Month: April 2018

April 23

Today is the last day with our rental car. It has been a trusty little Peugeot (here’s hoping I didn’t just jinx us since I’m typing this with two hours left on our drive). We’ve had the car for 24 days and started this puppy at 5290 kilometers on the odometer. It is now at 12,431 kilometers. Keep in mind that we had a different rental car when Johnny was in town and drove that mini for about 1280 miles (didn’t check the odometer on that one so we’re estimating). Converting our 7,141 kilometers on this car to 4437 miles, plus Johnny’s van, we drove 5,717 miles over the past month. For some context, it is 2,793 miles from New York City to Los Angeles. So we more than made it across the US two times in the last month. That’s a lot of miles.

It has been a ton of driving but such a neat way to see these countries and their beautiful landscapes. 9 countries in total. We’ve had so much flexibility and we’ve been able to see a ton with it. That said – I’m ready to be done with the car and Michael mostly is as well. It was more expensive than we were expecting. There are a lot of tolls that we’ve had to pay and many of the cities were expensive to park in. But there are a lot of places that we would not have been able to visit without a car. So grateful, but ready for some public transportation! Bring on our trains!

A final errand had to be run before we take our next flight. We have accumulated some “stuff” since we left the states almost six months ago and while that’s easy to truck along in a car, it’s hard to carry on your back. So we packed up a huge box and we’re shipping it back! I bet a few of you special readers just groaned and want to know if it’s coming to your home. Time will tell if you’re the lucky winner or not!

The box is packed and we had a post office picked out by the airport. When I went to map to the post office, google maps let me know that hours may be different because it is the feast of St. George who is the patron saint of Barcelona. What!? Oh no. So we changed our plans and starting trying to find post offices in cities outside of Barcelona. Zaragoza? Nope – the entire town is shut down. So I started calling the locations in Barcelona, hoping to get one that was open. Nope. On to fedex and ups. Finally we found one fedex that is open today. Thankfully.

Two things to note about this.

1. When do these people work!?!?!?! I get it, better quality of life, more family focused, less stressed, etc, etc. But seriously – they never work. Stores will just close down at random times for no reason. They are just coming off a week and a half with all of their stores closed for Easter! Many things don’t open until after 10 in the morning and then will take a 2 or 3 hour break in the afternoon. How do they pay bills? How can they afford all their fancy stuff?

2. When I called fedex, the recording was in Spanish and instructed me to press one for Spanish or two for English. I know that some people in the US get annoyed that they have to press a button to get English, but I will attest that this is just amazing customer service, especially when you are already panicked that you cannot find anyone to ship your box. And to take this thought one step further, we have traveled for six months and have rarely struggled to find someone who will either speak English with us or find a way to communicate. Often they apologize for their broken English. I hope that people in the United States are that kind and helpful to non English speakers that they encounter.

So now we’re off to Rome! We have two days before we meet up with my mom in Florence!

April 20-22

A short drive North from Lisbon landed us in Porto, a town that we were both really excited to visit. We had heard good things about the town and it’s the home of Port wine. Since we’ve been about four days since a wine tasting, it was time to get back to business.

First thing’s first – the highlight of the city for me was our dinner the first night at Cervajeria Gazela. We had seen this restaurant on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and Michael actually remembered it. So we went – it was up several hills and through some random dark streets. When we came upon it, it was a very small grill packed with people eating at the counter, eating while standing behind the counter and eating outside.

Awesome.

It has a full menu, but there is really only one thing to eat: the cachorro. It is sausage and cheese sandwich grilled to perfection with spicy sauce on top.

We also got fries and beers, but the real star was the sausage. Amazing. Plus!!! We got a seat at the counter, which was very lucky and gave us a chance to overlook all the activity.

Our first port stop was at Kopke – which is the oldest port house in Porto… you know because they wrote it on the building. It was a great first stop where we learned a bit about port and the process.

We knew very little coming into this visit and I wasn’t always the biggest fan, so it was great to get more info. For example, did you know that there is white port and rose port? Me neither. Also, most ports are either classified as Ruby or Tawny. The difference is that Ruby are fermented for only 2-3 days which allows them to keep their ruby color (hence the name) and a lot of berry flavor. Tawny ports are fermented for more days which turns more sugar into alcohol. Then they are barrel aged for extended periods of time which changes the color from ruby to a rusty color. Also that barrel exposure will mean you could taste carmel or vanilla or other flavors besides the berry flavor which is also toned down with more time in barrel. The longer tawny ports are in barrel, the lighter their color while the longer white ports are in the barrel, the darker their color.

There are also some ports that are bottled without being filtered. This allows the port to continue to age within the bottle indefinitely. These you can keep for 100+years without drinking (although I’m not sure I see the point of that). But once you open a bottle of unfiltered, you have to drink it within two or three days. For any filtered and blended bottle, apparently there really isn’t a reason to age it in the bottle, so you’ll want to drink it anytime in the first couple of years after it is bottled. Once open, a filtered bottle can be kept for three to nine months depending on other stuff.

Also – ports are fortified with brandy which stops the fermentation process before all of the sugar is turned into alcohol. This also boosts the alcohol content. About the grapes – I assumed there was a specific type of grape but there are actually over 100 different grape varietals that are used to make Port. None of the cellars made a big deal about the varietal. The important thing is that they’re grown in the Douro River valley that has a microclimate that is optimal for port grapes.

