TravelStream™ news feed for member everardt on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/everardt en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:48:39 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1230121980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1230121980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1230121980/tpod.html Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:48:39 -0400 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Arras, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of Galicia, the north-west tip of Spain. It is another of these many areas in Europe that have their own language, distinct from the national language, and from what I heard, it sounds fairly similar to Portuguese, which is no surprise.Most people will have heard of Santiago de Compostela because it is the end-point of the famous "El Camino" (known in English as the Way of St James), the most popular pilgrimage route in Europe. Santiago de Compostela is considered the third most holy town within Roman Catholicism (after Jerusalem and Rome).My first night I wander the streets, as is my wont, and go into what looks like a delicatessen, but it continues on past the counter into a tiny bar, about 1.5 metres wide and 5 metres long. As usual it's packed but I find a tiny spot in front of the bar and order a mixed plate of cheeses and cured meats and work my way through their selection of wines. A jolly Austrian man starts talking to me, and is mildly disappointed when I don't turn out to be a local (he said I looked like a regular - I guess that means swarthy, unshaven, olive complexion :), but is very surprised and intrigued that I am an Australian roaming the world (aimlessly). He introduces me to his colleagues, who are a group of European art gallery owners, and a Czech artist with his girlfriend. The gallery owners have come here to support the artist, Jiří Kovanda, who has an exhibition called Pink Carpet at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which I see the next day. This is a very jovial group and we work our way through a number of bottles of wine and finish with a nightcap of the Spanish equivalent of grappa).The next morning, after my breakfast of hot chocolate and churros I visit the Mercado de Abasto, the local market. It's only a week to Christmas and it's interesting to see what's available - pig seems very popular, all the different parts including whole pig's head, conical smoked cheeses, and a fantastic variety of fish and shellfish. I am delighted to see Percebes (stalked barnacle) - I once saw a TV program many years ago about men in some part of Spain who collected this funny looking shellfish off the rocks with waves breaking over them, and it intrigued me - as soon as I see the Percebes I know it's them. They are made up of a flexible trunk (about 1-2cm long and the thickness of a little finger), which attaches to the rock, with a claw on the end. I make up my mind to eat some while I'm in the area.I take a day trip to the west coast to Fisterra (Spanish Finisterre "end of the earth") and try and find Percebes on a restaurant menu, but no luck so I lunch at O Tearrón restaurant - razor clams (navajas), Lubina (bass) gallego style, with roasted red peppers and pepper infused oil; dessert of soft fresh cheese topped with a layer of chocolate, and an espresso (good for Spain), and Amaretto di Saronno (my first in several years). Fisterra is a beautiful, remote and lightly inhabited peninsula that is one of the westernmost points of land in Spain (Cabo da Roca in Portugal, which I visited the previous week is the most western piece of land in Continental Europe).As I walk to the lighthouse for a view I pass a sign that says 0.00 kms, ie the endpoint of the Camino. Just past the lighthouse I saw a man burning clothes on the cliff so asked him what that was about – he explained the actual end of the pilgrimage was here in Fisterra and the tradition was to burn your old clothes as symbol of starting anew. He had walked 1,300 kms from Lourdes to Santiago, and on to Fisterra (extra 4 days) in 45 days. He told me he felt renewed.Apparently this promontory was a Celtic place of sun worship and a Christian saint, San Guillermo also lived here in a small hermitage - nearby, sterile couples would copulate on one specific stone to try to conceive, following a Celtic rite of fertility. Unfortunately, as far as I could make out there were no sterile women for me to try it out with so I had to miss out on that experience.Another thing that piqued my curiosity was the statue of a St Jacob's Pilgrim, almost identical to one I had seen in Speyer in the German Palatinate district (about 2,000 kms away) in November - apparently this pilgrim-path (one of many) extends more than three thousand kms from St Jabik in northern Holland.At the risk of boring you with my new-found erudition on the subject ... when in Speyer I learned from my friend Orazio that Speyer was on one of the old historical routes for the Camino (known in German as Jakobsweg). At the time I didn't put 2 +2 together, ie St Jakob=St James=Santiago. It's actually pretty straightforward - how it became James/Jacob is that it started as Yaakov in Hebrew, which became Iacovos in Greek, Iacobus in Latin, Jakob in German, Jacques in French, and Iago in Galician, therefore Sant (Saint) Iago. Just to complete the picture Latin Iacobus became Giacobo in Italian, which sprouted a variant Giacomo (Jaime in Spanish), which ended up being James in English.  Besides all that St James/Jacob/Iago is the patron saint of Spain and his symbol is the scallop/cockle shell, explaining why they are called Coquilles St Jacques in French.There are various stories about St James, including one that after Jesus’ death, he walked until he came to Fisterra (ie as far as he could go without falling off the edge of the world), to spread the gospel. In the end his bones were believed to have been miraculously brought back to Galicia and in the eleventh century the cathedral was built over his grave in Santiago de la Compostela. Ok, enough with the erudition and back to Percebes - that night I went to a number of restaurants to try and find them, without any luck until I eventually found Casa Camilo, where I had Caldo Gallego (similar to Caldo Verde in Portugal), boiled Percebes, an empanada (pastry like Sicilian schiacciata) of bacalao and sultanas – only place outside Italy I’ve eaten a dish of fish with dried fruit; tarta de Santiago (a dry crumbly almond tart) – a lady at the next table called the waiter over (a small kindly man with a bow tie) and suggested he pour a liqueur over it, which he did. The Percebes were served simply boiled and you gently pull off the claw (making sure you don't squirt water all over yourself) and eat the meat inside - it's not a delicacy like prawn or crab but satifying nonetheless.   