Barry and Denise's Travel Page -- The Missing Years: 2012-2021
2012-2020 - The Missing Years So much is unforgotten … September 2012 – The Mediterranean It is the end of another busy
season in the B&B. This signals the beginning of our usual travel window,
between Canadian Thanksgiving and the onset of late fall. Weighted by many
other thoughts, all we really want is to get away from all things related to
work. A Mediterranean cruise fills the bill - a no-brainer vacation with little
effort on our part (and a lot of help from a travel agent). After last year’s
enjoyable Aegean cruise, we opt for an itinerary that will take us to some
Mediterranean destinations we have never seen before. We fly to Barcelona, our home for
a few days before embarking on the ship. We stay at the Hotel Jazz,
well-located just off one end of Las Ramblas, the social focus of the city. In
the other direction, through the Eixample district,
majestic boulevards with wall-to-wall fantasy Art Nouveau buildings and, just
under an hour walk away, La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s monumental, riotous
construction of Art Nouveau elements, still unfinished over a century after it
was begun. Las Ramblas is a series of
pedestrian-friendly boulevards running as one long street through the centre of
the city, from the waterfront, through the old Gothic quarter, to the Plaça de Catalunya, with narrow automobile lanes on the
outsides. Shops, boutiques and restaurants, popups, benches, buskers, a place
to stroll. We find an outdoor antique market a couple of blocks off La Rambla
in the plaza in front of the massive gothic Barcelona Cathedral and Cloisters.
We visit La Boqueria, an indoor market teeming with
fresh produce of all types, and a series of small restaurants in the rear where
the freshly grilled seafood and white wine are delightful. There are many other
dining options on the strip, however, the offerings are generally finer and
less touristy on the blocks just behind Las Ramblas. A short ride on the
Barcelona Metro takes us to the Mercat dels Encants, a largely Arab
flea market near an elevated boulevard, where we find all sorts of vintage and
antique treasures as well as useful things for our trip such as shoe insoles to
replace those that got soaked in the rain yesterday. Barcelona is the capital of
Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain with its own language, similar to, but distinct from, Spanish. In a café popular
with tourists, a waiter apologizes to a Catalan customer for addressing him in
Spanish first. Most public signs have large Catalan lettering and smaller
Spanish renditions. On the surface, everyone seems to manage but we know that
is not a permanent situation … the cultural dynamic is so familiar. After three
days, it is time to move on. Villefranche Our first day at sea takes us to Villefranche-sur-Mer, the cruise port serving Nice, France.
Villefranche is a quintessentially charming, French
Riviera village with pastel-coloured houses lining stairstep pathways up to the
corniche, and small cross streets with restaurants and shops, and views of the
bay and the Mediterranean at every turn. Otherwise laid-back, Villefranche is teeming with cruise ship tourists this
morning so we take a local bus to Nice, about a 20 minute ride away, where we
mingle with the locals, browse the antique shops along the Quai des Docks and
then amble on to the Cours Saleya,
home to the daily flower market and weekly brocante, for a lunch of socca
and rosé before returning to the boat. Livorno to
Naples The ship is now moving alongside
Italy’s west coast. We stop in Livorno, a bustling port city where, in a few
short hours, we visit the expansive 19th food market hall, with
additional outdoor vegetable and clothing stalls spreading out on downtown
streets and piazzas. The charming pleasure craft portion of the port offers
many options for lunch, and, as always in Italy, another fine meal. The next day, we stop at
Civitavecchia, the port city serving Rome, and opt for a bus tour to Orvieto,
the medieval city perched high up on a rock overlooking the surrounding
vineyards. Old Orvieto is a tangle of narrow streets lined with many shops
offering fashion and fabrics, but is dominated by its
14th century cathedral with its extraordinary façade decorated with golden
and multi-coloured sculptures and mosaics of biblical figures. The day after, a stop in Naples
allows for a side trip to the ruins of Pompeii where life millennia before us
is still on display, albeit in a state of disrepair. On our return to Naples,
we stop for a pizza in a side street trattoria … after all, how can you not
have pizza in Naples, where it was invented? The restaurant’s customers are
mostly ship’s crew members, which is usually a good sign. Bursting with flavour
and a nice char on the bottom, this pizza sets the standard for so-called
Naples styled pizzas when we return home. We are treated to O Sole Mio and
That’s Amore by a wandering singer and a story from our waiter Pasquale about
how he loves Montreal and will be opening a restaurant there sometime. He
leaves Denise his phone number. Venice The
twelfth floor of the cruise ship offers a grand view as the boat pulls into
Venice, moving slowly past instantly recognizable landmarks such as St Mark’s
Place and the Doge’s Palace as well as the many canals leading into the heart
of the city. Our cruising schedule up to now has been rather frantic – arrive
in port in the morning, spend a few hours on land, and then return to the boat
late afternoon to sail overnight to the next port. Our stop in Venice includes
an overnight stay, allowing for more ample time to visit. It is late September and there
are still throngs of people everywhere –we wonder at times whether there is
even room for one additional pair of feet in some places. But, somehow, we
manage to make our way amidst the bustle to the main sites. Tables are folded along the sides
of Piazza San Marco – had we missed an antique sale or flea market? It turns
out these are not tables; they are segments of raised sidewalk platforms kept
for the frequent floods in the square. We had missed ankle-deep water a few
days earlier. Water still oozes out between the paving stones as we walk over
them. We learn later (in 2021) that the Mosé Project,
a massive series of artificial moveable dikes, has been installed and
successfully tested, protecting the city from an unusually high-tide flooding
incident. We wander across Piazza San Marco
and into the Doge’s Place museum, across the Rialto Bridge, and through the
thick of shops and canals. We cruise the waterways in a gondola, and even if
packed into the small boat with other tourists, the unparalleled canal-side
perspective of the city is a treat. Our overnight stay in Venice affords us a
break from the frantic cruising schedule, and an evening away from the hubbub.
