Hotel Palace Bussaco

The rain abated and as we drove through the gates of the  Palace Bussaco Hotel and started up the cobblestone parkway leading up through the forest, we followed a tumbling stream, the rocks and banks around it covered in moss and vines, and beside it exotic, tropical palms and fern trees that looked other-worldly in this setting.  The 250 acres of the palace had been tended since the seventh century by Discalced monks, and the grounds are filled with plants collected from all over the world.  The Palace Hotel was built in 1888 in the romantic Neo-Manueline style we were seeing everywhere in Portugal.  It’s the over-the-top, wedding-cake decor that is wildly romantic:  curlicues and vines, chubby cherubs, plasterwork, huge tile romantic frescoes depicting love tales and battles, stained glass, tapestries, carved wood, stone, concrete, gargoyle rain spouts, a grand staircase carpeted in red, at least twelve feet wide, anything you could possibly dream up to decorate a building had been lavished on the Palace.

Now THIS is a lobby!

We were greeted by a chubby man wearing a uniform with epaulets (I’m a FOOL for a man with epaulets), and were taken in the caged elevator to our enormous corner suite on the second floor. It was MUCH bigger than the entire apartment that had been our base in Paso Robles.  The ceilings were fifteen feet tall with French windows and a little balcony (its railing featuring carved ribbons and regal animals, of course) with a view of the gardens and the forest beyond.  There was enough closet space to serve five people with built-in velvet-lined drawers and mahogany shoe racks.

Himself enjoying hotel life.

The spotless bathroom was at least 200 square feet, with the tall ceilings and pale green fixtures, a tub long enough for Kobe Bryant to lie down, and of course, big fluffy towels and robes. This was my kind of getaway.

Tim had plopped himself in one of the super-comfy velvet chairs while I did my customary fluttery, excessive “oohing and aahing.”   Even though he pretended to be blasé, I know that he was pleased with himself. The room could have used a little face-lift, but I have a fondness for slightly threadbare aristocratic lodgings, and the bed was good.   It’s much more interesting than state-of-the-art number beds and too-hip decor!

My spouse was smiling for another reason:  the Palace Hotel Bussaco is a seriously great bargain, particularly in March!

Wild boar ravioli.

Of course we were starving and when we entered the drop-dead baroque dining room, the center of the elegant room was dominated by a wine-tasting group.  We were seated by another epaulet-encrusted fellow at a romantic bay window table where we could observe the swishing and spitting wine crowd and also view the vast gardens as we perused a menu that would make Julia and Paul Child come to attention.  We were absorbed for quite a while because the choices were dazzling.

Duck!

Everything was delicious, but the highlights were Tim’s wild boar ravioli appetizer and my duck breast with the best potatoes dauphinoise that have ever passed my lips.   His steak over sautéed foie gras (if you recall, Tim discovered his duck fetish in France) was remarkable.

As we devoured our choices, we had time to observe the goings-on at the big table.  These were not folks who had come off a tour bus expecting some crackers and free wine.  These people were serious and we could tell there was business going on.  At least three languages were being used and we even detected an occasional American twang.  People were up and about, discussing, pouring, tasting and, from what we could tell, there was some large-scale dealing going on.

Lucky me!

I had drained my very nice large glass of syrah, and as I put the glass down I glanced up to see several of the wine guys standing near a gorgeous antique server, where an array of  bottles were commanding their attention.  My eyes met those of a big man with curly hair whose personality and enthusiasm I’d noticed during lunch.  He smiled, I smiled.  I raised my empty glass and my eyebrows.  He grabbed a bottle and in seconds was standing over our table.

“I couldn’t stand it.  You were all having too much fun and I know what you’re tasting is probably delicious,”  I apologized.

“Of course you should have some!  We are having a two-day conference introducing wine buyers from all over the world to our regional wines,” he said, pouring a taste.

