Travel Writer 2 Travel Apper

by Jules Older

Meet the Olders, Jules and Effin.

Jules: former magazine editor-in-chief, former website Director, Global Interactive Content, former person with income.

Effin: widely published photographer, suddenly not widely published.

Hi. I'm Jules.

Not long ago I start getting emails asking if I'd like to write all about San Francisco for a travel website. It would be oh, two or three month’s work. For which they'd pay me, oh, $400.

As calmly as I could, I asked, “Did you inadvertently leave out some zeros?”

That ended our correspondence.

Ah, but was I discouraged?

Yes. Deeply discouraged.

Then, one day, an email arrives, asking if I'd like to create an iPhone app. Thinking it’s one more of those $400 opportunities, I'm tempted to trash it, unread.

But when I read it, this offer is a fair one, and the subject is one of my special interests. Thus is born, San Francisco Restaurants, the app.

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Another Old Codger in Vegas the Envy of All

by Jules Older

Welcome to Las Vegas! Have a great time… and while you're here, we hope you'll take advantage of the unique services offered by AAES of Las Vegas.

As you stroll along the Strip or even through the casino of your Las Vegas hotel, you are sure to see one sight again and again and again. What is it? It’s the sight of a young — perhaps very young — lady on the arm of a gentleman of a certain age — perhaps your age.

When you see them, what do you think? Be honest, now. Do you think…

• “Oh, that must be a cool fellow to be out with such a youthful and attractive girl!”
• “Isn't it nice that a young, slim Asian girl and a portly, balding white gentleman have found each other!”

Or, do you think, “There's another old codger making a fool of himself in Las Vegas!!!”

At AAES of Las Vegas, we are committed to ensure that YOU WILL NEVER BE THAT GUY!

That’s why we started the Age-Appropriate Escort Service of Las Vegas (AAES of Las Vegas).

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Wine & Stein[beck]: It Happened in Monterey

by Jules Older

Back when I was a grad student in New York, I was lured to Monterey in California. The words of John Steinbeck are what lured me.

© Effin OlderA Baltimore boy who'd discovered Steinbeck in my teen years, I wanted — no, needed — to see and smell and walk the streets where Doc and Mack, Hazel and Wide Ida, Danny and Pilon plied their trades and plotted their scams.

Now, those same Steinbeck characters help entice three-to-four-million tourists every year and have, in the words of Diane Mandeville, vice president of Cannery Row Company, “changed us from a dirty, smelly industrial town to a clean and green tourist town.”

That’s all well and good, but it wasn't just The Grapes of Wrath that upgraded Monterey. It was also the grapes of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Cabernet, Chardonnay and almost every other potable varietal under the sun. Like Napa and Sonoma to the north, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara to the south, Monterey is now serious wine country.

And it was on my last trip to Monterey that I got into the fermented grape juice.

For the same sort of reason — if ‘reason’ be the word for it — that I skied the French Alps with French-speaking Quebecois, sightsaw Kyoto with one of those Japanese tour parties and toured Israel with the Black Hebrews of Jerusalem, I now found myself in Monterey with a group of dedicated oenophiles.

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Fresh Eyes

by Jules Older

When you live in a place, after awhile, you lose your fresh eyes.

© Jules Older. 25 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CAIt doesn't mean you're dumb or insensitive or unaware of your surroundings. Unless you work hard to correct it, sure as fog, sooner or later you're gonna misplace your awareness of what you see and smell, hear and taste on your way to work or walking home from school or going out for the Sunday paper.

Sometimes it’s actually a relief. As one travel-writer friend sighed about her blissful oblivion to her hometown surroundings, “Ah, the luxury of not seeing!”

But, ah the pleasures of seeing through fresh eyes. Everything is new, everything is fascinating. Every pungent smell from a Chinese grocery, every touch of salt spray on a beach, every clang of a cable-car bell and visual surprise of a public wall mural — they all capture your attention, alert you to what makes your new home different from the old place.

My old place is rural Vermont. More, it’s the coldest, snowiest, most isolated part of Vermont, the northern end of the three northern counties known collectively as the Northeast Kingdom. That’s where I've lived since 1986, that’s where I was a justice of the peace, that’s where I grew garlic and basil and tomatoes. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom: where I've shoveled snow off the roof and cowshit out of the barn. The old place.

The new place is San Francisco. Yeah, I just moved here.

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AAA and Mobil have their tastes, I have mine.

by Jules Older

There’s something to be said for stating boldly, baldly and in print the bases upon which a reviewer writes a review. After all, reviewing is personal, even when disguised as objective. Resorts lose their AAA stars and Mobil diamonds for things I find totally insignificant, like still using brass, not plastic keys; or even things I find laudable, like the absence of a noisy ice machine on every floor.

Jules' RulesWell, AAA and Mobil have their tastes, I have mine.

Here are mine.

A restaurant or inn loses a full point if:

• Arugula appears on the menu. Knock off another point if the menu boasts “wilted arugula.” Or wilted almost-anything-else.

• Raspberries are served in any course except dessert or palate-clearing sorbet. Raspberry vinaigrette counts the same as whole fruit.

• Fish (almost always trout) is served coated in pistachio. These first three points are not meant to discourage creative chefs; they’re intended to penalize trendy chefs who follow any food fashion, no matter how ephemeral or awful-tasting.

• Vegetables are treated as a throwaway item. Overcooked beans, combined carrots and peas, soggy zucchini—each counts as a point against.

• A rural New England restaurant offering only zucchini in the month of August loses an additional point.

• Patrons are expected to use a single fork for salad, main course and dessert.

• Everyone in the dining room is whispering. My wife the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant calls this “a WASP restaurant.” No, a meal should not sound like a rock concert, but it needn’t sound like a funeral either.

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HAWAII REVISITED

by Jules Older

On our first trip to Hawaii, our twin daughters were two-and-a-half.

Max in Hawaii. Photos by Effin OlderOn this trip, our grandson Max was two-and-a-half. Max’s mother, Willow, and her sister, Amber, were now 35. And his young sibling, Babybrotherben, just turned eight months.

On the first trip, we four — Effin and I and our twin daughters — stayed in a cottage at Puunalu on the (then) largely undiscovered north side of Oahu. This time we eight (add Willow’s husband Leroy and our dear friend Barbara) stayed in a slightly bigger cottage on the south side of Kauai.

Travel with Kids

In some ways travel with kids is harder today. If you intend to drive, you have to lug along awkward, heavy car seats. You have to make your way with kids and car seats and fold-down strollers and disposable diapers through airport security. On the plane, there's much less legroom and even less food.

On the other hand, these days you can rent a van, and you can rent or bring along a portable DVD to keep the kids amused.

Max did pretty well through the taxi to SFO, the airport wait, the five-hour flight to Honolulu, the Wiki Wiki bus to the other part of the airport, the two-hour wait for the next flight, the next flight, and half the mini-van ride to our cottage. We made a big deal of driving in a “brand new blue mini-van.”

Hawaiian Meltdown

At precisely the halfway point between airport and cottage, Max went into meltdown. His lower lip quivered ominously. “I w-w-want to go h-h-home.”

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