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Rome is slightly over an hour away from us by fast train, but it always feels like an exotic vacation, even on the briefest trips. In the last month I’ve gone for two overnight stays and found some special treasures—perfect after you’ve experienced the heavy-hitters like the Vatican, Forum, Pantheon, and Colosseum.
The Appian Way
The Via Appia Antica is in the running as the oldest paved road in existence. Begun in 312 BC, it was the first of the Roman superhighways created to move troops and materials—in this case 360 miles from Rome via Naples to Brindisi, an important port town where the Romans bumped up against the Greeks, and an intimidating military presence came in handy.
The most well-preserved section of eleven miles runs through the Appia Antica Archaeological Park, the second largest urban park in Europe. You can get there in fifteen minutes by taxi from central Rome. As I walked along the road paved with large basalt stones, still held in place by an early use of limestone cement, and showing wear tracks from cart wheels, it was impossible not to be swept up in history and natural beauty. This place is simply chock full of interesting things—several catacombs; Roman villas; a tomb of the daughter-in-law of ancient Rome’s richest man, converted in the 1300s to a fortified castle; aqueducts; and flocks of sheep. It was clearly the place to make your mark in Roman times.
We walked for about an hour from the Tomb of CaeciliaMetella to the Villa of the Quintilii and were surprised by a flock of sheep running across the road in front of us at top speed. Caecilia’s large, round tomb from 30-10 BC was later incorporated into a walled castle in the early 1300s that is now only a shell. It was fascinating to see what it must have looked like—aided by an excellent VR-tour, complete with helmets—which I had to admit I liked despite my initial skepticism.
Unfortunately, due to a ticketing system hiccup, we didn’t get into the Villa Quintilii, but now have something left to explore. The villa is so large that at first the archeologists believed they were finding a whole town, not a single residence.
The walk itself was stunning. It’s the kind of place where we walked past Seneca’s Tomb and didn’t notice because there were so many things to see—realized it only later when looking at a map. Part of what made this adventure so special was that we were off-season so it wasn’t crowded or hot. The light was stunning with the sun low in the sky. Attempting this in high summer when it’s scalding hot would not be fun.
We had lunch at the Hostaria Antica Roma, a quirky place where the chef has recreated several dishes from the first cookbook in existence, written 2,000 years ago. There are also places to rent bicycles—a great way to explore more of the archeological park—which is enormous.
One more for the, uh, road
Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini
Back in Rome, and next to Trajan’s Column is the Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini. Discovered in 2005, when work was being done on the 16th-century Palazzo Valentini, workers discovered a well-preserved house, street, and part of another house from 400 AD, buried from 16 to 23 feet under the palace. These were homes of the rich and powerful. The tour wanders through the private bathing complex of the house consisting of plunging pools of various temperatures, a swimming pool, reception rooms, and the family’s private staircase—many walls still decorated with polychrome marble and painted frescoes. A street that used to run outside the house, and some rooms from the house next door are clearly visible. You can also see how the foundations for the Palazzo were put right through the Roman floors below.
An earthquake in AD 538, and subsequent fire, seem to have partially destroyed the house. The scarred beams and earthquake cracks in the elaborate mosaic floors remain to tell the story.
Spaces for the tour are limited, so advanced booking is critical. An audio tour, in a range of languages, and projections on the walls of what the villa might have looked like help to bring this site to life. Morning tours are slightly longer and include an up-close look at Trajan’s Column.
Basilica di San Clemente
The ‘modern”church, from the before 1100, at the top layer of the archeological strata.
Almost in the shadow of the Colosseum is the Basilica of Saint Clement. The Basilica one sees today was built just before the year 1100, which is pretty amazing all by itself, but excavations revealed that the current structure was built on top of two older ones: a 4th-century basilica, and a 1st-century Roman home that housed a Mithraic temple, used for secret, early-Christian worship around 200 AD. I felt the layers of time as we climbed steep staircases down and down to the earliest structures, deep underground.
It’s moving to see these structures, still intact with their early-medieval wall paintings, columns and alters—as well as signs of earlier Republic buildings, like the Roman mint and an apartment block, separated by a street that’s clearly visible. At this period, the population of Rome was around 1,000,000 people so urban density was important. There were many five-story apartment buildings and multi-level houses for nobles.
This visit is less-structured than some of the others, and in some ways more intimate. We did book in advance (always critical), but because it was February, I was by myself on the lowest level—otherworldly and magical.
We had dinner at Hostaria Costanza, set into one tiny part of the massive walls of the Pompeo Theater, built in 61 BC. The setting would have been enough by itself, but the food was lovely, and the staff was smart, funny, and attentive. The kind of crew that noticed with amusement that as soon as we walked through the door Lola, our dog, found the location of the kitchen and was staring in that direction with her considerable focus and powers of persuasion.
And don’t forget to visit another of my favorite archeological treasures in Rome, Ostia Antica.
Italy is sinking under the weight of tourists right now, and it’s not even high-season. I am not too affected by crowds living in such an off-the-radar village, but am always on the lookout for places to go in Italy that are uncrowded and spectacular. We just returned from a week stay on Lake Maggiore and I loved its beauty, diversity of places to visit, and some unexpectedly good restaurants. The times I’ve been to Lake Como the crowds—mostly American—along the promenade in the town of Como have been so overwhelming that it has been hard to walk, even in early Spring. The towns that we visited along the north side of Lago Maggiore and Lake Orta were blissfully empty (as of two weeks ago) and filled with fun things to do, even for the two kids we were traveling with. Surprising as this area is just over an hour from Milan.
Lago Maggiore sits between Italy and Switzerland, nestled at the foot of the Alps. It’s the second largest lake in Italy and extremely deep—lower than sea level for most of its bottom. This depth evens out the heat in summer and the cold in winter, creating a semi-tropical microclimate, perfect for lush hillsides and unusual gardens. We went with extended family to the Villa Valentino, one of the few vacation rentals we’ve been to that is even prettier than the pictures, along with an unusually generous and gracious owner—this place is a gem if you are looking for a house for a large gathering. The deck at the front of the villa had the kind of view of the lake and mountains that made it hard to go inside, let alone get in the car to explore. There were thunderstorms nearly every evening and we watched the dramatic clouds, torrential rain, and lightening approach us from the end of the lake for hours.
Our first adventure was to Lago d’Orta, known for having the cleanest lake water in Europe. We headed to the beautiful village of Orta San Giulio, with its narrow stone streets, and found the lakefront piazza where the small wooden ferries docked. Our destination was a tiny island, Isola San Giulio, just offshore, crowned by the Basilica di San Giulio, started in the 5th century. That’s not a typo. For a few euros the wooden boats, ferry being such a strong word for a boat that fits about 10 people, took us across to the island.
From the water, I spotted a restaurant, Ristorante San Giulio, with a deck over the lake where I assumed that the view might make up for mediocre food. Amazingly, they had a table available for eight right at the lake’s edge and we had a delicious lunch with some unexpectedly kind and attentive waiters—in Italian they had referred to the 9 and 11-year olds as bambini, a common way to talk about kids of all ages, and then stopped to apologize and made sure that the kids knew that they weren’t actually calling them babies.
