London - British Isles

The good thing about having a sister who owns a restaurant – and The River Café is a great one in my opinion – is that when she’s cooking my son is allowed to order ‘off the menu’. In his case it’s a plate of the most wonderful creamy pasta carbonara. Made special for him with egg yolks the color of oranges, peppered pancetta and the parmesan cheese hand carried from Parma, I suppose. The bad thing is that my sister won’t let me have any. “You don’t need it”, she says looking at my waist. So it’s the regular menu for me.

It may have started with the London cabbies, but the city’s new skyscrapers all have affectionate but cheeky nicknames: Can of Ham, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, Walkie-Talkie, and the Shard to name a few… They are all easy to spot; their height and outrageous design makes them obvious. It is said that the Walkie-Talkie has created scary wind patterns with its Downdraught Effect and worse, “A Death Ray” as one report called it “channeling the sun in its concave façade to temperatures capable of melting cars!” YIKES! All in all, 230 such towers are in the planning. Wow!

It is the Shard AKA Shard of Glass, Salt Cellar or London Bridge Tower, however that took our fancy! Called the Shard as it truly does look like a large sliver of broken glass, this structure houses, according to its architect, Renzo Piano, “a tower as a vertical city, for thousands of people to work in and enjoy.” Besides offices, the Shangri La Hotel and numerous bars on the top floors, it has the sexy HUTONG – my new favorite Chinese Restaurant. If you have been in London within the last two years you may have already had the pleasure of experiencing Hutong, or if you have been to Hong Kong you will recognize this as an outpost of the renowned restaurant with the same name. If not, let me sing its praise.

Rules is the oldest restaurant in London. Situated in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, this eaterie is simply splendid not only for the food but also its history and the pictorial passing of time adorning the walls. Open midday to midnight seven days a week, you can choose to sit where such famous beings as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace, Thackeray, John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells quaffed their wine and filled their bellies with rich cuts of Rib, racks of Lamb, Pies and Oysters. Rules has also appeared in novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Green, John Le Carre and Dick Francis.

The walls are covered with signed cartoons, drawings and paintings for after all the entertainment world gathered at Rules, from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier and the history of the London stage is on view. Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and other notables from the art of cinema frequented this quintessential British surround. But the piece de resistance is the King Edward V11 Room, where the Prince of Wales wined and dined the beautiful actress Lillie Langtry.

It's no secret that my best friend, Missy and I love to travel. We met 25 years ago in the parking lot of a Winn Dixie grocery store in Valdosta, Georgia. I was in college there and she was home on Spring Break from Pepperdine in Malibu, CA. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen and never imagined that we'd grow up together and travel the world.

She put a damper on that for a few years when she got married and had 3 boys back to back. But I think we've pretty much made up for that in the last 6 months as we have been to Italy, Tuscany, Rome, the island of Capri, Spain, the South of France, Nice and Monaco. Tunisia is in Northern Africa. I hated it, she loved it. We spent a week in Paris in December, with 5 of our best girlfriends in a rented apartment on the Seine.