We enjoy dinner away from the ship’s dining room at a little restaurant in the
city, when the bulk of the day tourists have left, people-watching the locals
out for the evening from our terrace table. An after-dinner walk before returning
to the ship permits experiencing the grand public spaces in a different light
with far fewer people. Eastern
Adriatic – Kotor and Dubrovnik Back on the boat, we cross the
Adriatic Sea to its eastern shore and into the fjord-like Bay of Kotor in
Montenegro. A bus tour climbs to the quaint town of Njegusi,
perched almost 1000 metres above sea level. The hair-raising bus ride along the
corniche takes one hairpin turn after another to reach the top, affording us
ever-changing views of the harbour and the cruise ship shrinking at every turn.
Once at the top, the usual array of souvenir shops and rustic restaurants await
us. Lunch is traditional smoked ham, cheese, country bread, and
rough-around-the-edges wine. Our knowledgeable tour guide, a young Montenegrin,
speaks excellent English with a hint of an American accent. He tells us he
learned his English from the Cartoon Channel. We sort-of expect to hear “what’s
up, doc?” but never do. Next day, we sail on to
Dubrovnik, Croatia, and its thriving touristy (and automobile-free) medieval
walled Old City. We visit the Sponza Palace, where
the state archives bear testimony to the country’s checkered history dating
back to the princes who ruled Croatia and Transylvania, and which houses the
Dubrovnik Memorial honouring those who died in the 1991 siege. Throughout the
city, bullet holes in the old stone walls of the buildings are a persistent
testament to that painful time. Lunch in an alley restaurant is delightful and
the dessert is “made by my grandfather” (a term we hear regularly, Croatian for
“homemade”). Croatia is undoubtably famous for
another innovation – the necktie. Worn by Croat mercenaries to the court of
Louis XIII who dubbed them “cravat” (French for Croat), ties are a staple of
local manufacture and proudly on display in many Dubrovnik shops. Barry picks
up a bold silk bowtie for our upcoming formal events. The boat leaves Dubrovnik that
afternoon. The next morning, we pass through the Strait of Sicily, where Mt
Etna is smoking to our left and the boot of Italy rises on the right, a fitting
last view of land until we arrive in Barcelona, two days later, and then home. 2013 Going South March 2013 The plane veers eastward as it
begins its approach into Fort Lauderdale. Outside the porthole window, scrub
and wetland views begin to fade as urban sprawl comes into full focus and the
Everglades are a distant memory behind us. Highways, houses, and industrial
complexes spread out for miles in every direction, culminating in a series of
skyscrapers, invisible only minutes ago, cutting a panoramic swath north to
south, standing tall above the ocean horizon behind. This is not how we
remember it. Thirty years ago, this was an old-fashioned beach resort with
low-rise apartment and motels and shops, the ocean drive punctuated by many
inlets and small boats. A town. One of many towns separated by miles of beach.
Things have changed since we have been here. With few travellers since
Christmas, the winter has seemed long and cold in our rambling B&B. An
end-of-winter break in the South will be therapeutic. We have arranged to stay
in a community where some friends have purchased a condominium home, in Boynton
Beach, just under an hour drive north of Fort Lauderdale airport. We think of
windswept beaches, streets lined with soldier-like rows of towering royal
palms, and tropical-style cement and stucco houses adorned with hibiscus and
bougainvillea. However, to get there, we must leave the airport in a maze of
concrete ramps and overpasses and then a six-lane freeway full of
too-close-for-comfort traffic at highway speed. Mix in orange cones and
barricades on both sides of the roadway as crews work to add lanes in, what we
will learn is, a futile effort to reduce traffic congestion. Concrete, dust,
noise … our new normal, along with a motley assortment of shopping malls,
industrial buildings, and miles of low-rise housing walled communities, a
continuous stream of images zipping by. As we enter Palm Beach County, the road
widens to twelve lanes, spreading the road congestion more widely. But we soon
leave the highway and wend our way through a residential area of mostly
nondescript cement bungalows, most of them with one or two lone palms, perhaps
a flowering shrub, a random array of cars and pickup trucks, chain link fences,
and a variety of bins for garbage and recycling. We soon arrive at our destination
and drive around a manicured median and, as if emerging from an invisible cloud
that has enveloped us in a gray fog since leaving the airport, into a community
of neat one-storey buildings arranged in a grid separated by large, trimmed
lawns with palms and a variety of trees. It is called Pine Point Villas even if
there are mostly royal palms with few, if any, pine trees to be seen. Each
building houses four one- or two-bedroom homes, most of which have plantings in
full bloom in front. A pool and clubhouse complete the package, a package that
is repeated hundreds of times in varying degrees of luxury in communities laid
out for miles in all directions, from Jupiter to the Keys, from the ocean to
the Everglades. We step out of the air-conditioned car and are immediately
blanketed by a summer-like warmth that has eluded us for months in the frigid,
snowy north. The house where we will be staying is comfortable and neat, with
large rooms, tropical style furnishings and a 1970s modern kitchen, perfect for
a short winter getaway. We explore the area outside the
confines of Pine Point. There are businesses at every turn,
strip malls and big box stores, wide streets and
highways with the constant din of traffic, a continuum of gated residential
communities, many decked out with elaborate Italianate porticos and gates and
with Italian names, stretching out side by side for as far as the eye can see
yet separated one from another by concrete walls and hedges. We discover “urban