After lunch we visited the basilica, where the “modern” 12th-century church was built over the foundations of the earlier 5th-century building. We then walked the silent path around the island’s perimeter, skirting the Benedictine monastery that has grown up around the basilica. All along the path are signs encouraging silence, enjoyment of the moment, and contemplation.
The next day’s exploration of Lago Maggiore took us to not one island, but two. We drove to Stresa, which is often touted as a “mini Cannes”. We drove to the dock and again found a selection of beautiful, small ferries waiting to take us across the water for just a few euros. I love to be on the water, especially on wooden boats, and could have ridden around on these for the rest of the day. Our first destination was the tiny Isola dei Pescatori, or Island of the Fisherman. It’s inhabited year round by a population of 25. We had lunch in a lovely and sophisticated restaurant, Verbano, on a point with a stone deck draped with jasmine and wisteria with views to the Palazzo Borromeo. It also is an inn with twelve rooms.
After lunch we boarded another ferry to head to Isola Bella, or beautiful island, with its massive Baroque 17th-century palace and gardens created by the powerful Borromeo family. One of the ornate huge rooms has an alcove with a bed that was used for one night in August 1797 by Napoleon and Josephine. The description on the wall echoes complaints from 200 years earlier—how the Napoleon and 60 troops arrived with only one day notice, required special meals, and left the place “dirty and smelly”. Apparently the Empress Josephine was “much more polite than the great hero.”
Others enchanted by these islands include Hemingway, setting the final chapters of A Farewell To Arms here. “I rowed towards Isola Bella and I approached the walls, where the water suddenly became deep and you could see the wall of rock going obliquely down into the water, and then I climbed up towards the Isle of Fishermen where there were boats pulled dry and men mending nets.” This villa was also the setting of a meeting between the United Kingdom, Italy, and France in 1935 forging an agreement, the Stresa Front, to try to stop the advance of Hitler. This agreement fell apart months later when Italy invaded what is now Ethiopia.
An exploration closer to the villa was to an old church perched above a gorge with a rushing river 85 feet below. There’s a small bridge for cars paralleled by a foot bridge perched above the abyss, impossibly built in the 12th century.
But it wasn’t just scenery that we were after. There’s the charming Ristorante Grotto Sant’Anna where cascading terraces filled with thick stone tables are perched along the side of the gorge. We had such a surprisingly good meal here that we returned a second time. From the restaurant there’s an easy trail that heads downhill, following the river, to the beautiful lakeside town of Cannobio. I thought that the topography looked familiar and realized that we were only 13 miles from the stunning gorge we’d found last year in Switzerland on our road trip to England.
This proximity to Switzerland wasn’t just geographical. We found this area intriguing as you can feel the southern Italy versus northern Italy differences. It felt almost more Germanic than Italian, and the predominant nationality of tourists we saw, other than Italians, was German and Swiss, judging by license plates. Italy’s unification in 1861 was so recent that I am constantly intrigued by how distinct the architecture, food, language, and culture are from region to region. It is part of the reason that Italy is never boring.
We didn’t have time to visit the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso, an 12th century complex perched on a balcony of rock with a sheer cliff dropping to the water, but I will next trip. And there will be a return trip.
An unexpected visit to Brescia revealed a delightful town often overshadowed by its neighbors—Venice, Verona, Padua, and Milan—but packed with beauty, history, and great food.
We haven’t even hit May and yet friends are reporting epic crowds in all the usual suspects—Venice, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre, Amalfi Coast… As special as all of these places are, when you can’t even walk down the Spanish Steps in Rome because there are too many people it takes all the pleasure away, at least to me. One of the joys of living in Italy is the seemingly limitless supply of beautiful and fascinating towns to visit that are still uncrowded—and we accidentally found one last weekend.
John and I are still trying to master the Italian medical system and when a friend suggested we check out a modern clinic in Brescia for some routine doctors’ appointments we decided to make a night of it. I knew almost nothing about Brescia except that it was one of the cities on the front line when Covid arrived in Italy in January 2020. Arriving with no expectations we couldn’t believe what we’d happened upon—a beautiful town filled with architectural gems, a history of diverse cultures, and some great food. Best of all, we heard almost no English and saw almost no tourists despite it being a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Brescia sits at the foot of the Alps, whose snow-covered peaks were visible, and close to Lake Garda and Lake Iseo. Although it is a city of 200,000 and surrounded by industry, the old town is compact and beautiful. We wandered around with no agenda and happened across one beautiful little piazza after another ringed by restaurants and bars serving aperitivi at outdoor tables.
What makes Brescia so fascinating is its layers of history. There are remnants of Bronze Age settlements, later the first part of the city was founded in 1200 BC by either the Etruscans or the Ligures people, then it was inhabited by the Celts, followed by the Romans, then the Visigoths and Attila the Hun, then the Lombards, on to Charlemagne and French rule, then the Venetians…and this only gets us caught up to 1512. These layers play together in intriguing ways.
On old Roman ruin incorporated into an apartment building
The ancient old town is surrounded by palazzos built in the Renaissance. For dinner we decided to go to Veleno, located in one of these palazzos built in the early 1700s. The food was a bit uneven, but the decor was stunning. There is even a Michelin-starred option in town.
Our morning stroll took us up to the castle and its extensive gardens, built on top of the Bronze Age settlement. As one of the largest castles in Italy it dominates the hill that overlooks the town. Then we wandered into a stunning piazza where two cathedrals were jammed next to each other next to a palazzo with a huge bell tower where the city’s offices are housed. The Duomo Vecchio (Old Cathedral) sits snug up against the Duomo Nuovo (New Cathedral), started in 1604. The Duomo Vecchio is a stunning example of a round Romanesque church dating from 1100, but my favorite part was going into the crypt and finding a complete tiny church from 762 with a forest of columns supporting the low ceiling.
At that point we were satiated but decided to push on and go to the Santa Giulia Museum, housed in a monastic complex of Longobard origin. In its 150,000 square feet the museum houses archeological finds from the Bronze Age on. But it’s not just about things in cases—there are two excavated Roman houses, the Longobard basilica of San Salvatore (8th century CE), theChoir of the Nuns (early 16th century) and the Romanesque Oratory of Santa Maria in Solario (12th century), where the nuns kept the monastery treasure, all skillfully incorporated into the museum.
Despite being spacey and hungry we had a reservation at the archeological park which is part of the huge museum complex and we were told by several people that we cannot be late. We go back outside and walked past a large Roman theater to meet our guide in front of the towering Roman Capitolium (73 CE).
Our guide assembled our group of twenty and took us down a staircase into a small room to watch a film for 5 minutes. This isn’t just about information—we were in an airlock where our germs and the humidity and temperature are being controlled before we can go into the next room which is a Roman sanctuary dating back to the early decades of the first century BCE with vibrantly-painted frescoes—some of the best preserved other than at Pompeii.
After we all have our fill we go back up and into the Capitolium where we again entered an airlock before we could see the Winged Victory, a bronze statue from the early years of the first century BCE, high on a pedestal in all her 6 foot 6 glory.
Lunch, a quick wander through a pristine Renaissance piazza, the Piazza della Loggia, the oddly beautiful Piazza della Vittoria, an Italian art-deco piazza created in the late 1920s, then home, exhausted but barely having scratched the surface of things to do.
