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Egg pie! We haven’t had egg pie since the school cafeteria. When we spotted this at the supermarket we had to get it.

It tastes exactly as we remember: the slightly cloying flavor of custard encased in cardboard. We took a bite and remembered the small stationery store on the ground floor of our grade school building, where we went almost everyday to sniff erasers. And the chaos at the canteen at recess time, when hundreds of little girls would shout “Manang manang manang” at the beleaguered attendants behind the snack counters. And the ire of the teacher when we corrected her spelling of “yacht” and she tried to intimidate us by summoning the dictionary.

Other cut-rate madeleines: Hi-Ro, Hello, Mallows, Flat Tops, Curly Tops.

Actual madeleines are sold at Brasserie CiCou in Greenhills. Butch says there’s a Japanese bakery near Metropolitan Avenue Makati that makes madeleines, but they’re more Murakamian than Proustian.

On the Thames, 2010

Our trips to other countries generally fall into two categories.

First there are the DIY tours that we plan and book ourselves. We stay two weeks in the same city, get to know the neighborhood, and pretend we live there. The itinerary is very loose and based on books we have read—for instance in Trieste where we didn’t know a soul, our guide was Jan Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere; in Florence it was A Room With A View, the E.M. Forster book and the Merchant Ivory movie (Julian Sands circa 1986 did not show up, but we were chatted up by someone who looked like Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas).

The advantage of this method is that you don’t have to follow anyone’s schedule—you can do whatever you feel like doing, or in our case, do nothing. We tend to alternate indolence with long walks that end only when our feet are in pain. It’s very random, and it produces a notebook’s worth of meandering entries about atmosphere and such. (You feel very clever while you’re writing them, and when you get home and read them you realize they’re all drivel.)

The disadvantage is that you end up not seeing a lot of the sights, you get lost constantly (Which we actually like), and if you’re not careful you wind up staying in a “centrally-located” hotel which is by the airport.

On the Grand Canal in Venice, 2006

Then there are the package tours or “fam(iliarization) tours” we’ve done on assignment. The objective of these fam tours is to cram as much sightseeing as possible into a few days. Every minute is accounted for, and you spend a lot of time riding a tour bus with the same group of people. So far we’ve had the good luck to travel with people we can stand—imagine if you were trapped on a bus with people who do karaoke all day, don’t shut up, and ask you impertinent questions. At some point you feel like sheep being herded on and off buses. When you’re with a large group you have to follow a tour guide holding up a flag (or a folding umbrella) and rattling off factoids about the thing you’re looking at. Worst case scenario: packed lunches. It’s all very hectic—”On your right is the Colosseum, look there’s a cat, and that’s the Forum and if you crane your head 60 degrees over there are the Baths of Caracalla…”—and at the end you’re exhausted.

We mentioned our travel categories at lunch with Nicholas Lim, regional director of Trafalgar Tours, the international tour operator. Trafalgar offers another option: the insider travel experience. Instead of a harassed tour guide, you get a travel director who has established relationships with local families, artisans, and experts (historians, geologists, etc). You don’t just stand outside a building and listen to a recitation of historical trivia, you get to feel how the locals live. You’re welcomed into private homes, working farms and wineries; you’re immersed in the native culture. Trafalgar tours are arranged so you spend half the day sightseeing and the other half at leisure.

“When your friends from abroad come to Manila, you take them to the places you yourself go to,” Nicholas said, “So they get an authentic insider experience.” Trafalgar tries to do the same for its clients wherever they go. “No herding or packed lunches,” he assured us.

Established 65 years ago, Trafalgar is the world’s leading guided holiday company. Two years ago it opened a regional office in Singapore. “Everybody’s looking East,” Nicholas noted. Trafalgar PR and social media specialist Choy Wan Teh added that last year their Philippine business grew 40 percent. Pinoys do love to travel; we even have a term for the overpowering urge to travel—makakating paa (itchy soles).

For more information on Trafalgar guided holidays, call Pan Pacific Travel at 5231990 or 5361265, or visit Trafalgar Asia’s Facebook page. Check out their booth at the Travel Expo, opening tomorrow at SMX Mall of Asia.

Koosi approves of A Discovery of Witches, now available in paperback, Php355 at National Bookstores.

Jomari recommended A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness months and months ago. We read the blurb—witches, vampires, an enchanted manuscript—and figured we’d had enough of this stuff in recent years, thank you. Yesterday we spotted the brick-like Penguin mass-market paperback and made the mistake of opening to page one. NO! We could not stop reading, and no deadlines were met.

