Our latest trip
We have always loved to travel. We were bitten by the travel bug early in our lives, before we even knew each other. Another part of the meeting of souls meant to be together I guess.
My Dad had a plumbing business, so travel the way I came to know it later, didn’t happen. He had to be home running his business when we had summer holidays. So travel was weekends and winter. We took one big vacation one Easter, when I was 13, down to the relatively new Disneyland. And in order to prepare for that trip, to “break in” the new car (a 1959 Monarch, my Dad’s dream car because a water heater would fit in the trunk!) we had weekend trips to Minot, ND. A distance of 659 kilometres on today’s roads. We went so often my then youngest brother called the place Mommynot. For variety, we changed the destination up from time to time and went to Couer d’Alene. A mere 1200 kilometres. One way. Weekend trip.
But we got the car’s engine broken in and left Saskatoon, and headed off on our extended Easter holiday, stopping in Lethbridge, Vancouver and Victoria on our way to Los Angeles. The Trans Canada Highway didn’t open until the year after this trip, so we went through the mountains following the southern route.
Ken had different travel experiences. He was born in Edinburgh and moved to Canada when he was five. Not immediately, but soon after moving, His Dad joined the Canadian Air Force, having served in the RAF as a pilot in WWII. This meant frequent postings to exotic locations such as North Bay, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Moose Jaw, Gimili and some place in the outbacks of Manitoba where their quarters had poor if any heat, and no running water. Boy we look after our armed forces. But it also included a posting to Four Wing (I had been married into this family for YEARS before someone told me what a wing was — another word for base) near Hugelsheim in Germany. So Ken got a taste as a young teenager of the Black Forest, the Swiss Alps, and summer holidays spent driving from Germany to Scotland to visit family. He (and all the air force families at that time) travelled to and from Europe on a cruise liner, so he’s always been accustomed to luxury travel.
So we were both well and truly bitten.
Once we married, we travelled every year. We always went somewhere even when broke, if only to pitch our tent in some free campsite somewhere.
The travel bug is fierce.
Until Covid. We have not travelled further than to another part of Edmonton in nearly two years. I’m not whining…everyone is in the same situation. I’m merely saying that for the first time in our 70+ years of life and 50+ years of marriage, we haven’t travelled. Anywhere
So we’ve become armchair travellers. I’ve always enjoyed planning and researching a trip, so am I surprised to find myself in the throes of planning our next trip? Nope. And boy it’s going to be a dandy. Shall I simply say that we will have to win a multi-million dollar lottery to take this trip. But I am having fun as my fingers do the walking, to quote a very old Yellow Pages ad. Some may not even know what the yellow pages are. Oh well. I’ve dated myself. Again.
Details are still vague, no actual tickets purchased, no accommodations booked, no actual timetable set so no itinerary. But one thing is certain. Our trip begins and ends on water. We have become quite fond of traveling by ship. What a lovely way to travel, arriving somewhere exciting without jet lag, having been pampered and well-fed for days and days. We prefer the formality of both Cunard and Princess lines. If you don’t like dressing up, take a different ship. We love it, Where else can you go these days in tuxes and gowns? Sparkly jewellery, fancy evening bags, high heels. Love it. Even the non-formal nights are dressed up. Yum. Love it.
So we would depart North America from either New York or someplace in Florida. Of course we don’t want to go to either of these places right now, but pretend you’re watching a fantasy movie….willing suspension of disbelief. Like we’ve done, pretending we can afford this trip.
On board, we take full advantage of the lectures, the water colour painting classes, the fruit carving, the napkin folding courses, and in some cases, Hawaiin dancing classes, the movies, the entertainment. The first time we were on the Queen Mary we enjoyed a James Taylor concert. When we were on a Princess ship in the middle of the Pacific, they (the ubiquitous ”they”) turned off all the ship’s lights (except the ones they were legally required to leave on) and we had an amazing time looking at the stars with no light pollution. I get goosebumps thinking about it.
And just looking at the water. I’m a prairie girl, so miles and miles of wheat fields can be easily exchanged for miles and miles of water. And instead of looking, searching, peering deeply into forest for signs of bears, deer, elk, moose, we search the waves looking for whales, seals, dolphins, sea gulls. Futile exercise in both cases except as we travel through Jasper where we always spot elk.
So where we begin and where we land depends on which ship we take. We could leave from New York (Broadway, plays) or somewhere in Florida (home of World Golf’s Hall of Fame). And we could find our European adventure beginning in Southampton, or Hamburg, Copenhagen or for that matter, we could be in Barcelona. It doesn’t matter, because we are there and having an amazing time. And time and money (and calories) have no meaning in your imagination.