Brescia is also home to the famous Mille Miglia vintage car race where some of the most rare antique cars in the world leave museums and are driven for 1,000 miles in Italy every year. Brescia and Bergamo are sharing Italy’s “capitals of culture” designation for 2023.
So what were we to do? We had paid for tickets for all of us to convene in Edinburgh to drop Sebastian off at the University of St. Andrews. Four days before we leave everything changes and he is no longer going there. Cancel Scotland? “No way” says Donella, and she is usually always right, especially as we were already headed to London directly after to attend her graduation. Sebastian informs us that he is not going anywhere near St. Andrews. He’d just started bonding with it and making friends online when the last minute shift to Oxford happened and it was all too sudden and fresh to be able to be just a regular sightseer. I had happened upon a just-released Travel+Leisure article touting the wonders of Fife, Scotland, and I unilaterally decided that twelve miles or so outside of St. Andrews did not technically count as “near,” and a truly magical four days started.
The Fife peninsula lies between Edinburgh and St. Andrews, bounded by the North Sea, the Firth of Tay, and the Firth of Forth—say the last aloud and you’ll see that the fun has already started. The terrain is stunning, reminding me a bit of the Pt. Reyes peninsula in California, but with ancient ruins. It also happens to have a terrific food scene, along with villages right out of one of my favorite movies, Local Hero. I was in love. I haven’t been so strongly drawn to a place in years.
I booked us into one of eight tent cabins right on the sea at Catchpenny Lodges. The “tent” part is an exaggeration. Although they have canvas walls, nothing else is particularly tent-like—the floors are wood, there are two bedrooms with comfortable beds and good sheets, a charming sleeping loft, a bathroom with a rainforest shower, a well-outfitted kitchen with a wood-burning stove/oven, and a front deck with a grill and furniture from which to try to catch a glimpse of dolphins, humpback whales, and sea birds. And it’s totally off-grid. The best part was that in the few yards between the porch and the sea is the Fife Coastal Path, a 116-mile stretch of trail right at the edge of the water. We walked for a half hour to the left and climbed around the ruins of the 15th-century Newark Castle. To the right we walked past the ruins of the Lady’s Tower to the too-cute-to-be-true village of Elie where we had just-caught fish and chips.
The food options rivaled almost anywhere I’ve been in freshness, sophistication, and local sourcing—a few talented chefs and farmers moved to Fife during the lockdown from more urban locations and stayed. I didn’t get a whiff of food preciousness or pretensions either, quite the opposite of what sometimes drives me nuts about food in the Bay Area. Our first dinner was in the tiny fishing village of Lower Largo at the Crusoe, which also has a few rooms and is located right on the beach. We had a memorable candlelit dinner in our own tiny, dark-blue wainscoted room, complete with a fireplace in 17-century pub, The Kinneuchar Inn, with a hyper-local menu that changes daily. But one of my favorite food finds was the Andross Farm shop right at the end of the driveway to our tent cabin. The family farm raises grass-fed beef, mutton, lamb, and vegetables and has a lovely store that features their own bounty as well as loads of freshly prepared meals and pastries—perfect for going back to the cabin and cooking. I loved learning the intricacies of cooking on a wood-fired stove and oven.
And way too soon our few days in Fife were over. We were on to London for a couple of days for Donella’s graduation from UCL, then onto Paris to join friends for an overnight trek to Normandy to go to a new restaurant that one of their friends had started. More on that later, including finding one of the most memorable restaurants I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating at.
And no, we never set foot in St. Andrews. But I can’t wait to. This area of the world is calling me back.
Mistakes were made–our first was assuming that there would be a grocery store open in the town where we set sail, on a Sunday, late in the afternoon. We arrived at the boat launch on the Canal du Nivernais outside the town of Cuzy full of naive optimism, assuming we’d sail to the next town, find a great restaurant, a tidily stocked market, and a boulangerie for the next morning.
We met our boat, and it seemed … surprisingly long, 48 feet. More surprising still was the fact that the company seemed willing to just turn it over to us. After a quick training from a cheery Dutch guy, we took to the river, learning on the job what it took to pilot it along the narrow canal, under even narrower bridges, and into narrower still locks. Happily, my brother-in-law Nathan ended up being a gifted beginner–turns out his college stint as the president of the tractor club at UC Davis gave him a visceral understanding of massive-but-slow vehicles.
Out on the canal, we were confronted with some realities that didn’t quite line up with the vision of the adventure. First, the stretch of the canal we were on certainly had towns, but nearly all were mostly abandoned, home to maybe a half dozen families and no shops. This is where I mention that we boarded the boat as four adults, four children, one liter of water, one packet of cookies, and one record-breaking heatwave. As we realized that food and water was more than a short sail away, we adjusted our plan. We would:
Pretend the engines were too loud to hear the children when they said they were thirsty.
Go full throttle (3 miles per hour) down the canal, learning how to navigate the locks from the lock keepers as we went.
Try to get as close as possible to the larger town of Clamecy, where there was a rumored single restaurant and grocery store open on Sundays.
As we bumped gingerly into the first lock six miles from Clamecy, the lock keeper shouted instructions, sending the adults scurrying up and down the ladder, throwing ropes, steadying the boat as the water poured out of the lock and we plunged downward. By the time the doors of the lock swung open, we were sweaty and a little stunned–what were we doing here again? Why had anyone thought it was a good idea to entrust our group of total beginners with this massive boat? With each lock, we grew grimier but more confident. By the time the locks closed at 7 o’clock, we smelled like we belonged on the river and had sailed a full two miles. Which math and reality insisted meant we still had four miles to go to get to Clamecy.
The drinking water had run out a mile back, and thirst was all we could talk about, so we moored on a grassy bank, rolled the little rental bikes off the boat, and pedaled along the towpath in the waning light. On the one hand, it was achingly beautiful: the still water, the dense forest on either side, the hum of the cicadas as the day cooled and the breeze stirred. On the other, convincing an 8-year-old to pedal through the thirst turns out to be a hard sell.
But we got to town, found food and drink, and returned back in the dark, following the chalk-white of the path along the canal to find our way back, then fell asleep stargazing on the padded loungers on the roof of the boat.
This cadence–near disaster, physical exhaustion, crisis deflection, and moments of grace–characterized the following days. We swam in the river that parallels the canal (pro tip: don’t swim in canals in France; it’s still legal to flush toilets directly into their waters), we had big dinners and gathered around the outdoor table on the boat. But also, we sustained injuries that may have required stitches (we settled for tight bandaids), pedaled one kid into near-heat exhaustion, and wilted and sweated through the intense heat. And the thing I had anticipated most, the river towns, they were nearly all deserted. Not just shut for summer but simply and sadly … empty.
If I were to do it again–and I’m not sure I would–I would seek a more beaten path, because now I understand that with tourism comes towns that survive, towns with important things like restaurants and places to buy water (even on a Sunday). I’d also choose a smaller boat and arrive fully stocked up on food and water. I’d do more fitness training in advance to prepare for the physical demands of boat life. Finally, I’d skip the hot days of July and opt for a cooler sail on one of the bookends of summer.
As we were driving away after returning the boat, my 10-year-old son Augie looked out the window and said to no one in particular, “Adventures are always an adventure, but it doesn’t mean they always go well.” Word, kid.