boulevards” -- major streets akin to limited-access highways with service lanes
and overpasses and on-ramps and off-ramps at cross streets. Once in the car,
everything seems to be miles apart from each other yet busy at every turn. At
times, we might be like bees in a hive. However, there are nature
preserves and vintage markets to provide relief from the frenzy outside. A mile
east of the condo, we reach the coast, and drive north through Manalapan and
into Palm Beach, among the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the US and where we
admire the parade of massive oceanside homes, one more exotically beautiful
than the previous one. To the south, more beauty towards Boca Raton. In sharp
contrast, a mile or so inland, we drive through inland West Palm Beach, where a
stream of gas stations, pawn shops, and other businesses with largely Spanish
language signs merged with plain residential areas behind stands in sharp
contrast to the wealth we have just seen. The economic contradictions in such a
short distance are stunning. Few old-style beach resorts remain as they were –
Delray Beach, just 15 minutes south of us, stands out as one with a beachfront
and a highly walkable setting of shops and restaurants, albeit surrounded by
gated residential communities, sprawling miles in every direction. The scope of
development of this area compared to what we recall from trips decades ago is
astounding, evidence of a general southward shift of population, especially as
the Boomers reach retirement age. According to a vintage roadmap picked up at a
flea market, Pine Point Villas is located on what was referred-to as “The
Everglades” in 1974, recalling an old joke about selling Florida swamp land to
Northerners. A week goes by quickly. It is
easy in this short time to become accustomed to waking up in the warmth of
Florida winter. Despite the busy world outside our private little community,
life is quiet and easy in Pine Point, a distinctively middle-class
neighbourhood of friendly people. Much of our time is spent at the community
pool where we meet more of the residents; activities such as bingo and
shuffleboard bring variety into the evenings. We consider the alternative winter,
low-traffic B&B bedrooms and days in the cold barn antique shop. With Barry
working from home anyway, and the Florida real-estate market bottoming out
after the American foreclosure crisis, and the cultural contradictions aside,
the decision is easy. We leave an offer on a one-bedroom house before returning
to Canada, and soon become owners of a small piece of Florida. September 2013 It is end-of-season travel time
once again. This year, we are planning a month in Florida to set up our winter
home. We bring an SUV-full of furnishings and decorative objects with tropical
flair that we have amassed over the summer to personalize the house. Was it
destiny that brought us to that estate sale with the palm tree lamp? The
auction with the Art Deco-framed tropical bird prints? The upstate New York
antique shop with the box-load of colorful Fiesta dishes? Twenty-four hours on high-speed
interstate highways bring us across the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania,
through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, into the low country of the
Carolinas and Georgia, and, finally, into the flat, sandy expanse of
Florida. Along the way, the overnight
stops look remarkably similar one to the other, with abundant repetition of
chain hotels and restaurants at every exit off the highway. Predictability is
good, we guess. We will have the opportunity to explore later – we have a lot
to do and want to get to our destination as quickly as possible. This is the first time we are in
the US as residents, not as tourists. We quickly orient ourselves to the
grocery and renovation stores. Everything seems to be miles apart from
everything else with an outstanding exception being Costco, which is a short
drive away. We take joy in Costco’s $19.95 house label (real) Champagne, not
available in Canada. Curiously, Costco also sells oranges from California,
here, in the middle of one of the largest orange-growing areas of the United
States. It turns out most of Florida’s production is destined for orange juice.
We find some local Mexican markets in West Palm Beach, where local produce is
more widely available including a variety of products not generally available
in grocery store such as pepper and yam varieties, jicama, and tomatillos. We quickly dive into the
cleaning, disposing of most of the furniture and buying better quality
replacements - fortunately, there are many used furniture and antique shops
around. The mileage is piling up. A bit of plaster here. Some paint there.
Framed pictures at an auction or a garage sale. Ceramic fish figurines at the
thrift shop. The place is starting to
take on our personality, albeit a tropical look far removed from our Victorian
northern home. We start to explore our community, meeting neighbours, however
many houses are still closed-up, awaiting their winter residents who will
arrive in a few months. Alas, there are not enough people for bingo until
January. The pool is refreshing, even if sometimes a bit too hot for comfort in
September. This is how we have become residents. We enjoy dining out and realize
soon enough that despite the enormous number of restaurants in the area, there
is very little variety. More contradictions. It is not
that we expect the artful plates and fine table wines and refined service we
have become used to in our European travels. But finding variety and the
combination of consistently fresh quality and attentive service is a challenge
too often confounded by long waits, extra-large quantities of food, and added
cheese, as if added processed cheddar turns grub into gourmet. Nevertheless, we
will discover a few dining spots where quality and consistency reign – these
become favourites. Soon enough our month comes to an end and we take the long
drive back to Canada. December 2013 Our new annual routine now
includes planning for a full three-month relocation to Florida after Christmas.
