Back from the calamitous vacation o' calamity, which wrapped up with 10+ hours in the car. First, I drove down to Delaware to pick up Sarah. That went fine. Well except for the part where I got on NJ Turnpike going north instead of south. I think I reeled off every curseword I know and then started making up new ones when I saw that sign for exit 12. But other than that, not to bad this morning and it only took about 2.5 hours including the wrong way detour and stopping for fuel and coffee. But the traffic from DE to NC was brutal. Over 8 hours. Oy! But we made it. Rewarded ourselves with Pizza Palace for dinner. Mmm... pizza...

Refer to Sarah's blog for details of her family's week. As for mine, my father's still in hospital but doing much better. No infection (it was aspiration pneumonia) so hopefully he'll be able to go home soon.

For me, the actual vacation part of the vacation took place between Sunday morning and Monday afternoon. But it was a good day. Walked all over Manhattan. Got to check out the swanky WFM up at Columbus Circle. Had an awesome breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien, which is apparently a Belgium-based chain. By decor perhaps a bit fussy and over-determined. But the bread kicked mucho ass. Nice big basket o' good bread, with some wonderful apricot jam and a hazelnut spread that could bring tears to yr eyes. Big bowl o' coffee. Good way to start the morning.

The non-food highlight of the weekend was Sunday's trip to the Met. We saw the Chanel exhibition. Very interesting and reminded me of stuff from the biography of Chanel I read a few years ago. Sarah will no doubt comment more expertly on this show. Also checked out an exhibit of photography by Roger Fenton, an early British photographer. Included pics taken during the Crimean War, in Moscow during the 1850s, a few shots of Queen Victoria's children, many many landscapes and church ruins. A bit too many of those. After the 10th or 11th scenic Welsh waterfall it go to be a bit much. And, of course, the main event, the big big Max Ernst show. Breathtaking. I was joking that the Ernst documentary we watched made it sound like pretty much all innovations in 20th century art (except cubism) derived from Ernst. But after going thru the show, it's clear that he was enormously influential in a lot of different ways. Also fun, my friend Lisa was able to join us for the Ernst part of the afternoon. We go back, jeez, almost 20 years now to when we were both working at NYU. So it's been a couple of years since I've seen her and it was nice to get together and finally introduce her to Sarah. So yeah... one good day. Better than the last trip.