Everyone has lunch at Schatt's, across from the courthouse, or so it seems when waiting in line to order. Its a bakery-deli, wi-fi. Good solid food. My BLT had wonderful B in it. Rank for lunch #1.

Dinners were spread out during the week I spent there in trial. Montgomery and I went to a variety of places:

Patronas - dinner with Eric and Montgomery. Wines fine, pizza excellent (Montgomery "wasn't knocked out" but enjoyed it. The creme brule was excellent he reports). My rank #1, Montgomery #2

Himaylan Restaurant way down on South Main St. Something about the physical room itself doesn't appeal to me but the food was great. Montgomery and I rank this #3.

Thai restaurant (name coming) on N. State. Small tables, wonderful food. My rank #2, Montgomery #1.

Garden Court Cafe: Went there because my investigator said it has great Greek food. Must have gotten the wrong menu. Virtually nothing Greek on it. Mary Alice likes the place because the room is large, and it is quiet so you can talk while you eat. Food was fine but nothing to blog about. Rank #5

Taqueria Something, on South State, west side. Claims to be the best Mexican food in Ukiah. May well be. A bunch of Mexican looking people eating there helped me think it was authentic. Food was good. Rank #4 but would be higher were it not for some excellent restaurants in town.

Mutt Hutt: On South State St., West side. Introduced to this place by clients awhile back. Had lunch there and enjoyed it immensely. Indefinable cuisine, mostly vegetarian. I believe I had a BLT, and saw this incredible desert like dish being served. Turned out to be the lunch special main dish- fruit salad with yoghurt. Rank for lunch #2, and that's a close call. Come early this place is crowded. A little bit of patio seating.

Say tuned. Eric Kirk of Sohum Parlance fame is in Ukiah and so am I. We've arranged to meet at Patrona's for dinner in less than 1 hour. Details at 11.

This is the last of my sporatic journal from the European river trip Mary Alice and I took in 2004. We flew to Bucharest, bused to the boat in Contanta on the Black Sea, and went by boat up the Danube, across the canal at the top of Europe, and down the Rhine to Amsterdam. Unbelievely wonderful trip.

9/11/04
Amsterdam

We went on a canal boat tour seeing, from the canal, Anne Frank’s house. The tour ended at a diamond dealers where we got a short look at someone working on a diamond. Then the woman running the tour got us into the display room where she unwrapped a reasonable large bundle and got down to a very small diamond – one which sold for a few hundred dollars. It reminded me of the man we saw in a documentary about New Guinea who had a valuable shell wrapped in a variety of layers of packaging – except in this case I was one of those who agreed with the premise that the contents were of great value. We didn’t buy any diamonds at the shop. We had a second chance at the airport but passed that up as well.

We walked from the diamond shop through the old town looking for the hash houses and hemp museum. We found them and got a friend a marijuana lighter – many of the things we wanted to get for him seemed to me unlikely to get through customs upon our return to the US so we settled for the zippo lighter with the pot leaf on it.

The hemp museum had a $6 entry fee, so we didn’t go in. I photographed it. I would have liked to see if anyone there knew Chris Conrad, but didn’t want to pay the money to find out.

We were in the red light district but it was daytime and not so red-lightish. The streets were filled with people, mostly college age I thought, and the town looked like a spring-break destination.

Later in the evening I decided to go back to see the red light district. Mary Alice didn’t want to go – tired I think – so I set off on my own. When I got to the ship lobby there was our Austrailian friend Les & when I asked him if he wanted to come he was quite eager, dashing off to his cabin for something, and then off we went.

It began fairly close to the ships dock . We could see red lights in the darkness up and down the streets but at the entry to the quarter we found men waving red flags. I thought perhaps they were communists or anarchists but Les spoke with them and they turned out to be Christians who wanted us to give up sinful acts, like visiting the red light district.

The red light district works like this: the women rent display windows visible from the street. Most are at street level, a few half below and a few second floor. The windows have red lights around them. The women are standing in the window, usually, and wearing what amounts to bathing suits. Visibly it is quite tame – beachwear is more revealing. Some had florescent suits on which stood out in the window, but the entire thing was more matter of fact than you would anticipate.

The women are essentially living in the windows, so some would be tuning the boom box or radio, talking with a friend or something similar while other windows had women interacting with passers by with nods, winks, or gestures. The body types and ages ran a fairly wide gamut although I would guess none were above 40 years old, or 200 pounds. There was very little differentiation from one window to another or one woman to another. One window had a woman in a Nazi like uniform, and one had a woman with prostetic legs, but 99% were just women in two piece bathing suits.

When someone wanted to make a deal he would knock on the door, the woman came over and negotiated, and if agreement were reached, the man entered and they went upstairs (or into a back room). I understand the price is about 20 Euros for customary sex acts but I gained no first hand knowledge of costs or services supplied.

Some windows were uninhabited but had signs indicating that the window was available for rent – these too had red lights. Not every building on a block had red-light windows in it. There were one or two then dark space, then perhaps another etc. We didn’t do the entire quarter but went up and down two of the larger streets and the cross streets. The crowds never let up and I was more concerned with pick pockets than sex – in fact I left my wallet at the ship and just carried some euros in my pocket.

Les was astounded. He was staying over in Amsterdam for a few days and we found that his hotel was adjacent to the red-light district which seemed to please him.

After an hour or two we went back to the ship. I am still surprised at how matter of fact and mundane the entire thing was. There was neither glamour nor mystery about it. I suppose that is as it should be but I had anticipated something more on the order of Las Vegas production values.

9/9/4
Rudesheim

We went to dinner in town in Rudesheim. They had a “tourist train” to take us from the dock to the head of the narrow alley that the restaurant is on. We walked down, some with difficulty, and into a very large restaurant. We were seated in a second large room with a bandstand and a 3 piece band ? playing Austrian or German songs. Each table was decorated with the national flag of the country of origin of each of the people eating there (they asked us). We had Australian for Les, and US for us. I convinced Mary Alice to take part in the Schnaps ritutual. They line up 5 or 6 people and have them hold a long wooden bar with a cup on it for each of them. The cups are filled with Schnaps, and then the drinkers must in unison lift the bar and drink. This was the second drinking ritual we experienced in a restaurant – the first being the bladder of wine they would use to stream down the drinkers throat in Romania . The Europeans are not so worried about people drinking as are we.

I believe Rudesheim had the Mechanical Music Museum, and the godola ride to the germanic statue but I need to check. By this point in the trip some of the less well known towns were running together (or by the time I remembered to write about them). A kyacker was repairing her boat just below the point at which we docked.

I'm here for a trial with Montgomery. We drove down from Alderpoint, and decided to hold off eating until we reached Ukiah. I was hoping for Patrona, of course, and it wasn't open Sunday evenings, of course. So we cruised the main drag looking for something interesting. There is a sushi bar about a block from the court and that looked good except it was also Chinese food and Sunday Night Football. A bit too multicultural for a good dinner, we thought.

The Ukiah Brewery was next on the list. Right by the courthouse, crowded as usual, but also a bit noisy often - not talking but music. That's out. Driving on south, the Mutt Hut was closed. I recalled an Indian place way down the road and we drove past the airport to a place where no possible restaurant could be, and there it was. The Himalayan restaurant. Indian and Nepali food. Good choice. Excellent food. No beef, but lamb, chicken, and lots of vegetarian items. Good wine. If you're in Ukiah, consider it, and don't let your nerve fail you as you drive south looking for it. Until you reach the freeway, you haven't passed it.