a seating area, where they would leave fresh treats for us each day, as well as the biggest bed ever.  Our hotels along the way were hit and miss, but The Screen was one of the best.

Ryokan + Indigo

We stayed at a ryokan in Ohara, which is outside of Kyoto.  A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn.  Our ryokan also had an onsen, which is basically a hot springs.  One of the best parts of a ryokan is the fancy, multi-coursed meal they serve you right in your room.  It was quite an experience--though not a cheap one!

Our ryokan was vibing something out of The Shining, if only because there were no other guests there but us. Which meant that we had the place basically to ourselves. Oh, and there was a taxidermied bear holding a mug of coins in the lobby. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I also wasn't sure how I felt about wearing the robes they gave you (me = skeeved about wearing things that aren't mine... and tags are just the least of it), but I suffered through my skeev to shuffle to the onsen in my robe for a dip before dinner.

I didn't take any photos of the onsen because it was, you know, wet. There were three choices of hot springs--and two of them rotated the hours to be women-only or men-only. (Since we were the only ones there, the hours rotated to be Jodi-only or Byron-only.) There was a wooden bath that's basically like a sauna, then there was a rock bath, which was in this basement that was guarded by a feisty cicada (I gave up at first, but then the noisy bug took a rest on the window and I slipped by), and then--our favorite--the open air bath, wherein you dipped among trees that were hundreds of years old. The open-air baths were open to men and women concurrently, but they were separated by a wooden wall. So B and I could talk to each other through the wall when we went for our bath after dinner.  

Of course, there's a protocol to bathing in an onsen. You take a small towel with you to cover yourself when you are getting in and out of the bath, should you feel shy because--oh yeah, you're naked!  I was so glad we were on our own there because this gal is still a little Victorian about being naked around other human beings. (Thankfully, I got to experience an onsen all by myself.) You wash your body and hair first, with a hand-held shower head, before you get into the bath. There is a place to store your robe and room key. You wear your indoor sandals from your room until you get to the outdoor path to the onsen, then you switch to some wooden sandals for outside. You leave these wooden sandals outside the door to the onsen and retrieve them on your way back to your room. Our ryokan was in need of an update, but the onsen experience there was top-notch and made me forgive them for having a stuffed baby bear in the lobby.

They served us a bananas 9-course (was it 9?  Or 10?) meal in our rooms. I did not wear my robe for this because strange robe coupled with food only added to my skeev. But here you can see my husband (!) helping himself to a bottle of sake that is out of frame.

Here is a course of ayu, or sweetfish, which is traditionally caught by cormorants. (You can watch a brief video on these "fish-seeking missiles" here, though this is in China.)

This is what our room looked like. The floor is tatami mats. After dinner, they moved aside our table and made up our bed on the floor.

The other reason we came to Ohara was to visit a small spinning, dyeing, and weaving workshop.

I had contacted them in advance to arrange a weaving and dyeing course for B and me. But when we got there, it seemed better to just focus on the dyeing, so we did.


It is beautiful country there, and the weather was great.

It's basically the owner, his wife, and another young woman involved with the place, from what I could tell.

These yarns are all dyed with vegetal dyes.

The owner showed us his indigo fields and told us how Japanese indigo is different from Amerian indigo, etc.

Blue hands are the sign of an indigo lifer.

Vats of indigo.  He explained the fermentation process (sometimes they use sake!), and then advised us which vats to use depending on the depth of blue we wanted.

The owner spoke English, but he was a bit wary of us at first. Once we started asking questions and he saw our passion, so to speak, he seemed to dig us alright and we even got a few laughs out of him.  Here he is working with B.

(Side note on the skeev tip:  We had to wear wellies while working with the indigo and, of course, I showed up without socks--I mean, it was HOT there!--and had to put mybare feet right in these stinky old wellies, used by I-don't-know-how-many-people before.  I swear, I could smell years of foot grime and sweat cooking out of the top of those insulated boots and, barf, that was it--I took the damn things off. And I still could smell my feet and the years of other people's foot grime they'd acquired.  Barf.  We stopped at a cafe on the way back to the bus stop and I took the wet-nap they give you at the table into the bathroom and cleaned my dogs up good.  How has athlete's foot not overtaken the island, what with all of the shoe sharing in Japan???)