My mother was an artist, but her pallet for rebellion was limited. When I was growing up and she was really, really fed up—a fight with my father, or a particularly bad period of ennui—she would always say that if she’d been a different type of woman she’d go and hang out in a beer garden. To her, this was getting out the big gun. She always said this with a bit of wistfulness, but also a tiny edge of fear tinged with her fascination. Like the things that happened in beer gardens were not to be fully imagined as one might be contaminated by going too deeply into one’s inner beer garden. Born in 1920 of very conservative parents, she lived a constrained life, even after she married my father.
You can only imagine the space, both broad and deep, that a beer garden inhabited in my young brain. It’s such an innocuous, innocent sounding word. I’d never seen one, or heard of one outside of my mother’s yearning for rebellion and a taste of what it might mean to be bad. What possible things could happen there that exerted such a fascination to my mother? In a beer garden could you even see through the foliage—did the sun ever shine? Did the plants serve beer? What else could be happening there besides beer that was so wicked? It had been many years since this archetypical den of sin had ever crossed my mind, but earlier this week John and I found ourselves in Bavaria for a shoot and suddenly we were surrounded by beer gardens.
Most were, shockingly to me, merely a fancy name for an outdoor patio where beer was served. No jungle, no woman-eating plants, no scantily-clad servers. Just some picnic tables. What a letdown.
Our last night of the shoot we made it into Munich and went to a beer garden for bratwurst that our client had recommended. The Nuernberger Bratwurst Gloeckl am Dom fit the description of what I’d said that we wanted. Somewhere in the old section that had good local food. It turned out to be very happening, but not at all hip—the beer garden (i.e. outside tables) was packed and people watching was fascinating, and very different from our village, London, or Paris—all of which are pretty damn distinct already. Mainly men, mostly comfortably plump, largely in groups. A few couples on date nights. A man at the next table, who looked like a relative of Einstein, rocked a thick head of pure white hair extending in all directions, its exuberance matched only by his moustache. The table behind us had a group of teenage boys wearing some type of antique military uniforms and one carrying a large flag. A soccer team arrived. A popular dish seemed to be a platter of 150 sausages, all cooked over the inside beech wood fire.
The whole beer garden sat in the square in the shadow of Munich’s cathedral, the Frauenkirche. Haunting as it loomed in the dark—many places in Europe, including our village, are not turning on lights to illuminate monuments due to the energy crisis from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Doing a little research I discovered that the cathedral is well known for its Devil’s Footprint, a black mark resembling a footprint near the front door, which has several competing theories about what the devil, who clearly was the only entity who could possibly have caused such a mark, was really up to.
But my mother would have known exactly why the devil was hanging out in proximity to the beer garden. I wish that my now self could have told her then self that it would have been a powerfully good thing for her to have hung out in a beer garden. That trying so hard to always be good cut off a part of herself that I think she’d rather have enjoyed and would have given more spice, texture, and fulfillment to her life. That packs of men often just want beer. That we can trust ourselves, make mistakes, and find redemption. And that sometimes that dark shape on a floor tile is maybe just a mark from the kiln rather than proof that the devil lives in a beer garden.
When I left you last on our European road trip we’d headed out of the tunnel from France to England with hearts full of anticipated adventure, fun, and not the least of it, great meals to be had. Turns out that only the first was true, and not in the way we imagined.
Oxford
We headed directly to Oxford—Sebastian was an offer holder—and he wanted us to attend a university-wide open house. The British system is different from the American one. A British university gives a student an offer to attend, most of the time dependent on the grades obtained at the big tests at the end of the academic year. There is no senior year coasting. And the results don’t come out until late summer.
We checked into a hotel that I am still not sure how to rank in my order-obsessed brain. Location? Great. Charm? Pretty darn high, but in an eccentric way. Room size? Smallest I’ve ever stayed in. Historical interest? High. Bathroom? Pretty damn awful. Mildew? Just maybe. Bath Place Hotel is a collection of tiny cottages around a cobbled courtyard, built in the early 1600s by Flemish weavers who were given permission to settle right up against the Oxford city walls. Before the weavers came there was a communal bath house, explaining the odd name.
From the hotel’s courtyard there is a less than arms-width passage between two of the cottages that leads directly into the outside terrace of the Turf Tavern, where Bill Clinton famously did not inhale marijuana while a student. Its foundations date back to 1381 and it was built outside the town walls so that various kinds of illegal activity wouldn’t be under the jurisdiction of the colleges. In addition to Clinton, the Turf has hosted Ernest Hemingway, Steven Hawking, David Bowie, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, C.S. Lewis, Margaret Thatcher, to name a few, and us. Although now very touristy I was still glad we went as I was toweringly tall when ordering at the bar, barely fitting under the beams. Others, more truly towering (over 5’4″), have to duck.
Just steps further was the heart of Oxford University, where the first courses were taught in 1096. Three of the oldest colleges were built in starting in 1249, so the architecture, as it evolved through the centuries with the creation of more colleges, is varied and truly beautiful. Oxford is made up of 44 colleges, which are usually closed to the public and the best you can do is to catch glimpses of the splendor within through metal gates, manned 24-hours a day by watchful porters who have heard every excuse from people wanting a look around inside. This weekend was special as all the colleges were open and we wandered through a few.
All Souls College, Oxford
My current favorite of the batch is All Souls, which is a graduate-only academic research institution. Applicants have to take what is informally known as the hardest exam in the world—twelve hours of grueling questions—and those who survive go on to oral examinations. Beyond subject specific exams there are three general essays from a long list, including questions like: Should we bring back woolly mammoths from the dead?; If Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela had died on the same day, whose death should the BBC have reported as its top story?; ‘Taste is first and foremost distaste, disgust and visceral intolerance of the taste of others’ (PIERRE BOURDIEU). Is it?; and Is it ‘colonialist’ for the UK to pressure its former colonies to repeal anti-sodomy laws imposed during the period of British rule?
After all that two students are accepted on a good year, sometimes none. There are usually around a dozen students at All Souls in total. The college is one of the richest at Oxford, with an endowment of £420 million, which students, who are full fellows once accepted, can use for research. This is important because it breaks the usual academic cycle of graduate students having to limit what they research and study to appeal to funding opportunities and academic publishers who determine what might be publishable, to make a career and a living. All Souls provides the money needed to research, study, and write about anything a fellow wants, without restrictions—a pinnacle of academic freedom. T.E. Lawrence was a fellow, and I can imagine him fitting right in.
Graduation and The Plague
We leave Oxford for Sebastian’s graduation from Ardingly College. They have erected a big white tent where a ceremony happens in the morning and a black tie ball in the evening. Covid rates in England at this time were staggeringly high but we were the only ones wearing masks in the audience of 500 or so. As evening approached John and I were faced with a dilemma, all dressed in our finest, was there any way to approach the evening and still take some basic precautions? We debated and realized that the answer was no. Our tablemates had been carefully chosen by Sebastian and his friends so that we could meet their families. There was no way to wear a mask at dinner in this context, and we couldn’t be those people—”Sebastian, are those weirdos in masks your family?” So we went for it, quite the leap for us, who’d huddled under heat lamps all last winter to avoid eating indoors.