Next came Filipa Pato, a dark-haired, vibrant young woman I’d noticed as she went around the room pouring wine sips and talking with visitors.  She brought another glass and poured a taste, elbowing her competition out of the way.  “Now, here’s something REALLY worth tasting,” she joked.  And it WAS.  Her wine was full bodied and delicious.  Her label logo said Authentic Wines, without Make-up!  Within five minutes we were surrounded by winemakers vying for my attention, having fun showing their wares to an innocent bystander.  I was a willing accomplice and enjoyed seven varieties of delicious reds and even a nice port.  The man whose eye I had caught first was Dirk Niepoort, who is a key player in recent developments in the region. As well as producing some brilliantly expressive Douro wines himself, he’s been acting as a catalyst by encouraging the leading wine producers to get together and spur each other on to greater things.  We had luckily stumbled into one of his gatherings.  From that day  forward I noticed his label in the window of every wine shop I passed in Portugal!

We  spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the gardens, waterfalls, paths and woods on the estate.  The sun cooperated at exactly the right moment, so we were able to enjoy the excesses of Portuguese architecture and horticulture with the perfect light.

The next day, after a sumptuous breakfast  we drove up further to Aviero, a beautiful beach town that has big ideas like Trieste and created a series of canals, dominated by the Central Canal, which runs through the middle of it.   Tourists were lined up, in spite of the chilly wind, to be paddled around in motor-boat driven gondolas,ungainly compared with the Venetian ones they sought to imitate.  But the visitors were having fun, which is what counts.  We passed on the boat ride, but found a nice lunch, which is our big priority.  Portuguese food tends to be heavy on the fish and a little light on the flavor, but I’m happy to report that I my new best friend Dirk’s wine was on the restaurant’s list.  After a  couple of glasses of his lovely Redoma, the bland flavor of my lunch didn’t bother me at all.

Not Venice!

The bar at Palace Hotel Bussaco

When we retuned to our palace digs, we stopped in the grand hotel bar, with its heroic-sized paintings, overstuffed, comfortable furniture and high ceilings trimmed lavishly with layers of gilded crown molding.  Tim said, “I have something to confess,”

Oh Lordy, no wife wants to hear anything like that, not ever.  Thoughts like another woman, he wants to buy a Porsche, he really DOES think I’m fat, or we’ve gone broke, tend  to wander through a person’s brain at a time like that. “Yeeesssss..”  I answered, trying to be casual.

“I’m looking forward to going ‘home,’ as in our ‘home’ in Caparica,” he said.

I laughed inappropriately and he said, “What’s so funny,”

“Nothing,” I recovered myself.

“What I’m saying is that I’ve begun to think of the places where we are staying as if they are really home.  I mean I’ll be happy to get back to our bed, our kitchen, our life in Caparica…like going home after a weekend away.  I think that’s interesting, don’t you?”

I agreed.  It does seem as if we have become so adept at adapting that we embrace whatever lifestyle we are living at the time and feel so comfortable that it actually feels like home to us.  I made a mental note to share that with our friends who followed our adventures.

Tim at “home” in Costa da Caparica, Portugal

The next day when we arrived in Caparica, unlocked our gate, pulled in our luggage, and began to check emails, see what was in the refrigerator for dinner, and go about our lives, it truly did feel strangely like our own place in the world.

Any place seems like home as long as we are together.

I had a life that was going to last forever, and all the time in the world to see what there was to discover.  What a joy!  Maybe I’d get lost, maybe not, but I was free to make all the choices.  I was at liberty, and I NEVER felt foolish.

What happened?  As I became an adult, I outgrew the bike, lost that feeling of joyous abandon, and did the right thing.  I think you all can remember a sense of pride at being the adult.  It’s what one did because of what one had been taught over and over in school, in church, and in the workplace, until one finally got it implanted firmly in one’s consciousness.  It took me longer to adapt than most of my peers, but eventually I was a model citizen: jobs, houses, marriages, kids, step-kids, grand kids, and a giant pile of stuff.

Fast forward to retirement.  With luck, I saved some money, ended up happily ever after with the love of my life, and settled into a beautiful house on the central coast of California.  We were near two of our daughters and four grandchildren.  We got a dog.  We waited.

In January of 2010 we went on holiday to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  On the back terrace of a wonderful hacienda where we were housesitting, as the sun was setting, my wife Lynne astonished me by stating that she was tired of waiting around our house in California to get seriously old , and that she wanted to travel full time.  Without a moment’s hesitation, I replied that I felt the same but was afraid to tell her so because I thought that she would never agree with me.