I'll leave you (get it--those are indigo leaves drying!) with this shot of B's newly dyed shirt hanging to dry and another look at the magical location.

Amsterdam

We arrived in Stockholm from Paris at 11 pm on a Thursday, un- and re-packed and left straight from work the next day for Amsterdam.  Here we are, tired and on another plane.

We stayed at Hotel The Exchange in Amsterdam, and ended up with this all-white-everything room.  All knobs and panels and switches were covered with white boxes.  It was fantastic!  

We caught the William Klein at FOAM.

What a prolific artist!  I think I enjoyed his fashion photography best.

We got to catch up with some of our favorites!  Spent the day with Monica and the night with Celia, Frida and Jamie, Imogen, Amy, Leen, Richard and Kat, and on and on to celebrate Nick and Miz's getting hitched.  FANTASTIC-O!  We really do know the best people on the planet.

The Lautner Compound

Where do I start?  We stayed in a museum, in a piece of architectural history.  John Lautner studied under Lloyd Wright and was directly involved in the building of some of the Taliesin West buildings.  (Also, you know his chemosphere house, right?) So we toured Taliesin, immersed ourselves in Lloyd Wright's architecture, and then stayed in a place directly influenced by it.

Cool.

So this place is now called Hotel Lautner and here's a bit of its history, pulled from the wikipeeds:

Originally designed in 1947 as a planned community of over 100 buildings, storefronts and pools on 600 acres at Desert Hot Springs in the Coachella Valley, near Palm Springs, California. Lautner's client was the famous movie director Lucien Hubbard, the winner of the very first "Best Picture" Oscar for the silent movie "Wings". After building the first four-unit prototype and pool the project came to a halt and it was subsequently used for Hubbard's stars and starlets as a getaway from Los Angeles; it gradually fell into disuse and sat vacant for almost 20 yrs. After Hubbard's death in 1972 the 600 acres were subdivided and sold off; the pool property burnt down and was bought by the neighboring golf course to be rebuilt in a different design as their club house. The prototype units were purchased by a buyer from San Diego but they sat empty for another nine years until an interior designer renovated them and put in kitchens and baths, although at some point the kitchens and baths were destroyed and removed. This owner kept the property for almost twenty years until the year 2000, renting out the rooms as apartments. It was then sold to Steve Lowe, who briefly ran it as the Lautner Motel. After Lowe died in 2005 the property went through the courts as was finally put back on the market in late 2006, when designers Ryan Trowbridge and Tracy Beckmann purchased it in 2007 for less than $400,000. The couple spent the next three-and-a-half years renovating and restoring the property. Their efforts won the approval of the Lautner Foundation, who sanctioned its renaming as the Hotel Lautner, in honor of its designer. The hotel re-opened for business in September 2011.


Here's a shot looking toward the fire pit at night:

*sigh*

You can see lots more photos of the place on the Hotel Lautner website, but some of my favorites are below.

Caveats:  It is NOT in Palm Springs proper, but in Desert Palm Springs--a nothing "town" about 30 minutes outside of PS.  It is a not a hotel in the usual sense of the word, but more like four apartments sharing a small hot-tub-sized pool (which is NOT a hot tub, nosirree), BBQ grill, and fire pit.  Each apartment has its own kitchenette, cactus garden (with cool night-lighting), and private terrace.  The place is old, so not everything works reliably.  Our cactus-lighting was on the fritz and the fire pit could not be counted on.  (Which sucks when you're all circled around it, comfy with cocktails.)  These were pretty big bummers, and the owners were in contact and came over to replace gas tanks and run extension cords and stuff like that, but it became a hassle to keep contacting them and waiting for their arrival.  Still, waking up in a place like this was pretty special.  In a what-am-I-doing-wrong-that-I-don't-actually-LIVE-in-a-place-like-this? kind of way, but also in an appreciative, nice-to-stay-here-even-if-only-for-a-few-nights way.  And I didn't spill any red wine on any vintage anything, so this proves that I might be just about mature enough to have a nice joint like this IRL.