More info – if you get a 10 year tawny, that is a blended bottle of port with an average age of 10 years. Their intent is to blend so that their 10 year always tastes the same from year to year. Same with the 20 year and the 30 and 50, yada yada. Some vintages, if they are really good, will do a port specific to that year and that’s when you’ll see a specific year on the bottle. The interesting thing here is that they’ll keep that vintage in barrels until there is a demand. So a 1961 vintage that is bottled in 1980 will be much different than a 1961 that is bottled in 2018.

Our next stop was Churchill’s – no relation to Winston – that is a newer cellar with very delicious ports. Apparently since it’s younger it does things like pop up bars in London and festivals and other “hip” things that the older cellars would have a distaste for. Great ports – definitely some of our favorites.

Our next tasting was Calem which was a great tour of their cellar plus Michael booked us for the port and chocolate tasting. Bonus! Out of the thirty or so people on the tour only one other couple did the chocolate tasting with us – a couple from Texas: Bill and Mary Beth. They were celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We had a great time getting to know them and went on to do a second tasting and then dinner with them.

The highlight of dinner? Three things – round two of the goose barnacles. For the crew that hung out with us in San Sebastián… round one was much better.

Still a highlight, but they just didn’t have the right pizazz.

Highlight two – Mary Beth and I shared the salt cod. It was salt baked. So it came out in flames that they scooped off with the extra salt. What!? Also in this picture you can see the tomahawk steak that Michael and Bill shared.

The final highlight is that the wedding anniversary got the entire table free champagne and chocolate cake. Boom!

Our last day in Porto was quiet time after so much commotion the day before. I cranked out a few blog posts, Michael cooked dinner and we watched movies. Just the type of quiet day you need every once in a while.

April 18-19

Driving from Seville to Lisbon, we hit our first new country in what felt like a long time. Portugal! We are definitely getting close to being burned out on all this driving. But we only have a few more days with our rental car and we need to take advantage of it!

The city was really cool with a lot of people hanging out. We mostly stayed in the old city which had beautiful buildings and a lot of hills. It reminded me a bit of Valparaiso and reminded Michael of San Fran.

Stopped along one of the hills for some beers and sunshine:

Plus there was some delicious food! This pizzeria allegedly has the Rolls Royce of Italian pizza ovens. It looked cool, but more importantly the pizza was delicious.

We also hiked up to Saõ Jorge Castle which is a Moorish castle on the highest hill in town, overlooking the city and the Tagus River.

It gave us some beautiful views of the city as well as a little time with some peacocks.

And since it had been a little while, we popped in for some Peruvian food at A Cevicheria.

Our last morning as we were heading off to Porto, we popped into this bakery for some famous pastries.

About these pastries: the bakery opened in 1837 selling “pastel de Belém” which are based off a secret recipe from the Jerónimos Monastery which was next door at the time. They sell a lot of standard bakery stuff, but the egg tart pastry (pictured above) is their specialty and the reason that busloads of people visit every day… including us. They were delicious and definitely the kind of pastry that makes you wish you had ordered three times more than necessary. I want ALL of the pastries.

Our trip to Lisbon was short but sweet with a ton of great food!

April 16-17

When planning out this road trip, we had originally planned on heading to Portugal first from Barcelona. But somehow we found out that Seville had a week long flamenco festival called Feria de Abril. Yes!! So we adjusted our trip to be in Southern Spain to coincide with the festival. On arrival into the city, I was incredibly excited by the horse drawn carriages heading down the highways.

Michael was less enthused as he attempted to drive while I was reaching over him to get pictures.

Almost immediately we saw our first woman in a flamenco dress. I was super excited but more excited when I realized in just a few minutes that they were EVERYWHERE.

There were a few main components of the festival. One is “Hell Street” which is the carnival built right next to the festival grounds that looks similar to a huge parish picnic that you’d see in St. Louis, which I’m now learning did not happen at parishes where Michael grew up. This has led to a great discussion on parish picnics and county fairs (which I’ve never been to). This was not like a county fair – perhaps similar to the carnival ride section of the Monroe county fair per Michael, but there was no livestock or art being judged that we saw or politicians campaigning.

Another component of the festival is the carriage parade. These carriages were traditionally used to show economic status and often competed with each other in garments and decorations to be the most beautiful. Apparently this happens every day of the week long festival.

My favorite part of the parade was this little girl riding side saddle in a traditionally male outfit complete with the cordobés hat. Typically, the women wear a flower and a comb on top of their heads as you’ll see in other pictures. Tell me she’s not awesome.

The next component is bull fighting. We saw the bull fighting arena from an aerial view the cathedral, but otherwise did not see any bull fighting in this trip. The tickets to see the bull fights sell out months in advance. We’re pretty sure it’s the stadium about halfway into the distance, center, in this picture.

The final component is the night time celebrations. There is drinking and dancing until 3am when the lights are turned off. Most of you know that Michael and I don’t stay out until 3am, but we did make it past midnight the second night. The interesting thing about the fair is that despite the fact that everyone is out in the street partying, it is very much for locals. One reason for that is the dress. Most of the local women wore traditional flamenco dresses or very sleek pantsuits. The men wore very well tailored expensive suits. Apparently few men wear the traditional clothing which consists of tight pants, high boots and the same wide brim hat the girl above is wearing. I’m not sure when they switched to suits, but in general, I like the decision as the men looked sharp and was a nice complement to the beautiful dresses the women wore.