Could we just grab our imaginary bikes, take off, and ride until the wheels fell off?  Would the adult we had so diligently constructed allow us to revive the child that faced the world with a pocket full of positive energy?  Could we afford it financially? There had to be a way.  We were stricken with wanderlust and that long lost feeling of facing the future without a net.

We soon discovered that we could afford to travel if we sold the house and lived within the same budget that we adhered to before the sale.  It was arithmetic, not rocket science.  It felt adult to us and to our financial advisor.  That was not the hard part.

In my bike adventure days, I had been unburdened by a lack of ownership.  I had stuff, but I didn’t really think about it much.  Plus, I’d be back for dinner, cooked by my mother with her stuff. Nobody thought I was foolish to go out riding my bike.  I was a kid doing kid things, with plenty of time to become that adult I keep talking about.  This was, as pointed out to us by many, different.

Nonetheless, we set our intention and put the house up for sale.  It sold in one day,and our fate was sealed.  We gave away or sold most of our worldly goods, reminding ourselves over and over that it was just stuff.  Our inner voices and biological clocks became the compass that we would carry with us in our world travels.  As departure day loomed, we could feel the fearless children inside of us coming to life again, and the exhilaration of being in the wind.  Our adult selves were in the passenger seats this time, the kids were in charge.

The Portuguese people are warm, polite and welcoming, so  even cool, blustery, wet March weather couldn’t spoil our  five week stay in Costa de Caparica, a beach town across the Tagus River from Lisbon.

We  arrived in Lisbon after an eighteen-day repositioning cruise from Miami to Venice, which was dusted with snow when we arrived in late February.  It was a long, long trip, with ports of call  in Malaga, Barcelona, and Italy. Sailing through the Strait of Messina and up the Adriatic side of Italy had been exciting,  but we  realized halfway through the cruise that traveling by ship has a different meaning for home free travelers.  We were more interested in transportation than most of the vacationers on board and we used the time to write, rest, and enjoy all the benefits of a first class hotel while moving from one home to another.  It was an altogether different experience from our first crossing in May, when the transatlantic experience and cruising itself were new to us. 

The approach from Lisbon airport gave us a tantalizing peek of  the magnificent 25th of April Suspension Bridge, one of the world’s longest.  Buildings painted in Easter egg colors, topped with red tiled roofs scrambled up the hills and when we rounded the final bend in the highway we saw the rust colored  bridge spanning  the Tagus River, which  spilled into the Atlantic Ocean.  I shouted, “Oh, look, Tim –  it looks like San Francisco meets Istanbul!” As usual, my darling could NOT look or we would have run off the road and taken five hundred Portuguese citizens with us!

Over Lisbon’s rooftops.

Nice work, if you can get it!

The rented beach house was two blocks from the ocean, was protected from the blast of spring winds by dunes and a pine tree forest.  By our standards the house was huge – three bedrooms, two baths, a working fireplace, a spacious front patio, and a HAMMOCK!  Here is this writer, hard at work one warm afternoon.

Our experience in living home free for eighteen months taught us to organize ourselves in a hurry, and within twenty-four hours we were installed completely, unpacked, kitchen stocked, ferry transport arranged and tram tickets purchased.  Practice makes perfect and it certainly helped that almost everyone in Portugal speaks some English.  When we complimented our sweet property manager on her perfect command of our language, she informed us that she and most Portuguese people had learned it from TV and movies!

“Our” beach.

Portugal has  some of the biggest waves in the world and the minute we had secured our gear,  we took the path down to the beach, which stretches for seven miles along the Atlantic.  The huge sets are a surfer’s dream, and romantic, beat-up wooden clapboard buildings house restaurants serving them and us less athletic types among the dunes.

The Kontiki on Sunday afternoon.

Our favorite, which we frequented often, was the Kontiki.  People from Lisbon came from the weekends and we loved the octopus, sardines, cod and other local specialties, washed down with good local Portuguese wine.  The children played on the beach while the grown-ups gossiped and enjoyed the afternoon sun.  There are beanbag lounges strewn across the sand with little tables for drinks and food.

Fishermen on “our’ beach.