From Santiago I drove towards the northern coast heading for the seaside town of Cedeira, where I had lunch at Restaurante Brisa comprising Pimentos Asados (roasted peppers) and vieras ó Albariño (scallops cooked in Albariño white wine), accompanied naturally enough with a couple of glasses of Albariño.The coastline north of here (almost the northernmost point in Spain) is spectacular and has the highest sea cliffs in Europe (at least according to the Spanish although Iceland and Portugal also claim this) - the highest point on the road was 628 metres.Along the way I stopped at the Sanctuary of San Andrés (Saint Andrew) de Teixido, a beautiful little church, gorgeously sited overlooking the Atlantic. There is a saying in Spanish:A San Andrés de Teixido  vai de morto o que non vai de vivo. (Anyone who does not visit San Andrés de Teixido when he is alive must visit after he is dead).The story goes that St Andrew was depressed because pilgrims flocked from all over the world to the shrine of his fellow apostle at Santiago de Compostela, as if he were a less faithful disciple and less caring about the well-being of mankind. Jesus promised him that no one would enter heaven unless they had visited his shrine at least once, alive or dead - in case you don't make it before you die, a member of your family can do it for you after your death. I hope you appreciate I'm doing my good deed for the day in giving you this information, after all I wouldn't want you to miss out, seeing as I've been :).So, on to Asturias ...I first heard about Asturias when a group by that name played at the Port Fairy Folk Festival many years ago – their music was wild and full of energy and excitement, so I filed it away in my memory as some place I should visit one day – and here I am. I get to the capital of the province, Oviedo, in the mountains, but it’s already dark and raining, and it’s too busy, so I head back to the coast and try Gijon, which I also find  too busy, and decide to stay at the next quiet small town I come across. This happens to be Villaviciosa (town of vice?)– by this time I’m fed up with driving, the dark, the rain, etc and I go to the first hostal and they want 45 euros for a room which I don’t think is worth it, and I walk a little bit further and I end up finding a very cheap room (15 euros) above a small dark bar, which looks a den of vice.  I’m hungry by now (and looking for a bit of vice :) so I go wandering the streets and find a sidreria (ciderhouse) – it's packed to the rafters, nowhere to sit but I manage to shoulder my way to the the bar and take my position. The place is wonderfully atmospheric - the bare floors are sodden, as are the waiters and there's a strong smell of fermenting cider in the air. I look around - the only sort of drink I can see is large green bottles of cider so I order one. The barman brings it over, removes the cork, holds it at arm's length over his head and aims it at a long narrow glass which he holds below his groin, filling it roughly to around a quarter to a third full, then puts the bottle in front of me with the cork on top. I take a couple of sips, then go to top up my glass but he comes straight over and takes the bottle out of my hand - I have committed a faux pas - the custom here is to skoll the drink - the barmen are watching all the time as to who needs a refill, and do it for you, in their inimatable style. I order some bar food - revuelto de caviar de oricios (scrambled caviar of some vegetable?) and pastel de cabracho (slab of pate of fish?), and work my way through 2 bottles of the house cider brewed on site, while watching the human spectacle. The waiters are all sodden and thin - even though they are expert at pouring the cider more than a metre into a glass they can't help splashing some on to the floor, some sprays back over their clothes, and even their hair, so by the end of the night their hair is wet and bedraggled from the cider shampoo. They are thin from the constant running to fill the patron's glasses.    I am woken in the morning about 10am (slightly hungover) by Pavarotti singing “O Come all ye Faithful” (in Italian) at high volume, coming from a speaker suspended on the wall in the alley outside about 3 metres from my ear – it's the first time I’ve heard a Christmas carol since arriving in Europe - then I heard “Silent Night” sung in Spanish. So after this enjoyable interlude in a small "town of vice" I drive along the Cantabrian coast to big, modern, funky Bilbao. I don't have much time here so quickly go to the Guggenheim museum. Although the outside is made up of flowing shapes and forms the inside is fairly conventional, with large airy exhibition spaces. The current exhibitions are: Richard Serra – The Matter of Time, huge rusted sheets of steel in spiral and other formations; and Cy Twombly, a US artist who worked from 1950s to 1990s (still alive, much of his work done in Rome). Dinner – grilled slices of foie gras with grilled slices of eggplant, hongos (type of mushroom) on bed of chickpea puree; bacalao with leek sauce, crispy fried spinach and almond flakes; Basque dessert.It's the 22nd Dec and it's a countdown now to Christmas eve when I'm expected to be in London, and I'm still more than 1,500 kms away so I leave Bilbao in thick fog and drive to Donostia - it's a very hilly and windy road and clouds fill the valleys, but after Donostia it became warm and sunny all the way to Lourdes, about 250 kms away.Similar to Fatima there are very few people about as I walk around Lourdes. I get a map of the Sanctuary, walk past a series of modern white marble sculptures depicting the Stations of the Cross, cross the river and come across a sign for baths in Holy Water. I am attracted to this but when I go in to investigate I see that it's a more complicated procedure than I thought (there are priests asking what I want to heal and you are expected to recite prayers, etc) and as I don't have much time I have to skip it but manage to visit the Grotto where St Bernadette saw the apparitions of Mary, and the two basilicas, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception above, and the Basilica of the Rosary built into the rock below it.I leave Lourdes in the sunny early afternoon, and drive north to Cahors where there is an incredibly thick dark fog. Police were breath-testing everyone at the entrance to the town (fortunately I hadn’t drunk anything ... yet) and the nice policeman gives me a free breath test kit, which he told me to put in the glovebox, and wishes me a happy Christmas.Less than 100 metres up the road I stop at a big wine store, partake of their wine tasting, and buy a couple of bottles of the heavy, high-alcohol “black wine” made locally (you would think the breath-test would have been set up near the wine shop, but I guess the police thought that would have negatively affected the shop's business). Apparently this is the most popular area in France for English people to buy property and I pick up a copy of the local English-language magazine for the ex-pats.I push on to Gourdon, right in the centre of the area where geese and ducks are fattened up for foie gras. I arrive late at night and do a couple of circuits of the town trying to find accomodation and an open restaurant. Finally I eat at the Boulevard – panfried foie gras and served with 3 types of caramelized onion & a glass of a sweet white wine; maigret de canard (duck breast) – outside crusted but centre rare, with sauce of fruits rouge (much too sweet), with a glass of Bergerac red (very good); a plate of 3 cheeses; and a digestive with a name that sounded like Bourianou, made of apple & walnuts, which also was very good.The next morning was freezing – frost everywhere until nearly midday. I buy a whole de-veined foie gras (600 grams) and the lady puts it in a foil bag and says it will keep for a 8-10 hours. I won’t get to London until the next evening, and I'm worried about it going off, so I drive for a few hours without any heating, my body shivering and my fingers numb. Besides farms full of ducks and goose being fattened up for foie gras this area is full of grottoes and caverns that have seen human activity for over 35,000 years. The most famous are the cave paintings of Lascaux but this has been closed since the early 1960s to prevent their further deterioration from the body heat and breath of visitors.So I go to the Grotte de Font-de-Gaume nearby - it was first used by Stone Age people about 25,000 BC when bison, reindeer and mammoths roamed around here. You can only go with a guide and a maximum of 200 people a day are allowed in. At this time of year it looks for a little while that I will have a personally escorted tour but a family of 4 arrives and we enter the cave through a narrow opening above a wooded valley, then move through a narrow twisting passage