Sep

Little London

by Joyce McGreevy on September 26, 2016

Entrance down into The Wonderpass, a mini-museum in a street underpass, showcases London details that offer travel inspiration. ( © Joyce McGreevy)

To truly appreciate London, get down into the details.
© Joyce McGreevy

Travel Inspiration: Details That Delight

You’re watching an American TV show when the location segues to London. Yup, there it is again—ye olde stock footage of Big Ben. So much for London in close-up.

By the logic of TV, Londoners from all 33 boroughs enjoy unobstructed views of this English landmark, the better to set their watches. Never mind that Big Ben refers to the great bell housed inside the Elizabeth Tower.

Gold railings in Little Venice Maida Vale are London details that offer travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Gold railings along Little Venice Canal in London’s Maida Vale.
© Joyce McGreevy

Travel guides often present London as a checklist of iconic attractions–Buckingham Palace, the Tower Bridge, the Millennium Eye. Yet for 30 million annual visitors, it’s the London details that form our enduring impressions.

Oh, I see: In the sweet-shop of travel inspiration, London is packed with tasty “allsorts.” Here’s a sampler of London details to savor:

1. Fascinating street names

A street sign for Bird in Hand Yard is one of the London details that offer travel inspiration. (@ Joyce McGreevy)

Presumably worth two in the bush, this London street is named for a former pub.
© Joyce McGreevy

Favorites among London’s 20,000 streets include: Man in Moon Passage, Crooked Usage, Ogle Street, Batman Close, and Ha-Ha Road. Technically, “ha-ha” refers to hedges and a batman is a cricketer, but still.

Don’t forget Pudding Lane. Or perhaps do, since “pudding” in the 1600s referred to animal guts that were tossed from butcher-shop windows onto the streets below.

2. Not-always-so-historical plaques

A Sherlock Holmes-themed sign at a dry-cleaners is one of many London details that offer travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Dry humor at its best pressed.
© Joyce McGreevy

London-born actor Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (try saying THAT five times fast) is synonymous with another famous Londoner, the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes.

Could this plaque signify the designated drop-off for Cumberbatch’s britches and cummerbunds? Doubtful, but it’s eminently worth pondering.

3. Games afoot!

So popular is the BBC television series “Sherlock” that the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street draws constant crowds.

Don’t fancy languishing in line? Then follow the literary clues on foot. Pop round to the Criterion Restaurant, where Dr. Watson first hears that Holmes is “looking to share lodgings.” Stroll through the Langham Hotel, named in “The Sign of Four.” See the Opera House, one of Holmes’ favorite haunts.

Hats, a pipe, and magnifying glass at the Sherlock Holmes Museum are London details and a travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Grab your hat and follow Holmes on foot.
© Joyce McGreevy

Or go all modern by visiting locations from the BBC series. You can even get your London details direct from Holmes’ nemesis—albeit by text message—if you sign up for Moriarty’s Game. It’s a creative way to explore hidden London while solving a mystery with fellow sleuths.

4. Windowsill whimsy

Why limit your décor to inside the flat? Despite googling the World’s Silliest Search Terms, I’ve no idea why there are frogs on this central London windowsill.

An English windowsill with two ceramic frogs on it, both delightful London details that are a travel inspiration. showcases whimsical London in close-up. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

When toad-in-the-hole becomes frogs-on-the-sill.
© Joyce McGreevy

5. Places to “potter about”

Potterheads flock to King’s Cross Station to find a sign labeled Platform 9¾ and a baggage trolley submerged in a wall. But for truly immersive magic, visit Leadenhall Market.

The location for Diagon Alley scenes in the Harry Potter films is just as enchanting in its everyday guise. As local Muggles go about their business, let your imagination summon up wizarding charms.

Leadenhall Market is among the must-see London details that offer travel inspiration to Harry Potter fans. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Does this Victorian galleria look familiar?
© Joyce McGreevy

6. Museums under sidewalks

Design firm London Sing transformed a bleak underpass in Marylebone into The Wonderpass, a free must-see mini-museum. Step down to discover London in close-up.

