France Feb 10-14 Finale

 

France Feb. 10-14 finale

Monday morning we awoke to a calm and brilliant sunny day. While Cindy went off on her run, I was charged with finding a boulangerie to get some breakfast goodies. My mission was successful and I returned to the room with two warm croissants and a raisin custard pastry, both of which were delicious, especially with the espressos I was able to make in the room. On my walk I had a chance to really see what this area is like. The road we are on is one long straight one with storefronts on either side that cater to the needs of cars, buses, and trucks. There are car/truck washes, dealerships, places to replace glass in windshields, and to repaint cars - and one large lot where the public buses sleep at night! Tucked here and there are strange little snack shacks, small restaurants open for lunch only, and one huge marina that has to contain at least 150 large sailing and motor yachts. 

By the time we were ready to leave for town the weather had turned against us and it was cold and cloudy with the threat of rain ever present, but that did not deter us for a moment. This city is divided into three neighborhoods all separated by water, ours (Jonquières) being the largest. To the west of us across the canal is L'Ile, a small island that looks and feels just like Venice. There are picture perfect little canals, small plazas with fountains and restaurants, and very few cars. It really is a beautiful and tranquil park-like setting. Crossing the next canal is the neighborhood of Ferrières. This seems to be where lots of the North Africans settled and you can see the influences in the restaurants, halal meat markets and cafes. After our explorations we retraced our steps and headed back to our own ‘village’ for lunch. We found a small bistro that was open that had a chalkboard outside with the daily specials. There are very few cafes, restaurants or shops open on Mondays so we were happy to find this one. There is no such thing as a small lunch in this town! I ordered a salad lyonnaise, one of my favorites and usually served in a small bowl with one poached egg. Here it was served on a large plate with two poached eggs and enough greens and bacon to feed three! Cindy ordered the special of the day, duck bourguignon with pasta, again enough for two hearty diners. All of it was delicious and the house wines were inexpensive and lovely foils to the lunches. 

The fun and games ended last night after a surprisingly good dinner in the hotel rooftop restaurant.  We tend to ignore hotel restaurants unless the weather is too foul for walking, but we have done a lot of walking and most of the decent restaurants are closed on Monday nights. The room itself is far from romantic, but we assume the views in daylight are swell. It had lots of (too much) light, and tables for two and one were spread over the large room,, reminding us that this is a business hotel. We were seated near an old music box of some sort playing the finest American Jazz you can imagine. Seems the manager is a big fan and therefore he calls the shots.  We started with two icy glasses of very good Champagne and shared a small but good vegetable tart. Cindy chose the tuna tataki which was not only visually stunning but tasted so fresh and filled with a variety of flavors. There was even a little scoop of delicious wasabi ice cream, a first for us. I had the lamb chops which were cooked to perfection and surrounded by little cuts of very fresh sautéed vegetables. We were shocked at how good everything was and the service and bottle of local Rosé made it a memorable meal.

But as I said, the fun ended last night! Cindy woke up at about one am and spent the next three hours in and out of the bathroom. Something she ate, most likely at lunch since I only tasted hers and I was okay until about six when I had a very, very minor incident compared to poor Cindy. We are recovering today but things are all in slow motion. We have already had a morning nap and will have another nap at three. Soon we will walk over to the music conservatory where Cindy went yesterday to see if they wanted her violin, they do, so we shall deliver that and use it as an excuse to get out of the room.  We’ll pack tonight and we have a car ordered for 8:15 tomorrow morning when we shall begin our twenty-two hour journey home. It gives us that much more time to celebrate Valentine’s Day with one another! It was a good trip, perhaps too long, but great fun in new places and worth the effort.  Happy Hearts Day, Cindy and Wm

Lisbon Feb 5-10

 Feb 10 2024

Our return to Lisbon was easy except for the 0630 wake up which was required for the early morning flight.  PDL is an easy airport, surprisingly busy for early morning until you realize that there are fourteen flights between 7 am and 9 am, most to other islands of the Azores and three to mainland Portugal. Check-in and security were a breeze and we settled in for a coffee and a Pastel de Nata for our one-hour wait. The gates are all a matter of walking to the plane - not jet bridges - reminding us of early days in Germany and Washington State, all very civil and well organized.  The flight lasted two hours and we landed on time and were at the apartment/hotel we booked by 13:30. Surprisingly our apartment was ready which was a thrill. Not so thrilling was the fact that it was on the third floor (US 4th floor) when we had been promised one on the first floor. They have no elevator!!  We settled in, went for a walk, had a quick light lunch and a lovely nap before meeting our friends for a pre-dinner walk around Lisbon.