until the guide shines her torch on a bison. It is a stunning artistic accomplishment - imagine trying to paint in a narrow pitch-dark cave, with rough irregular walls and primitive stone-age lighting, painting tools and materials. The artist has used the shape of the walls to give a 3D effect, for example on the shoulders and haunches of the animals. We go deeper into the cave and there are paintings of a horse, more bison, and a reindeer.I then go to the La Madeleine troglodyte village, a prehistoric village, where the inhabitants modified the caves in the cliffs above the Vézère River to provide defence, sleeping quarters, workshops, storage, and an assembly area. It was part of a chain of villages built along the river which traded with each other. In medieval times the area was re-inhabited and a church was built there. I would have loved to stay in this area a few days as there is so much to see but had to move on.I am very worried about my fresh foie gras so at the next town I stop at a bar and manage to explain that I need some ice to preserve it until I get to London tomorrow, otherwise it will go off, and the barman, appalled at the thought of spoiled foie gras scoops ice into a plastic bag for me, with which I fill the foil bag. I drive the rest of the day without stopping, except for petrol (about 700kms), and arrive that evening in Arras in northern France – site of a major battle in WW2 and also the name of one of the best Australian sparkling wines (from Tasmania) – I’m not sure of the link between the two.The next day is the 24th December and there's a Christmas market in the Place des Héros, so I buy a dozen fat oysters, 3 cheeses, a baguette, and a fresh black truffle, put them in the boot (packed in ice that the nice oysterman gave me) and drive to Calais, from where I cross the channel to England.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1182698940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1182698940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1182698940/tpod.html Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:44:07 -0400 01 South America and Sicily - February to June 2007

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Panarea, Italy

I have a free week before I need to get ready to leave and fly to London. My friend Denise, who is a born and bred Venetian, and who I met in Australia when she lived there for 5 years, rings and we try and work out where we can meet. I suggest she comes to Sicily, then I say why don't we go to the Eolian Islands, so on a hot Saturday afternoon, here I am at Catania airport picking her up. It's weird seeing somebody you know only from one context in a completely different one, eg my father at BA airport, and so it is again here in Sicily. It's unusual that I'm here and even more unusual that she's here and that we're going off for a holiday together. I drop her off at her B&B on Ortigia (the little island of old Siracusa) then give her a trip around the island on my Aprilia, both helmetless and with the cool wind through our hair. The next day we tour the Duomo and the main piazza in Ortigia, the main Archaelogical site and the Archaelogical Museum (which is fantastic) and have a very nice cena (dinner) with my cousin Letizia and Angelo in Ortigia again. We are generally using my Aprilia, because it's so handy getting around the narrow streets and is so easy to park (basically anywhere). The problem is we are both without helmets and I don't know why, but there seem to be police everywhere. I am nervous as if they stop us they will find out my registration papers are held by the Floridia police, so I will be booked for that as well as not wearing a helmet (I can't bear the thought of all the hassle). The problem in Sicily is that the law is so randomly applied - most of the time the police don't seem to care if you don't wear a helmet (I have ridden past many), but occasionally one does - you just never know when this might happen - most people take their chance and don't worry about it. We also go to Noto, where that very day the Italian Prime Minister has reopened the Noto cathedral, which has been undergoing renovations since the dome collapsed 15 years ago. So finally we head off for the Eolian Islands, going northwards along the coast to Milazzo, an ugly industrial town, which is the jumping off point for ferries and hydrofoils to the islands. We are headed for Panarea, the smallest of the islands, which was recommended by my cousins. We are picked up at the port by Luca in a little electric vehicle and he drives us through the little laneways to the B&B which he runs with his mother. The little town (280 inhabitants) is swarming with these electric cars as they are the most practical vehicle to get around in - the lanes in general are just wide enough to let 2 of these vehicles pass side by side. Luca's B&B looks almost brand new (or at least the renovations are recently finished) and is very lovely - I haven't stayed in accomodation as nice as this for a long time, but, hey this is a holiday (and I might not have this opportunity again, as I keep rationalising all the time). We have a self-contained 2 bedroom apartment with kitchen, bathroom, terrace, outdoor eating area above, and an outdoor shower, which I make liberal use of. Luca is a man of many talents - he paints, does woodwork, lays bricks and stones, and sometimes works on the wharves on Stromboli, besides running the B&B. The next 3 days are spent in visiting 3 islands, so will describe each individually as they are very different from each other. Panarea Panarea is the smallest and most exclusive of the islands and is the favourite of the jet set (I'm so thrilled - I've never mingled with, or even seen the jet set but alas I don't see any or if I do I don't recognise them, although there are quite a few luxury motor cruisers around - sometimes I really am so shallow). We decide to do a circumnavigation of Panarea, exploring and stopping wherever we want, so we hire a boat and set off. Panarea has a number of craggy islets offshore from the port so we set off to explore these. As Denise is from a watery city (Venice), and her father was a sailor, she decides that she will do the driving and I am only too happy to be chaffeured around - I'm actually supposed to watch out for reefs and water depth but I sit up the front and just day dream and enjoy the view most of the time (don't tell Denise otherwise I'll be in trouble). There's actually lots to view as I think today must be International Women's Topless Day. There are lots of other boats out on the water - luxury motor cruisers, yachts, speedboats, and people like us who have hired a small wooden boat with an outboard and a canopy. Most of the women are bare breasted and are very insouciant about it. In a show of solidarity with them I take off my shirt :) In a couple of boats the women are sunning themselves completely naked, and Denise very nicely draws my attention to these (in Italian - oh, Everard if you're interested, there's a nude woman over there). The day is very hot (hard to say exact temperature but definitely over 40 degrees), and we motor around for a bit, go in for a swim, lie out on the deck to dry off, and repeat this pattern pretty well all day. We have fruit for lunch then lie on the deck in the shade under the tarpaulin and doze off. The heat is ferocious and just lying there sweat trickles off my body - I'm in a heat daze, the boat is rocking gently, I have no energy at all, it's a strange and not unpleasant feeling and I stay this way for a couple of hours I think (my sense of time is completely gone too). The great thing is that I just have to dive off the boat to break the spell, and the sensation of the water is wonderful on my body and my mind wakes up too. Unfortunately, in the afternoon there are a few jellyfish in