A diorama in The Wonderpass, a mini-museum in a street underpass, is one of the London details that are a travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

A diorama in London’s Wonderpass.
© Joyce McGreevy

A diorama of Regent Park Open Air Theatre exemplifies the travel inspiration of London details. (© Joyce McGreevy)

A doll-size peek into Regent Park Theatre.
© Joyce McGreevy

7. Afternoon tea

To avoid shocking Dowager Countesses, never, ever call it “high tea.” That’s an entirely different meal, associated with humbler, heartier fare. (Think meat, cheese, and other savories laid out by Mrs. Patmore for Downton Abbey’s staff.)

A costumed writer for OIC Moments clarifies London details that make afternoon tea a travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Important disclaimer: One is not actually a Dowager Countess,
nor does one play one on “the telly.”
© Joyce McGreevy

Credit for the more formal “afternoon tea” goes to the Duchess of Bedford. Around 1840, she visited the Fifth Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, where the fashionably late dinner hour left guests peckish. Her discreet suggestion for bridging the gap became a national habit.

Today U.S. visitors pay a duke’s ransom to sip afternoon tea in hotels populated mainly by their fellow Americans. For twice the charm at half the cost, try local favorite Bea’s Cake Boutique. Or splurge while dodging stodginess at sketch in Mayfair.

8. Or do as the English do and . . .

Drink coffee! Tea consumption in the UK has fallen by 60 percent since the 1970s, but coffee has percolated up to boiling point. Britons now drink 70 million cups of coffee daily.

Customers at Bloomsbury Coffee House share the travel inspiration of London details. (© Joyce McGreevy)

By 1633, there were already 85 coffee houses in London.
© Joyce McGreevy

9. Pillar boxes and postal puzzles

You can still find red pillar post boxes dating back to 1853 all over the city. There’s surprising variety among the designs.

A 19th century red postal pillar is one of the London details that have become a travel inspiration. (© Joyce McGreevy)

When you absolutely, positively have to send it next Thursday.
© Joyce McGreevy

Over time, Britons “have found ways to play with their post.” So say the founders of the Postal Museum. The first major new museum in London in over a decade is sealed until 2017, but visit its website posthaste for special delivery of fascinating finds.

A Victorian-era pictogram envelope from The Postal Museum exemplifies London details that offer travel inspiration.

To deliver this letter, the postman had to unscramble the words Greenstone House on the envelope.

10. Your own personal London

London in close-up is the world’s most renewable source of travel inspiration. As novelist Walter Besant wrote, “I’ve been walking about London for the last 30 years, and I find something fresh in it every day.”

Now recall your own personal London, whether it’s based on life, literature, or your favorite British video. What London details inspire you?

An interaction between a waiter, a dog, and a customer exemplifies the travel inspiration of London details. (© Joyce McGreevy)

Small treats add big charm to London’s Primrose Hill neighborhood.
© Joyce McGreevy

See guides to coffee and afternoon tea that really stir things up.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 1 Comment

England/On Foot

Sep

What’s in the World’s Largest Food Museum?

by Eva Boynton on September 21, 2016

A woman selling chocolate at Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Sam Anaya A.)

Oaxacan chocolate rivals Swiss and Belgian chocolate in flavor, in uses (mole, hot chocolate,
sweet and savory dishes), and in cultural heritage.
© Sam Anaya A.

Chocolate, Pineapples, and Cultural Heritage—All at Mexico’s Central de Abasto

“Zoooooom!” A cart stacked with mangos tumbles by me, almost taking my right foot along for the ride. Fortunately, Isabel Ramillo, who sells chocolate from Oaxaca, grabs my shoulder to pull me out of the way.

As I regain my composure, my nose catches a whiff of meats, flowers, and spices for Mexican mole sauce. My ears ring with the sounds of “¡Buen precio!”, whistles, and hundreds of shuffling feet.

I’m in Mexico City at the Central de Abasto (“Supply Center”), the world’s largest wholesale market. But, considering the people, produce, and regions of Mexico represented here, to my eye it is more like a bustling food museum.