Fishermen were out all the time, ready to haul in their dinner, and between those hardy guys, the surfers, and the constant wave action, we found a walk down to the ocean irresistible.

The ferry we used almost every day!

Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in Europe, older than Paris or London by hundreds of years. It is westernmost large city on the continent.  We always love being near the water and traveling into Lisbon on the ferry system made every visit even more exciting for us!

This is Tim NOT driving!

Tim especially loved the ferry rides because for once he could actually look at the scenery without risking our lives!

Portugal, with its rich history, castle, palaces, beaches, and fabulous food was a feast for us in all ways and I’ll be sharing more of its abundant pleasures with you soon!  Until then, ciao!

The Santa Justa elevator, which helps everyone get around in hilly Lisbon.

Today it’s snowing in Paris, there are blizzards in Phoenix, and it’s not very warm here in Lisbon, Portugal, where Tim and I landed over the week end.  We were at sea for eighteen days on a repositioning cruise from Miami to Venice, which had been dusted with SNOW the night before we arrived! It seems a perfect time to catch up and tell you about being in Florence last summer, when it was so hot that we abandoned that exquisite city two weeks early, seeking refuge in France.

As always,  we began our stay in a new city by looking for food.  The day after we arrived, our friend Martha kindly took us to Essalunga, a major supermarket, and as Europeans  do,  she used landmarks to help us remember the route.  “See that clump of cypress at the end of the median,” she said, as she veered to avoid a Vespa carrying an Italian family of four, “ That’s where you go around the circle so you can turn left up that street.  “And look,” she continued, merrily waving one hand at a long terra cotta building with a tile roof, “At the end of this building, when you see that very large pine tree, you’ll turn right.”

Let me tell you that there are probably  five thousand pine trees and six  thousand cypress clumps in every neighborhood of Florence. Also, every building is some shade of terra cotta with a tile roof.  Martha did her best to teach us, but we were poor students, and for a long time, the location of Essalunga remained as mysterious and elusive as Big Foot.  We knew that each time we struck out for a shopping expedition we would get lost at least once, sometimes more.

We managed to find it on our the next day so we could set up our kitchen.   Shopping at Essalunga is a contact sport.  Florentines are always in a hurry and they do not have time for dawdlers!  They are especially impatient in the produce department, where acquiring tomatoes and apples can be a test of skill and determination.  Here’s the drill: a machine in the middle of the area dispenses  plastic gloves and bags.

The shopper puts on a little plastic glove, grabs several plastic bags, and then makes his or her choices.  Squeezing is not allowed.  You must look, make your choices, and plop them in the bag using your gloved hand only.  After choosing the produce, the shopper gets into a haphazard line in front of the weighing station.  Then the purchases are plunked on a scale and the buyer punches the picture button which matches the item on the machine.  If the product’s picture is not featured on a button, one must type in its product number, which is displayed in microscopic letters on the price card in the bin. If you do not remember that number, you must give up your spot in line, go back to the bin, retrieve the number, and start all over.  I usually stuck to buying produce that had a picture because I could never remember the numbers. Our meals a little dull because of my unwillingness to run back and forth in the produce section!

Finally, the machine spits out a sticky label, which is supposed to adhere to the bag, but usually grabs the glove too.  It seemed that there was always some tiny elderly Italian widow in a floral dress breathing on my neck as I made a fool of myself, caught three ways in a sticky loop.  At this point, my mate, who watched the action from  a spot safe for his claustrophobia, would snort with laughter.  It took some time for me to see the humor in it.

Tim managed to pilot us home without making contact with another car or a hapless Vespa driver, and after we’d put away our prized groceries, we beat it upstairs to the pool.  Each day was becoming warmer and we soon discovered that errands or sightseeing not accomplished by 2 p.m. were simply not possible.  We’d managed to be present for Florence’s hottest summer in 200 years.

The sparkling pool was our haven on those hot afternoons.  It was at a  higher elevation than our apartment, and the view was even more spectacular.  We would take drinks, snacks, and our books and computers and while away our afternoon under the trees.   We read and chatted and wrote with cicadas providing the perfect summer sound track, and then we’d dip in the pool now and then to stay cool.  Each day the celebrated Tuscan light would change the hills and the city into a glowing golden work of art.