the sea and I get a couple of minor stings. At one stage I'm on the boat and hear these screams coming from the water and rush over to see if a shark or something has got Denise, and there she is thrashing about and screaming for all she's worth - a jellyfish has attached itself to her breast (can't remember which one) and she's trying to push it off and getting stung on the hands too. Fortunately the stings aren't too bad and by evening we're both ok (the lady in the next apartment isn't so fortunate - a couple of days later she's also stung on the breast and her hands have swollen up with the stings when she tried to brush the jellyfish off - they must like women's breasts because I don't hear of any men being stung on the chest). We continue on the rest of the day until early evening when, having seen lots of sea urchins under water earlier, we motor back around to the 'formiche' (ants - a set of rocks which just peep up above the sea) and I do the he-man, hunter-gatherer thing and dive in to get some as we would like to make pasta with sea urchin sauce for dinner tonight in our apartment (eating out every night is expensive). Unfortunately the tide is running and the water has turned choppy and I only have Denise's swimming pool goggles, a cheap fake Swiss Army knife (my real one was confiscated at an airport), and a plastic bag to do the job. It's very hard trying to get a footing on the rocks below so I can peer down to see where they are, then dive under to prise one off a rock, then as it starts sinking in the water I have to catch it with the same hand that has the knife in it (trying not to stab myself), as the other is holding the plastic bag - all this while being moved about by the waves and being bashed on to rocks. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that the spines on sea-urchins are very sharp and it's very hard to grab one under these conditions and try not to get the spines under your nails. Anyhow, I finally got my first one and was so proud I stood up and had to show Denise what a fantastic hunter I was, even though it took me about 10 minutes to get just one. I get the hang of it pretty quickly and collect another 9 (and didn't lose any out of the plastic bag, and didn't stab myself, even though I got a few puncture marks in my fingers). We buy a bottle of wine and look forward to getting back to our apartment and preparing our meal. So, the water for the pasta is heating, the wine is cold, the oil and garlic are melding nicely, and I'm unsuccessfully trying to open the first sea urchin with my cheap blunt fake Swiss Army knife, while my fingers are getting punctured while trying to hold it still. I eventually work out a method (cut the bottom out), but the problem is these are all males and have virtually nothing in them (how stupid I am - I didn't even realise that the sea urchin sauce I've eaten in the past is made from the eggs of the females). I try and find out later how you recognise the females and I'm told that they have a slightly paler purplish colour but there won't be any around because those cunning fishermen from Bari (on the Adriatic) come over and steal them from the local waters. So we have pasta al aglio è olio (garlic and oil), with the merest hint of sea urchin sauce. Stromboli Next day we're off to Stromboli, which is basically an active volcanic cone rising sheer out of the water. The last eruption was in February this year and lava flowed down to the sea on the other side of the island. We have a quick look around the town (a film was shot here by Roberto Rossellini, starring Ingrid Bergman, in 1949), then see a sign for Frank International offering a boat tour around the island. There are lots of other companies offering the same but we like the sound of this company - it has a certain resonance about it. So off we go with Frank - 2 young Italian couples, a young German couple studying for a year at Catania University, a mother and daughter from I can't make out where, and us. Frank speaks English pretty well and to me he sounds like an Italian who has lived in Australia speaks English, so I ask him and he says he lived in Australia between the ages of 6 and 15, then his parents returned to Stromboli (this is not unusual - quite a lot of Italians returned after a few years in Australia as it just didn't suit them. Same thing happened in the US - both my grandfathers lived there in the early 1900's, but some of their brothers and sisters remained). Frank is a great guide and first takes us to Ginestra (a tiny village of 25 people only accessible by sea), where I climb the steep path and wander around the paths in the incredibly heavy heat. I have a granita before I go back down to the boat as my engine is overheating - granitas are the best thing to have in hot weather - think of a bowl of cold, slushy, flavoured ice sitting in your tummy and cooling you from the inside - much better than a drink or icecream. We then continue circumnavigating the island, passing by the Sciara del Fuoco, the main area where lava flows when there's an eruption, and you can clearly see the most recent lava. Stromboli obligingly emits a cloud of smoke as we pass by - Frank must have a deal with one of the gods up there (or else prays to a saint). We pass by a few picturesque spots and go for swims, with Frank keeping an eye out for jellyfish, then he takes us out to Strombolicchio. The tour lasts about 3 hours and we get back a bit after 5pm. I have been harbouring a desire to climb Stromboli, the volcano, so Denise goes back to Panarea and I set off up the mountain. The last hydrofoil leaves at 6.40pm so I have less than an hour and a half to climb a 924 metre volcano that rises sheer out of the sea. I change from thongs into my 10 year old Tevas (open sandals) and set a blistering pace up the mountain in 40 plus degree heat. You will recall my last adventure climbing a volcano (Mt Etna), when I nearly froze. Well I'm wearing nearly the same attire (shorts and short-sleeve shirt) but you could not imagine a more different experience. The late afternoon sun is focusing it's intense heat directly on me (or at least it feels like that), and heat is radiating from the mountain, and within minutes I am just pouring salty sweat from my body (tastes nice). This is a 'lightweight' expedition so I'm only carrying my camera and a half-full litre bottle of water in my hand. The going is steep and hard but I soon pass the 400 metre sign and a little while later I emerge from the low trees and shrub into the lava zone. It's the same thing as before - every step you take (good name for a song) you slide back, there is nothing solid anywhere, and all you can do is grit your teeth and push on, expending 3-4 times as much energy as before. I don't have any way of telling the time (except look at the sun) and I need to get back by 6.40pm otherwise I'll have to stay the night here (I don't have enough money for a hotel) so at a certain point I make an executive decision, have a break for 5 minutes and drink the rest of the water, take a few photos and turn back. I estimate I'm at around 600-650 metres. On the way back there is a fork in the path - one way (the main way), is the way I came - so I take the other (yes, I know I'm an idiot). Whereas the main path zig-zags down the mountain, this one goes virtually straight down, and is so steep I virtually am forced to run down - this is not easy as the path is very narrow, overgrown with plants (which whip my bare, sweating, suntanned torso - ok girls, get a hold of yourselves), and the surface underfoot is very uneven and made up of lots of little volcanic stones, and as you know I'm wearing sandals and the stones get trapped under my feet and hurt like buggery as I pound down the mountain. This definitely feels like purgatory and I know it will stop, but I don't know when or where, but