Pineapples stacked with their juice in front at Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Eva Boynton)

At this “museum,” the exhibits are interactive—buy and sell, sell and buy.
© Eva Boynton

Within the mountains of tomatoes, baskets of chile de árbol (tree chile), bags of nopal (a type of cactus), and shelves of pineapple, there are also links to Mexico’s cultural heritage. You may be surprised at what you find.

Metropolis Within a Metropolis

The Central de Abasto has everything typical of a big city: banks, kitchen supplies, laundry, convenience stores, electronics and restaurants—not to mention Mexico’s greatest show of produce, fish, flowers, seafood, milks, and meats.

Foods attract the eye in museum-like exhibits, carefully arranged for beauty and stability.

Carrots stacked in a criss-cross pattern at the Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Eva Boynton)

A carrot weaving?
© Eva Boynton

The market is a hive of activity with somewhere between 300,000–450,000 daily visitors, more than see Rome or Madrid in a day! Consider its impact:

30 thousand tons of food are sold here on a daily basis.
The market provides 80% of the food consumption for over 20 million Mexicans.
About 10,000 loaders, known as diableros, operate carts that carry goods to the vendors’ stands. They are among the market’s 70,000 employees.
Warehouses in the market complex cover 328 hectares (810 acres).
Fifteen halls, totaling 11 kilometers in length, hold 100 warehouse sections each—all filled to the brim.

In fact, the market is so big that freeway-like signs direct customers to the halls, each of which specializes in one type of food or goods. In just the produce area, about 2,000 vendors sell fruits and vegetables.

Inside a hall packed with people at Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Sam Anaya A.)

In the middle of the hustle and bustle!
© Sam Anaya A.

Cultural Roots

The concept of a large central market in the area that became Mexico City goes back six hundred years to the Aztec market known as Tlanechicoloya. Throughout Mexico’s cultural history, foods and goods have continued to change hands in central markets.

In the 20th century, when Mexico City expanded around the downtown La Merced market to the point that traffic congestion impeded market operations, the government decided to open a new central supply center.

In 1982, it inaugurated the Central de Abasto in Iztapalapa, an outlying district in the eastern part of Mexico City. Over time, the Central de Abasto became its own metropolis. Today, it is not only the most important food supply and distribution site for Mexico City but also for the entire country.

Two vendors holding a papaya in front a stack of papayas wrapped in newspapers at the Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Sam Anaya A.)

Papayas travel from Oaxaca to the Central de Abasto to be sold by Enrique and Eric Mandujano. They are wrapped in newspaper to keep their color and avoid oxidation.
© Sam Anaya A.

The produce from the country travels first through the Central de Abasto and on to homes, taco stands, neighborhood mini-markets in Mexico City and even to outlets in Mexico’s different states.

A Taste of Cultural Heritage

Mexico is a country of diverse cultures and regions, all represented at the Central de Abasto by vendors offering products unique to their regions.

If the market is a food “museum” offering a collection of cultural heritage, then the foods are the cultural artifacts in the collection. These are foods that have fed indigenous and Mexican populations across centuries. They offer you nourishment and something more—a taste of cultural heritage. Tastes like these:

1. The Pitahaya

Known as dragon fruit, pitahaya or pitaya (pee-TAH-yah) comes in an exotic pink with a delicious surprise center. As a member of the cactus family, it grows in the northern desert regions of Mexico.

Every July, a pitahaya festival is celebrated in Miraflores, Baja California. A gathering contest kicks it off and is followed by traditional dance, music, and food dishes, many of which showcase pitahaya as an ingredient. The festival began thousands of years ago with the Pericúes, Guaycuras and Cochimíes, indigenous peoples who celebrated the juicy fruit in cactus “forests.”

A girl holding a pitahaya fruit cut in half at the Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Sam Anaya A.)

Pitahaya comes with a sweet chia seed-like gelatin center.
Add some yogurt for a tasty combination!
© Sam Anaya A.

