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| Here I am in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, my trusty L.L. Bean camo tote bag full of madcap and marvelous purchases. |
When last we visited, I was bobbing about the Mediterranean aboard the extraordinary Cunard liner Queen Victoria. Ah, heady days. We began our voyage in Venice and from there it was a Grand Tour of the Mediterranean. We wandered through the atmospheric and cobblestoned, albeit tourist-prone, streets of Dubrovnik with a fabulous guide from the pros at Exeter International. We explored the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, one of my most cherished places to purchase textiles and gems, and lunched at the stunningly revamped Pera Palace Hotel, a favorite of the great Agatha Christie. We took in the whitewashed splendor of Mykonos, visited the stunning Palazzo Barberini museum in Rome and sipped tea at our favorite Roman haunt, Babington’s, situated at the foot of the Spanish Steps. We brunched at Il Salvatino, the arresting villa hotel high above Florence in Fiesole, and, sadly, had to pass up Marseille because of the seemingly endless French strikes. Ah, to be able to retire at 62 a la francais!
After the cruise, the Nixon clan booked an apartment in Barcelona and lapped up the Catalonian capital like so much cava. Oh, how I adore the big “B,” and the city is even more groovy and wonderful than when I lived there soon after the Olympics. Just skip the very questionable cooking at Moo at the Omm hotel, the place is highly overrated and pretentious, capital “P.”
A week or so later, it was time for me to jet off again. As you know, this jet-setter is never one to rest upon his laurels, so here I am sitting in the Sea Lounge of the wonderful, just-reopened Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India. The hotel has risen from the atrocities of the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks like a phoenix from the flames, refreshed and renewed.
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| The Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, a historic structure that has seen its ups and downs and ups. |
Mumbai intrigues me: The financial capital of India, the city mixes the traditional and the cutting edge, the poor and the rich (just take in the Mumbai skyscraper home of biz mogul Mukesh Ambani to see the epitome of the word “rich”). But enough highfaluting musings, off to lunch I go: My cognoscenti friends have all suggested I dine at Trishna to savor its king crab with a buttery garlic sauce, and I am never one to pass up a decadent lunch with a glass of a cool Sauvignon Blanc (unless it’s the aforementioned Moo in Barcelona where I’d rather not eat or drink at all). And tomorrow I am off to Udaipur in Rajasthan to stay at the famed Lake Palace hotel plunked in the middle of Lake Pichola. And then it’s on to Jodhpur, Jaipur, Agra and more. Think of it as “India for Beginners.” You can read all about my far-flung adventures in a spring issue of Sky.
Signing off.
Images by Jason Oliver Nixon