Although I wore my nicest dress and Michael work navy pants and a collared shirt the first night, we were clearly outsiders. The tents are reserved by families, so you cannot enter a tent without an invitation. That meant we were not going into any tents. There were apparently a few public tents that would serve alcohol to anyone, but we never saw these tents. It wasn’t a big deal, being the classiest of classies, Michael and I brought two small water bottles filled with French wine along with us the first night. We knew there was drinking in the street, so there wasn’t a concern about getting in trouble for it. There was one moment where Michael was taking a drink out of the bottle when a very fancy woman and her very fancy 10 or so year old son dropped their jaws with shock and embarrassment that they happened to be standing so close to a man of such horrible character and breeding. But other than that, most of the crowd completely ignored us.

I did ask a few women if I could take their picture. It’s a little creepy, but more so if I just take their picture without asking, don’t you think? Everyone I asked seemed legitimately shocked that I asked. I just checked my Spanish on the google machine to make sure I was using the right words… I was close enough. “Puedo tomar tu foto” when it apparently should have been “Puedo tomar su foto”… my Spanish scholars can chime in. For the most part they just couldn’t believe I wanted their photo and almost all of them laughed and then pulled someone else into the photo with them – other girlfriends or a date. I was surprised at how almost shy or embarrassed they acted while wearing such bold and confident clothing.

There was some dancing in the street and some dancing in tents that we watched. Many of the tents had adult women dancing inside with partners while younger girls danced in their streets with their friends, practicing for when they get invited to dance with the adults.

Also, I liked this group of girls which included one girl dancing in the four without a flamenco dress on.

Also, the lights!!

Besides the festival, we also spent some time walking around the city. We got a run in and took a selfie on a bridge that our Airbnb host told us we HAD TO TAKE A SELFIE on. She told us that if we didn’t get the selfie, then we cannot say we really experienced Seville. We’re not totally sure why the selfie bridge was so important, but we did it, because heaven forbid we screw up an entire visit on something as easy as a bridge selfie after our run:

Also, we went on a tour of the Cathedral de Santa Maria de la Sede aka the Seville Cathedral, which is UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here’s what we learned:

The Seville Cathedral became the largest cathedral in the world in the 16th century, overtaking Hagia Sophia, another cathedral that Michael and I have visited in Istanbul and love. There are now two churches that are larger: Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida (which probably also holds the record for longest church name) and St. Peter’s Basilica. But since both of those churches are not the seats of bishops, Seville Cathedral is still the largest cathedral in the world per Wikipedia. Now I had to research a bit further, because I thought St. Peter’s was the seat of a super important bishop. But Wikipedia is telling me that the seat of the Pope is actually the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which I probably should have known from my visit to St. Peter’s Basilica a few years ago. When clicking on that link to make sure I was understanding correctly I found out that the full name of that cathedral is The Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran, which disproves my above thoughts on record holder for longest name.

Now as I’m writing, Michael told me that per the audio tour the two bigger churches were St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Paul’s in London. But when I looked into this a bit further, St. Paul’s is an Anglican cathedral, not Catholic. So my info here probably ok. Take it all, as usual, with a grain of salt.

Now back to the cathedral at hand. It was obviously beautiful and ornate.

An altar dedicated to St. Teresa:

A few things that were cool or strange:

1. This was one of the pieces of art in the building. It’s John the Baptist’s decapitated head. This is not a rendition of John that I think I’ve seen before. Later on there was a second decapitated John the Baptist head, but I didn’t think you needed to see two.

2. This is a huge crown that is brought out once a year on the feast of Mary’s Assumption and put on a statue of Mary that is paraded through the streets. It also has the second largest pearl in the world.

3. This is the main altar. It tells the entire story of Jesus starting in the bottom left hand corner and working its way all the way up to the top right. This redefines the word elaborate.

I know what you’re thinking:

4. A bunch of bishops are buried here but apparently Christopher Columbus is also buried here. He’s here in this tomb being held up by these four people (Angels? Soldiers? Knights? I have no clue).

Now here’s the issue with the Christopher Columbus burial. Three issues actually. First that few of us actually consider him a hero anymore as we’ve evolved in our thinking of what the “discovery” of the Americas means since it involved slaughtering a ton of people and taking land from people who already lived there. Plus CC wasn’t a very good person. That said, he’s a hero in Spain. Second point is that it is in dispute if his body is actually in this cathedral or if it is in the Dominican Republic. My third issue is that the audio guide got very confusing at this point and I go distracted and so I didn’t realize what it was. I saw the huge ornate tomb, but didn’t hear the story of who was buried there. Later Michael told me that was his favorite part of the cathedral and I had no idea what he was talking about. Oops.

5. We were able to climb to the top of the bell tower which was formerly the minaret of the Almohad mosque which was built in the late 1100’s. The mosque was “Christianized” after Ferdinand III’s conquest of Seville. This converted bell tower is now the city’s most well-known structural symbol and is 104.5 meters high.

6. The mosque’s sahn, which is the ablutions courtyard where the Muslims did their ritual cleansing before entering for prayer was also maintained and turned into the Patio de los Naranjos because of all the orange trees.

I would say that the selfie bridge is probably less of a “have to visit” than this cathedral.

We loved Seville and I would definitely recommend it. It is added to the list of places that we’ll need to come back to in the future… maybe with some fancier clothes.