As I research, I’ve just been cherry picking the places in Europe I would like to visit, with no attention paid to logistics or convenient travel routes or awkward travel plans. So come with me to some of these places.
I have to start in Paris. I love Paris. I had no idea until I got there that it would move into my heart and stay there. It’s loud, busy, crowded, fraught. But OMG I love it. Of course it’s all about the museums and the galleries, but it’s also about walking the streets and just soaking in the architecture and the ambience. And the smells and the amazing food and well, the coffee is pretty special too. It’s filled with adventures, and I know that I’ve only seen just hints of what Paris is.
But what would I do if I could only do or see a couple of things. Well Sainte Chapel is right at the top of my list. I would never have heard of this place except a colleague years ago told me that if he could only see one thing in all of France, it would be this. It’s on the Isle de la Cite, very close to Notre Dame, and is part of the Courts of Justice, so security is tight. But the stained glass. Takes your breath away. Stunning. Breathtaking. Awesome. All words meant in the fullest and largest sense of their definitions.
And I’d go to Musee Cluny. A medieval house just off the Seine on the Left Bank. I’m a weaver and a stitcher and the Cluny was a dream to me. I saw the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries!! A taste of history. Hundreds of years old, six of them, different sizes, each the size of a wall in a tall room, probably eight feet wide and ten feet high….i’m guessing. Each depicting one of our senses. Woven with precious metals and silks. I am still in awe. I suck in my breath with that awe every time I look at the post cards I bought from the museum. Photography is difficult in darkened rooms, flash not allowed, and the last time I tried to disable the flash on my little digital camera I deleted six weeks of vacation photos, so… I bought postcards. But all parts of this museum are interesting. The garden is a medieval garden, divided into plots where they grew what was needed for the kitchen, what they needed for medicines, what they needed to keep the house smelling fresh. Such an amazing museum.
And of course you can’t miss Luxembourg Gardens, the Tulleries, the Musee d’Orsey, the uncountable other museums and galleries housing the Impressionists. The street artists. The needlepoint store — of course I found a needlepoint store in Paris — just off the Quai where the painted needlepoint canvases are original art and unaffordable for normal people like me. The kitchen store is pretty neat too. Dehiullerin (sp?) just a couple of blocks from the Louvre. I found a few things I coveted there. The pan for baking a whole salmon was pretty special, but I’d have had to abandon Ken and give the pan his seat on the plane. It was tempting but….. Well, leave it at much as he loved Paris, Ken wasn’t keen on gving up he seat on the plane home.
The Senses are just glutted in Paris.
So yah, I have to start in Paris.
Barcelona was another city that unexpectedly grabbed my heart. Yes, I’d go back. La Rambla, the colours, the smells, the sea, the Flamboyant architecture, the food, the self-cleaning street bathrooms.. The huge giant-sized drinks with the two-foot straws. The sand sculptures. The extraordinary bathroom at the amazing beach-side restaurant. (I thought i was in the Kasbah) Of course seeing and experiencing all this with dear friends enhances the pleasure. I’d go back. In a heartbeat.
But from here on, I am directed by my taste buds. I could easily eat my way across Europe. And in fact, have come close to doing just that. Of course, given the format of this adventure, and as mentioned earlier if money and time are no object, then food and drink have no calories, so I will eat food with sauces, drink my fancy drinks, eat desserts, and sorbets and I’ll have gelato in every town, village and city we visit. And in Paris, I’ll have a Berthillon sorbet, found on the Ile de France, then walk two blocks and have a gelato from the ice cream parlour that with two swipes of the dishing tool, makes your ice cream cone looks like a rose bud. Calories and diabetes be damned. And magically, I will gain no weight through this culinary adventure.
I’ll eat foie gras in the Dordogne after visiting all the prehistoric caves and river cruising the River Lot. I’ll eat salted caramels and drink apple cider in Normandy and Brittany, Schnitzel and strudel in Alsace, moules and frites in Belgium (we were in one Michelin Starred restaurant in Bruges that offered 17 different ways to have moules.) and I’ll try those oysters in France’s oyster capital, Cancalles.
Of course in Europe, wine is exceptional. Locally produced wines that never make it to the export market are delicious and no meal is complete without it.
Marseilles is famous for its bouillabaisse and aioli.
Local markets, fresh produce, fresh seasfood, artisan breads.