We have never stayed in this part of Lisbon before and therefore we really don’t know much about restaurants so we decided to just amble down the pedestrian street that is lined with restaurants in order to read menus. Impossible!! Each restaurant has a shill outside who approaches you with a picture menu asking do you want to sit inside or outside, or special price for you, or come sit for a drink and read our menu. Impossible to look at any menu without being assaulted so we decided not to eat on this street. We finally found a place where no one came out trying to lure the farm boys in and ate a very decent meal there. Since then we have found other places that have magnificent food, wines and service so we are happy campers.

The weather was nice on Wednesday and since our friends had never been to Lisbon, we climbed onto the Hop On/ Hop Off bus for a tour with headphones. We have found these buses to be an invaluable aid to understanding a city and its history and culture. We have always been happy with the ‘guided’ tours and so we were a tad dismayed at how this one played out. It started well and we had great seats and the narration was very good; it filled in lots of blanks that we had and we have been here often. The trouble started when the bus came to the stop for the Museum of Coaches. We got up and the bus lurched forward and started on to the next stop. Cindy went down the narrow stairs and berated the driver for not stopping. He said if you wanted to stop you should have pressed the Stop button. NO such button existed where we sat. We did notice them on the next several busses but not on ours. We got off at the next stop and walked back to the Museum which, as the link shows, remarkable.

After our visit to the museum we walked out to the bus stop and one bus had just departed so we had been told that the next one would be in twenty five minutes. We poked around a bit in the gardens and after about fifteen minutes we noticed that another bus had come and gone; it seems they do not stop there! As we walked to the next stop we passed one of the famous bakeries that make the Pastel da Nata so I popped in to buy two of them for our friends to try. I am now officially an enabler! These things are habit forming and they are the first things we buy as soon as we arrive in Portugal(while still in the airport before retrieving our luggage).   We finally got on the bus for the fifteen minute ride to the Tower of Belem where we spent a most enjoyable time walking along the river and enjoying the day. On the ride back to our starting point there was almost no narration despite passing lovely monuments, castles and gardens. We will not use this bus company again, preferring to stick with the Big Red Bus.

Yesterday we visited the National Tile Museum. It was pouring rain so we were pleased to take an Uber to this museum and spend two dry hours just wandering around, most interesting.  Cindy had the great idea to go to another museum and for once I agreed. This one was the Museum of Beer!  I’ve never enjoyed a museum more than this one, although to be perfectly clear, we failed to go to the Museum part, instead favoring the food and beverage part for two hours. Other than the beer, which was great, they feature Pastel do Bacalhau a national dish that is well made and presented here.  Walked home in a pouring rain storm and settled in for a long nap.

Portugese food is lovely, but after a certain time cod, potatoes and pumpkin just don’t cut it. We found a lovely restaurant that had the best eggplant dish ever as well as special twists on seafood that gave us a welcome diversion from traditional foods.  The next night we decided on Italian and found an Italian restaurant in Portugal run by Napalese!  How is that for international? Magnificent food, service, and wines - and ever so inexpensive. A lovely way to end our time in Portugal.  Now it is on to France for a four day fix of foie gras, Kirs and Champagne.

France Feb 10-14 Part One

 France Feb. 10-14 2024

Things did not get off to a good start on this leg of the trip. Our flight was late in departing Lisbon thus landing in the dark at Marseille. We dashed off the plane only to find out that we had to clear customs and immigration!!  This shouldn’t happen on flights within the EU but there is a provision that allows it if there is a perceived threat. Thus we stood in lines with passengers that had just arrived from Casablanca, Tunis, Rabat and Cairo. Tediously long waits. Finally out with luggage and a connection to WiFi so I could get an Uber. Told it would be fifteen minutes so we waited and after twelve minutes got a message that no Ubers were available that night. Stepped outside into a driving rain looking for a taxi. Found the taxi stand at the end of the building and when Cindy told them where we were going they told us to get in the taxi at the end of the line. Turns out that cabbie lives in Martigues and for him it was a great end-of-day fare. 

When Cindy told him our hotel he was shocked since it is in an industrial area far from the center of town. We had both researched this and this was by far the best hotel in Martigues, and on the website it said it was .7 km from downtown. It was not!  The fare for the trip was 97 Euros, outlandish for a thirty minute trip but there are fees: on weekends, from the airport, in the rain, if it is dark and so on. True to the cabbie's word, the hotel is in the industrial zone and is about two kilometers from downtown. They have a restaurant but it is closed on weekends! So far, not the best start of a visit. 

We unpacked in our lovely suite (it really is lovely) with a separate bedroom and big windows that overlook the tire store and truck wash.  By now it was eight and the rain had stopped so we walked the two klicks and found a few nice restaurants in a lovely little pedestrian area. We tried to get into one that seemed to have free tables but we were assured they were all reserved, it being Saturday night. We finally found a place above a dive bar which was just charming and filled with young diners. They specialize in Fondues and Raclettes , which every table seemed to be having. We opted for lighter fare and had a nice welcome to France dinner with some good wines. The walk home was cold and long but we made it safe and sound and slept well. 

