Travels from France

First of all, it has been a really long time since I have posted my observations. When I finished my text, I couldn’t remember the procedure for creating a post. It took me a few minutes of reflection before I remembered that Google has a variety of apps and “Blogger” is one of them.  Posting a new article should be straight forward: I have written and posted more than 150 of them. I guess when readers of my blogs have said that it has been a long time since they have seen any now posts, they are right! Let’s see if I can still do this…

We had two trips out of France this year. We went to Barcelona to meet Lansing friends and the four of us went on to Bordeaux via Carcassonne. The second trip was to Florence as our next-door neighbors (Lansing) invited us to join them at the apartment that they had rented there.

Ellen and I had not been to Barcelona in fifty years. I guess it has changed. The Gaudi cathedral (Sagrada Familia) is closer to being finished. As we did on our last visit, we ambled along Las Ramblas but so much has changed. Barcelona hosted the Olympics (1992) and appears to have used the opportunity to clean up the whole city, especially the waterfront area. We had tips on places to see and good restaurants in which to eat from our friends at Thé Chez Toi who had lived in Barcelona before they moved to Vaison.

Carcassonne is one of the most famous walled cities from the middle ages and we wanted our friends to see it. We also wanted them to try Cassoulet – the white bean, sausage and duck confit stew - in the region where the recipe was created. We stayed at an old (Renaissance era) hotel in Caunes-Minervois; a hotel at which Ellen and I had stayed 12 years ago. The owner, Frederic Guiraud, is a charming man who is continually working at updating Hôtel d’Alibert. Our only disappointment was that the owner had closed the restaurant but he made reservations for us at another place. The rooms were large but just the idea of sleeping in a room that is older than the United States gives me pause.

We left Caunes-Minervois and headed off to Bordeaux. Travel has changed dramatically since the arrival of smart phones. Twelve years ago, when Ellen and I were travelling across the south of France, I found the Hôtel d’Alibert in Rick Steves guide and called from the car. (Ten years before that, we didn’t have cell phones.) This trip, Ellen not only let the owner of the hotel know when we were arriving but used her phone to find restaurants along the route.

Bordeaux was as good as friends said it would be. It is a vibrant city. On the first day there, our trolley trip was interrupted by a huge demonstration about climate change. We didn’t let it rain on our parade. We made it to the Cité du Vin – the new wine museum. It is a museum with a lot of interactive displays so we all had fun trying to improve our wine knowledge. We took a side trip to St. Emillion to taste wine.

We had been to Florence before but for only a day. The apartment that our neighbors rented was in the center of the city only a kilometer from the city market and the Duomo – the spectacular white and green marble cathedral in the center of the city. Even in early April, the lines of tourists waiting to enter a museum or historic site were foreboding. The apartment was close to Piazza San Marco and a tourist group staging area so we were sharing the narrow sidewalks with tour groups of seniors or school-age children. I can’t imagine what maneuvering the city would be like in July.

We ate well and drank well. Our neighbor loves Chianti classico and he found a number of great ones for us to try.

One day, on our walk to the city market, we noticed that there was a photo exhibition of David Bowie being shown at the Medici Palace. The exhibition, called “Heroes – Bowie by Sukita” was a collection of photos taken by Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita that spanned the public life of David Bowie from 1972 until his death in 2016. The juxtaposition of photos of a pop icon in the city palace of the Medici family (construction started in 1445) made the exhibit all the more interesting.

I love our village in France but must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Barcelona and Florence. I can get pretty chauvinistic about French wines and French cuisine but I also appreciate the quality of the foods and wines in Spain and Italy. The things that made the trip special were friends. Experiences are so much richer when they are shared.

Madrid

We left Alicante by fast train and two hours twenty minutes later, we were trying to find our way to the Mayerling Hotel in Madrid. The train coach in which we rode had a status screen and I watched as the speed of the train hit 249 k/h (150 mph). Can you imagine a rail system in the states of equal speed? If we had a similar rail system, we could go to Chicago from Lansing in less than two hours!