We found all kinds of ways to beat the heat.  One morning as I sipped my coffee, determined to enjoy the majestic view of Florence, the garden hose next to my feet jerked so violently that I jumped up  and sent my cup flying.  Tim was standing at the far corner of the terrace ready to begin our daily plant watering ritual.  He had yanked the hose to make it long enough to hold over his head and he stood there chuckling and smiling, pleased with this new idea. Water cascaded over his head and  down his entire body.  I giggled and joined him in our private wet t-shirt contest.

We found our way into the city with our trusty GPS.   Veronica speaks in a fluty English accent, but her pronunciation in foreign languages leaves a lot to be desired. Her Turkish was terrible and her French made us laugh, but her Italian was truly abysmal.  Each time she wanted us to turn on Bolognese, the main artery near the villa, she would instruct us to turn left of Veeeeya Boll-og-Knees.  I became adept at interpreting her strange language, and eventually we developed the skill to get around the city with a minimum of shouting and blue language from the frustrated driver.  It’s a very tricky city and Italian drivers are notoriously aggressive, but we noticed early on that they seemed particularly piqued with us. When we mentioned the problem to Martha one afternoon at the pool, she solved the mystery:  ”Oh, it’s just because you have French license plates,” she said.   The blue “F” on our license plate made us a target for every Italian driver, but at least we knew not to take it personally!

I have more of Florence to share with you, plus  a visit to Martha’s castle, Porciano, and  trips to Venice, Verona and Trieste, but right now Tim and I are going out for an exploratory look at Lisbon.  I can’t wait to see how Veronica’s Portuguese sounds!

Tim and I are grateful for the joys that 2012 brought us, and especially for our new friends from all over the world!  The Wall Street Journal article, which was  published in October,  brought over 2600 new subscribers to this blog, and our correspondence with  you has enriched our lives.  You have invited us to stay with you, dine with you, and you’ve offered to show us your cities, and we hope we’ll get a chance to accept your kind offers.  You have generously shared your travel experiences.  Best of all, you have laughed with us and at us as we stumble along, learning about the world as we go.  We’ve enjoyed your company and never feel lonely because you’re with us.

Since we don’t have the luxury of actually sharing a meal with you, we thought we’d share  photos of some  luscious foodie moments we have enjoyed  on the road.  We wish you could have been with us and we hope that you’ll continue to share our travels in 2013.

Bon appétit!

Haute Tex-Mex in London

Lamb!

More Lamb.

Oysters Every Way!

Fancy ship fare.

Shipboard Surf and Turf

OHhhhhh Oso Buco

Food Everywhere!

This was in Istanbul. Eggplant and smoky peppers.

Turkey. Glorious food!

Would you believe beets? Paris.

Home cookin’ in Paris.

At D’Orsay Museum, Paris.

La Coupole, Paris. Happy Anniversary.

Bananas. Paris.

Salmon.

My Favorite Cheese Man in Paris.

And the cheese he sold us one day.

Hot Bread. Paris.

Tin to Table – Cassoulet Fast Food.

No comment. Too good to talk about.

Vezely, France. Escargot.

Fussy French Food.

Over the TOP! France, of course.

Gorgeous.

Luscious – you know where.

Octopus. Italy!

I think this woman was drinking wine. This was our kitchen in Florence.

Tim and our friend Dyon making a burger Florence style. Where is the Weber when you really need it?

Italian yumminess.

Goat cheese wrapped with sweet peppers. Italy.

Italy. Check the fries.

Fish and chips fancy Italian style.

Italian meat. Who’s the ham?

Ham, ham, ham and melon. Italian addiction.

French aspic with seafood. La Charité sue Loire.

Créme fraiche with sweet wonderfulness on top. France.

Dessert, anyone?

Paella at the Eden Project, Cornwall, England.

Irish breakfast.

Hearty English food.

Yummies in London.

Taco eating lesson in a London restaurant. The owners were from Mexico City. it was spectacular food!

Guinness in Dublin.

Fried cheese and guacamole. Yes, it’s London!

Fish and chips, Irish style.

The Irish love potatoes!

The Irish also know everything about oysters.