This first winter is special, and we will be flying our two granddaughters to
Florida to spend their winter break with us. That will be in March. But first, with the Christmas
celebrations over, we drive back to Florida and begin to acclimatize to our new
life there. Many of the houses that had been closed-up in September are now
alive with their seasonal residents and there is much more activity outdoors –
people working in their flower gardens, chatting on front patios, at the pool,
or just walking the streets within the confines. With over 400 houses of
uniform design with delightful personalizations,
there are many corners to explore and people to meet. There is a large pool, a
convenient place to socialize with some of our neighbours, mostly retired
seniors from northern US states. Typical of many such communities, ownership is
restricted to people over 55 although there are frequent visits from kids and
grandkids (as our own will soon do). A significant number of residents are of
Italian origin and we often hear Italian spoken at the poolside. Many residents have owned properties here for
a long time and a large number are over 80. This leads us to believe that the
southern winter climate is longevity-promoting. We participate in group
activities such as bingo and shuffleboard and enjoy events such as communal
suppers and the Valentine’s party. In a neighbourhood enclosed by walls and
hedges, we enjoy the company of the same people daily, as if at a seniors’
summer camp, and share stories about our families, travels, and past careers.
There is comfort in knowing that we are all there for the same reason – to
escape the northern winter. With Barry still working part-time “from home”, and
the rest of our days spent in shorts and t-shirts in search of antique markets
and vintage shops, our days are full, and we do not miss a single snowflake. March 2014 It is time for our own winter
visitors. As simple as it sounds, the planning is not -- we start right after
Christmas. Eva, at 11 years old, cannot travel unaccompanied. Lili, 13, can
travel alone but not be the one responsible to accompany her sister. The
airlines offer accompaniment as a service. Direct flights are far costlier than
one-stop flights in early March but we are concerned
that a two-leg trip may be derailed by a winter storm somewhere in mid-USA. It
turns out that the best deal has Barry flying to Montreal twice through
Atlanta, once to pick up the girls and once to return them home, and everything
is booked. Later, at the end of January, the accompaniment choice seems
justified as we see freak snowstorms and something
called a “polar vortex” bringing Atlanta road and air travel to a standstill in
early winter. Lili and Eva arrive in Florida
after an uneventful trip with Barry into Palm Beach. Both advanced Red Cross
badge swimmers, they immediately take to the pool and work out a routine for a
short swimming show. Immersed in an environment of senior citizens, they enjoy
working their charms on a slew of new doting grandparents. Later
on, Eva will cite this as relevant experience in an interview for work
in a seniors’ residence. Being in
Florida, there is one other treat that is too tempting to pass
up (not Disney World, we had all been there a few years earlier). Unknown to
the girls, we have booked a three-day Bahamas cruise. We tell them we are going
on an adventure, and that they need to pack a small travel bag and be sure to
include a dress. The 90-minute drive is full of mystery, and when they see the
sign welcoming us to Miami, they assume that is the destination. At one point,
a large sign welcomes us to the cruise port so Barry
diverts their attention to a large Art Deco style building across the street.
We are now circling amidst warehouses – the ships are hidden from view – and
the mystery grows. It is only once we have parked and made our way up a ramp
that we see the sign “Welcome to Celebrity Cruises” that the excitement
explodes. Smiles are burned-in on the girls faces for the rest of the day, so
much so that they can hardly speak when we call our daughter to advise her of
our safe boarding. We travel to Celebrity’s private
island where we spend the day at the beach, and then part of the next day
exploring Nassau. On-board the ship, the girls learn the pleasures of resort
cruising, at the pool, at the rock-climbing wall, at the ping-pong tables, in a
mysteriously private teenager-only section, at the evening musical show, and in
the dining room where they charm the waitstaff and get whatever food treat
pleases them. The cruise was comfortable – it was an adventure not to be
forgotten soon. It is time to bring the girls home. We leave the sunny warmth of Palm Beach and
arrive in Atlanta only to discover that the Montreal flight has been canceled
because of snow. Barry calls Montreal and despite the bright sunshine there,
there is, indeed, snow in the forecast, up to 10 cm., but only to start
overnight, after our estimated landing time. Nevertheless, Delta has rebooked
us on an Air Canada flight to Hartford Connecticut and then on to Montreal from
there. At the Air Canada counter in Hartford, the agent tells us that the
Montreal flight is cancelled. The storm has already forced Chicago, Detroit,
and Toronto to close their airports. He explains that even if Montreal is open,
the airlines will not fly if there is not an alternate airport to land in case
of emergency within some certain distance, hence the cancellations. “What are
we going to do?” asks Eva, anxiously. Trying not to look concerned, Barry makes
a few phone calls and finally locates a nearby hotel room. Everything is under
control. We spend one more evening of spring break with mediocre pizza and the
hotel pool. We wonder what the airlines would have done if we had paid them to
accompany the girls home. Was this a self-fulfilling premonition? We leave Hartford early the next
morning and arrive in Montreal, a foot of fresh snow on the ground but runways
dry and nearby highways buzzing with traffic. Snow has never really shut down
Montreal airport. Our son-in-law greets us to pick up the girls. Barry was
supposed to go into the office bright and early for a half-day but it is
already a bit late so he turns around instead and
heads to US immigration for the ride home. It is standby all the way, and rewarded by a first-class seat Atlanta to Palm