The four of us walked in single file from the train station - somewhat for protection ("be careful about what you carry in your backpacks because the pick-pockets/street robbers are very skillful...") some to manage the numbers of people on the sidewalks.

Madrid is a marvelous, vibrant city. No ghosts of the Inquisition or the years of Franco (at least none that we saw). Madrid is exciting.

We stayed at a hotel recommended by a friend of MB. It was a lovely European-type hotel just three blocks from the Puerto del Sol - Madrid's most famous central square.  The rooms were neat and well maintained. The staff was the best feature of the hotel. They were very welcoming and friendly. They reminded us of the breakfast bar (included in the room rate) and informed us that the café/tea machine was ours to use 24 hours per day. The day clerk provided us with a map and good ideas of where to go to find tapas. When we checked out, the clerk told us that when we finished our touring/shopping and came back for our bags, we could use the facilities and have a café or tea. (We did both.)

Our hotel was pretty much at the top of the city; just blocks from the indoor city market and in the heart of a non-franchise shopping district, i.e., little shops selling everything from the new spring fashions to Spanish hams to shoes made in Spain.

Our first tapas bar visit turned out to be a bad choice. We picked a place with few customers (contrary to the advice of the hotel clerk) and two of us ended up suffering the consequences for most of the next 24 hours. (I sure hope it was not the fried eggplant drizzled with honey – I really liked that tapa!)

We walked around our neighborhood and discovered the indoor market with all of its offerings, the cathedral of La Almudena, the Royal Palace and the Royal Opera.

Cathedral de la Almudena

We visited the Prado (Velasquez, Goya), the Reina Sofia Museum (Dali, Picasso) and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Dufy exhibit). Spain has a rich art history and we got to see some of the greats.

Following our first day food disaster, we found wonderful places to eat and drink. Tapas bars are everywhere and we enjoyed wonderful tapas, delicious paella and very nice wines. We drank mostly Rioja wines - from 2 euros a bottle! - always worth the price and usually excellent. The Spanish eat even later than the French! The restaurants don’t open for the evening until 8:00 pm and then hit their peak at 10:00 pm. (We missed out on the Wednesday “1 euro” tapas as suggested by MB’s friend – only discovering the shops on Thursday.)

The fearsome foursome at the Plaza of the Orient (between the Royal Palace and the Opera)

Our train was at 16h30. We agreed that two nights was not enough time to begin to discover Madrid. We plan to return.

Madrid Train Station

Alicante Wines

We had planned to visit Granada but it was closed. Actually, we discovered that the Alhambra palace was sold out. One cannot get tickets at the last minute. Seeing the Moorish palace will have to wait for another trip. Instead, we decided to taste some of the local wines in the Alicante wine region. We visited Novelda, Monòver and El Pinós.

All three towns are part of the wine region where the main red-wine grape is Monastrell (Mourvedre). In El Pinós, we thought we would have lunch, but like Alhambra, it was sold out. (The reason was that that Sunday was the last day of a week-long gastronomic festival in El Pinós and the restaurants were all booked.) We headed back toward Alicante with the idea of eating in Monòver but found no restaurants open there. The same was true in Novelda. We ended up having a nice home-made lunch back at the apartment. It seems that few establishments are open on Sunday in villages far from the tourist towns. A waitress in El Pinós told us that we would have little success in finding wineries open on Sunday; everything was closed on Sunday. (Luckily, we proved her wrong and had fun tasting wines at a wine cooperative near Monòver . She was right in that none of the vineyards were open. As I think about it, the wineries that we passed did not seem to have tasting rooms as the wineries in France have…)

In Novelda, we visited the Gaudi-inspired church Ste. Maria Magdalena at the site of the castle de la Mola.

The church was designed by José Sala Sala and finished in 1946. Novelda is known for its stone quarries and the organ loft is built with local marble.

One other thing that I have noted on this trip is that one can buy a whole leg of air-cured pork.  In the wine coop they were selling a leg of pork for 7.95€ per kilo. (In Madrid, the lowest price I saw was 13 € per kilo.) I am sure that I never saw a leg of air-dried pork for sale in the states…

Which is the ham?