Regrets for such an interruption in postings. Despite having spent the last dozen or so days in two countries where a net connection shouldn’t be a problem, it has been. Nevermind the T-Mobile account. It’s a joke. Finally at a home away from home in the Lake District of England—and it has Wi-Fi! Never thought we would be so tickled. So this is what we’ve been up to…sort of…
Boxing Day means a flight to London, and this time we snuck a night in town before heading out of the big city to Sevilla. Following a platter of fin de clair oysters and frites at Randall & Aubin in Soho, we stopped for sweets at a corner shop called Yauatcha that was something out of the future. Or make that Shanghai today.
A glowing blue cube from the street, inside it’s a cross between nightclub lounge and pastry shop. An endless glass counter box slides to the side to access exquisite little pastilles in gorgeous blue, pink, green and orange. Usually, I avoid sweets in such shocking shades. But these looked irresistible. Like the Japanese sweet shop Jin on Abbot Kinney, where chocolate tabs are similarly printed in a gold filigree pattern and everything is boxed and bagged in packaging too pretty to dispense, this place—Chinese, actually, with a dim sum menu we want to try out some time--was as much an experience in high design as it was sugar high.
We rung in the new year just outside Sevilla, at one of the most stylish nuptials we’ve likely ever attended (and that says something).
Accommodations at our friends’ finca--with its groves of olive trees, 400 some black Iberico pigs and a menagerie of other farm animals—was rustic.
But dizzying late nights of manzanilla, dancing, cante and eating with such an amazing group of folks from here and there was a dream. Most magical of all, however, was seeing our two friends, Armen and Valentin, who we know from Silverlake (a Spanish expat, Valentin’s brother owns the finca), wed…LEGALLY wed. Witnessing two individuals who’ve stuck by one another through so many years further pledging their devotion in the eyes of the law is true style. Viva Espana.
There’s more. But that’s all for now.