Beach. Even the simplest plan can turn into an adventure. April Soon winter is over, and we close up the condo in preparation to head north. This trip
home, we spend a few nights in Savannah, Georgia, where wisteria and azalea and
cherry trees are in full bloom. We have many opportunities to sample fine
Southern cooking and Southern charm as we explore the historic centre with its
cobblestoned streets, its many manicured squares and colonial era and civil war
architecture, and a dominant presence of student artwork from SCAD (the
Savannah College of Art and Design). In subsequent years, our
overnight stays en-route to or from Florida provide
opportunities to visit places we might not otherwise see, especially in the
Shenandoah valley of Virginia, where the Civil War story is retold through many
relics at cities and towns along the Interstate. One city in particular,
Staunton, Virginia, is set in a pretty hollow, with
its old centre village-like with historic buildings and fine restaurants and
shops. We stay at the century-old Stonewall Jackson Inn (later
on politically-correctly renamed “Hotel 24 South”), a charming downtown
alternative to the Interstate-exit offerings of chain hotels. Other trips bring
us through Lancaster County Pennsylvania, known for its large Amish population,
and a wealth of antique markets to satisfy our treasure-hunting urges. Trying to minimize our time
living out of our luggage and overstuffed SUV as we move between homes, our
goal is generally to get to our destination as quickly as possible. The en-route stops bring variety into the long highway drive,
and the occasional back road deviation provides alternative to the monotony of
the interstate highways. Virginia’s Route 340, along the Shenandoah River and
past Harper’s Ferry comes to mind as particularly delightful. Whatever the
route and itinerary, it is always pleasing to pull up in front of our home
again, wherever it is. 2016 – Little adventures The year starts as usual in our
Florida winter home. Before returning to Canada, we
take a 2-night escapade with friends to the Bahamas, the same cruise we took
with our granddaughters. We are beginning to see small cracks in the excellent
level of quality in food and cleanliness we have come to associate with
Celebrity Cruises. We suspect this may be partially related to the cruise line
catering to the passenger demographics, largely younger, partying types on this
trip. Particularly annoying, the lax
enforcement of smoking in designated areas results in smoke spilling out to
common areas, making some evening activities rather unpleasant. No more quick
cruises during spring break. Longer cruises are probably ok. We rediscover our sense of
adventure in August, when we treat our elder granddaughter, Lili, to a week in
Paris for her 15th birthday, fulfilling a long-standing promise. We
rent an apartment on Rue de la Harpe, in
Saint-Germain des Prés, an ideal pied-à-terre for
enjoying the busy Paris street scene, especially in the highly charged August
tourist season. We wander the busy streets of Paris, Lili in her flowery skirt
and handbag like a young, dimpled Amélie Poulain. Watching
over a young teenager allows us to see the city through her eyes, bringing a
fresh perspective of discovery to everything we see around us and that we take
for granted otherwise -- the majestic bell towers and the soaring interior of
Notre Dame, the entrancing interplay of bateaux-mouche
and strollers on and alongside the River Seine,
the solid and intricate metalwork of the Eiffel Tower, the mysterious Musée de Cluny and its oversized, colourful tapestries of
La Dame à la Licorne, the haunting Catacombs of
Paris, and the ornate glory of Versailles. Somehow the familiar is all new and
exciting again. We call this “the Lili effect”. October
2017 – retour au Grand Sud Two recent trips to the southwest
of France, in 2014 and 2015, treated us with rich history, breathtaking
landscapes, exquisite food experiences, charming people … and we made a promise
to ourselves then to return. The time to return is now. We reserve once again at Le Grand
Large in Biarritz as our pied-à-terre in the Basque region – two stays, actually, with a side trip in the middle. We fly into Pau,
whose small airport offers fewer crowds and easy in-and-out to the car rental
and the Autoroute, a mere hour and a half drive to Biarritz. Our first week of
country drives and antique markets and pinxtos
(tapas) and seafood goes by quickly. We head southwest, and once in
Spain, drive south from the Basque region into the Navarra, to Pamplona, our
home for the week. We have a pleasant stay at the Hotel Maisonnave, Calle
Nueva, a short walk to the historic centre with its ornate 17th century city
hall, where the fiesta of San Fermín, the annual running of the bulls, is
launched in July. In October, there are only people strolling around. There are
some tourists, some backpackers following the trail markers leading them on
their pilgrimage to Compostela, and many families with children out for a walk,
even late into the evening. The streets around Plaza del Castilló are lined with bars offering pinxtos,
some even proudly displaying a Michelin star, where 25€ can buy an exquisite
light supper of pinxtos with wine for two. Follow
this with a freshly made churro and coffee street-side a few doors down. (The
other option would be to wait until 9PM for most full-service restaurants to
open.) Smokers must remain outdoors and they do so
outside the bars against the walls with their plates of tapas and glasses of
wine, filling the narrow street with tobacco smoke. We find the overall level
of smoking much higher here than in France and muster up a high level of
tolerance when on outdoor terraces. We do not miss an afternoon visit to the
Plaza de Toros, open to visitors who can learn about bullfighting and
bullfighters when there is no event going on. A day trip south takes us out
through more barren landscapes than we have seen in the Basque country. We
visit medieval Tudela with its historic Catedral Santa Maria de Tudela
and lunch in the Plaza de los Fueros. We stop in Olite to walk the Castle
grounds. It is still mid-day and, this being Spain, everything is closed from
noon until late afternoon so we never get a look
inside. Soon we head back to Biarritz.
