Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language
The older I get, and with a birthday coming up on Monday that is top of mind, the more I realize that one of the most necessary elements in my life is adventure. And one of my top adventure partners is Meg Ray, the unstoppable founder and cake boss at Miette. She’s in the planning stages of her third book which is on several chefs and bakers in France who are breaking all the rules and French traditions. When she suggested that we take an overnight trip to Normandy to visit the new restaurant of one of her favorite rebels, John, another friend, and I were in.
The Presbytere is in, as the name promises, an old church and parsonage on an estuary of the river Sienne, by the hamlet of Heugueville-sur-Sienne. The restaurant was started by British chef Edward Delling-Williams, who originally trained at St. John in London, then moved to Paris and opened a successful restaurant Le Grand Bain and bakery Le Petit Grain. He describes his new restaurant as part English pub, part Norman bistro, and he features the best of hyper-local ingredients prepared in sophisticated, yet earthy and simple ways.
Ed sat with us before dinner and revealed his reason for choosing this new location for his work. With three young children he wants to be as close to self-sufficiency as possible, growing much of his own food and being well away from urban centers. Thought-provoking actions from a self-declared collapsist.
We changed the subject to a lighter topic, namely where we should have lunch the next day, and he suggested one of his favorite places, a shack on the beach that serves only mussels, oysters, lamb, fries, and wine, called La Cale (I am afraid there’s no website to link you to). I didn’t need more persuading. We walked along the beach at high tide before the restaurant opened—it doesn’t take reservations and we were warned to get there early. It’s located next to a concrete boat ramp that leads into the sea and the “shack” description was not stretching reality. One whole wall is constructed of glass panels and swings out on hinges to embrace the wooden outside deck and protect it from wind, leaving the restaurant completely open on one side. There is a small stage and a big open fire that was crowded with pieces of meat on a grill. A hutch contains serve-yourself plates and utensils. All the walls are covered with paintings—badly-painted nudes, mostly female. I didn’t notice when we sat down that my seat placed my head right next to a penis in the painting behind me. For some reason the other side of the table found this amusing.
The place filled up almost immediately and we got bread, oysters, a steaming, enormous pot of mussels, lamb, and local rose wine, just as promised.
The band was a duo in their late sixties which upon closer inspection revealed that the lead singer was a transvestite. The meat-cooker was a person with a beard wearing hiking boots and a pink gingham dress. I was in heaven.
Midway though the meal, when I turned to the right to converse, I realized that I had unconsciously noted a series of large tractors going by, all loaded with standing men. It was like I was watching a parade going by through the small plastic window I was facing. The mysterious thing was that they were all headed towards the concrete ramp which ended in the sea a few yards beyond the restaurant. I was mystified about why I didn’t see any tractors coming back and where they all ended up.
We left the restaurant and when we looked towards the sea we were shocked. The tide had gone so far out that the water was now nearly invisible on the horizon, leaving a huge patch of revealed sand. And oyster traps. And men in waders who were loading the oysters into the tractors, which were now dispersed all over the still wet and boggy sand. In addition to the more organized oyster farmers were locals, mostly French grandmothers, armed with hoes, shovels, buckets, and wearing rubber boots headed out to harvest their own oysters in unfarmed areas.
In the afternoon we took the train back to Paris completing a perfect adventure which will stay with me for a long time.
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.
Resources:
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.
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.
I thought that after I was rescued by helicopter on Mt. Blanc my adventures were over, but I was wrong.
The next day I left my cozy hotel in Chamonix and drove to a place I’d found to stay outside of Vézelay, in Burgundy. I’d chosen it quickly and pretty much randomly. Exterior looked impressive online, it was well-positioned for my final sprint into Paris, on the edge of a huge national forest, not too expensive, and oddly it had rooms available on the last weekend of summer break — a major time for travel for the French.
To get to the hotel I drove through some truly beautiful countryside. Rolling hills of cut hay, old trees, tiny stone villages, small rushing rivers, and white cows in green fields. I get to the Château d’Island and it is as stunning as the pictures. The parking lot was empty except for one other car when I arrived. After a few minutes of standing in the parking lot an older man came out and led me to the base of a staircase in a tower. A woman came out, and instead brought me into the bar which was clearly never used and had me write my name and the date on a slip of paper. No ID or credit card required.
