A Beer For Strange Climates

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  • Rosé In Montmartre

    Rosé In Montmartre

    I’ve felt vaguely bad in the past for floating an ice cube in my glass of white to chill it, to make it more refreshing. I thought this was An American Thing, one more demonstration of our strange love affair with ice in our drinks. Though I’d never put a cube in any nuanced white–or,…

  • A Leffe In The City Of Love

    A Leffe In The City Of Love

    While Paris lies under a flooded Seine, I remember the time spent there over so many years. My favorite city, a city for love, but one in which I’ve often been happiest alone. Why is that, in the midst of the City of Light, would I feel most part of her love when sitting solo…

  • Thank Goodness For Elephants

    Thank Goodness For Elephants

    The drive from Port Alfred to George took us along South Africa’s dramatic eastern Cape towards the more well known Garden Route. We hugged emerald-clad cliffs dropping into the wild ocean on a road weaving along grades originally carved for trains. We made our way in silence, mostly out of sheer awe. When we stopped…

  • Windhoek in Port Alfred

    Windhoek in Port Alfred

    Unless you have an airplane, it’s not exactly easy to get to Port Alfred, on South Africa’s windswept Eastern Cape coast. On this trip, at least, it felt like a test of will. The flight school we’d visit suggested a guest house as opposed to the bland traveler’s hotel in town–for the same price I’d…

  • Pubs: My First Real Pint

    Pubs: My First Real Pint

    Pubs in England showed one face to me at first contact, like the “oldest pub in Oxford” where I went back in 2009–that had to be authentic, right? With its low ceilings and timbers so shellacked over the years by smoke and skin and paint to the point they looked plastic. We had ducked our…

  • Cider in Mayfair

    Cider in Mayfair

    Needing to stay in Town for a meeting at the Royal Aeronautical Society, you do well to find anything reasonable in Mayfair, but as I’d never been…the Holiday Inn saved me once again. In the U.S., the HI is where you’re most likely to find your dogs welcome. Abroad in the world, they’ve proved a…

  • Nora’s

    Nora’s

    Friends first led me to Nora’s Smoke Shop several years back on a work trip to Orlando involving airplanes and sales and the doldrums as the real estate market tanked in Florida…we needed a dose of cheer. The guys sized me up and gauged correctly that I would “get” Nora — she’s a broad in…

  • Earl Grey On Emerald Hill

    Earl Grey On Emerald Hill

    When you first find a secret spot it charms you…and even though it lies hidden from no one, just off the bustle of Orchard Road, Emerald Hill in Singapore feels like you’ve stepped through a door. Suddenly you’re away from the commercial hustle of the shopping malls and hawker center halls and on a quiet…

  • Yi, Er, Tsing Tao

    Yi, Er, Tsing Tao

    Towered over by giant cans of the distinctive green, we made our way past tour busses into the shrine of Tsing Tao. The Germans brought beer to the city of Qingdao (the more streamlined Westernization of the name) in 1903, and today, the brewery captures 15% of the domestic market in China. Though the bottles…

  • Dirty Martini in the Writer’s Bar

    Dirty Martini in the Writer’s Bar

    If the cocooning comfort of the room embraced me more completely, I would be loathe to leave. I would conspire to remain in Beijing as long as my yuan would allow. How many writers and travelers had passed through these tall French doors in to the Peace Hotel back in the early 20th century? Now…