New Restaurant -- Five Sisters Blues Cafe

Last Friday we had lunch at Pensacola's newest restaurant, Five Sisters Blues Cafe.

Cecil Johnson sold CJ's Kitchen & Grille and opened Five Sisters Blues Cafe two weeks ago. It's on Belmont just off DeVilliers. The cafe specializes in Southern fare.

We arrived around 12:30 for lunch and the place was packed. It's noisy with the polished floor and glossy ceiling. Very loud. In the evening there is live music. The food was fine and the sides were wonderful with lots of choices. Service was friendly but the kitchen was slow. Probably this will improve over time. They haven't been open very long. My smoked turkey was excellent as was the chicken fried steak.

The food was on the salty side for my taste. Next time I will ask them not to add any. It wasn't as salty as food I have been served at Pensacola's Fish House or Cactus Flower Cafe, but in this health conscious time there's no reason to serve any over-salted food.

There's an extensive menu of some of my favorite things to eat so we will be back to the Five Sisters. And we will still go to CJ's for breakfast, too.

Savannah

"Bird Girl", 1936, by Sylvia Shaw Judson, originally located in Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery.

We are thinking about a car trip to Savannah, Georgia sometime during the summer and a possible side trip to Charleston, South Carolina. The first bit of research was to find out how far away these places are.

Pensacola to Jacksonville -- 358 miles
Jacksonville to Savannah -- 140 miles
Pensacola to Savannah -- 498 miles (801 kilometers)

Savannah to Charleston, via Interstate Highways 95 and 26 -- 142 miles
Savannah to Charleston, via Interstate 95 and slower but more direct Route 17 -- 107 miles

For more information about Savannah and its attractions click here. And here for Charleston information.

First Swim -- 2005 to 2010

Here's how the pool looks today.

Our first swim of the year is usually when the pool temperature goes above 80°F (27°C).
• May 13, 2005
• May 18, 2006
• May 13, 2007
• May 21, 2008
• May 13, 2009
• May ?, 2010

This spring cool nights and cloudy mornings are keeping us out of the pool. In fact the pool has lost four degrees in the last three days.

UPDATE -- Friday, May 14, 2010 -- after several sunny mornings and some mild nights we got in the pool today. The water was 81 degrees. Refreshing.

The Trinacria On The Garden Wall

Our backyard has a dozen or more sun faces and decorative plaques hanging on the fence. A while ago my cousin Lorrie sent us a ceramic plaque with a design called a Trinacria It is the symbol of Sicily where she lives. In ancient times Sicily was called the Kingdom of Trinacria.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

We loved the plaque but worried about its safety -- hanging by a string above the concrete slab of the patio. So last week I took it to the frame shop and they made a shadow box for the Trinacria. The box is lined with dark green linen and is about 14 inches square and 2 inches deep.

It is now hanging on the living room wall and I won't worry about it when I wake up on windy nights.

Here's a link to a slideshow of the sun faces and plaques that were in our backyard last summer.

Spring is here

I took this photo today. The azaleas are starting to bloom in the front yard. These plants have bunches of very small blossoms -- each flower is about an inch across.


Click on image to enlarge

London Links for Visitors

First, a few words about where we stayed in London this time.
For many years and many holiday trips to London, Nick Price and his son Warren, of Price Aparments, have helped us find self-catering apartments in wonderful parts of London. This time they suggested 202 Apartments, 202 Kensington Church Street at Notting Hill Gate, and put us touch with the manager there, Susie Fraser.

The studio apartment was comfortable and was nice and warm during some chilly weather. There was a well-equipped kitchen, a large bathroom, lots of closet space, two beds, a dining table, chairs, a great TV and a patio. The double glazed windows in the sleeping area kept out all the street noise. Heavy draperies kept out the morning light. Susie couldn't have been more helpful. And the location was fabulous.

Second, a page of London links
Click here to see a page of London links we put together before the trip -- theatre guides, restaurants, London information and much more. You might find some of these helpful when you visit London. In no way is this a complete list of things to see and do in London. It reflects only our interests and contains some of the links we wanted to have handy while we were there.