Belgium is famous for its chocolate: well, Belgium is famous for its chocolate, and Bruges has an amazing chocolate museum which operates in partnership or in tandem perhaps with the french fry museum. What more can you ask for….So Bruges is on the list. We’ve been there and we loved it. It’s a beautiful city, filled with canals, quirky stores, delicious food
And speaking of Chocolate, yes, with a capital C. I’ve discovered in my reading that Perugia in Italy, has an 11-day chocolate festival featuring displays, sculptures, and chocolate art sculptures. It’s home to the largest of Nestle’s 11 chocolate factories in Europe. What more can you ask for. Well perhaps another french fry museum.
Well, you can ask for stunning architecture and history.
After i’ve eaten myself silly, that’s exactly what I ask for.
I am in awe of European architecture. I spent years of my career working with people who built things. Big things. Highways, office towers, hundreds of schools and hospitals. I watched the last piece of the bridge crossing the North Saskatchewan River, as part of the building of the Anthony Henday ring road, drop into place like a piece of lego. Engineers and architects have always amazed me. But when I look at the castles and cathedrals in Europe and know that they were built hundreds of years before slide rules, calculators, 3-d building plans and blue prints, bull dozers, cranes and all the other modern conveniences we use to build now, I am left speechless with awe.
I will visit every cathedral and castle Iam given the chance to see. I will marvel at the architecture, and the size and the beauty. And I will be in awe. I think of the wonders of Vauban…I wrote a whole blog about him and his work on behalf of Napoleon, way back during our retirement trip, nearly a decade ago.
I’d have to make a special trip to Perugia thought. I know I mentioned it earlier in reference to chocolate. Well, nearby in a place called Gubbio. Let’s leave it a Umbria. Anyway back in 1444, a farmer plowed up some tablets. Seven of them as it happens. They’re called the Iguvine tablets, and were written in Umbrian at the turn of the 2nd and 1st century BCE. The are the longest and most important documents of any Osco-Umbrian group of languages. The seven bronze tables contain religious inscriptions that memorialize the acts and rites of the Antiedian Bretheren, a group of 12 priests of Jupiter…the full rites and sacred rituals addressed to the highest gods of the local community. The site where they were found was once a temple of Jupiter. The temple has completely disappeared, but the tablets are in the Gubbio civic museum.
Might as well go to Strasbourg. I’ve always wanted to go there. Seems like it was passed back and forth between Germany and France that it doesn’t really know which nationality it is, and has become it’s own culture. I spent my life in communications, so the fact that the world’s first newspaper was printed in Strasbourg back in 1605 is amazing. And as a diabetic I was interested to know that way back in 1889, they discovered the pancreatic link there. And as a communicator I have to go because it was one of the earliest centres of book printing
I’ve been in the neighbourhood a few time, and love the food, wine scenery, and especially the architecture of that part of France. The bright colourful, half-timbered houses are beautiful. We spent time in Alsace and I think I took a photo of every house in every town we visited.
One visit to Tuscany, we stayed in Radicondoli, a hilltop village. At night, in the dark, the tops of all the hills around us twinkled in the darkness of a rural night, and for the first time, I understood the concept of City States my history teachers had tried to impart.
I’ll have to go to Antwerp and at least walk through the diamond district. And I’d have to see the Port House….apparently it is a glass ship on top of an old fire house.
I have to go to Ghent because the first mechanical weaving machine was introduced here hundreds of years ago.
I have to go to Hamburg because it is a city of bridges. I grew up in Saskatoon, known as the City of Bridges. It had, what, five bridges at the time. Hamburg has 2500 bridges, which is more than London, Amsterdam and Venice combined. It has more bridges within the city limits than any other city in the world.
I’ve barely scratched the surface. I have yet to mention the Roman ruins, the neolithic sites, the caves painted and otherwise, and caverns, the vineyards, the art, the people, the breathtaking scenery. And the sea.
I debate daily do i want to revisit favourite places, or explore somewhere new. And i never reach a conclusion. Well, I guess really I do. Both. I want to do both.
I have filled a four subject notebook with reminders about what is interesting about this and that town. Who had the first University, the first printed newspaper, the best seafood, the most interest museums. Where the local markets are. Where the best lace, leather goods, embrloidery…..
And I start another notebook. And yes, to those who know me and have experienced my handwriting. all notes are written with one of my favourite fountain pens. And all, after a day or two, all are unreadable, even to the writer.
It doesn’t matter.
Come…Come along with me as I dream.