April 14-15

Our next stop on this road trip was Sagunta, a beach town about 20 kilometers north of Valencia. Weather was looking beautiful for a day at the beach, so we booked two nights and relaxed.

Also – these were the shampoo containers in the hotel.

First thought was how amazing they were. Second thought was how there has to be some child poisoning issues associated with making shampoo look like those yogurt and apple sauce containers.

April 12-13

After our time in Alsace, we were ready to broaden our horizons away from all the wine tastings… to more wine tastings. But we were switching from deliciously dry whites to deliciously complex reds. Variety is the spice of life. We drove southwest to Hermitage, a small hill in the northern Rhône region that is known for exceptional Syrah. This was another area that the documentary, “Somm, Into the Bottle”, had directed us towards.

Some interesting history about Hermitage. The wine region surrounding Hermitage is quite large, but wines labeled exclusively “Hermitage’ speak to 140 hectares of vines on a south facing hill outside Lyon, France. According to legend, an injured knight in 1224 was given permission by the Queen of France to live on the hill while he recovered. That knight never left his hill and lived as a hermit – hence the name hermitage. However, at a winery we visited, the man doing the tasting talked about a battle between Gaul and the Romans in 121 BC (thank you google for that year). Apparently the Celts (had no idea of the Celt/Gaul connection) had significantly more troops than the Romans, but the Romans brought elephants which where incredibly exotic at the time and terrified the Celts. The Celts fled via a bridge they had constructed over the Rhône and the bridge collapsed, killing a large number of the troops. The hill was then apparently given to a Roman commander as reward and he began farming the hill.

The hill:

Now about the wines. We tasted wine from the region and wine specifically from the hill. The stuff on the hill – the Hermitage appellation – is significantly better. And that analysis is from someone who likes drinking wine but would not call herself an expert by any means. I struggle to define what I’m tasting when I taste it. I’m getting better (practice makes perfect), but for the most part, I can only tell you what I like. I like Hermitage wines. So apparently the five tasting notes of a standard Syrah is cherry, leather, pepper, licorice, and a fifth one. We don’t remember what the fifth tasting note is from our tasting yesterday. It may be lavender, but whatever it was, I was surprised that he said it and I don’t think I have ever picked that out. Definitely cherry, definitely pepper… and the rest? I’ll trust the experts on what they think. But I can tell you, with my limited experience, that when you taste a Hermitage wine next to wine produced from the next appellation over that the Hermitage is noticeably better.

Of the 140 hectares, a quarter are Marsanne and Roussanne white varieties. These are wines we had never tried before this visit. They were fine – but tough when compared to how good the Syrah is and how good the whites were that we had just tasted in Alsace.

On to the Syrah – it is bold and spicy and wonderful. The hill has granite soil with alpine glacial deposits. This produces heavy tannic wines which allow them to be aged for a long time. We drank mostly 2014 and 2015 vintages and both wineries told us we could keep them in a cellar for 10-30 years. That’s a long time.

We visited three wineries while in the area. The first was actually the same winery of the bottle we drank in Alsace – Domaine Des Remiziéres. We had the 2005 Cuvée Emilie and were pumped when we met… Emilie.

She is the winemaker’s daughter and did the tasting for us. Without a common language between the three of us, it was a quiet, but delicious tasting. Google translator did its job more than a few times to get through the 30 or 40 minutes. She did recommend a few other wineries for us to visit in the area.

We headed directly to one of her suggestions in St. Joseph – Domaine Pierre et Jerome Coursodon. St. Joseph is the next appellation over and this tasting was proof that the wines were just not as good as the Hermitage. They were fine, really delicious, but we had been spoiled now.

The following day, Michael found Delas, a small producer of Hermitage for us to visit. The guide spoke English, which was great because he had a lot of information for us. Besides the history that he shared regarding the area, we also got a (slightly snobbish) opinion of new age wines. Basically, if it isn’t French or tastes just like French, this guy isn’t a fan. It made me laugh on the inside as he was telling us this. Michael does not agree with how I remember this part of the tasting. It wasn’t a big deal and I liked the guy a lot, but I thought it was a peak into a bit of the old world wine snobbery.

So we now have a new issue: how are we going to ship about nine bottles of wine back to the states. None of the Hermitage or Alsace wineries would ship for us, so we didn’t buy much, but we did buy a few. It is too much to ask anyone to carry back after a visit, so we’re going to try to ship over the next week or so.

One food item to mention: we had lunch yesterday at a pizza place. We ordered a pizza to share and an arugula salad. The salad came with a 8″ by 4″ pastry baked to soft perfection and filled with melted cheese. That’s what we get for trying to order something halfway healthy for lunch. It was an amazing surprise.

I’m typing this while we’re driving South to Seville. It is a 13 or so hour drive, so we are stopping after 9 hours for two nights North of Valencia, Spain. As of right now, my weather app is telling me that we’re going to get sun and 70 degrees in this beach town, so I’m looking forward to sitting on the beach tomorrow and doing nothing.

The roads from Hermitage to Valencia are mostly highway and not that much different than views you’d see in California, but one thing is different… the rest stop food.

This is the croissant we had this morning for breakfast. 1 Euro and it tasted as good as anything we’d had in a real restaurant. How do they get their rest stop food so fresh?! No McDonald’s breakfast burritos here. (Editor’s note: McDonald’s breakfast burritos are delicious and I love them).