London Trip March 2010 -- Day 12, Fly home

The flights home were smooth and on time. We were exhausted. Too much to carry. In Dallas we had to rest and get wheeled around. At last we found all the luggage, and the hotel at the New Orleans' airport and the car. All was fine. We were home by mid-afternoon on Tuesday.

London Trip March 2010 -- Day 11

It's time to go home. We packed up this afternoon and headed for Heathrow to spend the night at an airport hotel. We have an early flight Monday morning and we would have to get up around 4:30 AM if we stayed in town. This way we have no wories in the morning about traffic congestion and late trains. And we get to sleep a couple hours longer.

We saw six shows while we were here and liked them all.

Some of the shows we saw in London
(Click on the image to enlarge it)

We also saw and enjoyed Once Upon A Time At The Adelphi at the Union Theatre, but you don't get a ticket stub. Their tickets are little laminated plastic cards that they recycle.

The hotel at Heathrow was comfortable and quiet and there was a McDonald's next door.

London Trip March 2010 -- Day 10

We enjoyed the short train trip to Kingston upon Thames via Wimbledon. The city's official name is The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Kingston is where the Saxon kings were crowned and one of its historic attractions is the Coronation Stone.

Kingston is a charming city with lots of historic sites along with plenty of shops and restaurants. You can sit and watch the Thames as it flows behind the theatre but it is tiny compared to the width of the river in London proper. Because the river narrows here it was, until 1729, the first place a bridge could cross the Thames upstream of the London Bridge. There is still a bridge on that site. The day was chilly and gray but Kingston must be lovely on a warm summer afternoon.

We had lunch at a Gourmet Burger Kitchen half a block from the Rose Theatre where we were about to see Judi Dench as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream.


Dame Judi Dench at the Rose Theatre


Titania with Bottom

FROM JACK
Think it's worth a transatlantic trip to see Dame Judi Dench, live and in person, and speaking Shakespeare's verse? I'd say yes.

Last fall, I read on one of the London theatre blogs that Dame Judi would be playing Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Rose Theatre in Kingston on Thames, suburban London. Lo and behold, that meshed perfectly with the trip we were planning. After some emails to the most-friendly Rose box office, we found that tickets would go on sale to the public (they have a big subscription base) on line on a Monday morning -- middle of the night Pensacola time. We did what was required and ordered the tickets. Less than a week later, we had them in hand.

Titania is, of course, not the largest role in the "Dream." But Dame Judi makes you think it is. We had seen her before live in contemporary drama but never in Shakespeare. What a privilege. She speaks the verse like no other actor I have ever seen. Unforgettable.

She and her director, Sir Peter Hall, agreed to this limited engagement at the two-year old Rose in Kingston to help the theatre survive -- bless them. It was a sell-out engagement and, according to our London friends, the hottest ticket in town.

A memorable theatrical finale to our trip. We won't soon forget any part of our afternoon in Kingston.

Top: Sir Peter Hall, Dame Judi Dench
Bottom: Rose Theatre Kingston

London Trip March 2010 -- Day 9

We had a quiet day of reading and relaxing. Early in the evening David picked us up and drove over the river to the Union Theatre where we were to see Once Upon A Time At The Adelphi. At the tiny theatre we met his friend Chris who had already seen the show and, a good sign, wanted to see it again.


Direct from Liverpool -- Once Upon A Time At The Adelphi

The show was a big hit in Liverpool when that city was European Capital of Culture in 2008. It came to London in 2010 to a much smaller venue, staged by its original director.

The book is slight, but charming enough. The action deals with a grand old Liverpool hotel, The Adelphi, in the glamorous 1930's and today.

There are many snappy character roles and lots of songs, most of which are quite good. The songs are sung and danced beautifully. The Union Theatre is very small and the surprisingly big production numbers have those of us sitting in the front row ready to duck during some of the full-out choreography. It's intimate musical theatre, sometimes in your face -- some times (almost) in your lap.