A Cure for Jet Lag

I have a French friend who's convinced that in fifty years time they're going to discover that air travel seriously damages your health and airlines will have to issue warnings like on cigarette packets.

I wouldn't go that far, but I do sometimes wonder if jet lag isn't the universe's gentle hint to go back to the gentler era of trains and ocean liners.  It's not just the lack of sleep (or on the other end of the spectrum, sleeping too much); it's the feeling woozy and disconnected from your surroundings.  I find myself getting a bit melancholy too (just when my energy levels drop) and also ravenous at strange times of the day (like two o'clock in the morning).

In the past, I have tried to drown the jet lag with lots of coffee (even more than I usually drink) and usually ended up feeling worse than when I started.

So what's a jet lagged lady traveller to do?

The answer - and I almost hate to say this, because it makes me sound like one of those annoying people they interview for the last page of glossy magazines who swear that they only travel with rose water, cashmere blankets and scented candles - is ... go running.  Or at the very least, brisk walking.

Find a park, a river, a seafront; plug in some music, lift your face up to the sunlight (exposure to sunlight is supposed to help reset your body clock) and go for it.

Yesterday, just when my energy levels were lowest, I put on my running things and headed for Fitzroy Gardens, one of my favourite green spaces in Melbourne.  It was a beautiful golden evening and there were lots of other runners, so I could pretend to be a local again.

(Photos taken on the run, with mixed success.)

Afterwards - afterwards I felt restored, full of energy.  Even better, I stayed awake until after ten and slept through the night, waking up, refreshed, at seven this morning.

International Day of LTLS

Quiet! We are respecting International Day of Luiseach (aka Lady Traveller's Little Sister) with respectful silence. Later there may be a parade.

Packing + Maths = Illusion of Control

So, packing.  Item #92 on my life list is 'Master the art of packing a suitcase so I can always travel stylishly.'  This is an art that has eluded me for some time.  I always start with great intentions to create a capsule wardrobe but inevitably last-minute panic sets in and I end up packing for every eventuality (freak blizzards, unexpected invitations to the Oscars, that kind of thing.)

I've decided to approach this scientifically.

Last year, when I spent some time shuttling between Melbourne and Auckland, I developed a plan that kind of worked.  

1 dress + 1 skirt + 1 trousers + 3 tops + 2 cardigans + 3 pairs of shoes = wardrobe heaven?

For five weeks in Melbourne, I've decided on the following - it's based (loosely) on twice the Auckland Equation, bearing in mind that you can't wear exactly the same clothes week in and week out without getting a leetle bit bored.  At least I can't.  So I'm going with a two-week, on-again/off-again cycle.

For working - 
2 dresses + 2 skirts + 2 trousers + 4 tops + 2 cardigans + 2 pairs of shoes + 1 blazer

For evenings & weekends -
1 dress + 1 jeans + 1 shorts + 2 tops + 1 shoes + 1 casual jacket

Just in case of freak blizzards - 
One warm jumper (I can't help it, it's like I hear a choir of Irish mammies in my head asking, 'have you packed your woolly jumper?')

And that's it - I'll travel with my handy dandy trench coat (warm enough for wearing in Ireland on departure / arrival, not too warm for Australia if it gets wet and windy, which it might).

My suitcase is looking a bit more streamlined than usual as I've resisted the urge to pack all of my favourite clothes.  I've also kept to a strict every-top-has-to-go-with-at-least-three-other-things rule so I can mix and match.  Plus I keep reciting the following mantra: there have WASHING MACHINES and SHOPS in Australia.  

So, is this the magic formula?  I'll let you know...

Think Pink

I think I may be entering what would, if I were an artist, be called my pink period.  Or to be strictly accurate, my second pink period.

Long ago, before blogging was invented, I wore a lot of pink.  When I was at university, I was known for my love of pink - all shades of pink, from candy to peony.  I have a photo of me at a college ball in a fuchsia dress with a little gauze jacket and a big pink peony in my hair and pink lipstick and yes, it was a lot of pink, but that girl is glowing (it was so long ago I can talk about myself in the third person.)

I realised that this had become perhaps too much of a good a thing one night when a group of friends was playing Psychiatrist.  (A game that is probably now banned because of its insensitivity to people with mental health issues - but we were 19 and clueless.)  If you don't know the game, one person leaves the room and the rest decide on a 'complex' or tic to adopt, like everybody compulsively scratching their heads.  On this occasion, we all had to adopt the personality of the person beside us.  The psychiatrist (sorry, 'psychiatrist') came back in and as soon as the guy beside me said, 'I wear a lot of pink', he guessed the tic.  And he didn't even know me very well.  That was the beginning of the end of my pink period.

In the years after, I wore very little pink.  Colour yes (working with a lot of designers makes me avoid too much black - too obvious), but not pink.