April 9-11

We arrived at our bed and breakfast (which is also a wine producer) in St. Hippolyte late on Monday night and went straight to bed. With two full days in Alsace, France, I was promised some time to rest and I (mostly) got that. We found out about Alsace from watching the documentary “Somm, Into the Bottle” on Netflix which is about sommeliers, wine and wine regions. It sounds boring, but it’s actually done really well and very enjoyable to watch.

Alsace is an interesting region for a few reasons. First of all, they produce really delicious Rieslings. Dry Rieslings. Second, I find it interesting because the area borders Germany and Switzerland and over the centuries has alternated between German and French control. So the area reflects both cultures.

Our first stop in wine tasting was Sipp Mack which Michael claims to have found on the interwebs. It was just a small shop a few towns over from St. Hippolyte. The guy who did our tasting was great. He spoke English well which made it very easy to do the tasting and he was very friendly on top of that. Apparently he had spent 9 months in Traverse City, Michigain, working at a cherry farm in the early 80’s, which is a fun coincidence. Plus the wines were delicious.

The Sipp Mack tasting guy pointed us to Riquewihr for our next stop. The town was just like the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast.

We popped into Famille Hugel for some more delicious Rieslings. The wines were good, but the town was the real show stopper. We grabbed some macaroons and a bottle and headed off to our next stop.

That next stop was Paul Blanck which also had delicious whites and a great story surrounding their family tree and the history of the winery.

Next we grabbed a baguette, some charcuterie and cheese and headed back to our bed and breakfast. It was still relatively early and we were going to just snack a bit while watching a movie and calling it an early night. Before that, however, we had a tasting at our bed and breakfast (remember I told you it was also a wine producer).

Sylvie Fahrer & Fils is the winery and the wine was pretty good. The cool thing about the tasting, however, was the communication method. Everyone in this area speaks French. The second language for most is German, and then a lot of people speak English as well. Sylvie speaks German and French which makes a descriptive wine tasting tough. But another couple visiting from Eastern Germany spoke German and English and became translators. It was actually a fun way to do the tasting and was a great excuse to chat with the Germans.

The Greatest Showman and a bottle Hermitage Syrah that we’d picked up from a wine shop made the evening really great. If you haven’t seen that movie, it is a really fun one to see.

Then this morning we went for runs through the vineyards which was beautiful and hard. Hard because it has been a long time since I’ve been for a run and Michael is coming off that pesky marathon. But it’s time to get back into it.

How about this swan we saw on the run?

Afterwards we took a trip up to Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg which is the local castle. Built in the 12th century, it was destroyed and then rebuilt in the 15th century then destroyed again in the 17th century before it was abandoned. Then in the early 1900’s, the castle was fully restored by German emperor Wilhelm II. Similar to the Alsace region, the castle was transferred from one country to another over the centuries depending on who was in power.

These are the really pretty stoves. As early as the Middle Ages, stoves were used in this region for heating purposes. They would surround the stoves with detailed ceramic tiles.

Plus just some random cool castle stuff:

Interestingly, someone we spoke with mentioned that there are a lot of wild boars in the area. Too many. Michael asked the standard US question: do many people hunt them? The man’s response: No, we don’t hunt. We don’t have guns here like you do in the United States. Touché.

But best of all were the views from the high vantage point.

After the castle, we grabbed lunch in a nearby town before heading to our last Alsace tasting at Maison Trimbach. This is the winery from the documentary that made Michael so geeked to come visit Alsace. Maison Trimbach’s wine maker appeared in the documentary and had a really neat experience with his son opening up a 1962 bottle of wine together. The (younger) wines we tasted stood up to the high expectations we’d set for them. Plus, the wine maker came into the tasting room and I snapped this creepy stalker picture.

We didn’t speak with him (Michael was way too star struck), but we were excited to see him and bought a few bottles.

Now we’re back in our bed and breakfast looking at another movie night and early bedtime. See? I am getting some relaxation here!

April 7-9

We jumped on a morning train from Troyes into Paris. We thought this would be cheaper/easier than bringing the car into the city and trying to find parking. The train in was super easy and cheap and we made it in time to visit Sainte-Chapelle which is a royal chapel within the Palais de la Cité which was the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century. It was commissioned by King Louis IX to house his collection of Passion relics, including Christ’s Crown of Thorns. We didn’t see any relics. But we did see these amazing windows:

I know what you’re thinking:

After this, we headed over to pick up Michael’s bib for the Paris marathon. Oh? You didn’t know he was running? No surprise. Only a few people knew and he spent the better part of the last six months saying he wasn’t going to be running even though he had signed up.

Although still in decent running shape from his Chicago marathon training, we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to run while we were in Africa. After an 18 mile test run about 9 days prior, he decided he was definitely going to do it.

So here we are, carb loading in an Airbnb in Paris on Saturday night:

Now, some of you know this. Some of you don’t. But marathon Sunday is THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR. It is my absolute favorite day. If you have been in New York City for marathon Sunday, you probably know what I’m talking about. If you have watched other marathons, you may have an inkling.