being a stoic :) I keep going (not without a tiny bit of cursing and swearing) and eventually reach the main path and walk back into the town. I am a sight to behold - I am sweating heavily all over and my legs are completely covered with black lava dust which has stuck to my wet legs, my shorts are covered with the same dust, my torso has slight cuts from thorns and dustings of yellow from flowers (virtually the whole mountain is covered with yellow flowers). I run into the shipping office to see if I'm in time and it's 6.32, so I buy a ticket and rush to the wharf as I am. As luck would have it the hydrofoil is late so I have time to go down to the beach and clean myself up a bit. I arrive back in Panarea and Denise is relieved to see me - she had called my mobile but I didn't have it with me. That night I eat like a horse at our regular restaurant - da Paolino (little Paul). Paolino is a large man with a very impressive paunch (always a good sign in a cook), who lived in Australia for 5 years (he asks me to give my regards to East Bentleigh) and likes to come out later in the evening and sit and chat with the guests. By the second night we have been promoted to the best table in the house - the corner one on the terrace with a beautiful view over one of the little islands off the coast and Stromboli. I just love this view, especially one night when you can just see the faintest outline of Stromboli in the night sky (Picture 72). Paolino offers us his delicious homemade limoncello every night, and also his mint liqueur (homemade from his own mint leaves and Denise likes it even more than the limoncello). Salina Next day I decide to go to Salina and Denise decides to stay on Panarea and relax. Salina is the 2nd largest of the islands and the greenest, and has 5 or 6 villages and about 25kms of road. I get started very late and it's almost noon by the time I get there. I hire a little 50cc motor scooter and go off for a little ride around. Salina is famous for it's sweet wine, Malvasia, and vines are growing in all sorts of inaccessible little places. I want to go on a boat tour of the island at 2.30pm but lose track of time and realise I've only got 8 minutes to ride 9 kms on a very windy road. I ring the company and ask them to hold the boat and roar (actually my scooter sounds more like a mosquito) along the road back to the port. About 1km from the port the engine dies and I think I've run out of petrol - I coast along for a bit down hill then have to push, and arrive at the port red-faced (not from embarassment, but effort). The boat has waited for me so we set off for another lovely cruise - 3rd one in 3 days. It really is the best thing - seeing an island from the sea. Salina has it's own beauty spots and at one stage we float in the crater of an old volcano near where scenes from the film Il Postino (the postman) were shot. I get back to the port and have an hour to kill before the last hydrofoil back so I stop at a bar and have their special granita (carrot, lemon, orange, and mint), and a cold glass of Malvasia served with biscuits which you dunk in the wine. The hour goes past very easily.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1181555940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1181555940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/everards-trip/1181555940/tpod.html Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:17:29 -0400 01 South America and Sicily - February to June 2007

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Cefalù, Sicily, Italy

Ciao tutti This is the last leg of this trip and involves following the coast from Selinunte around the western tip of Sicily, along the northern coast to a bit past Cefalù, then cutting inland behind Etna back to Floridia. I left my bunker in Selinunte in light rain, and spent a couple of hours wandering around the Greek ruins. Selinunte was a major Greek metropolis and port from the mid-500BC time to around 200BC when it was virtually razed to the ground by the Carthaginians and most of the population had to flee. Many of them travelled around 250kms and occupied the cave tombs at Panatalica, near Floridia, which I will visit soon. My first stop is Mazara del Vallo, a major fishing centre. It is full of little alleys and I find myself going round and round in circles a few times, often arriving in the same place, but by a different route. I'm hungering for a good fish meal, so I ask some men at the port and they tell me to go to 'Il Pesciolino' (the little fish). I scoot down there in the rain and the waiter wonders who this is squelching through the door in sopping wet clothes and a bright orange backpack and speaks to me in English but relaxes when I respond in Sicilian and it's after 3pm but he checks with the kitchen and they can fix me up something. I have pasta con ricci (sea urchin sauce), and a mixed grill of seafood and a half litre jug of white wine. After lunch the rain intensifies substantially and I wonder what to do. Here I am warm, nearly dried out, and mellow with the wine and a full stomach. I can see it's not going to stop raining and I can't stay in the restaurant all day, so with a good meal and half a litre of wine under my belt I head off for Marsala. At the best of times my scooter slides around a bit and I 've got to be careful. The rain is now absolutely bucketing down and the streets have 15-30cms (6-12 inches) of water and it's coming over the footboards of my Aprilia. I am wearing a Goretex jacket, which sort of keeps my upper half dry, but the rain funnels down the front of it directly on to my crotch - it's a very funny feeling having a cold wet crotch, but not unneccesarily unpleasant once you get used to it (ok, now you're finding out about my kinky side). Cars coming in the oposite direction are showering me with their spray from head to foot every few seconds - in short I seem to be riding through a universe of water coming at me from all directions, above, below and the sides. My jeans are heavy and cold as only wet jeans can be. I am enjoying myseld immensely - I am cackling with laughter every time a car sprays me. I feel like singing but it's not practical to open my mouth otherwise it will be flooded with dirty water. I reach the outskirts of town finally and there's less traffic and water on the road and I can speed up a bit. Just to give you an image of me at that time I want you to use your imagination - I am riding along a windy seafront road in heavy rain, the Aprilia slipping and occasionally aquaplaning along, I am completely sodden, I can barely see out of my visor (no windscreen wipers, you know), half a litre of wine is coursing through my veins, my mouth is firmly shut but I'm humming songs and the words are running like SBS subtitles through my mind (for non-Australians SBS is the puclic TV channel that screens foreign films). I ride on like this for about 15 minutes, then as I come to Marsala I ride out of the storm. I park my bike outside the city walls and walk up the main pedestrian thoroughfare - Marsala is a bit like a Sicilian Tidy Town - all very neat and clean. A number of the Enoteca's (wine shops) have tables with bottles of Marsala outside and you can just pour yourself some and taste it. I go into one that offers degustation, and an attractive young lady behind the bar divines my wishes, sits me down and proceeds to take me through a comprehensive tasting of Marsala wines (5 dry, aged up to 22 years, and 3 semi-sweet), accompanying them with little titbits she hands over the bar (with one of them she gives me an almond biscuit and she says dunk it in the Marsala - heaven) - after the fifth Marsala I'd like to be lying down on a sofa like a Roman noble with her putting a glass of wine to my lips and popping the titbits into my mouth (ok, I better stop fantasising and get a grip on myself, the wine