Aboard Ship – more gym time required.

Tim has discovered the joys of paté

Foamy scallops in Dublin.

Hearty Irish Sausage.

Trout right out of the loch.

Moroccan stew.

This pot cooked all day in the steam at the hammam (Moroccan bath) next door. Beef with lemons. Fabulous!

Marrakech Market.

This lady ran a street restaurant under a tent in the main square of Marrakech. I thought she was  beautiful and she graciously allowed me to take her picture.

This is what her restuarant was serving. It was divine!

Here we are doing what we do best, waiting for dinner to be served.  In Istanbul.
Happy New Year everyone!

This is why, whenever possible we try to schedule a short road trip between places where we will stay for a month or two.  This time our companion Veronica, the unflappable GPS maven led us from Paris to Vezeley, France, and like all tourists, we explored the countryside nearby.  Semur-en-Auxios, one of those drop-dead walled French towns on a gorgeous river turned what we thought would be a five minute stop into a two hour revel in 13th century beauty.

The French countryside floored us again.  There were endless fields of sunflowers below mountain tops, small fields outlined with ancient trees, spectacular cloud formations, and those gorgeous cattle, all the delights the impressionists showed us on their canvasses.

Then came the Alps.  We made several stop-and-gawk pauses and were gasping at their majesty while we dug around looking for jackets.  Of course it rained a LOT in the mountains and there seemed to be 10,000 tunnels, not the best thing for claustrophobic Tim.  The French, whom we view as orderly people, have installed blue lights in the tunnels at regular distances from one another.  The idea is that if you stay a blue light length away from the car ahead, a horrible accident can be circumvented. This is a really good idea when the tunnel is several miles long. The Italians do not hold with such strict rules, so there’s a lot of terrifying tail gaiting going on in their tunnels.  Some are in such a hurry that they actually pass in a tunnel.  I closed my eyes a lot. We were soon to discover that Italians drive just as they speak – too fast and too close. We were really happy when our spry little Peugot delivered us safely through the mountains to Santa Margherita  a lovely beach town near Portofino, with not an Alp in sight!

We adored our room, with the sea sparkling below our comfortable balcony and a little town  glittering on the other side of the bay.  The buzz of Vespas zooming up and down the coast road provided background music.

Next morning we discovered that Portofino is where the truly wealthy hang out in that part of Italy.  There had to be a billion dollars worth of boats snuggled in that little harbor.  The beautiful people must have been  ensconced in their magnificent manses that day because the only people we saw were hundreds of other tourists who were as jealous as we were!

Veronica purred us down the coast to Livorno, whichis an industrial town offering only one surprisingly elegant hotel.  The NH Grand Palazzo  is wonderfully restored and our huge room had every amenity a vacationer could require.  The star of the show was the glass infinity pool on the roof.  Hanging onto the thick glass edge of a pool while gazing out at the Mediterranean Sea was a sensation we aren’t likely to forget.  We dined on the terrace with the forever sea view and blazing sunset and I instantly acquired a passion for octopus salad. I ordered it at every opportunity from then on.  Tim averted his eyes every single time it was served.

The next day, we faced what would be the first of hundreds of encounters with Florence’s hysterical traffic.  In retrospect, I have no idea how we managed to reach our new home that day.  Located on one of Florence’s storied hillsides, the villa can only be reached by navigating a hairpin turn so sharp that Tim only managed to make it in one go twice in the entire time we were there.  The other hundred or so times, he would have to stop, back up, and try from another angle, while keeping a sharp eye for vehicles and scooters which were coming from both directions.  After completing that feat and before making the next blind turn,  he had to hit the horn to prevent someone from carooming down the impossibly narrow street, killing everyone involved.  Italian’s, like the Irish, drive as if they  have a strong conviction about the existence of an afterlife

We were met by barking dogs, our host and hostess, the gardener, the maid and a neighbor who was passing by.  Everyone helped us drag our suitcases up a steep hill to our gate.  The villa sprawls over many acres and has four separate entrance gates facing the street.