Cotswolds adventures
We then went back up to Oxfordshire to meet family from California in the Cotswolds, one of the most beautiful natural areas of England with a higher than usual share of gorgeous villages. The rental I’d chosen, largely by proximity to family, turned out to be located in a nice wooded, rural area, very quiet and secluded except for the six lane freeway separated from us by a thin line of trees. We were basically sleeping on the shoulder. (I will never ignore John’s trick again of looking up addresses of rentals and doing an overhead Google Maps look at where it is actually located.) We drive back into Oxford with family to show them Sebastian’s perhaps future college, punt on the river, and have a picnic. Tempting fate certainly, but probably the only chance they will have to see his college if it works out and he gets in. All adding up to more and more emotional investment in this outcome.
A few years ago I happened upon Hidcote Gardens by myself and when I realized we were staying right nearby I encouraged the family to go, a little nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my memories, or my hype. Fortunately it didn’t let us down. And yes, for you gardeners, it is the home of Hidcote lavender.
Another highlight for us was Chedworth Roman Villa, one of the largest Roman villas in England, dating from its heyday in the 4th century. As with other of the Roman villas I’ve visited I am reminded how elegant and beautiful the life of rich Romans was—putting much of our modern architecture and lifestyle to shame. The idea of having different dining rooms for each seasons to take advantage of the patterns of sun, shadow, and views is inspirational to me, and it was great fun to stand in the footprint of the summer dining room looking out at basically the same view that they had centuries before.
The underfloor heating systemJust a little Roman dude
By evening John is not feeling well at all, the first of the three of us to succumb. He tests positive in the morning. Sebastian and I are still testing negative. We are supposed to head to London for a action-packed few days with even more family, but that is clearly off the table. We decide to head back to France to wait it out because if something goes really badly health-wise we want to be out of Britain’s painfully underfunded and understaffed NHS and into the French health system. We pack up the car and head toward the tunnel.
Getting real, fast
It also happens to be results day for Sebastian for the IB exam, which are supposed to be posted at noon. We are driving along on an unseasonably cold day, with all the car windows open, trying to avoid getting John’s germs, in the off chance it makes any difference at this point. John is in the backseat with his head resting on a metal fan while we bounce down the road, all wrapped up to try to stay warm through his fever. I kindly ask whether he’d like the dog blanket to cushion his head, which he refuses saying that the cold metal feels good. Sebastian is next to me hitting refresh on the results site, which isn’t responding due to the large number of students checking, and trying not to let me see what he is doing as he huddles next to the passenger door. As we approach Folkestone I see his face turn pale. His marks were over in every category for his offer except one. We have no idea what this means, but it’s not good news. He met his offer for St. Andrews, but at this point has his heart set on Oxford. The news feels gutting. I could so clearly imagine him there. And I am also surprised by the force of my feelings—what of this reaction is about me, and what is really about him? And feeling bad about feeling bad—having either of these options is an enormous privilege—why are we feeling so strongly that this isn’t the right outcome?
The ride back on the Eurotunnel train is silent as we sit in our car underwater in mood as well as body. We exit in Normandy and head to a little gîte, built in the 1700s, I’d found that was self-contained, allowed a dog, and we could have for a week—one of five available at the last minute in all of France. Our plan is to reunite with the family in the Loire valley at a small chateau we’d all rented after we’d weathered the Covid storm. John heads directly up the tiny ladder-like stairs to bed, Sebastian and I are madly calling his school to get advice. He and I are still negative but feeling worse every day. Finally, I test positive as well. I don’t remember much about this week except a couple of trips into Five Guys burgers because we could order and eat outdoors, away from everyone. And the beautiful color of the drying flax when I could muster the strength to walk to the end of the driveway and look over the fields. (Spoiler alert: It all did work out in the end for Sebastian after his problem exam was regraded, and we’ve just returned from dropping him off. This summer reinforced the idea of not giving up until all roads are followed to their end. And patience, as it wasn’t all resolved until the very end of August.)
John is finally negative, but I am not. Fortunately the chateau for our next leg had a maid’s room with a single bed off the kitchen with its own bathroom, perfect for me, so we all decide to go ahead with the next stage of the vacation, and we are off to the Loire. We make one stop enroute at Jumièges Abbey, a Benedictine monastery that dates back to 654. As with many ruined churches and monasteries in France it reached its end after the French revolution when the grand buildings were raided for their riches, stones, and lead roofs, leaving only impressive ruins behind that only hint at the extravagance that was once there.
The Land of Castles
The Loire valley is the rich heartland of France, filled with chateaus. As John observed, you can drive for hundreds of miles in Italy, which was a much poorer country, and not see a house the size of these—hundreds of rooms, surrounded by beautiful gardens—but here we seemed to see one every few miles.
Our rental chateau, called Chateau Alaire, was a mere speck compared to its neighbors, but charming. We cook a lot, picnic, and take a walk to visit a church dating from the millenium which the local tourist office gave us the key to for the day (hero shot at the top), but mostly I lounge about masked and rest. We are located next to a couple of well-known French villages, Montrésor and Loches, but I keep noticing a very odd thing about the villages we were seeing, that even my niece’s seven year old daughter brought up, is that they are creepy. Immaculate and perfectly restored, but they seem to lack any semblance of life—no cafes, no old people standing out on the street and talking, no lights on in houses at night, not a single small, tempting bakery or restaurant. Although it’s the height of summer it felt as though everyone had left but us. A sign of too many second home owners sucking the life out of little towns. And yet there we were, searching for lunch, sleeping in a rented out second home. I started to yearn for our thriving, quirky, and very alive village in Italy.
The adventure that didn’t happen
The next leg of our planned journey was the biggest part of the adventure—three nights on a barge on a canal in Burgundy. Something I’d been curious about doing for years. I’m still not testing negative and as we’d be in such tight quarters, 12 of us on the boat, we decide to head back to Italy and forgo this particular adventure. And it sounds like it was a stroke of luck, especially as one of the intense heat waves that hit France this summer was gearing up for another strike. Christine Sarkis, my niece and travel entrepreneur, writer, and editor, who was on the barge, wrote about it for Itch, which I will share in a separate post.
As we start the long trek home it’s apparent that this “vacation” profoundly reinforced that nothing can truly be counted on—not health, weather, conditional admissions, or good times that we assume will happen as we plan ahead. Although always true—and the more at peace I am with this the happier I become—it’s an aspirational state for me and it’s of maximum importance to strengthen those muscles now. Grab the moments that delight you and hug them tight and try to let the rest go. And don’t forget to breathe.
Resources:
— Our cottage in Normandy, at Gîtes Normands de charme les châtaigniers, known to us as the Plague House, was one of five cottages a rural and beautiful property, watched over by an old horse. Ten kilometers from the sea and a couple of lovely towns. Reviewers said that some of the cottages were pretty unbelievably tiny, but ours, the section on the right of this photo, was small but manageable and had some lovely architectural touches.
— Beaune, France might be a bit overrun with tourists, but it at the heart of Burgundy and has a delightful Saturday market. There’s also one of the most stunning kitchenware stores I’ve ever seen, The Cook’s Atelier, run by an American woman, her daughter, and her son-in-law. Sets of antique cleavers, copper pots, and the like. They also run a cooking school and have cookbook we really like which is orderable from overseas. We’ve stayed in both the Najeti Hôtel de la Poste and the Hotel Remparts, both were lovely and located in the middle of things.