The novel begins in a dusty, dimly-lit reading room deep inside the Bodleian Library at Oxford…sold! The heroine Diana Bishop is a witch from a long line of witches—one of her ancestors was burned in Salem. She has resisted using magic, preferring to employ her human abilities to become an academic. Her field is the history of science (much like Harkness’s), specifically the period when astrology and alchemy give way to Newton and physics. While doing research in England she comes upon a manuscript on alchemy labelled Ashmole 782, and strange things begin to happen. For starters there is a disturbing increase in the ratio of magical creatures—witches, daemons, vampires—to humans reading in the library.

Of course they’d be hanging out in the stacks. Say you have certain abilities that the general public would find alarming, or in the case of vampires an unnaturally long life span. What field would allow you the solitude, peace and relative obscurity to pursue your esoteric interests (and keep people from noticing that you’re 300 but look 30)? The academe! In Harkness’s world, vampires go into biochemistry (Blood!), particle physics, and other areas that require many, many, many years of study. And being scholars, they are not the swooning, simpering nitwits we have come to know and loathe from recent bestsellers.

Intelligent witches and vampires—we’d almost forgotten their existence. A Discovery of Witches is a supernatural thriller full of fascinating historical detail. Fine, the prose gets gushy and the editing could be tighter (Confession: we zipped through some of the less essential chapters), but it’s smart and fun. Now to find the sequel!

No one expects the pope’s resignation! His chief weapon was surprise.

First time in 600 years that has happened. We didn’t know they were allowed to do that.

The relics of Celestine V after the church roof fell in an earthquake

As news reports have pointed out, the first pontiff to abdicate was Celestine V in 1294. (They’ve also noted that Benedict visited Celestine’s tomb twice.) He was succeeded by Boniface VIII. Boniface then had him imprisoned, which was rather rude. Dante Alighieri loathed Boniface and hated Celestine for paving the way for his papacy. So Celestine got a cameo in the Inferno, where Dante consigned all his political enemies:

When some among them I had recognised,
I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.
(Inferno Canto III)

Vatican history is fascinating, with its schisms, scandals and Crusades, Borgia and Medici, its apocryphal Pope Joan, Inquisition, its political dealings, its financial holdings, its beyond-spectacular art collection. Interesting how this pope is abdicating for medical reasons when his predecessor died in office after a long illness. We kind of like (can’t bring ourselves to like outright) how he acknowledged the need for “strength of mind”—making thinking as important as suffering. Under the circumstances, that’s almost liberal.

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Two friends begin their illustrious careers at the same time, their paths diverge, one turns into Vader and the other tries to overthrow him.

Star Wars, or Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Küng?

Catholic theologian preaches revolution to end church’s authoritarian rule

was at Chef Bernard on Aguirre Street, Legazpi Village Makati behind AIM. It was so good, we forgot to take a picture. The other menu items were all right, but the pork binagoongan was outstanding. Prices are reasonable for the Greenbelt area—the basic meal cost less than Php300.

We were wondering why there were so many fashion designers eating there—turns out the restaurant is owned by a designer and a former model. Chef Bernard is open Mondays to Saturdays from 10 to 10.

Have you tried any good restaurants lately?

Saffy threw up clear fluid thrice and then refused to eat or drink anything. So we texted our vet at Pendragon Clinic and she suspected an upper respiratory tract infection. She said to give Saffy vitamin C syrup and observe her for 24 hours. Clearly Saffy wasn’t herself because she didn’t put up much resistance when we gave her the vitamins. She ate and drank a little on Saturday but she was too well-behaved—a sure sign she wasn’t feeling okay. Sunday we took her to the vet. She hates going to the vet so much that the minute she entered the consulting room she shook off whatever it was. It took three people to draw a sample for her blood test and take her temperature. All her tests came out normal, her temperature was normal, there was nothing wrong with the cat! Just a little cold magnified by her human’s paranoia.

WordPress, whenever we embed video in a scheduled post, the video does not appear when the post is published. Why is that.

A Street Cat Named Bob, the true story of a cat who adopts a homeless heroin addict and turns him into a bestselling author.

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Attention: nativereader, rusticrouge, jediknight and Momelia. We owe you some books, sorry for the delay and the changing instructions. We will leave the copies at the Customer Service desk of National Bookstore in Rockwell; you can pick them up starting Friday the 15th. (Or later; we expect traffic will be hell this weekend.) Their number is 8974562.