The apartment was HUGE by our standards, and every room offered views of vineyards, other villas, gorgeous churches or the beautiful pool which belongs to the property.  Francesco, our host, gave us a tour of the apartment; he saved the terrace for last. We caught our breath as we saw red tiled roofs stepping down the hill, punctuaed by olive and Italian cypress trees.  We could see most of Florence with its centerpiece, the unparalleled Duomo gleaming in the afternoon sun.

That evening Martha and Francesco, our friends and landlords, entertained us on their terrace at a dinner party of twelve friends.  We felt as if we had landed in a Sunset Magazine photo spread – you know the kind, with lots of glamorous people surrounding a colorfully laid table with candlelight, great food and many bottles of good wine abundantly displayed.  Stories in several languages and laughter (which sounds just the same in Italian, French or Croation), carried through the hillsides.

If we were going back to our real life living, this was going to be a fantastic way to do it!

We picked up a little Peugot (Tim’s favorite rental car of all time) and headed south through  Paris traffic.  No one spoke except Veronica,  the GPS goddess who purrs directions in her elegant British accent wherever we go.  She’s unflappable, even when she’s wrong, which is rare but sometimes disastrous.

Finally we reached the countryside and conversation resumed.  Wild flowers meandered through the fields,  graceful church spires rose from shingled hamlets, and ancient trees shaded the roads.  Even the cattle were gorgeous.  Our crush on all things French intensified with every kilometer.

Veronica led us to Vezeley,  an ancient village famous for its tenth century abbey.  The hotel looked perfect with gorgeous carpets, antique furniture, paintings and lots of shiny brass,  but when the pretty girl behind the desk cheerfully announced that our room was on the fourth floor and added that the hotel did not possess an elevator, we were not happy.  It was hot, the stairs were steep,  and we had too much luggage to drag to the attic.  Negotiating for another room didn’t work.  We were stuck.

We humiliated ourselves in the parking lot as we reorganized  toiletries and undies into manageable small bags. Other tourists amused themselves watching the Clampett family spectacle.  Panting,  we dragged our odd assortment of luggage into the lobby.  The scowling young man who lurked behind the desk did not offer to help. Apparently the girl was the receptionist cum porter and she grabbed two bags and trotted up the stairs, encouraging us to follow her.  At the top we were breathless, she was still perky.  We hated her.

When we had recovered ourselves in our cabbage-rose-laden boudoir and discovered that the bed was comfortable and the air conditioned worked perfectly our attitude improved immeasurably.

A stroll through the village, a drink at a sidewalk bistro and a tour of the magnificent abbey, where nuns’  and priests’ voices floated celestially to the vaulted ceiling, finally won us over.  We returned to the hotel with renewed hopes for a lovely stay.

Not so fast.  We presented ourselves at the appointed hour in the dining room and we were greeted by the scowling chap from the front desk.  Presently another young man, whom we had seen parking cars earlier, appeared with menus.  We noticed a person at the far end of the room bussing tables.  She was the maid we had seen earlier in the hallway with a cleaning cart.

A Fawlty Tower theme was emerging and continued as we waited much too long for a menu and even longer for the drinks and first courses to appear. The guy from the lobby peeked around the door regularly to see if we had bolted yet.   When my escargot with puff pastry and a nice little sauce and Tim’s  sublime fois gras appeared we forgave them everything and began to enjoy ourselves.

Much, much later the waiter appeared bearing two gorgeous-looking steaks (remember the pretty cattle?), which was encouraging, except that I had ordered chicken.  When we pointed this out, his eyes widened in terror, he fled with both plates and we did not see him again for at least a half hour.  By this time I had enjoyed so much good French wine that I didn’t care any more.

That was fortunate, since the chef had clearly left the building and our main courses tasted as if it had been prepared by someone who missed a lot of the classes at culinary school.  Our good attitude disintegrated once more, but when the desert arrived we were cheering the home team again.  They were gorgeous and delicious. It was all so strange that we fully expected John Cleese to silly walk through the door and smack the waiter/manager/front-desk clerk/chef/electrician.

The bill was finally sorted out (it was all wrong, of course) and we groped our way back to our fourth floor garret.  Once again we were surprised – in a good way – with comfortable beds, plenty of hot water and a quiet night’s rest.  Not wanting to break the spell, we dragged our hobo luggage to the Peugot and let Veronica purr us away to Italy.