— Somewhere outside of Turin… When driving from France to Italy the Turin area is a convenient place to stop. We found this aged beauty, the Sina Villa Mathilde, and enjoyed it. John pointed out that it reminded him a bit of business trips to India. A kind of faded colonial glory surrounded, right up to the property walls, by not the most pleasant urban sprawl, but once you are in the walls and the hotel’s large garden it’s a different world. Not bad food either.
One graduating kid, one car, one dog, four countries, four languages, three seemingly endless tunnels, eleven different places to stay, three positive Covid tests, one quarantine—all in twenty-four days. What it is like to do a road trip in Europe. We were, as the Italians would say, in giro.
Or, the things my dog makes me do. We’ve done road trips in Europe before, instead of taking other modes of transportation, largely so that we could take Lola with us on vacation. Destinations have included Switzerland, Croatia, Corsica, Germany, and France, but this was our most ambitious road trip yet. Sebastian’s high school graduation outside of London in West Sussex, and a twice postponed Loire-valley chateau and canal boat rental in Burgundy with family from California, bookended the trip with plenty of time to explore in between.
The freedom to easily access different worlds is one of the things I like best about living in Italy. In California we’d go for long road trips but still end up, it felt like, not that far from where we started. To start adventuring as soon as possible I try to get further than northern Italy on the first leg, although it is a good five to six hour slog. On our first night out we pushed across the Swiss border to an area near Lake Maggiore called Ticino.
I’ve explored a lot of Switzerland but never this region. It has been strategically important for millenium as it’s the entry to the Gotthard pass, one of the routes over the Alps and into the main Swiss plain. The pass is grueling so Ticino is distinct from the rest of Switzerland. The language and food are Italian and it feels almost tropical, lush, and verdant. But the prices are unmistakably Swiss. Swiss prices have the same effect on the respiratory system as a plunge into the Baltic in winter. I reflexively check the exchange rate—surely 50 CHF for a pasta with tomato sauce and a 12 CHF bottle of water is more reasonable when converted to euros or dollars—nope. Nearly one to one for my currencies. Sometimes a 50 CHF plate of noodles with tomatoes is a $50 plate of noodles with tomatoes.
We stayed in a tiny town called Tegna which next to the Ponte Brolla gorge on the Maggia river, one of the rivers where water rushes down from the Alps to feed the Po River. From an elevated bridge the gorge looks like it has a pretty normal stream at the bottom until I realized that it was all supersized. When we walked down near the river what looked like small river rocks turned out to be immense boulders. It looked like giants had been playing games with rocks and had gotten called home for lunch mid rock skipping.
We left the relaxed, Italian-speaking region behind and headed through one of miracles of modern road building, the Gotthard tunnel. The first tunnel under the Gotthard was for trains and opened in 1882. Cars had to wait their turn until 1980 when the 11-mile long tunnel opened, the longest tunnel in the world at that time (it’s now the fifth longest). It turns out that eleven miles in a tunnel is a long time, not as bad as twenty-two minutes of a hypothetical Thanksgiving dinner between when an uncle declares his support for Qanon and when you can escape after dessert, but definitely longer than twenty-two minutes of most anything else. The first time that we drove through I didn’t know anything about the tunnel and remarked to the family after about five minutes in the dark that this was a really long tunnel. We were at about mile three at that point. It’s one lane in each direction and there can be quite a wait to get in, but we were lucky this time. I’ve done it now five times and each time I’ve been impressed by how respectful drivers are of this stretch of road. The speed limit is 30 miles per hour and drivers mostly obey, as well as leaving an abundant distance between cars.
And then you see light, and you are out, and in a different world. Soaring peaks with snow, and German road signs and food. We stopped for lunch with a friend who lives overlooking Lake Zurich and then decided to drive five hours into France to position ourselves well to make our all-important ticketed time on the Eurotunnel train with the car.
Google routed us along some stretches of the autoroute, but largely along country roads that followed through small towns and countryside, and around countless roundabouts. John recently read David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy where Gilmour posits that the differences in Italy and France’s culture, history, and wealth may be partially due to geography. Italy has a mountain chain that runs its length north to south cutting off one part from another and has almost no navigable rivers. France, on the other hand, has mountains on its borders with most of the country being a fertile plain, and has many wide, deep, navigable rivers. This was dramatically apparent as we drove from Zurich into the Champagne region passing lush, fertile fields of crops and flowing water, so different from our Italian landscape.
We arrived for the night in a tiny village called L’Épine, the hotel chosen mainly as it was touted as very dog-friendly. When I mean a tiny village I know of what I speak. It makes our village look like a metropolis. But it does have the huge hulking Flamboyant-Gothic Basilica di Notre-Dame (yes, Flamboyant Gothic is a thing) in the middle of its three streets, one shop, and one restaurant. We walked around it after dinner when it was dark and misty and the three people who might have been out on the street during the day had left and it was like aliens had planted this thing in here. How could this place have ever created this?
The next day ended in Calais. Calais is the closest French town to England—the channel is a mere 21-miles wide here, so it has been a strategically-important port town pretty much forever. This geographic fate has hit it hard, most recently in WWII, where much of the town was bombed flat. We stayed in a sweet family-run Victorian B&B about a mile from the sea, and as we walked towards the shore the buildings abruptly changed to post-war architecture in every direction. The town was in the throes of Tour de France anticipation, with banners and signs everywhere, as the Tour was due to end Stage 4 in about a week.
The next morning was something I’d fretted about since we started planning the trip—Calais to Folkestone on the Eurotunnel. We arrived 90 minutes early for our ticketed time and pulled right up to the drive-through area of the Pet Welcome Center. A woman walked up and said “Nancy Raff? Is this Lola?” I was amazed—turns out our license plate was scanned on the approach and the records pulled up in advance. She checked Lola’s EU pet passport and I got to scan my dog, a first for me and Lola. All was cleared and we went to the automatic check in. I put in the reservation number and the screen said we were early for our train and would we like to change to the one 30 minutes earlier? Why, yes! We drove on to a parking lot with multiple lanes, like the staging area for a ferry. After about five minutes they started loading us. We drove down to the train and on to one of two levels. We got the top. You drive forward the length of the train until it is filled. Attendants urge you forward and make sure to leave enough room to close doors sealing off one train car from another. Five minutes later we were off. You can get out of your car but as there’s nowhere to go everybody just stays seated.
I am only a tiny bit claustrophobic, but these tunnels did cause me a few moments of careful thought. I am not sure which I found more intimidating, to be deep under a mountain in the Alps or under all the water of the English Channel. Thirty minutes in the dark to ponder various ways of dying, then we arrive in Folkestone and drive off the train. Easy. And yet a whole other world in a matter of minutes.
Next week, Part 2. The son graduates and the Plague hits.
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Ticino area, Switzerland: our inn, Boato Bistrot & Bed, was clean and simple but I wouldn’t really recommend it. One of those places where the photos on the site were so much better that you wonder if you’ve arrived at the right place. We passed a restaurant on our walk, Da Enzo, that looked very much worth a visit—and it is right on the edge of the gorge. I’m actively looking for recommendations for this area from readers who use this route often.
