On Saturday, January 20, 2018, Cindy Emmans <ccemmans@yahoo.com> wrote:
We thought it would be a swell idea to take a little road trip in Europe on our way to our annual visit to Nice to avoid winter. I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking, if I was thinking at all, but it appears that it is very difficult to avoid winter in Europe in January.After a nasty flight on United, we landed in a dark and wet Paris. Two 747 flights from different parts of China landed before us so the lines to clear immigration were immensely long and slow, but we really didn’t have a schedule and it was great just to be out of the plane. We found our way to our rental car company, completed the paperwork, and by 8 am we on our way to Lille. It was a dark and stormy morning, filled with truck traffic and speeding commuters, not ideal conditions for a road trip. Despite the fact that we declined GPS, it seemed to be working quite well and we named our new best friend Collette as she guided us in perfect French to Lille. After a small unguided tour of Lille - Collette did let us down at the last minute - we finally found our way to the parking garage closest to our hotel. Our room was not ready since it was only a bit after 10 am, so we deposited our luggage and set out to explore.Lille is a compact and elegant city, which on the tenth of January was still all decorated for Christmas, complete with a snow machine that was blowing snow in the central square. Yes, it was cold enough to make snow. We wandered in and out of shops and arcades to seek warmth and shelter from the intermittent rain/snow squalls until we finally ran out of steam and stopped for a coffee. Our spirits revived, we set out for more explorations, mostly looking for places to eat dinner that night. By 1 pm our room was ready and we unpacked, cleaned up and set out to find lunch. It was raining rather hard so we scuttled to the closest cafe for our first French lunch of the trip.Northern France bears little resemblance to the south of France, especially when it comes to food. The north is cold, wet and dark for five months of the year and their food tends to be rather heavy and cheese- and meat-based. At the restaurant owner’s insistence, I tried the specialty of Lille, which turned out to be a variant of Welsh Rarebit. I was presented with a shallow bowl of what looked like melted Velveeta. Beneath this pool of yellow goo there was a piece of white bread spread with mustard and covered with a thin piece of ham. Honestly, it was the worst meal I’ve had anywhere in a long time but all the more horrible that I was wasting a meal in France. Further investigation of menus in Lille demonstrated that this was not a one-off experience; they all had variants of the same dish as their specialties. Armed with this information, we gravitated to bistros that had more typical dishes for the rest of France and we dined well for the two nights we were there, ending at a spectacular fish restaurant that presented stunning oysters, fresh fillets of fish, and crisp white wine. Always nice to leave a city feeling good about the cuisine. We would certainly go back to Lille, but not in January!Cindy programmed Collette for our daughter-in-law Meagan’s address in Brussels and we were off and running at the crack of noon. Visiting Meagan was the real reason we decided to make this road trip, as opposed to simply flying in and out of Nice. The ride was quite nice with very little traffic for the two hour journey and Collette guided us perfectly to Meagan’s front door where she was waiting patiently for us. After parking the car in her garage, we settled in while she returned to work at the embassy. Her apartment is lovely and so centrally located that she can walk to everything and has no need of a car, ideal in a big city. We planned the visit to coincide with a three-day weekend, giving us time to be with Meagan and share her city.We had a grand three days with Meagan. One day we did the hop on/off bus and visited all the sights, followed by mussels in Brussels at one of the most famous restaurants, Chez Leon. Brussels has a well-deserved reputation for fine dining and it did not let us down. One night we ate at a little bistro in the Sablon, an area filled with bars, cafes and bistros. I had rabbit stewed in fine Belgian beer and it was crazy good. Another evening we went to an authentic Spanish tapas bar - it was Sunday so not much else open - but this was really special and we loved every little dish we tried, not to mention the Spanish wines.One day we went shopping at the markets so that I could get the ingredients to make a cassoulet, one of Meagan’s favorite meals. I had a great time cooking since Colin had outfitted the kitchen well on his last visit and I had all the tools I needed. The cassoulet turned out rather well and I made sure I made enough so that Meagan would be able to eat the rest after we departed. On the last day of our visit it rained cats and dogs the entire day, so I prepared omelettes for lunch and then since Meagan was leaving for the states on Friday, I did what I could to clean out her refrigerator. Dinner that night was therefore rather eclectic: a carrot and celery salad with an orange curry dressing, a green bean salad with peanuts and a sesame oil dressing, followed by two kinds of sausage - one garlic pork, the other veal - both grilled and served with egg noodles, chopped tomato and fresh parsley. It was lots of fun to just stay in all day and talk and cook and drink wine.Meagan was off to work early the next morning and we managed to get on the road by eleven, heading to the Alsace for a refresher course in yet another cuisine that we came to love during a dozen years living in Germany. The Alsace was our go-to area for weekends and we were looking forward to our brief return. More later, Cindy and Wm