She led me to another staircase and up three flights of stairs to a room in the attic. It was then that I started to notice the smell. It was similar to the scent of a grandparent’s house that had been shut up for a long time, but like there had been generations and generations of grandparents who feared fresh air and replacing any furniture or upholstery. It smelled like death.
I loved my room, tucked into the corner of the attic, with an amazing array of beams, including one that grew out of the middle of the top of the mattress. There was a dormer window set near the floor with a wide sill where you could sit, touch the roof tiles, and gaze over the gables and gardens.
The woman then showed me around the rest of the house, including a salon that had original paintings from the 1400s, when the place was built, and the breakfast room with a fireplace almost tall enough to walk into, topped with copper. It was all stunning. It felt somehow naked — like nothing had been touched in centuries. An endangered species of place before it gets Relais-et-Châteaued. I was in heaven.
I left to go a few miles into Vézelay for dinner and when I returned I drove right past the hotel by mistake. It was easy to do this because the whole place was dark. Really dark. I parked, now the only car in the lot. They didn’t mention how I should get in after hours so I was relieved to see that the door to the tower was wide open, lit only by a couple of glowing green nightlights.
I get to the room, lock the door, open the window to get some fresh air, and get ready to go to sleep, placing extra pillows around the beam that’s even with my head in the middle of the bed in case I roll over quickly in my sleep.
All went well till the bat flew in.
When I first heard the loud rustling noise I thought a rat had come along the gutter and hopped into my open window. I was relieved when I turned on the light and saw it was just a bat. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to go back to sleep which turned out to be impossible because I’d hear the whoosh of flight and feel the lightest puff of air as the bat flew close over my head about every half hour. The problem was in the forest of beams in the tall peaked ceiling there was no way to tell whether it had left or was still in the room. And the window where he’d come in was near the floor and small. After several hours awake I got an ingenious idea, or at least it seemed so at the time. I turned on my iPhone flashlight and placed it outside on the roof, shining up, hoping it would attract bugs, which would attract the bat. I don’t know if this worked, or exhaustion took over, but I finally did get back to sleep for a couple hours.
The interesting thing is that after my Paris stay, when I am making the return road trip back to Italy with two friends, we book an overnight at a hotel in prime Burgundy territory, right outside Beaune. It is lovely, we have one of the best meals I’ve had in forever, sleep in comfortable, well-appointed rooms that are clean and don’t smell of death. And it is uninteresting and soulless. I realize my friends and I need to backtrack about an hour and a half to return to the Château de la Mort. Fortunately my friends are really good sports and trust me. No other guests were there when we arrived and the hostess showed us every room — quite the endeavour as it involved a huge mass of keys and considerable time to lock and unlock each door. Each was completely different and widely varied, as did the level of the château’s unique smell.
One of our favorite moments occurs over our two breakfasts. They have classical music playing from a station with a considerable amount of static over speakers that must have been from the 1970s. When this aria came on my friend had to capture it. We decided it was a fitting soundtrack of the place.
Although my friends were definitely aware of the rough edges, I interviewed them last night over some wine and captured their stream of consciousness memories. “A vanishing place that will never be again.” “There was no ‘show’. Most hotels feel like they are putting on a show, but not here.” “A privilege to see the unrenovated place before it is renovated beyond redemption.” “Unusually relaxed — more relaxing than being at a spa.” “Like time travel. My room had a desk and chair in front of the full length window set up to write letters.” “No pretension. It’s pure, not packaged for tourists.” And my personal favorite — “weird as shit”.
Trip Notes:
Château d’Island is located between the gorgeous villages of Vézelay and Avallon.
Château de Saulon is the place we stayed outside of Beaune and very near the famed Route Vins. Looks amazing on the homepage picture, but marred on the other side by the addition of an glass eating area and glass elevator. However their farm to table restaurant is worth a trip to Burgundy by itself.
Lunch at Olivier Leflaive, one of the top white wine makers in the world. We ate and tasted a about 10 glasses (between us all) of their wines. We tried two Puligny-Montrachet 1er Crus were from the same row of grapes in the same field, but one bottle was from the top of the rolling hill (a 2015 Champ Gains) and another bottle was from the less-arid bottom (a 2015 Renferts). And they tasted completely different. We also had a glass of a wine from the same field which is available only in the restaurant because so few bottles are made and it was breathtaking. For you wine buffs, just to brag, it was their Les Pucelles wine from 2011.
I’m going to do another Itch on Vézelay and Avallon because they are that good.
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