More drives into the mountains where Michelin stars shine even on the smallest
and remotest of towns (Ainhoa), and the salt air
fills the seaside resorts of Hendaye and
St-Jean-de-Luz. Once again, the week just seems to fly by. Is the Basque
Country on its own clock? With a feeling
of discovery at every turn, le Grand Sud never fails to please. November 2017 - a new beginning Our family is growing up quickly.
Our granddaughters, who were infants when we moved to Westport, have become
teenagers. We know we have been missing time with them as we operate two
businesses three hours distant from our family. We decide to put the B&B up
for sale in 2015. There is intermittent interest in
the house over the two years – many visits, one ‘way below-cost offer which we
did not consider, two better offers, both of which fell through buyer
loopholes. None of this is a surprise as we expected the B&B would not sell
quickly, however, disappointing, nonetheless. Then the agent calls and tells
Barry there is someone who would be interested except that the house is too big
for them. Barry says to the agent, “tell them to just close off the third
floor, revert it to an unheated storage attic, then it will be smaller”. It
seems too simple. The buyer hears the message. The
“sold” sign goes up two weeks later, on November 30. Ten minutes afterward,
everyone in town knows the B&B was sold. The next day, December 1, we fill
the SUV and lease a storage locker in Montreal as we begin to undo the antique
shop and hunt for a new home. The apartment search is swift. Few vacancies are
advertised in Montreal’s west end in December, but we drive up and down the
streets of our preferred neighbourhood looking for signs until we find, on the
fourth call, a nice-sized upper duplex flat -- our new home. The lease is
signed, and we move in late January. The boxes are piled up everywhere, and we
depart for Florida the following morning. April 2018 – The crossing Before returning to Canada, we
join Denise’s sister and her husband on a trans-Atlantic cruise. The spring
sailing is a repositioning cruise, where the cruise operator moves the ship
from the Caribbean winter routes to begin its Mediterranean summer itineraries.
The cruise port is a convenient drive from our Florida home, and the idea of
travelling the route of our forefathers is compelling. Seven days to cross the ocean. We
have visions of Champlain tossed atop huge ocean waves in a creaky full-rigged ship but the Atlantic is remarkably calm for the whole week,
in fact, we describe it as a big bathtub. Barry observes, looking out at the
ocean in the mornings, “we were here yesterday”. It does look much the same all
the time when the weather is unchanging. The ship’s passengers are
predominantly senior citizens, and there is an inordinate number of motorized
rolling chairs zipping back and forth along the narrow hallways. This is a fact
of life as we get older, although requiring a bit of extra attention as drivers
occasionally do not seem to pay much attention to fellow passengers. We reflect
on how things have changed since our first cruise, 20 years earlier, when men
were not allowed into the dining room without a tuxedo or fine suit on formal
night, a nicety that has long vanished from Celebrity Cruises, morphing into
jeans and polo shirts. The overall quality of food service and many details of
cleanliness seem also to have taken a dip over the years as cruising has become
more of a mainstream mode of travel. The constant sneezing and coughing in the
corridors and the elevators and our soon-to-follow colds seal our fate. This
may be our last cruise. April 2018 – Across At one point on day 6 we see a
bird and a floating can. We are nearing land. An overnight stop in the Azores,
and we make our way to Ireland. A day stop in Cobh, the port town serving Cork
(but more renowned as the port near the world’s largest producer of Viagra),
where we take a drive through the countryside, and then a stop in Waterford
giving us our first looks at the Emerald Isle, its towns, its rural areas, and
its people. We have barely set foot in Ireland but we
learn quickly how easy it is to strike up a friendly conversation with a native.