Imagine this scenario: an entire city of people who are busy and cranky and traffic is bad and people don’t know their neighbors or say hi when walking down the street. You work long days, probably weekends too. When you are not working, you are trying to maximize the short amount of time you have with the most fun. But for the most part, you are just tired. But then once a year it is marathon Sunday. In New York, they shut down streets and everyone gathers to cheer on random strangers. If you park yourself on second avenue, in the 70’s or 80’s, you can grab a beer from a local pub and watch for hours. My first five years in New York, I didn’t know a single person running the marathon, but I would stand on the street for five or six hours screaming at the top of my lungs. The runners love it and are energized by it. They write their names on their shirts so you can cheer them on by name. They run 26.2 miles in tutus and costumes. It’s just one day where everyone has a good will type of attitude. Don’t even get me started on those people who run it while pushing a disabled child. Unreal.

What’s not to love about marathon Sunday? It is my favorite.

It’s a little different in Paris for a few reasons. First of all, I didn’t have anyone to cheer with. Not an issue. I can do it solo. Second, I don’t speak French, so screaming my standard phrases was less effective. For your reference: “let’s go!”, “you’re nailing this!”, “keep it up!”, “don’t stop now!”, and the more generic “yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh”.

Michael is ready to go:

And so was I. I was determined to meet up with Michael at three or four locations. Marathon Sunday isn’t the easiest spectator sport. It’s hard work if done properly.

I got to mile 4, ready to start my day. The important thing is knowing that you have to stay on one side of the course. I chose the inside of the Paris marathon route because I could easily jump from 4 to 14 and also there was a subway close to take me towards the end.

I got an espresso and croissant and waited for the runners to come to me at mile 4 which was right at the hospital. There were about five doctors that had come out of the hospital to watch the runners. Otherwise, it was just me… clapping nonstop for about an hour. I got a few “merci”s from random runners and I gave some extra love to anyone who was clearly from the USA, Mexico or South America. Those countries fall into the languages that I speak and the people who I assume get the least amount of support from a French speaking crowd.

Here we have Michael coming up on mile four – he’s nailing it! It turned out that the bad drop was super far away, so he carried it with him to the start and left it with me at four.

So far so good. I headed off to mile 14 for the next viewing. He was still doing great!

The interesting thing that I learned at mile 14 is that Paris does not really block any of the streets or monitor who is crossing. So you can enter the course at almost any time. Apparently there was a church service that had an entire group of people trying to cross the street: wheelchairs, strollers, kids, old people, adults who have zero self awareness. It was crazy. A woman in a stroller walked right out into the elite men runners and knocked right into a runner. I can’t imagine running a marathon competitively and having to worry about random people pushing their baby right into their path. It was awful and you could never get away with that in New York.

Mile 21 – Michael was on the struggle bus. Still doing well, considering, but I knew it wasn’t as well as he would want to be doing. As such, no video or picture from this stop. No way was I going to put the camera in his face at this point.

Mile 25.5 – ok, so they’re basically done, which makes it a great point to watch the runners. Even the runners who are walking often start jogging again since they’re so close. That said, there was a guy who looked really rough that walked right by me. I called him by name and told him to keep going. It was that point that he collapsed in front of me and had to be carried off the course. It was one of those reminders of how stupid it is to push your body to run 26.2 miles.

But here came Michael and he seemed pretty good. I have video of it but it’s terrible because when I saw him I threw my hands up in the air. Here is a screen shot that I pulled from that video.

And then it was over. I hustled down past the finish to meet up with Michael who was tired. Very tired.

But also very pleased to have finished with a great time – 4:18:31. Not as good as his Chicago time, but amazing for having done no training.

After the race we headed back to the AirBNB so Michael could shower and then off to drink some beer and have a nice dinner. I deserved at least that after my strong showing.

My analysis of marathon Sunday, Paris edition: Not exclusively, but for most of the day people either stood in silence as they watched the runners pass or they cheered exclusively when their friends passed. Also, there was no wine or beer or food along the route. Perhaps a glass of wine in these “fans” would have improved their moods. Regardless, it’s still my favorite day and it makes me excited for the next time I’m back in New York for my favorite day of the year.

The toughest part of the day for Michael? Facing these six flights of stairs to get up to our Airbnb.

Or maybe trying to figure out how to eat escargot directly out of the shell:

That was new for us. We’ve always had the snails removed and put in one of those escargot dishes. We were too proud to ask for help, but not too proud to pull up a YouTube tutorial.

The next day we spent the majority of the morning trying to figure out how to get back to our car in Troyes after the train strike shut down every train and there were no buses. It was definitely a fiasco that negated any attempt at saving cash by leaving the car outside the city. Oh well – we got back to the car finally and headed back east to French wine country.

April 6

We got up at 6am so we could get on the road. We had a ton of driving to accomplish in one day. We had packed up the night before so it was an easy departure from the hotel.

1. Italy: We started our trip with a few hours in Italy – we drove out of Cinque Terre, enjoying the sun rising as we twisted and turned out of the towns.

We drove past Lake Como and waved at George Clooney. We didn’t wave at Amal – I’m sure she’s too busy saving the world to be hanging out here on a week day.

2. Switzerland: Our next country was Switzerland. We passed seamlessly into the new country. As previously mentioned, Michael had visited Switzerland with Chuck. But this was a new country for me! We didn’t spend any time here yet, but we got to drive through the beautiful Alps!

Very scenic way to spend a few hours.

3. Liechtenstein: Next stop – the tiny country of Liechtenstein for lunch. On the drive, I googled what you can do in the country of Liechtenstein. I got a lot of suggestions that confirmed the fact that we did not need to spend any additional time in this pretty little country. We grabbed lunch and then continued on our drive, back into Switzerland.