This morning was bright and clear - I swear the visibility was more than twenty miles - and we discovered how truly lovely this little town really is. While I realize that everything looks better in sunshine, this place glistens with all the canals, etangs and whitewashed buildings. We dashed off to the Sunday market, always a high point in our French experiences, and this one did not disappoint. There were the usual stands of clothes, bags, bras and socks - which we ignored - and instead devoted our attention to the many food stalls. Depending upon the region of France, the food stalls have very different flavors, literally! Here there was a combination of Spanish, Northern African and local foods, and especially attractive were the hot items:  couscous of infinite varieties, some with fish and others with lamb and beef, huge caldrons of paellas, again with fish or meat, and local mixes of strange looking but marvelous smelling combinations of grains, pastas and potatoes. There were some ‘exotic’ food stalls with Vietnamese and Chinese cuisines, but in the end I purchased my breakfast of one saucisse de Toulouse and a piece of rotisserie chicken. 

We wandered around town and every outdoor cafe was packed with families and friends enjoying the sunshine while sipping on coffee, pastis or wine, all at ten in the morning, god love them. We did a little shopping at the local Spar grocery store and then looked about for a good Sunday lunch. Once again Cindy’s keen eye spotted a little (eight table) restaurant and we were shown to a two-top on the window. As we enjoyed our Champagne and garlic/olive tapenade we could not overlook the very loud but joyous conversations of a multigenerational table of seven adults and three kids, celebrating the birthday of a two-year-old who was cute and LOUD!  The restaurant is run by a charming couple and the food and wine were absolutely divine, a very lovely way to spend a Sunday in France.

Sunday night was cold and windy and we elected to stay in our room and have a French picnic with some of the things we had purchased during our walks. The lovely ladies at reception where only too happy to supply us with real wine glasses, a large plastic bag of ice, and for me a cold bottle of local beer. We had cold chicken, potato chips, local cheese and bread and wine.  For dessert we had some cookies with dark chocolate and chilled glasses of Jameson whiskey. A feast made even more special by the nasty weather outside that we were avoiding.

Scenes from Martigues, the Venice of Provence. 

  

 

Ponta Delgada, Final Chapter

 February 4, 2024

I’ve been in need of a haircut and knew I wanted to get it done here in Ponta Delgada. Tried two places that were recommended by drivers and both were closed, despite it being during their posted open hours. Slightly disturbed, I started up the hill and remembered seeing a little door that suggested a barber shop. I found it and entered. An older man was getting his hair cut by an older woman whose name was Dora, or so the framed news articles hanging on the wall indicated. I determined that it had been started by her husband many years ago (whose picture was above the mirror), and she continued the business when he died some ten years ago. There was one barber chair, lots of museum pieces of barber equipment, and total silence. I greeted Dora and her customer and she replied with her head indicating that I should take a seat and wait, which is exactly what I did. Finally the man departed, again without a word, and I took the chair.  I’m not a tall man - in fact according to my medical records I’m getting shorter - however I still towered over Dora, all 4’10” of her. The chair was as low as it could go and she still had to do a lot of reaching to get to the top of my scalp. After establishing the fact that she only spoke Portuguese the haircut began in total silence except for the rhythmic click, click, click of the scissors.

It was close to a Zen experience. The silence was delightful and the movement of her hands was sheer poetry. At the end she dusted me, dry shaved the back of my neck, blew the cut hairs away and with a flourish, took off my apron with the same elan that a bull fighter expresses to the bull!  This was a job well done and the price was a mere ten euros ($11). I gave her a tip of three euros which provoked a magnificent smile. I then gave her a See’s lollipop using the Portuguese word for it, Chupa Chupa, and was rewarded with another smile and multiple Obrigadas.  I walked home with a spring in my step, knowing that I had a great haircut as well as having had a lovely experience. Cindy approved of my cut and the next day we were walking past Dora’s shop and she was standing in the doorway and gave me another smile as I introduced Cindy. Cindy said all the right words, of course, and Dora wanted to make sure she was happy with what she had done to my scalp! As close as we’ll come to making a friend on this island!

The sun has remained a delightful companion for all of the past four days. Yesterday we were invited to join our friends who had rented a car and journey to the far Northeast of the island, about an hour's drive. Our destination was the little village of Nordeste, a picturesque, quaint place that deserved all of the thirty minutes we gave it. The 15th century church was closed as was the tourist bureau, however the public toilets were open and we did enjoy the break. Along the way we passed two tea plantations, one of which has been in the same family for six generations. Ponta Delgada is the only place in Europe that grows and sells tea. The tea itself is quite mild, a type of green tea without much flavor. (Lipton has nothing to worry about.) The island is so very green and at times reminded all of us of Ireland and New Zealand, especially the wild north coast with its deep valleys and tall cliffs.

