My mother's daughter

My mom turned 63 years young yesterday! Happy birthday, Mom.

This is my mom in her forties, when I was in grade school. In the photo, she is the only woman in a mining expedition in Mindanao, wearing a necklace and (what I suspect to be) South Sea pearl earrings while traipsing around the mountains of Agusan del Norte.

This is not the kind of thing that a lot of moms do, so this picture I feel perfectly captures the kind of woman that she is. She made a lot of bold decisions and tough choices, and while I'm not quite as brave (and circumstances have not tested me as severely as they did her), I still try to push myself now and then. I thought it was my thirst for adventure, but it may just be that I am my mother's daughter.

Then there's me. Sometimes—not often, but it happens—I still feel like the little girl trying to wear her mother's clothes (I'm wearing her scarf in this photo, by the way) and follow in her footsteps. While we are vastly different—because she has let me be—the older I get, the more similarities I notice between us, just like in these two pictures.

More importantly, the older I get, the more I understand her. (Although she still drives me crazy sometimes.) My mom was widowed early, less than 10 years after she married my dad; after being married for just four years, I have only begun to understand just what she lost and what a herculean accomplishment it was to have rebuilt her life after that, with her family on her shoulders no less.

Not only did she rebuild her life, but she made a good life for us too. And because she did, I am able to, among many other things, indulge my wanderlust, pursue new and different things, stand tall and smile brightly—just as I am in this picture.

So, it's her birthday, but she is the gift. Again—happy birthday, Mom and I love you!

Vintage treasures from Mom

My appetite for travel is something that I most definitely inherited from my mom. While I was growing up, if she wasn't jetting off to a foreign country then she was packing us—her two girls—into the car for weekend jaunts to the beach. 

In addition to being a consummate traveler, she was also an insatiable collector—or as we like to say, a hoarder! She would always bring things home from her trips: anything from heirloom-worthy pieces from Europe to whatever was the latest trend in Japan or the US or wherever she happened to be. I remember being the first family we knew to have a Discman and to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the faces of The Simpsons (whom I thought were really ugly and weird) as early as 1990.

Mom has since declared her jetsetting days pretty much behind her, except for the rare occasions when my sister and I succeed at convincing her to get on a plane and visit us. But some of the things she picked up on her travels still remain. And since we've been ragging on her to de-clutter, she decided to pass them on to us, her two daughters. 

So out came the tablecloths she amassed in Europe over 20 years ago. Not only are they beautifully handcrafted, but now, they're also vintage! #doublewin

I was torn between this lovely ecru lace cloth from Portugal, above, and an embroidered cutwork tablecloth with handmade lace, from Belgium. Each fits a table for 10-12 persons and comes with matching cloth napkins.

After much agonizing, I chose the latter. The details simply won me over.

Mom decided to wrap them up for Christmas—you know, just because it's more fun that way! 

She also threw in a set of handmade Belgian lace coasters...

... and matching cocktail napkins. I've never used cocktail napkins (I didn't even know such things existed!), but now I'm racking my brain for an excuse to debut them. 

Finally, Mom brought out the most delicate little demitasse cups in refreshing pastel hues. That was when I squealed like a tickled piglet.

Aren't they cuuuuuuuute?

Even Marlon, who's been known to veto any additions to our home that are too overtly girly, couldn't help but be charmed.

Feel free to come over to our house anytime for the most precious espresso ever.

Really. It's my pleasure.

Now this is how you recycle gifts for Christmas. Thanks, Mom!

Welcome to Palazzo Plazo

The joke about running a hotel began a couple of years back in Singapore. Being so close to Manila and a regional hub for flights, Singapore was a frequent destination for a long list of friends, whom we happily hosted in our spare bedroom. It was Pauline who dubbed our one-bedroom "hotel" Palazzo Plazo, and the name has stuck. 

After our "soft opening" and first official guest this spring, Palazzo Plazo Amsterdam got busy. Mom came over after our Oslo jaunt in May, and Jon and Gutsy arrived within days of each other in June. 

Al fresco dining on Palazzo Plazo's charming terrace

There's something about Amsterdam that makes all my guests so chillax. Not once did we make it out of the house before lunch time! Luckily, the days have gotten so long that my visitors and I got to do and see so much even with our late starts.

While I've had far more than my fair share of visits to the Holy Trinity of Amsterdam tourism (the Anne Frank House, Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum), I'm happy that I got to do a little something different with each guest. There's really so much to still do and discover in this city!

Mom was pretty low-key. She was content to stay home and share my domestic diva lifestyle. She also spent a lot of time bonding with Rogue.