2. Magnificent Mole Sauce

Coming from the Nahuatl word molli that means “sauce” or “mixture,” mole (MO-lay) is used as a base for soup, poured over different kinds of meats, or used as a sauce for enchiladas. It can include a complex arrangement of 20 ingredients, including chiles, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and sometimes cacao.

Bags filled with different spices at Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image© Eva Boynton)

A rainbow of mole and other spice powders
© Eva Boynton

The flavors and styles of mole vary with the region in Mexico where it is prepared: moles come sweet, spicy, red, yellow, brown, and in a variety of names. Mole poblano, named the “national dish of Mexico,” is associated with either the state of Puebla or Oaxaca. The origin of the famous dish is a mystery told in several legends.

3. Huitlacoche

Huitlacoche (wheat-lah-CO-chay) is a fungus that grows on corn kernels, a delicacy inherited from the Aztec who added it to soups, crepes, quesadillas and tamales. Though its name translates from Nahuatl as “raven’s excrement,” it makes a tasty dish when you slap it together with onion, garlic, and salt.

Huitlacoche fungus at the market, an artifact of cultural heritage at Central de Abasto (image © Eva Boynton).

Huitlacoche is also known as corn smut or Mexican truffle.
©Eva Boynton

In Chiapas, people connect huitlacoche to family, history, and life in Mexico. When families searched for the fungus in corn fields, they spent quality time together. While they walked through the fields, elders passed down stories and families built a relationship to their land and crops.

Oh, I See

The experience of the Central de Abasto is like that of a grand museum. You leave happily exhausted from looking hard at the details of the past and present.

What I took away from the market was not only some tasty cultural artifacts but also a new understanding of Mexico’s culinary cultural heritage. The Central de Abasto transforms from a food market to an epicenter of national inheritance: the gifts of the land incorporated into cultural practices.

Mexico City is the city with the most museums in the world — 128 in all. It is a city that proudly preserves its cultural heritage. Let’s put one more museum on the list—the Central de Abasto!

A table with produce bought at the Central de Abasto, the world's largest wholesale market where Mexico's cultural heritage is also on display. (image © Sam Anaya A.)

A display of cultural souvenirs
© Sam Anaya A.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Eva Boynton 6 Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Mexico

Sep

World Photography: The Art of the Neighborhood

by Meredith Mullins on September 12, 2016

Man from Dublin street photography series by Eamonn Doyle. (Image © Eamonn Doyle.)

Untitled, from the i series
© Eamonn Doyle/Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

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Eamonn Doyle’s Dublin Streets

Sometimes the sets and characters of a neighborhood become just a background track for daily life. The peripherals fade from view. Familiar details lose their luster. People pass unseen.

The act of creating through a camera lens can bring a neighborhood back into focus.

That’s exactly what happened when Irish photographer Eamonn Doyle took camera in hand after a 20-year hiatus.

He rediscovered his home turf—capturing the urban landscape of North Dublin within a half-mile radius of his house, often finding his subjects within just 10 meters of his front door.

He stripped scenes to their essence and brought himself—and those who spend time with his photographs—inside the pulse of Parnell and O’Connell streets.

Panel of Eamonn Doyle's exhibit at Rencontres d'Arles, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Meredith Mullins/Exhibit photographs © Eamonn Doyle.)

The result was a trilogy of books (i, ON, and End.) and an exhibit at this year’s Rencontres d’Arles that takes hold of the viewer in an unshakeable way.

No Manifestos

Eamonn Doyle at the Rencontres d'Arles, making a difference in world photography. (Image © Meredith Mullins.)

Presenting one of the best shows of the festival, Doyle lands with force on the stage of world photography.

He makes no claims about his images. He doesn’t like labels. The photographs could be called landscapes of the city, fleeting portraits, or a unique form of street photography as seen through only his eyes.

He has no manifesto or intellectual philosophy. He just makes pictures—pictures of passing strangers on their individual journeys.

Welcome to the neighborhood.

The i Series: The Respected Elders

The i series features the local elders—those characters who have worn a familiar path in the neighborhood streets.