The food in restaurants has been hit and miss, with mostly misses. The other night we returned to one, which we seldom do but this is the only one we have noticed with real linen napkins and tablecloths and where we had had a lovely lunch. Dinner was, to be charitable, a disappointment. First of all - and this has happened on this island before - the menu posted outside the restaurant is only a suggestion of things that they have served in the past, not necessarily anything you’ll be able to order that night. Outside the menu offered two types of tuna and two types of octopus. Inside, no tuna at all and only an octopus stew, which Cindy ordered while I chose the salmon knowing full well they don’t raise or catch salmon anywhere near these verdant islands. We chose poorly!  Cindy’s meal was a mess of black fluid studded with roasted potatoes and various bits and bobs of chopped octopus. My salmon looked lovely and was prepared well but lacked texture and flavor. The sides were three types of potatoes and a mound of cold rice and some sort of broccoli that had been steamed just long enough to remove most of the color and flavor so it resembled a tan mystery vegetable. On the plus side, they had a marvelous lemon curd cake, which we ate with gusto since we didn’t eat much dinner, and their house wines are two euros for a very, very generous pour.

The next night our friends had invited us to meet them at Michel, a restaurant that they found very close to their hotel. None of us knew about it or what to expect but my goodness if you are going to end a two week visit to Ponta Delgada, there is absolutely no way to end it better!  The food, ambience, wines and service were what you might expect in a very good French restaurant. Everything was delightful and we are so happy to have had the experience. Always best to leave on a high note!

Tomorrow we catch the morning flight to Lisbon where we’ll spend five days before heading to Marseilles for four days and then home on Valentine's Day. A long trip for sure but so far we are still happy and healthy.  Ciao for now, Cindy and William

Ponta Delgada, Part Five

 February 3, 2024

And on the ninth day we arose and there was sun in a cloudless blue sky and all was right with the world!

Truly remarkable what sunshine can do to improve your attitude and to make a dark and damp city look like a jewel. The place was already jumping with folks at 8 am, some sitting in cafes which we didn’t know existed until they placed tables and chairs outside. Others were walking to work with smiles, something we have not seen during our visit. The walking area around the marina was really busy with lots of people queuing up to get on whale watching boats. We saw five boats heading out of the harbor in calm seas and no wind for their three hour excursion. We sat down at our usual cafe and since we have been going there for a week, they knew our order and brought it to us immediately; so nice to be regulars!

We decided to take advantage of the day and booked another car for a trip to Lagoa do Fogo. Our first driver was busy so he sent another and it was wonderful since Carlos was fluent in English and we learned so much more about this island. Our timing was darn near perfect, great weather to see the black beaches of the North, the surfing areas, the picture perfect little villages and more churches that I could count. We headed up the mountain, second highest on the island at 3,000 feet, towards Fog Lake. Along the way we saw lots of vents still sending steam into the air from the volcano beneath us. The island gets 45% of its electricity by harnessing the energy of these steam vents to drive turbines which generate the electricity. We reached the lookout point and lo and behold we could actually see the lake, which was quite impressive. It is the only caldron lake fed by natural springs on the island; all the others rely on rain, which as you know is quite reliable here. By the time he took us to another higher vantage point the fog was rolling in and in just five minutes it went from perfect visibility to no visibility. Like I said, timing is everything!

That night we met a friend and his partner for dinner. We met him first eight years ago on a cruise and we have stayed in touch with him mainly via Cindy who corresponded in French, his first language, and Cindy is always trying to improve her skills. Quite by happenstance he was scheduled to stop here during a four-month round the world adventure so we arranged to get together at a restaurant we enjoy. When we first met I introduced him to a Sidecar Cocktail, which he enjoyed immensely and many times over the past eight years we have sent pictures of one or the other of us enjoying the drink and the memories. We arrived at the restaurant early to see if the bartender knew how to make the drink. He said he did and we reviewed the preparation and told him to serve two of them as soon as our guests arrived, which he did, much to the surprise and delight of our friend. 

FUN FACTS:

The Archipelago of the Azores gets its name from a mistaken identity! The Portuguese sailors who landed here thought they saw many Azor birds, however they were really Kites.

On almost every island I’ve visited, gasoline is really, really expensive. However in the Azores gas is subsidized by the government so it is actually cheaper than in Lisbon.

The government still subsidizes families with children. Therefore there is a small town that used to make its money fishing but when that couldn’t pay the bills, they had kids, lots of them. The average sized family in that town is twelve!

Cars cost about the same here as on the mainland due to the much lower tax structure for residents of the Azores.

Any Azorian can fly to any of the other islands for only 60 Euros round trip. Again another subsidy that came into play when the intra ferry system stopped.