In Singapore, she absolutely abhorred walking. But this time, the cool weather in early spring made a huge difference. It was a lot easier to plan her itinerary this time around because she didn't mind walking. So much of Amsterdam's charm lies in these leisurely strolls in the canal district. 

I also got to try my first rijsttafel ("rice table") at one of Amsterdam's numerous Indonesian restaurants while Mom was here. A rijsttafel is basically a meal that consists of rice served with a large-ish number of small side dishes (the usual satay, rendang and so on), which seems to be an entirely Indo-Dutch colonial hybrid; I've never had it at any Indonesian restaurant in Southeast Asia.

We also rented a car one Saturday to drive out to the Zaanse Schans, an open-air museum about twenty minutes from Amsterdam. Truth be told, I found it a little too touristy for my taste, but I think it was just Mom's speed... and made for some pretty pictures.

The best part of the Zaanse Schans for me was getting to see a functioning windmill from the inside. It's pretty amazing what people will think up to get out of having to work so damn hard.

On the way home, we decided to do a big detour and drive along the Afluitsdijk, a feat of Dutch engineering. It's a 32-km causeway that dams part of the North Sea and turns it into the Ijsselmeer lake; salt water on one side of the highway and fresh water on the other. 

Since Mom was such a big fan of the neighbors' roses, I also took her through the Bloemenmarkt, Amsterdam's "floating" flower market. "Hindi ba talaga tutubo sa Pilipinas ito?" she asked, rifling forlornly through the flowers. "Malapit naman ako sa Tagaytay eh!"

With Jonathan, the agenda was completely different and can be summed up in one word: boys. Haha! So our first stop on a scorching Saturday was the Vondelpark, where everyone and his mother/girlfriend/barkada/boyfriend goes to take off his shirt and soak up the (rare) sunshine. While shirtless hunks were in attendance, so were bikini-clad babes.

Still, Amsterdam did not disappoint me us Jon in my our his search for Dutch, er, treats. We were particularly impressed with the array of waiters the city put forth that week. While customer service is far from being one of this city's strong points, we certainly couldn't complain about service from waitstaff like these.

 

Boys aside, we also meandered through narrow side streets...

... and along the canals, which never fail to amaze me.

Jon's visit was a cause for many firsts, such as our first barbecue on the balcony... which also became the last due to a prompt scolding by our upstairs neighbor. We took it to the pavement outside our building, in true third world style.

It was also my first time to hang out at Leidseplein, a big square in the center of town that every single tourist in Amsterdam seems to naturally gravitate to. I really don't get it: they just stand around there like huge flocks of sheep. It's a convenient (but certainly not the best) location to sit down for a drink, but other than that I don't know what's so great about Leidseplein.

Jon's interest in the social sciences led us to the Oosterpark...

... to visit the Tropenmuseum, one of Europe's leading ethnographic museums. It houses exhibits about non-Western cultures, and includes an excellently curated exhibit about the Netherlands' own colonial history.

The biggest surprise about the Tropenmuseum was also the most admirable: it very matter-of-factly stated that the Dutch colonial history was very deeply linked with slavery. No whitewashing (pun not intended), no sugarcoating: the simple facts of slavery and how it contributed to the Dutch golden age laid out for every foreign visitor, every schoolchild to see... and learn from.

An old drawing of slaves packed into a Dutch galley for trading

Just a day after Jon left, Gutsy arrived for a weekend. I wish we had had more time together! Still, we managed to pack in a decent amount of meandering...

... with a visit to Anne Frank...

... and even the Homomonument nearby.

Sunday brunch was at the lovely Cafe Belhamel on the Brouwersgracht, with its gleaming green walls and Art Deco interiors... 

... followed by another Amsterdam tourist staple, a first for us: the canal cruise.

We surrendered most of Sunday to a fog of kabangagan that can most adequately be summed up in this photograph.

Let's just say we were extra happy... because Gutsy was in town! Right Guts? Yay!

It's been weeks since our guests have checked out, and I miss them already. While playing hostess was tiring, it sure was tons of fun. And I hope playing tourist in this town never gets old.

So, who's next?

Off to Oslo

If you had told me years ago that my mom, sister and I would be holidaying together in Scandinavia one day, I would have scratched my head and wondered how the heck that would ever happen. But life is funny—and awesome—that way. 

One of the biggest perks my sister got from her assignment in Oslo by her Norwegian telco employers was a free business class ticket for my mom. Getting my mom to overcome her fear of flying and finally agree to fly to Europe was a battle and a half, but the free ticket definitely sweetened the deal. 