Having uploaded these pictures I’m realizing that Liechtenstein doesn’t look that cool. It was a really beautiful tiny country and these pictures do no justice to it. I mean… what is that van picture? Is that really the best we could do? Yes. Apparently, it was the best we could do. I’m sorry.

4. Germany: Now this is a new one for both Michael and me*. It was also a surprise. We didn’t take a very good look at the route apparently. Germany didn’t really look that different than Switzerland. The buildings look the same and since we were in the German speaking portion of Switzerland, all the signs looked the same as well. We drove through Germany for an hour or two before getting into France. No pictures. You’ll get pictures when we hit up Munich or something more German looking.

5. France: This portion of the trip was 4 or 5 hours straight west towards Troyes. Troyes is a city outside of Paris that we were going to be spending the night in. We got to drive through Alsace, part of wine country that we are actually returning to in a few days.

The highlight of this drive? This street sign! We’ll have to investigate when we come back in a few days.

The lowlight? All of the towns were creepy and empty. Like super empty. Zero people. A few cars parked along the street, and buildings that are well taken care of, but no people. It was around 7pm on a Friday night. Where are the people? We had a few theories: everyone was gone on vacation for Easter week, or something to do with upcoming planting season. We didn’t know. But it was strange. But we got this beautiful sunset as we were approaching Troyes.

So that’s how you see five countries in one day. It was too much driving, but we wanted to knock Liechtenstein off the list and also get close to Paris in anticipation of our weekend in the city.

*The first time I came to Europe, with my family, Betsy and I had a layover in Munich. It was a very short layover – possibly 2 hours. Definitely not long enough to leave the airport and go into the city. That said, we exited security, and went out into the plaza in front of the airport so that we could experience “Germany”. It was about 15 minutes of running around and was an absolute blast. Michael says this doesn’t count, but I would never belittle the experience we had there.

April 3-5

After our quick stop into Nice and Monaco, we continued East into Italy to hit up one of Michael’s favorite places in the world: Cinque Terre. Michael has been telling me how much he loves these five cities since the first weekend we started dating. He visited about 12 years ago with his good friend, Chuck, on a trip around Italy and Switzerland. So needless to say, the expectations were high as we drove into the area… always a dangerous way to visit a new place.

We arrived pretty late on the 3rd, so after getting to our hotel in Monterosso, the furthest north of the five towns, it was one of those tough decisions if we wanted to go out for dinner. I was still feeling pretty terrible and after a day of driving through the mountains, with all my ear popping glory, I was definitely in the “just go to sleep” camp. But I knew Michael was pumped to be there, so I got myself out of bed and out the door for dinner. And, as usual when I’m not feeling inspired to leave the apartment or hotel on this trip, I’m so glad we did. Even though it was rainy and cold, the city was alive with a ton of shops and small restaurants just starting to get busy for the night.

We walked around for 15 or 20 minutes before settling on a restaurant that has a window into the kitchen from the main street. Here was the view of the seafood. Looks great!!

The meal was delicious: a seafood risotto, some stuffed mussels and tiramisu. It was a reminder how great Italian food is!

We had two full days in the area, with a lot of rain in the forecast. Wednesday looked rainier than Thursday, so we decided to take a train on Wednesday and to hike on Thursday. There was a winery in the next town over, Vernazza, that Michael had reached out to. They were bottling but invited us to come over. Super cool! We slept in, had some breakfast and then took the 10 or so minute train ride to the next town. When we arrived at the winery, the gate was locked and any attempt to get the winemaker’s attention was a bust. Ha. So much for that.

Time for a new plan. We headed down the road and into a restaurant to grab something to drink. Still feeling poorly, I ordered a hot tea and Michael got a glass of vino. The cafe was super busy and once they finally got an order from us, they brought me hot water without any tea bag. But we also got a pizza with prosciutto that was the best pizza we’ve had in a really long time. The service didn’t get any better, but the hot water was nice on my soar throat, the food was delicious and it gave us some place to sit and stay out of the rain.

With a ton of the day left, and the rain seemingly dying down, we decided that we were going to do the hike back to Monterosso instead of taking the train. I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea. My main concern was that I was wearing my tennis shoes and I was worried about getting them wet and then having a full day of hiking the next day in wet shoes. Oh well. We started the hike and a sign said it was going to be a 3.5 hour hike. What the heck! I knew that the entire 5 town walk would be about 5 hours if you do the shorter hike. How could this one piece between two towns be 3.5 hours? My mood was souring. Fast. It was cold and I was not prepared for a 3.5 hour hike without any water. Plus, it was super cloudy. Like… we were walking through the clouds.

See how hard it is to see Michael up there?

Takes away a lot of the fun if you can’t even see the beautiful scenery.

We did have one good view of Vernazza but then it was just clouds.

Pretty incredible, isn’t it? But not the time to enjoy it. My bad attitude spread over to Michael and we were both grumpily hiking when the skies opened and we got hit with some pretty heavy rain. Perfect. It was about this time that I jokingly suggested to Michael that he probably had more fun hiking with Chuck. He didn’t think my joke was very funny. It was definitely that moment when I decided I needed to adjust my attitude. There was nothing to be done about the decision we made at this point except try to enjoy it. We are in Italy, in Cinque Terre, one of the most picturesque places in Europe. Fake it ’til you make it.