We disembark in Dublin, where we
stay for four nights. It is a short stay on a small island, but overflowing
with experiences – pubs, markets (was that Mrs. Brown?), many stories,
musicians walking us through the history of Irish music, statues of Irish
scholars at every turn (Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Wilde and so many more). There are
the enthusiastic students at Trinity College animating the history of that
great school. The Book of Kells is proudly on display
in the Trinity College museum. Passionate historical scholars guide us through
the mystical Druid ruins and recall their legends on one cold and rainy day as
we sip hot tea by the fire in a cabin on top of a mountain somewhere amidst
ancient burial grounds. Everyone we encounter is affable, and Dublin is
particularly young and vibrant. Alas, it is time to return. We
leave feeling that the Dubliners are so much bigger than their city and keep
Ireland in our future travel plans for a longer visit. We fly to Florida, close up the condo and return to our new apartment in
Montreal where piles of boxes and a substantial layer of dust from the winter
bathroom renovations await us. The adventures never cease. October 2018 – back to an old destination Unpacked and settled in our new
Montreal home, free from business cycles, our travel clock still signals the
end of summer. After eleven B&B seasons, autumn travel to Europe has become
as natural to us as the falling leaves. We book a few days in Paris at
the Hotel Trianon Rive Gauche, near the Sorbonne and the Jardin de Luxembourg
(and the RER train stop from Charles-de-Gaulle airport). We have a charming and
comfortable garret room with window boxes full of geraniums, framing a clear
view over Rue de Vaugirard and overlooking the
rooftops of St Germain des Prés to the Eiffel Tower.
We spend a few days walking the streets of St-Germain des Prés,
which, somehow, never seem to be the same twice. But we have just started. We haven’t been to the French Riviera in many years and are
ready to return to that old favourite destination. The TGV (Train à Grande
Vitesse) brings us from Paris to the south of France, past Marseille, to Toulon
in just over 4 hours. The ride is
smooth, although at TGV speed of up to 300 kmh, it is
a challenge to get a good look at the sights where even mountains disappear from view in the time it takes to locate their
names on the map. Our early arrival allows us
plenty of time to pick up a car and navigate our way to Le Lavandou,
a small Mediterranean resort town, do some grocery shopping, and wander around
in daylight. We have rented a small apartment a short walk from the town centre
and beach, and our landlord, a retired professor, and his charming wife refer
to us as their Quebec cousins. They will entertain us several times at their home
in nearby Bormes-les-Mimosas. Hemmed in on a coastal road by
the Massif des Maures mountain range, Le Lavandou is a pretty town, one of the last old-fashioned
French Riviera resorts, with a large beach and harbour area and generally
low-rise buildings with a few multi-storey 1960s style hotels in the town
centre. It is quiet in October as most tourists have left and some of the shops
and restaurants have closed for their end-of-season vacations. Locals are
always playing pétanque in the town centre. We
enjoy quiet walks around town where many fine restaurants are still open. A
large outdoor food market sets up every Thursday around the corner from our
apartment where we choose from a large variety of fresh vegetables, cheeses,
tapenades, breads, saucissons, and other local treats. Short drives take us to
large antique markets near Toulon and Hyères on the
west and St Tropez on the east, and many small destinations across the
mountains to the north. We navigate the tortuous mountain road to Collobrières, the capital of chestnut production (the
harvest is in progress and the chestnut ice cream is divine), take day trips to
our favourite antique markets in Nice and Cannes and discover the massive brocante in nearby Grimaud. Not surprisingly, the wide
expanses of empty beach along the coast road that we recall from our first
visits to the Cote d’Azur twenty years earlier have been filled in by condo
developments, reflective of the general movement of retiring boomers to warmer
coastal regions worldwide. Three weeks pass in a moment.
Maybe that funny clock is not just for a Basque trip. September 2019 –new destinations We often discuss places we would
want to visit, and one name pops up regularly in these conversations. Legendary
for its beauty and cultural history, Prague has emerged from behind the Iron
Curtain as one of the most visited cities in Europe. When Barry retires from
his day job in July, we decide the time is right to include Prague in our next
travel plans. As usual, we look first at
apartment rentals in Prague on Homelidays.com (now vrbo.com) and
itineraries. However, given the huge
unknowns about language, location, culture, accessibility, and so on, we decide
a guided tour might be advised for a first visit. Now, our experience on land
tours is limited to day excursions off a cruise ship so navigating the
offerings of tour operators is a challenge. We do not want to replicate the
cruise experience of whirlwind one-day one-city visits and finally settle on a
package that offers 3-days in each of Prague, Vienna
and Budapest with combined guided and free time. We feel this should be
sufficient for an introduction to each of these cities. We select Trafalgar Tours,
renowned for their quality. It turns out to be an excellent choice, with first
class accommodations and expert tour staff who bring us to the centre of what
makes these destinations unique and interesting and who pay meticulous
attention to our comfort every step of the way. Prague is as beautiful as
promised, except overrun with tourists so we never get the opportunity to
appreciate its antique and art nouveau treasures without the persistent masses
of crowds milling around us. Vienna is classically stately as expected.
Budapest is bustling with the beauty of Paris and the joie de vivre of
Montreal. As beautiful are the
destinations. it is the experiences that make the trip. We see the remnants of forty years of
communism right from the first moment, when we arrive at the passport check in
Prague airport, where the border control agents do not even look at us, instead
talking to each other between the occasional passport stamp.