The last time my mom visited both of us was when we were still living in Singapore and my sister in KL. My sister accompanied Mom on the flight to Singapore and spent the weekend there, establishing a new sort of family tradition we now call "the handover." So on my mom's last weekend in Oslo, Marlon and I  decided to fly up and do the handover there. 

Oslo in May felt to me like Amsterdam in March: cold and windy. Fortunately, our first day there was gorgeous. We went out to the harbor, and it felt like the city was doing its best to welcome us by mustering up some blue skies and sunshine. Still, the breeze was stiff and chilly and I had to get used to having different parts of my body be prickling with cold and sweating profusely at the same time.

The Oslo harbor has some of the most coveted residential real estate in the city, and it's easy to see why. 

It felt like what Robertson Quay in Singapore aspires to, or maybe even a Serendra or Bonifacio High Street with the sea.

It's so clean-lined and modern, it feels kind of like an architectural rendering or mockup of a future development. 

We waited at the ferry terminal while my sister went to pick up our Constitution Day parade tickets at the Radhuset, or City Hall.

Our plan for the day was to hop on a båt (ferry) to Bygdøy, one of the islands within Oslo's harbor, to see the Viking Ship Museum and Folkemuseum. While waiting for the ferry, my sister taught us how to pronounce the special letters in the Norwegian alphabet. For example, "å" sounds like "wa", so båt is pronounced "bwat." Alexander Skarsgård is "Alexander Skarsgward." Very Pinoy swardspeak! I like!

The ferry to Bygdøy took just around 10 minutes. From the dock, we walked another 10 minutes to the Vikingskiphuset, or Viking Ship Museum. In Dutch, it would read Vikings Chicken House—kip is chicken!

I went through a phase when I was completely obsessed with Greek mythology. One of the books I read was Edith Hamilton's Mythology, which combined both Greek and Norse mythology in one volume. It was easy to get into Norse mythology from there. So I've always been fascinated with the Vikings. In my boy-crazy adolescent years I used to picture them as hot blond conquerors. Oh, how hormones can distort history.

So the Viking Museum pretty much blew my mind. It contains four (mostly recreated) Viking ships excavated from burial mounds in Norway. Vikings were buried with their ships and possessions for the journey into the afterworld, revealing the dramatic "burial at sea with flaming ship" to be a Hollywood trope.

This graceful ship was buried with a Viking queen, with all her worldly goods: everything from jewelry to weapons to cooking tools to clothes to four of these massive, intricately carved wooden carts. Parang SM lang: we've got it all for you!

The scale and power of these ships are truly impressive, revealing the might and skill of a supposedly primitive civilization. You sail, sometimes row, for hundreds of miles across the world's coldest seas, subsist on dried scraps of meat (basically, tapa) without a roof over your head, exposed to the harshness of the elements. Then when you get there you have to do battle, conquer bloody everyone and sack bloody everything. That can't have been easy.

After the Viking Ship Museum, we walked to the Norse Folkemuseum, a sprawling open-air conservation area that features recreated buildings from different regions and periods in Norway's history. What is Nayong Pilipino?

I keed, I keed. This is the oldest open-air museum in the world, so we can safely assume Nayong Pilipino ang nanggaya. I thoroughly enjoyed wandering through this museum, which had everything from houses to schoolhouses.

I love the clean lines and unadorned simplicity of their architecture. And I was delighted to learn that the Scandinavians were into roof gardens long before being green was chic.

Nothing looks touristy or kitschy. Buildings are recreated with careful attention to detail. 

Some, like the Stave Church from 1881, were bought, disassembled and rebuilt here piece by piece. 

We arrived just before closing time, so we were only able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the museum hosts in their traditional folk costume. 

One thing I liked that we rarely get to do was take a nice family portrait. Our last one was during our New Year's trip to Bohol, and before that, at my wedding. Luckily Marlon was there to play photographer.

The four of us took the bus back to the harbor for dinner at Solsiden, one of Oslo's best seafood restaurants, where we discussed... my sister's future. Haha.

She'd warned me that eating out in Oslo is expensive, but I didn't realize how expensive until we actually ate out. Marlon and I have dropped our fair share of cash on meals, but masakit talaga sa wallet ito. We had a similar meal at Restaurant Red here in Amsterdam, and the value for money there was significantly better. With the exception of two lunches, we had all the rest of our meals at my sister's apartment after this one. At least this particular dinner was worth it. The seafood was indeed excellent.

Anyone who would have looked over at our table would have laughed to see four Filipinos working furiously to scrape every last speck of meat from those lobsters. Thank goodness we come from a seafood-eating culture na marunong maghimay at magsaid. Ang mahal kasi eh!