What Michael knew but I didn’t: this stretch of the hike is the hardest. Straight up and down the whole time. Add in a ton of running water on the path and the hike is not that pleasant. The rest is easier. There is a portion of the hike that is actually called Lover’s Lane because it’s such a gentle stroll.

What neither of us knew: the 3.5 hour estimate was completely off. It took us 75 minutes to complete. So not nearly as bad as I was expecting. (Editor’s note: Michael was just reading over my shoulder and assures me that he knew it wasn’t 3.5 hours. Great job managing my expectations.) We rolled into our hotel, dried off and once again had the “to go to dinner or not” discussion. I was tired and we were cranky and it was rainy. Plus I hadn’t really warmed up despite a hot shower. But… the food was so good last night…

So we went out again, this time at a quiet restaurant down a dark alley. We had octopus, a pesto pasta, grilled fish and caramel panna cotta. Mmmmmm. Who knew panna cotta could be so good?!?!

On Thursday, we started the hike late morning. The options were to take the train to the end and hike back or hike to the end and take the train back. Already with a firm grasp of the last portion of the hike, and eager to get the hardest part out of the way, we started towards Vernazza. Tough, but much better than the night before. One thing I didn’t mention last night is that the trails were actually closed because of the rain. We had to step over a chain blocking the path with a message declaring it closed. When we arrived to the path this morning, there was a group of 40 or 50 somethings from the United States debating whether they should continue on or listen to the sign and turn back. We were definitely not obeying the sign this morning after successfully hiking last night in the pouring rain and I think our confidence in stepping over the chain encouraged them to do the same.

With no rain and better attitudes, we took off.

This is looking back on Monterosso:

Once in Vernazza, we ate an orange we had brought with us and then headed off to the next trail entrance. On the way, Michael stopped us to point out a shirt he liked. That 30 seconds was a huge error. As we turned back to the trail, a group of about 30 older people had stepped in front of us. They all had hiking polls and were going SO SLOW up the incline. Now, there was no way we were going to have patience for this type of thing. So we started trying to get around them. The walking path is wide enough for two or three to walk comfortably side by side, but somehow they were able to ensure that no one was getting around them. It took some incredible maneuvering, but we finally got through the crowd. We definitely got a few mean glares as we bobbed and weaved through the crowd. But it had to be done.

The second portion of the hike from Vernazza to Corniglia was a steep climb getting out of Vernazza but then was a fairly easy and enjoyable hike with great views.

This is looking back on Vernazza:

The above picture is as we’re approaching Corniglia. We arrived in Corniglia and had planned on grabbing a quick pizza before continuing on the hike. Michael ordered for us while I jumped into the small chapel right off the path. Each of these towns has at least one church and they are often open.

After lunch, we headed back on our way. Next stop Manarola. We started on the path and ran into a group of people who told us that the path was closed. Please, don’t waste our time. We’ve stepped over a number of chains proclaiming the path to be closed.

I guess this time they’re serious.

Ok, we’ll take the train to Manarola and then hike the last portion.

We arrived in Manarola and it was crowded but beautiful. A ton of people were enjoying the sunshine and we were more than happy to join them.

After sitting in town for 30 or 40 minutes, it was time to continue on.

Uh oh. The hike to Riomaggiori is also closed. So much for Via dell’Amore.

Another train ride and we made it to the fifth town. The plan was to have walked the entire thing and to have worked up an appetite since lunch so we could have dinner in Riomaggiori. That didn’t happen, so instead when we saw a craft beer bar right off the train, we knew it was fate.

This bar was awesome. It was a perfect juxtaposition of old world and new world. The bar itself was old and fairly dark inside. It had the windows and doors open to allow light to poor in. Behind the bar was an older Italian guy with long white hair pulled into a pony tail and pinned to the top of his head.

Oh… did I forget to mention his mustache? This guy was amazing. He did not have an indoor speaking voice. He exclusively yelled in Italian. About everything. We ordered a beer. He yelled the order back at us and then yelled it down to a woman who was grabbing the bottles for him. They didn’t have the bottle Michael wanted, so he yelled that back to us in Italian and gestured that they were out of the beer.

So the new world part? Two things – they sold craft beer, but also the woman working with the man. Our guess is that he owns the bar and she is his daughter. She spoke some English with us (he spoke none) and had a partially buzzed head, zebra striped pants, and piercings. She was just a normal 20 something dropped into a 1960’s Italian pub. Besides yelling at her dad when he yelled something at her, she could have been a bartender at any place in Chicago. This is not the best picture, but I was trying to not be a creep by taking pictures of them.

While we drank our beers, the man yelled things out the front door at passing people. He yelled things at people sitting out front of the bar. He yelled along to Cyndi’s Lauper’s Time After Time when it came on the stereo. Note: he didn’t know the words. He just yelled muffled sounds along to the song. He was the most awesome Italian man in the world.

After a bit we left to wander the town and then took the train back to Monterosso. Once back in Monterosso we had an early dinner at the restaurant that we’d eaten at our first night again. If it ain’t broke…

Seafood linguine, more stuffed mussels, steak, plus round two of that tiramisu. Mmmmmm

Between my cold, the rain and the cold weather, Cinque Terre probably didn’t get the love that it deserved from me. But it was beautiful once the sun came out and the food was incredible. I’d love to come back and visit in a few years during the summer to see those last two portions of the hike and to visit my new best friend.

Early to bed because we’re leaving early the next morning for an epic one day road trip.