The mini soaking pool.

Our apartment, the "Bachelor Pad."

Cards Against Humanity was in full effect.

LOVE the light fixture above the bed.

All rooms are equipped with record players, so we had fun spinning while sipping.  Our television was hidden behind the painting at left, something I'd love to do in my real place.  But I guess we'd need an actual TV first.

Here a goofy-faced B shows off the Bachelor Pad, with a view of our private terrace.

I forgot to add that we had the run of the place, with all four rooms rented, and that was pretty sweet.  I can't imagine sharing the fire pit or pool with randoms, though I'm sure it's fine.  Still, if you stay here, line up some friends and take the whole place.  It's really the best way to go.

AZ Intro

I met up with B and our friend Monika in Arizona, of all places.  Random, and honestly we had not planned to be in AZ but it was convenient and sunny and good for road trippin' and so it ended up to be a vacation salvager.  Thanks be to Arizona!

We stayed at the Hotel Valley Ho in downtown Scottsdale, which is recommended.  They did a bang-up job renovating this old Scottsdale hotel, leaving enough of the atomic vibe, but making it comfortable and modern.  The bar scene was also much livelier than that at the hotel where we almost stayed, the similarly retro-modern Saguaro.

This was the view from our balcony the first morning in Arizona.  Nice, right?

We did our best in Scottsdale, which was definitely not our scene.  We were all excited to find a "speakeasy" cocktail bar, which had some rules posted outside, where we had to wait to be escorted in after calling on a private phone.  But when we got inside, the decor felt more Residence Inn than Milk & Honey (the OG modern speakeasy).  And the "mixologist" (yuck, yuck, quick calling them that!) who came to help us was all, like SHOUTING at us, O-M-G, about the COCKTAILS, you know, you guys, and was she, like, wait... is that one of the Arizona Cardinals...?  Yeah, it was gross.  And M's cocktail was bad but the cheer-ologist did comp us for it.  Still, no.  The best meal we had was at a Japanese joint in an outdoor mall run by a James Beard regional semi-finalist.  That was a treat!


B turned up in Scottsdale with not only a nasty cold, but a crusty pink eye full of--PINK EYE!  Yuck-O!  I found I was better at working switches and knobs with my elbows than I'd given myself credit for. (Dear Self, Add new skill to resume?)  And I was constantly wiping my hands with straight alcohol wipes, injection prep-style.  I am happy to report that due to my vigilance, the pink eye virus died right there at the Valley Ho-tel.  Or maybe B left a little in the rental car or perhaps in Jerome, AZ.  But know that we did not bring any crusty eyes to fancy Palm Springs.  Nuh-uh.

Here I am showing off my new jewelries, purchased at the super super swell Chief Dodge in Scottsdale.  Oh, to be head-to-toe in turquoise!

This is my new ring of agate from Montana, made by a Navajo artisan.

And look!  My perm is still in effect!  Must be that dry desert air.

Paris Things

New good stuffs.

We stayed at the Hotel du Temps in the 9th and highly recommend it.  We spoke to the owner when we were checking out, and he totally deserves all of the props he's been getting for the place.  The decor is so refreshing--every piece seems thought out and curated, but not in a precious way.  Here are a few shots of our room.

Telescope for good coffee and a simple environment, just off the Palais Royale.

Parmentier giveth the potatoes.  Love this statue in the metro station bearing his name.

Weird shadowing, but running into old friends is always swell.  Look at this dashing fellow who was dining just nearby at Astier!

This is me at my most happiest ever, with a vegetarian galette from the crepe guy at Marché des Enfants Rouges.
This.
This would be my last meal, I've already decided.

Chicago--Hotel Burnham

Some shots of the lovely Hotel Burnham at State and Washington Streets. It was so nice to be in a boutique hotel that wasn't all modern and stark. They did a great job refurbishing the old Reliance Building and kept most of the old details. Behold:


Lo, a real key!


Interior hallway.


Our door.