has gone straight to my head). I tell her I'll buy a bottle of Marsala but she says I can't let you go without trying the Zibibbo, and weak man that I am I stay a little longer and try it - very delicious and I get a bottle. So I totter back to the Aprilia and ride to Trapani - much of the coast has stone walls containing salt pans. I reach Trapani, the capital of the province (70,000 population), and find a lovely B&B with a restaurant attched. Although I've had a substantial breakfast and lunch, plus assorted titbits at the wine tasting, and I'm not really hungry, I psych myself up to eating dinner as I want to eat couscous, for which Trapani is famous - they even have a couscous cooking competition every year. The couscous obviously is a remnant from Arab times but I don't know why it's only cooked in Trapani and nearby, but nowhere else in Sicily. However the Sicilian influence is felt as it is made with with seafood - it's a lovely golden colour and is served with 2 fillets of fish draped over, and a bowl of reddish fish stock in a bowl on the side, which you spoon over the couscous to your taste. At the end I'm full as a goog, but there's a great selection of cakes on the sideboard and I can't resist - I have cassata (which traditionally is a cake, not an icecream) and a sponge drenched in wine (Malvasia, I think), and accept the waiter's recommendation of a glass of Malvasia to go with it. During my meal I've heard an Australian accent at the far end of a table near me - there are 8 people and the ones down my end are speaking Sicilian. The face of the man speaking with the Oz accent is somehow familiar to me and I think he's a well-known bussinessman, Paul Rizzo (has sat on a number of boards - Telstra, IBM, etc) - I read an article about him in The Age (Melbourne's main newspaper) last year, in which they said how he had done well in business, coming from a poor family who had emigrated from Sicily, all the while remaining a very decent human being. I overcome my natural shyness again and walk over and interrupt their conversation and ask if they're Australians, and yes, they're all from Melbourne (except the 2 locals), and it is Paul Rizzo, and several of them even live in the suburb of Kew, where I used to live. They are surprised and delighted to talk to me and pepper me with questions about what I'm doing here. Paul was born in Ragusa and migrated at an early age like me and I tell him I've just spent a week there visiting my aunt and cousins, and there we go again with the 6 degrees of separation. I muse about this later and consider the similar experiences we must have had in our early years and the slightly different outcome - he's wealthy, well-connected, influential, probably lives in Toorak, BMW or Mercedes, etc and I'm unemployed, no house, and bumming around the world :) - I have a feeling I'm having a lot more fun. I retire to my room and sleep for 9 1/2 hours. Directly behind Trapani is Monte Erice (ancient Eryx) so next day I leave sunny Taranto and head up Mt Erice, of which the top third is in cloud. I've flown in to cloud but never ridden into it - at first little wisps of it then as I get higher the visibility drops to 50, 40, 30, 20 then finally less than 10 metres. I am riding up a steep, narrow road full of hairpin bends, the ground is wet from condensation, and cars coming from the opposite direction emerge from the cloud almost on top of me. It's a beautiful sensation - it feels like I'm in a little 10 metre moving cocoon of cold moist air. I get to the little town of Erice, which I presume is somewhere near the top of the mountain, and it's an eery feeling wandering through the misty alleys - you can actually see wisps of cloud moving through buildings. The cloud lifts a little after a couple of hours and I have lunch at a cosy looking restaurant - busiate (a local handmade pasta coiled like a thin rope and about 15cms long) with eggplant sauce, then as a change from fish I have a long coiled grilled sausage with eggplant caponata (sweet and sour). I have noticed bars with very nice pasticcerie so I walk into one after lunch and see cassatine (crescent-shaped deep fried pastry filled with ricotta) and the friendly lady tells me they have freshly-made cannoli which she will fill to order - I can't make up my mind and have both (the cannolo is gigantic - about 22cm long) and I have a ricotta overload, so I have a coffee and a glass of Zibibbo to help my digestion and to warm me up and fortify me for the ride down the mountain (as you can see I can rationalise anything :) It works and I ride down the mountain and continue along the coastline, which has one massive promontory after another. Early in the evening I reach the tiny village of Scopello, on the edge of a Natural Reserve, and I ride into the cutest, littlest piazza you could imagine so decide to stay there at a B&B high above the village on a steep, rough dirt road - an interesting riding experience at night. I wake up to a beautiful sunny day (first one for a week)- not a cloud in the sky and calm sea. It's a welcome change from nearly a week of wind, rain and cool weather. I put my shorts on as a change from my jeans which can now nearly stand up by themselves, as any good bikies jeans should. I'm looking forward to the thrill up the breeze up the legs of my shorts (there goes my kinky side again). In Scopello I notice a sign for a boat excursion so 45 minutes later 6 of us and our captain Andrea (Andrew) cruise gently along the beautiful coast in a rubber inflatable. The coast is a series of rocky coves, interspersed with pocket handkerchief-sized beaches, green, turquoise and blue sea, and a backdrop of hills covered with native vegetation, and rocky bluffs. We swim, snorkel and sunbathe for over 5 hours, the conversation never flagging (even underwater :) and I get very sunburnt on all my white bits. That night I stay in Palermo at Casa dei Amici (House of friends). As soon as I walk in I hear the unmistakeable Aussie twang and have a chat with Patrick from Perth. My devilish streak comes out so I ask him if he wants to go to dinner, have a shower and change then Patrick hops on the back of the Aprilia and we go off in search of a seafood restaurant, Patrick is a tall, strapping, good-looking young fellow and I've never carried a pillion passenger before on the Aprilia, so I set off with some trepidation - we are both without helmets, Palermo traffic is at it's worst, and I weave in and out of the traffic like everybody else. Patrick is strangely quiet and occasionally I look over my shoulder to see if he's still there. He is so clean-cut and squeaky clean and tall, etc and stands out a mile when we enter the seafood restaurant - I wonder what the waiters make of us - me completely different in every way - very dark suntan, short, grey-haired, but speaking Aussie lingo with him. He asks what's good to eat and I suggest sea urchins but he balks at that and ends up with a mixed seafood pasta, then later I shout him to a ricotta pastry and a digestive liqueur, which he's never had before. I drop him off and go down to a milonga. I have rung Cinzia (Cynthia) who I met at the tango festival in Selinunte, and she meets me there. As we dance to a tango song she breaks out in a full-blooded voice and sings along with it - a truly amazing and disconcerting experience. She is a professional lyric singer and sings all over Italy and also overseas. Next day I visit head off along the coast to Cefalù, where I have lunch, then continue along the old coast road - there is an amazing autostrada high above me on the right most of the way. I have now been riding my Aprilia for a week solid and this afternoon we become one - I have one long Zen moment as I glide effortlessly along the sinuous coastal road at high speed, passing every car in front of me. I just lean one way then the other and can feel the road in the minutest detail beneath me. I reach Castello di Tusa, where a wonderful man, Antonia Presti, has dedicated his life to art, not for his own ego, but to benefit people. The Art Hotel has a number of rooms that have been completely created by artists. There are also a number of sculptures in towns and the countryside commissioned by him, and he has a project going in the Librino slum in Catania to assist the residents to regain their dignity through association with artists in a practical manner. I would love to stay at the Art Hotel tonight but I have to be back in Floridia tonight - I'm still over 150kms away. I turn south up into the Nebrodi mountains and weave my way through them (neverending series of curves and hairpin bends) and eventually get to Bronte (best pistacchios in Sicily) on the western side of Mt Etna, then back down through Catania (stopping for a horsemeat hamburger in the street in a rough part of town (well, I'm a bikie, aren't I?), then get home to Floridia after midnight, after having covered a total of 1,600kms on my Aprilia.