Then, just before Christmas, I was reading Vogue (I mentioned this before, but bear with me.)  On a grey day, the glowing Norman Parkinson photos of a Vogue fashion shoot in India lifted my spirits immeasurably.  I didn't realise it then, but I had been (re)bitten by the pink bug.

Symptom 1: Last week, glove shopping in Rome, I didn't plan to buy pink gloves ... but once inside the shop, realised that no other colour would do.

Symptom 2: Today, I put on a pink cardigan that I hadn't worn in years and only kept out of sentiment.

Symptom 3: Not just that, but (like one in a trance) bought a pink checked shirt in Gap because it was so obviously what I had to wear for my Australia trip.

I like to think that I'll wear pink a little more judiciously than the last time but don't be surprised if you see me sporting pink head to toe some day.  At a time of relentless doom and gloom, pink is an excellent tonic.

And if that doesn't convince you, maybe the fabulous Kay Thompson will:

Roman Holiday

(Sorry, couldn't resist cheesy title.  Also, spent much of weekend channelling la bella Audrey, hoping to bump into Gregory Peck.)

So, let's see - Rome Day 1.  What did we do?  What didn't we do?

First of all, the taxis were on strike so we had to bargain with a minicab driver to take us into the city from the airport.  We could have been annoyed by this, but I felt it lent a pleasing verisimilitude to the proceedings.  (When in Rome etc.)

Our hotel was near the Colosseum.  From there we walked and walked and walked.  We walked past the Colosseum, the imperial fora, the typewriter / wedding cake memorial to Vittorio Emanuele.




We walked around and around and around Trajan's column trying to find our recommended lunch spot - eventually we discovered we'd been standing in front of it and it was closed.  So we found somewhere else.

Replenished, we walked some more.  Along the Via del Gesu, through the Piazza della Minerva (stopping to gawk at the priest supply store),



over to the Pantheon,




into the Piazza Navona.  We swung into the church of San Luigi dei Francesi to see the Caravaggio paintings there.  (This is free by the way, but you have to put 10 cents into the box to turn the lights on over the paintings.  I found this strangely charming.  Also: check out the bling in the church - all of the gold paint in the land was used on the ceiling.)




Along the way we fortified ourselves with coffee (Sant'Eustachio il Caffe, allegedly best coffee in Rome, certainly best coffee we had) and a small, teeny-weeny canolo.




We walked over to the Via del Corso and past all the designer shops and even raced each other up the Spanish Steps (this is why I'm looking decidedly shiny-faced.)





And then we had puccinis (like bellinis but with mandarin puree) and walked some more.

And then we had dinner (three courses, silly not to) and walked back in the direction of the hotel.  Luckily - as at least 20 minutes had passed since we'd eaten and we were in danger of expiring - our walk took us by Gelataria San Crispino.  Possibly the best ice cream in the world, never mind in Rome.



Around the corner was the Trevi Fountain so naturally enough we walked over there and ate our ice cream.



And then we walked back to the hotel (swinging by Trajan's column for old time's sake).

Feet: sore.

Tummies: full.

Smiles: ear to ear.

The Stones (but mostly Sounds) of Rome

Part inspired by Ruskin's book The Stones of Venice, part inspired by my surroundings, I made this on Saturday morning, sitting on an ancient masonry fragment in the Roman forum.

More (much more) to follow on our Roman holiday.

The Little Museum

Once upon a long, long time ago, there was a Civic Museum in Dublin.  Squashed into a house on South William St, its collections were a mix of the historic and the nostalgic.  It was the kind of place people like to call a gem - and like many such places, it closed (due to lack of funding? interest?).  There were plans at various times to create a new city museum in its place, but none of these became a reality.

Then, in 2011, The Little Museum of Dublin opened, its stories covering some of the same ground as the old Civic Museum.  The project seems to have gone from idea to reality in a matter of months.  There's a refreshing air of hey-kids-let's-put-the-show-on-right-here that I associate more with pop-up exhibitions - though I'm willing to bet The Little Museum will be around for a while to come.

One of my favourite things about the museum is its setting, in (so far, I believe there are plans to colonise further) two rooms of a Georgian townhouse on St Stephen's Green.  There are comfortably over-stuffed armchairs pulled in front of a coffee table beside the fireplace and, yes, you're welcome to sit and read.



The collections are largely two-dimensional: photographs, paintings, menus, letters are framed and arranged around the walls in clusters, by decade.



There are also some groupings of souvenirs, food packaging, small sculptures, coins, memorabilia.



The layout is unashamedly domestic, in the best sense: the salon hang, the use of drawing room furniture to display the collections, the absence of labels (information about everything on display is available in the catalogue, which you can borrow or buy at the reception desk) creates an intimate atmosphere, very appropriate for telling the story of Dublin, which is, after all, a city on an intimate scale.



The museum is open late on Thursdays (this is when we went, a really lovely time to go) and costs €5 (reductions for senior citizens, the unwaged and students, children go free.

http://www.littlemuseum.ie/