Doyle is drawn to solitary figures. He takes this isolation further by working to eliminate what he calls the “visual noise of the streets.” He shoots on Monday mornings, after the street cleaners have removed trash and grime and captures his subjects in the simplest graphics of a setting.

“I shot from above, mostly, and tried to flatten the figures into the pavements and roads,” Eamonn said of the i series. As a result, the subjects often seem weighed down, as if being looked at by the burden of life itself.

Woman with red gloves from Eamonn Doyle's i series, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Eamonn Doyle.)

Their faces are usually turned away, affirming their anonymity—their status as strangers. However, what is not shown is important.

As Eamonn explains, “I want the viewer to look elsewhere, to find cues other than the obvious ones, to look harder and, if need be, to infer the missing faces.”

The viewer must act . . . must notice these usually unnoticed souls—the textures, colors, and style of their clothes; their few cherished possessions; their pace, posture, and gestures—their journey.

Strangers on a Dublin street, from Eamonn Doyle's ON series, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Eamonn Doyle.)

The ON Series: The Changing Cityscape

The second segment of the trilogy shows a neighborhood changing dramatically in mood and tense. We, as viewers, enter a raw and vibrant present.

Where the elders were flattened into the scene, the ON subjects leap from the photographs in strong black-and-white, low-angled power.

Here, we see the strangers’ faces, movement, energy, and the context of their lives.

Black man from low angle, from Eamonn Doyle's ON series, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Eamonn Doyle.)

The neighborhood is dynamic, exploding in a multicultural mix of activity. Immigrants from West Africa, China, and Eastern Europe clash with the sharp edges and angles of the city.

And we begin to understand the text that fueled Doyle’s theme for this series.

You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
—Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable

The End. Series: The Loop of Life

In the third segment of the trilogy, we see the neighborhood in bits and pieces—a mosaic of lines, forms, textures, and inhabitants—that we somehow know are destined to have impact on each other.

Diptych from Eamonn Doyle's End. series, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Eamonn Doyle.)

This series is not just a collaboration with fragments of life. It is an artistic collaboration, with Doyle providing the photographic vision, Niall Sweeney providing design and illustration, and David Donohoe replacing the usual city sounds with a haunting, looping electronic track.

Eamonn Doyle exhibit at Rencontres d'Arles, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Meredith Mullins/Exhibit photographs © Eamonn Doyle.)

Immersed in the Neighborhood at Rencontres d’Arles

End., as well as i and ON, came together this year in the dramatic installation at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in southern France—a revelation for world photography.

For me, the “Oh, I See” moment came as soon as I entered the darkened Espace Van Gogh.

Here, Doyle, Sweeney, and Donohoe have recreated Doyle’s North Dublin neighborhood pulsing with life—an integration of past, present, and future that made the theme of passing time clear on so many different levels.

Visitor at Eamonn Doyle's exhibit at Rencontres d'Arles, a revelation for world photography. (Image © Meredith Mullins. Photographs © Eamonn Doyle.)

The design of the installation transported me to the streets, but I was not as hurried as the photographic subjects. I paused and let the city find its rhythm, much as Doyle must have—picking out the most interesting characters and studying them as they passed by unaware that anyone is watching.

The physicality and scale of the panels lent themselves to the energy of a city, and the well-placed “windows” in the grids allowed a view beyond that first glimpse of life.

When a connection was made, the eyes of the strangers on the walls were penetrating, following me whichever way I walked.

The whole experience was mesmerizing.

Woman in scarf in Eamonn Doyle's exhibit at the Rencontres d'Arles, a revelation for world photography. (Photo © Meredith Mullins/Exhibit Photo © Eamonn Doyle.)

Most of all, I was inspired to reconnect with my own neighborhood—to slow down and take a closer look at the fleeting human drama that is always present—and to say, with the rest of the world, “I’ll go on.”

Visit Eamonn Doyle’s Exhibit in the Espace Van Gogh at the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France, until September 25. Find more of Doyle’s work on his website and at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London.

Find more information on the Rencontres d’Arles here.