L’Épine, France:Aux Armes de Champagne, comfortable stop right next to the basilica, although modern in its restoration. Good restaurant too with an impressive chariot of cheeses. Very dog friendly and seems to be a popular stop with the British vacation diaspora. Convenient for exploring the Champagne region.
Calais, France: We looked hard to find something with some charm in very post-war Calais and found it at the quirky and simple Les Secrets des Loges, a bed and breakfast in old Victorian house overlooking the theater. The best part was the lovely family who ran it along with their four cats. One downside was very thin walls.
Here are some of my favorite adventures and discoveries of the year. If you’ve stuck with me this long you know that as much as I love an over-the-top Relais & Chateaux-type joint I find even more delight in small places that may be a little rough around the edges, but are one of a kind. A couple from this year have stuck in my mind with such fondness that I figured you have to know about them.
Greater Bologna
The photo above is from Ca’ Lo Spicchio, a house from the 1500s in the mountains about 45 minutes away from both Bologna and Modena that offers one room for rent. It’s almost impossible to find, but worth the drive down one-lane unpaved mountain roads, except when Google Maps is insistent that you turn up a goat path. Run by a retired advertising executive and his fashion-industry partner every detail is thought through and done with an attentive eye, from the building restoration to the guest room touches. Their home also includes two dogs, seven cats, two horses, chickens who are the focus of attention from the fox they befriend, and one of the best situated pools I’ve seen. The guest suite has a bed and lounge up more of a ladder than staircase located above the living room with a big fireplace and wood-burning stove. Definitionally cozy.
The Truffle Hunters
One of my favorite films of the year, The Truffle Huntersis a documentary with intelligence, heart, a poetic eye, and humor, beloved at Sundance and Cannes. It’s a breath of fresh air —not one cliched drone shot—with every frame filled with creativity. I laughed out loud several times the first time I saw it as each new scene was a surprising delight, and I could feel the fun the filmmakers had creating it. The film follows a men hunting white truffles in Piedmont, Italy—a notoriously closed and suspicious group who somehow opened up to these two American filmmakers, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw—who shot the documentary over three years. Dweck and Kershaw were able to capture the men’s trials and joy, as well as the cutthroat, competitive world of selling and marketing this high-priced delicacy when supplies are dwindling due to climate change and competition. It embodies so much of what I love about Italy, and the Italians, and I hope you get as much joy and inspiration from it as I did.
Tivoli
On a trip to pick up Sebastian at the Rome airport we spent a night in the small town of Tivoli, which is more car-friendly than driving into the center of Rome. What started out as a night of convenience turned into love. Tivoli is the nearest town to two of greater Rome’s heavy-hitting sites—Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este—but it turned out to be charming in its own right. The modern outskirts that you spiral around to reach the historical center on a plateau are not promising, but once you get to the old town it has that mix that I love—real, working, a little dingy, and bursting with life.
At night we walked Lola down a dark, narrow medieval street when from behind a shuttered second floor window we heard “Alexa, spegni la luce” (“Alexa, turn off the light”). Perfect moment.
We stayed at the Residenze Gregoriane, which is part of a palace from the 1500s. It has only three rooms, decorated in an older Italian aesthetic, and serves breakfast in a perfect courtyard adorned by frescoes and mosaics created by some of the same artisans who worked on the Villa d’Este. The family who runs it is one of warmest and most welcoming we’ve run across, which is saying a lot in Italy.
We visited Hadrian’s Villa on a very hot day and we lost our breath in more than one way. Another visit is in the cards during the cooler months. Built between 118 and 138 AD the ruins of this single palace are extensive and gorgeous. It has been revered since Renaissance times and I had one of those moments, which I occasionally get in a Roman ruin, where I am overcome with the sophistication, beauty, and grace of the lives of the elite Romans. This architecture had a goal of impressing visitors, no doubt, but it transcends its “look how rich and powerful I am” mission into something profoundly pleasing. Which many of other such palaces don’t. Looking at you, Forbidden City.
Also near, and somewhere I am excited to visit, is the Villa d’Este, started in 1560. A masterpiece of Italian garden design, it’s known for its fountains, including one that is an organ fueled by water.
Tivoli is a great base for those seeking a deeper experience of Rome beyond the main sites in the center. Close by is also the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, among the other UNESCO sites.
Maremma
This part of Tuscany, bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea, is not very well-known. On the mainland there are many Etruscan sites and gorgeous beaches. Just off the coast are the islands of the Tuscan archipelago. We went for an a couple of nights to the Hotel Torre Mozza, with seven rooms. Our room was in the 16th-century watchtower that juts into the Mediterranean and had a door cut through the thick defensive walls opening over the waves.
The island of Elba is a short ferry ride away from Piombino. I had spent several days on the island a couple years ago, but this trip we just went over to the island for memorable lunch on a small square at the Trattoria Moderna di Matteo in the tiny town of Capoliveri.
“Ancora Tu” by Lucio Battisti
Sebastian introduced me to this Italian mega-hit from 1976, “Ancora Tu” (“You Again”), from one of Italy’s biggest musical stars of the 1960s and 70s, Lucio Battisti. I just love the poignant way it captures the magic of a familiar love.
You again, it doesn’t surprise me, you know. / Ancora tu, non mi sorprende lo sai.
You again, but, weren’t we supposed to not see each other any more? / Ancora tu, ma non dovevamo vederci più?
And, how are you? Useless question. / E come stai. Domanda inutile.
You’re like me, and we can’t help but laugh. / Stai come me, e ci scappa da ridere.
My love, have you eaten or not? / Amore mio, hai già mangiato o no?
I, too, am hungry and not only of you. / Ho fame anch’io e non soltanto di te.
How beautiful you are, you seem younger / Che bella sei, sembri più giovane
or perhaps you’re just nicer. / o forse sei solo più simpatica.
Oh, I know what you want to know. / Oh io lo so cosa tu vuoi sapere.
No one, no, I just restarted to smoke. / Nessuna no, ho solo ripreso a fumare.
It is still you, unfortunately the only one. / Sei ancora tu, purtroppo l’unica.
Still you, the incorrigible one. / Ancora tu, l’incorregibile.
But to leave you is not possible. / Ma lasciarti non è possibile.
No, to leave you is not possible. / No, lasciarti non è possibile.
To leave you is not possible. / Lasciarti non è possibile.
No, to leave you is not possible. / No, lasciarti non è possibile.
It is still you, unfortunately the only one. / Sei ancora tu, purtroppo l’unica.
It is still you, the incorrigible one. / Ancora tu, l’incorregibile.
But to leave you is not possible. / Ma lasciarti non è possibile.
No, to leave you is not possible. / No, lasciarti non è possibile.
To leave you is not possible. / Lasciarti non è possibile.
No, to leave you is not possible./ No, lasciarti non è possibile.
Desperation, joy of mine, / Disperazione, gioia mia.
I’ll be still yours, hoping it’s not madness. / Sarò ancora tuo, sperando che non sia follia.
But, let it be what will be. / Ma sia quel che sia.
Hold me, my love, / Abbracciami amore mio,
hold me, my love, / abbracciami amor mio,
‘cause now I want it too. / Ché adesso lo voglio anch’io.
You again, it doesn’t surprise me, you know. / Ancora tu, non mi sorprende lo sai.
You again, but, weren’t we supposed to not see each other any more? / Ancora tu, ma non dovevamo vederci più?