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229461380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229461380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229461380/tpod.html Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:53:49 -0400 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Lisbon, Estremadura, Portugal

I arrive in Lisbon at night after the long drive from La Mancha. Somehow I find this funky hostel called the Living Lounge Hostel in front of the main metro station, Baixa-Chiado. This is another of these art hotels where each room is designed by a different artist - mine is stark white with black beds and an inscription in red across the wall "I know not what tomorrow will bring" by Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's greatest poets. There is a nice big kitchen with a great cook, Antonio (from Mauritius) and every night you can sit around the dining room table and for only 8 euros you get soup, main course, dessert, & wine - one night he makes bacalao (dried cod) with rice - one of the best bacalao I have ever tasted. The first night I arrive go to to a milonga - it's very difficult to find but eventually I locate it on the 3rd level of a thumping disco bar. There's only 2 couples there, but fortunately the barmaid is a big friendly Swedish girl who mixes me up a Margarita with passionfruit juice??? (I much prefer the traditional one with lime juice & Cointreau), which loosens up the tongue a bit and I get chatting to people at the bar and stay until 3am (and drink a few more Margaritas). Next day I get up late (I haven't drunk so many Margaritas since Mexico) and wander around Lisbon all day, culminating in the Castelo de Sao Jorge, from where you get a fabulous view over the city. I like Lisbon a lot, and especially the people - they are friendly and more reserved than, say, Italians or Spanish. The written language has many similarities to Spanish but it sounds nothing like it when spoken. Lisbon has a gentler pace than a number of European capitals I've been to and feels a bit like what they may have been like many years ago.By the time I have a drink at a bar, have dinner at the hostel, get showered and changed, and find tonight's milonga it's about 11.45 - 15 minutes before closing. I dance one tanda with an Argentinian woman - we fit like a glove. How long are you staying she asks - only a couple more nights - que pena (what a pity), she says - que pena I say too. Next day I visit Sintra up in the mountains near Lisbon. The whole region is studded with palaces, many of which are exuberant romantic follies, exhibiting a wide collection of colours and architectural styles, usually surrounded with extensive and beautiful gardens. At one of the castles I hear the tune of Greensleeves, sung in Portuguese - it's odd how hearing a song well-known to you in one language sounds so strange when sung in another. To finish off the day I drive to Cabo de Roca, only 18 kms away, and the westernmost point in both Portugal and the European mainland. The wind is bracing, blowing wildly off the Atlantic and I watch a the sun set slowly in the west :). After this very full day you would think I would just go back to the hostel, and have a nice dinner and a relaxing evening, but after dinner Antonio decides we are going to have a big night out. So me and a Belgian woman and some of the staff begin the BNO at the casino. It has 3 levels built around a large internal void with a stage down the bottom. The floors in the casino are large square plastic tiles lit from underneath in changing colours. It's all slick and modern and it's extremely crowded. We get drinks and go to the top level and look down to see Rita Redshoes and her band performing. She has platinum blond hair, a black dress and red stilletos and does mainly covers. After, Antonio takes the Belgian woman and me (the others not being able to handle the pace :)to a popular fado bar. You could not get a greater contrast with the casino - it is small and impossibly crowded but we eventually get to the bar (many people are drinking moscatel with ice so I have one) and I manage to manouvre myself to a position behind one of the guitarists (the other guitarist plays for Mariza, one of the most popular fado singers) and about 1 metre from the singers. It's fascinating being so close and watching the singers' facial expressions and movements - the songs remind me of some of the songs on my Sicilian CDs which I have in the car. Although we have eaten well at dinner back at the hostel, by this time of the night we are peckish so we order a smoked chorizo, which is brought to the table, doused in brandy and set alight - a bit dangerous considering how crowded the bar is. Another 3am night. I have decided to stay an extra day to visit Belém, about 10kms north along the coast from Lisbon, and considered the historical heart and soul of Portugal. Next day is warm and sunny, 17 degrees, and I spend a pleasant morning visiting the tower of Belém and having a coffee and a pastel de Belém (also known as Portuguese egg tart) at a cafe which has been making them since 1837. Nearby is the Monument to the Discoveries - the description is along the lines of: Prince Henry the Navigator, gazing toward the ever compelling horizon. Fittingly, he holds a small ship in his hands. Behind him are King Manuel and Camoes the poet, followed by soldiers, sailors, priests and weeping women. It makes a telling statement about the cross section of individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of exploration. Before I do anything more energetic I decide to have lunch and among the many options choose the Caseiro restaurant (which means homely, homemade). As soon as I sit down sardine paste and a smoked cheese are brought. I order Morcela de arroz (blood sausage with rice - the skin of the sausage is burnt and you eat the inside with a spoon); garoupa grelhada (grilled groper) - a cutlet of firm dense flavoursome white fish, the most expensive on the menu. I drink a half bottle of Marques de Borba red wine (made from Aragones and Trincadeira grapes) from the Alentejo region in the south. At the end of the meal I have an aguardiente - the waiter pours a little into a brandy balloon, warms it up over a flame, then pours the rest in - as not that much is left in the bottle he decides to give me the rest so I end up with a very full glass. I struggle to finish it as I don't think I'll be able to walk, but the next thing I'm doing is going to a modern art exhibition so maybe it's good preparation and will help me to appreciate it better. I trundle over to the Berardo Museum (put an e in front of it and that's how Portuguese people pronounce my name, eberardo), a vast white complex and I stay there