Civil dis-service for sure, making a couple of dozen travellers wait 40 minutes
to get through. A forty-five minute wait in a
Bratislava restaurant for a sandwich – the experience is consistent. Drab
communist-built industrial style apartment blocks abound in Prague and
Budapest, with 19th century buildings behind scaffolding throughout Budapest
reflecting efforts to correct years of deterioration from Soviet inattention to
the old, still ongoing decades after the Iron Curtain was brought down. We meet
people whose family property was taken from them and they describe programs to
re-establish ownership. One of our tour guides was a young Czech when he took
part in the 1989 “Velvet Revolution”, later becoming Henry Kissinger’s personal
driver when Kissinger was in Prague. His
vivid stories peppered with cynical humour bring to life what we have only
surmised from books and films. We learn the extent to which
World War II decimated the populations of this area, especially moved by a
visit to the old synagogue in Prague’s Jewish quarter and the Shoes on the
Danube Bank monument in Budapest. Prague displays its Art Nouveau glory and
Budapest’s proud baroque European roots shine. Vienna shows off its staid
personality in its Naschmarkt, Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Mozart and Strauss concerts, restaurants and
cafés. Side trips to the countryside round out the experience. We are on the go for a full 10
days. We credit Trafalgar for allowing us to see sites, meet people, and try
restaurants that we might not have otherwise experience. Yet we barely scratch
the surface of life in Central Europe. We would return to Budapest. Vienna too.
Prague? Maybe – the visit-worthy sites are all clustered in the centre and
filled to the brim with tourist crowds … If we ever make it back this way. After ten days on the move, we
are ready for a rest. We fly to Nice and stay a few weeks in St Raphaël on the
Cote d’Azur and continue our re-discovery of this area begun last year. France
never seems repetitive. Familiarity is a welcome companion, to the point that a
vendor at the Cannes antique market recognizes us from last year. 2020 – a different way to travel A three-day post-Christmas drive brings
us to the warmth of Florida, where we herald the arrival of 2020 with little
fanfare. We soon learn, however, that there is some sort of new virus out
there. We all know how the story unfolds. In mid-March, the Canadian government
asks us all to come home. The situation escalates. We are
lucky to find a couple of bottles of hand sanitizer, and to have on hand a full
stock of toilet paper that we had picked up at Costco just before mass panic
emptied store shelves. We pack it in the car with our other belongings to be
sure we are not stuck without any on our return to Canada … oh, the uncertainty
of it all. It is an eerie drive north, with
mall and business parking lots empty of cars, few cars on the road bearing
out-of-state license plates except for other Canadians heading home. We hear
that hotels are closing one by one behind us – thankfully, our favourites are
still operating. Rest stops are closed, but interstate gas service centres are
open and clean. Roadside signs advise to stay inside to help to flatten the
curve. Flatten the curve -- we will find out where that goes. Restaurants are
mostly closed but we have plenty of food with us in the coolers as we had to
empty our fridge before our sudden departure. All we think of is to be safe in
our own home. We cross the Canadian border with a verbal promise to go directly
home and stay there for 14 days. We made it! A neighbour
phones and says she saw our car and wondered if we needed anything as
she is going to the grocery store. A new protocol is in place. We learn what the new normal will
be -- masks, sanitizer, separation, lineups at the grocery store. Then there is
the “Covid dance” -- the new sidewalk maneuver where we decide who goes off the
sidewalk onto the street to preserve six feet separation from the stranger
coming the other way. We soon lose any sense of what day it is. Our anchors are
gone – the Tuesday antique market in the Laurentians, the Friday estate sales,
Wednesday auctions. Today is garbage day. Tomorrow is the day after garbage
day. Wine and cheese with friends on Friday is now a
Zoom call. We wish we could hug our grandkids. As the pandemic rages across the
planet, it becomes clear very quickly that we cannot stray too far from our
apartment in this calendar year. However, we quickly adopt a different form of
travel and enjoy the French TV documentaries Les Racines et des Ailes (roots and wings) and Echappées Belles (beautiful getaways), two
high-quality series of programs that travel across glorious landscapes, visit
heritage sites and meet locals wherever they go,
primarily in France (and both available in large part on youtube).
We watch our favorite travel hosts excitedly sharing the rich heritage
of their destinations, what people are doing to preserve it, or just admiring
the lasting beauty of the ancient architecture and breathtaking landscapes.
Sometimes one of us declares “We were there!” or “We should go there next time”. As
beautiful as are the sights, we can almost taste the flavours in the
restaurants, smell the sweet fields of flowers or pungent cheese factories. However, calling this “travel” is
like eating a restaurant menu instead of the dinner. One of our great pleasures
is sharing stories with the people we meet, the vendors in the markets, about
their life in their country or ours in Canada, about what they are selling,
whether something to eat or antique objects. These experiences will have to
wait to some future time. March 2021 – pandemic, a year later It is a strange time. We are
spending our first winter in Canada in several years. Pandemic aside, we watch
domestic terrorism rear its ugly head and our neighbour to the south turns into
an armed camp. We sometimes wonder what our Florida plans might have been
without the pandemic given the political turmoil in the US, however, that is
moot now. It is winter, and government restrictions make normal things so much
more difficult. Just seeing family is often a fleeting experience in sub-zero
conditions. And, frankly, we are healthy and want to stay that way. We look
forward to the spring we can start to get together outdoors for a meal or other
shared social activities once again. The mass vaccination program has begun, a
faint light at the other end of the tunnel. In the meantime, we continue
exploring where our next destination will be. France, Spain
and Italy have so much more to discover. It might be somewhere else with
Trafalgar. Our bags are ready.