Happy 4 Year Blog Anniversary

On June 27th I've been a blogger for 4 years.  Time got away from me to post that day, but I still love using this place as a creative outlet and sharing my travels and food adventures.  I really thought this blog would be more about food, but when I took an edit of the site I realized I post more travel adventures then food.  Which makes sense as travel logs are my favorite types of books to read.

Here's a few I keep going back too and recommend. And yes E I do read my books more then once and thus I do need a bookshelf (more to come on that later).

I follow David's blog and now on twitter....he is hilarious.  

A great view on what it's really like to live in Paris.

 

Another book I re-read just about every summer.  I want to buy a house is Tuscany in another life.

I've read most of Frances Mayes books all are very good: Bella Tuscany,  A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller and recently read Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life.

Recently I discovered Bill Bryson.  I read A Walk in the Woods and laughed out loud so I just picked up the book above, Notes from a Small Island. And again, I lay in bed laughing out loud.

 

And finally Peter Mayle.  I tried to read this book in my early twenties when I was just started my advertising career.  I wasn't into it.  Give myself a number of years later and I reread this book and loved it.  Peter is an old ad guy moved to Provence and writes a witty tale.  I've read just about everything he's wrote Encore Provence: New Adverntures in the South of France, Toujours Provence, French Lessons: Adventures iwth Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew and one of my favorites A Good Year, also love this movie with Russell Crow and Marion Clotilde.

I personally hope to find new fun reads and enjoy yet another year posting away and snapping pictures of interesting things I see and hear.  Thanks to the very few followers for coming by to check up on the adventures.

Books I've Read - January

I just finished this fascinating book called the Billionaire's Vinegar. It's all about a bottle of wine sold thru Christies that broke auction records. Supposedly it's a bottle that Thomas Jefferson purchased from the Chateau and had engraved with his initials, year and vintage. In 1985 it was sold to Malcolm Forbes for $160K. The story features a few real life collectors and one man, Hardy Rodenstock, who seems to suspiciously stumble upon the oldest bottles of wine. I love wine, but can't say I know much about it. This book was a fascinating journey on what kinds of tasting notes wine specialists make, on Christies and Sotheby's auctions and the people who run them, how to make a 1787 vintage fake wine, then how to test wine to see if its fake (i.e. radation before and after the a-bombs) and why some people collect wine to store in a cellar and others drink it, seriously why wouldn't you drink it. If you love wine you'll enjoy this book immensely. I enjoy a good mystery, love history and am grateful to learn something new anytime I take a week to read a book.


My dear friend Bekah and I like to swap books and she told me I must read the above book. I started it last night and already laughed on Page 2. The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicous Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City. David Lebowitz has a funny sense of humor and I love when people can just pick up there lives and move to a new city, foreign one at that. I know I'd have to learn patience if I moved anywhere as things are done so much differently. But that's the charm of it all. I'll share a few snippets as I get further into the book. It has fantastic recipes that have already made me salivate.