And, how are you? Useless question. / E come stai? Domanda inutile.
You’re like me, and we can’t help but laugh. / Stai come me, e ci scappa da ridere.
My love, have you eaten or not? / Amore mio, hai già mangiato o no?
I, too, am hungry and not only of you. / Ho fame anch’io e non soltanto di te.
How beautiful you are, you seem younger / Che bella sei, sembri più giovane
or perhaps you’re just nicer. / o forse sei solo più simpatica.
The Second Annual French Road Trip—also known as The Paris Haircut Trip—concluded recently. This time John was with me and I wanted to share with him the sites of the discoveries and adventures I had last year, including the Mt. Blanc helicopter rescue, the mountain top with grazing cows and the hut that makes and sells fontina cheese, and one of my favorite hotels in the world—as quirky and a bit odd-smelling as it happens to be. If you’d asked me last year if Covid was going to be equally on my mind in twelve months time I would have seriously doubted it. Sad to still be going around in masks and in fear, but I thought you might be interested to know what it’s like to travel in France and Italy at the moment.
American readers might have missed that both countries have instituted a Green Pass system, a QR code-based golden ticket that documents your vaccine status, Covid antibodies, and test results. In both countries you need to show you are vaccinated, have antibodies, or a negative test within the last 48 hours to eat at any restaurant, go in a museum, theater, gym, indoor pool, attend a conference or event, take a high speed train, and more. The pass makes travel within the EU much easier too. In Italy, Prime Minister Draghi has gone all-in and required that all public and private employees have the vaccine to stay employed. And in France, your Green Pass is checked even sitting outdoors at cafes and restaurants. There have been a few sputtering protests in both countries but the measures have been very popular. And looking at the data it is easy to see why.
Recent Covid case trends: France on the left and Italy on the right
The peaks and falls in the fourth wave coincide with the widespread use of the Green Pass, and the resulting surge in vaccination rates. And it’s not just about new cases, yesterday it was announced that the proportion of Italy’s intensive care places occupied by Covid sufferers was down to 5.1%.
On our travels through northern Italy, the Alps, Burgundy, and Paris people were being remarkably careful. In addition to the Green Pass being checked without exception people were all masked indoors, and pretty universally with N95 masks now, not the flimsy little surgical ones or cloth. On the Paris metro we didn’t see one person unmasked. Testing is easy; Paris has tents on the sidewalk every few blocks where you can drop in and get a free test with results in a couple of hours (nonresidents pay $35), Italy has Covid tests widely available at pharmacies for about $25. The big question to me is about indoor dining at restaurants, which were packed everywhere we went (at this point we are only eating outdoors). I was surprised to see how popular sitting indoors was, given how often Covid is spread in such settings—certainly cut down by the Green Pass requirements, but still a lottery with the Delta variant.
We decided to go to London on the Eurostar for less than 24-hours to see Donella’s new flat and meet her puppy, Nora. Although the paperwork and requirements to get into England were epic, once we got off the train we were in a different world. No checking of Covid status at restaurants, lots of unmasked people everywhere, even on the Tube, and packed restaurants.
We spent a couple of days in Beaune, France this trip, in the heart of Burgundy. It was a town we’d been to years ago, and it was fun getting to know it a bit better. Driving in we passed a store that looked intriguing so we doubled back to go in and found a gem. With two small windows facing the street, a narrow room lined with wine, and things like sets of antique meat cleavers and copper pots artfully displayed on a center table it was a little hard to determine what it actually was selling. Turns out, quite a mix. It’s called The Cook’s Atelier and is a family-run cooking school, shop, and wine store. Started by a woman from Phoenix, Marjorie Taylor, and her daughter, Kendall Smith Franchini, whose French husband gave us some excellent advice about wines, the place intrigued me. Everything was carefully curated and had a story, and the shop and cooking school is in a 17th-century building with a lovely carved staircase. They ship internationally and have a beautiful cookbook of favorites from the cooking school that I bought and am enjoying.
Gorgeous photo from The Cook’s Atelier website.
One night I poured through the cookbook to find any special things that I needed to be on the lookout for the next day at the Saturday farmers market. This is a truly lovely French farmers market with lots of very small stands selling just a few exquisite things. One stand was full of different squashes and I remembered a recipe for a squash soup from the cookbook so lugged two large Potimarron squashes around in my market bag along with 8 jars of unlabeled but glorious looking raspberry and strawberry jam, a bunch of cheese, some figs and plums, and mushrooms. These all got carefully packed into the car for the return trip. After we got back to Italy I was shopping at our unexciting local grocery store and I spotted the Same Damn Squash, but now called a Zucca Hokkaido.
I made the soup, with the French squash thank you very much, and I’m quite sure it spoke with a more delicate and nuanced Gallic accent. Anyway it was delicious.
We visited the Hospices de Beaune, a hospital for the poor founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin and his wife Guigone de Salins, who in additional to funding the hospital bequeathed some prime vineyards in Burgundy to the hospital. They have an auction every fall where they sell the young wine in bulk. It is the most important wine auction in Burgundy and an indicator of how that year’s wine will be valued. In the 1970s the hospital relocated to a modern structure at the outskirts of town.
We happened to be staying with friends in Paris who live very near the L’Arc de Triomphe so we got to watch the Christo and Jeanne-Claude project wrapping the monument being installed and finished. It was fascinating to see it come together during dog walks and watch the workers rappelling off the top of the monument.
The other highlight was a chance decision to duck back into the Romanesque (and oldest in Paris) church at St. Germain-des-Pres which has been glowing from its recent cleaning and restoration. I want every single pattern and every single color in my life every single day.
One thing I love about doing this trip is the excuse to stop in Italian cities we wouldn’t normally visit. We stayed in Parma on the outbound and Turin on the way back, both beautiful, walkable, and with a surprising thing to see in Italian cities—a wide age demographic.
Turin after a storm
Treasures we discovered, or rediscovered along the way…carefully edited. This is only the good stuff in case any of it ever comes in handy.
—Lovely wine bar, Croce di Malta Caffe and Cucina Vini in Parma on a cute courtyard. We had a really good starter on fresh focaccia, ricotta, and Parma ham. Ah yes, the ham. A 30-month Prosciutto Crudo di Parma Sant’Ilario.
— In the Val d’Aosta, the valley in Italy that butts up against Mt. Blanc, we returned to stay at the Maison de Saxe in Courmayeur and this time snagged the room with the balcony nestled among the massive roof tiles in the 17th-century hamlet and a view of Mt. Blanc.
Maison de la Saxe room balcony with Mt. Blanc view
— On the way up to Courmayeur we stopped in Aosta and had a lovely lunch in a courtyard at a little restaurant called Stefenelli Desk. Interesting, refined, and delicious menu.
— Over to the French side we stayed at two places in Burgundy, Chateau du Saulon, and of course John had to stay at the Chateau d’Island with me, which is the subject of a past Itch.
— In Beaune, on our return, we stayed in a lovely hotel inside the town walls for two nights, Les Remparts.
And, oh yes, the hair. Thanks to the ever-masterful David Mallett who makes it worth the trip.
Now my glam trip is over and I am back to mowing.
One more gratuitous shot from Chamonix of Mt. Blanc cause it’s so Wes Anderson.
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