until evening, when I attend a concert of Portuguese medieval and Renaissance music in one of the performance theatres in the complex. Straight after this I drive to Fatima, where I arrive fairly late at night, and stay at a type of pilgrim's lodging house - pictures and statues of Jesus & Mary and crucifixes all about, narrow hard bed, but it's cheap and clean, if not cheerful. Next day I walk past the many shops selling religious trinkets and tour the religious complex - there is a huge praza surrounded at one end by a traditional church, while at the other end there is a huge modern church, mostly underground, able to hold thousands of people. Along one side is an open-sided chapel (The Chapel of Apparitions) built next to a cross which marks the spot where the Virgin appeared to 3 children in 1917. People are quietly but fervently praying (standing, sitting and kneeling), and one young man goes past on his knees accompanied by his sister (I think he is doing circuits of the chapel). The whole place seems large and sterile to me. I think partially it's because it's winter and there's few people there to fill up the vast spaces - I am sure with crowds there would be much more religious fervour, but even so I can't help being disappointed. For some reason I just do not enjoy these vast modern places of worship, which I find banal and sterile compared to older church architecture (am I beginning to sound like Prince Charles?) I drive back to the coast, stopping at Figueroa da Foz for lunch, and follow the road north until I reach Porto, which I assume I don't have to tell you what it's famous for. I drive into the centre, stop to ask at a travel agency if they can give me a map and tell me where the tourist office is, and they offer me a room above their office which is very spacious, cheap and central, so I take that. After settling in I wander down the hill towards the Douro River and come across a bar offering port degustations called @ Vinologia (exactly what I wanted - the Universe provides :), so what is a chap to do but check it out. Even better (the universe must be reading my mind tonight), I wanted to try a dry white port as an aperitif as it's not something that's easily come by outside of Portugal and this establishment has available an extremely delicious Extra Dry White Port (Quinta de Baldias), 8 years old and a beautiful deep gold colour. An Italian couple from Torino, Ilaria and Roberto, were sitting nearby so I teamed up with them and we tasted a selection of 2000 and 2001 vintage ports (port made like wine from the grapes of a single vintage, not blended as for tawny) and a LBV (late-bottled vintage port), in which it's still a port from a particular vintage but it's ageing has been done in the cask, not in the bottle and there's no point cellaring it, unlike a vintage port which will continue to age in the bottle. I had an excellent dinner of Caldo Verde (collard greens, and mashed potatoes virtually dissolved in a thick soup), Cataplana de Peixes & frutos do Mar (several types of fish & shellfish cooked in a closed copper container called a Cataplana), and bolo de Noz (walnut slice). My last day in Porto was wonderful - started with a breakfast of queijadinhas (a type of tart), rice custard, and cafe con leche (milk). Then a bit of culture and religion at the Museum of Sacred Art in an old Jesuit church, a Douro river cruise, and a tour of the Croft cellars and a tasting (the House of Croft is the oldest British Port family, I think). I buy a half-bottle of the 2001 vintage port (the grapes for the vintage port are still crushed by foot). I also have a great lunch in a tiny restaurant in an alley - it is about 2 metres wide and there are only 5 tables - once again I have caldo verde (cabbage & white beans & slice of chorizo added this time), half a dozen fat grilled sardines with small chunks of raw garlic sprinkled over with gay abandon, 1/4 litre of vinho verde, and it sets me back the princely sum of 8.50 euros. Throughout my meal the family is cheerfully & noisily arguing, and fado is playing in the background. This is my last meal in Portugal and that afternoon I drive back into Spain to Santiago de Compostela, which is only about 200kms away.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228965360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228965360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228965360/tpod.html Thu, 28 May 2009 02:42:29 -0400 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Madrid, Spain

Before I start on the description of the first part of my latest sojourn in Spain, I must tell you an anecdote about when I ran out of petrol near Arcachon on the Atlantic coast of France. Arcachon is relatively remote - the only people who live there out of season are the oyster-growers and fishermen, and there's not a lot of facilities. In this part of France most of the petrol stations are automated, self-serve stations. I was low on petrol as I left Bordeaux for my excursion to Arcachon and tried to get petrol on my way out of Bordeaux at one of these automated petrol stations, but it wouldn't accept my credit card, which is the only way you could pay.I keep going, keeping my eye out for petrol stations but they are all the same sort. I have no choice but to keep going and try and find a manned one, but the one I find is closed for lunch, so I push on, otherwise I'm going to lose a few hours, which will ruin my day and I and won't be able to get the oysters I'm lusting after. The inevitable happens and the car splutters to a stop, fortunately only a couple of hundred metres from a LeClerc store, which has a petrol station attached (automated, of course). My problem is not only to buy petrol, but to carry it to my car and pour it in the petrol tank.LeClerc is a large Target type store (or KMart, I never know the difference), so I go in and wander the aisles trying to find a petrol container and a long funnel, which of course you can find easily in a Target store in Australia in the automotive section, but not in a LeClerc store in Arcachon. So I went to the laundry section and bought a blue plastic bucket, then to the kitchen section and bought a packet of 3 funnels (small, smaller, and smallest).Then out to the petrol pumps and accosted a man who was filling up his car and asked if I could give him 5 euros and he could use his credit card to fill up my blue plastic bucket - he looked at me carefully for a while and must have decided I wasn't a loony (the grey hair helps) and agreed, and looked on amusedly as I filled the bucket. Then I lugged it over the busy road, trying not to spill it over myself (which you can only do by walking slowly and steadily, which makes you a sitting target for the motorists speeding along), across a rough field, down and up a deep ditch, and across another road. Now the moment of truth comes - I have to pour petrol from a full bucket into a kitchen funnel that has the capacity of about a cup. Then I find the funnel is too short to reach and open the safety valve on the petrol tank unless I push it in and hold it in with my hand, which means the other hand has to lift the bucket, tilt it and pour the petrol carefully into a cup-sized container.Not having had much practice with this situation previously I lose a lot of petrol down the side of the car and on the roadside - fortunately nobody is near with a match otherwise we would have gone up.So then it's back to the petrol station where I have to accost another man and persuade him to accept 20 euros and use his credit card to put petrol into my car, using my pidgin French/Italian fusion language and charades-type actions (in this situation the subject matter is obviously mineral). Back to Spain:It continues to rain heavily as I drive into San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque), the first major city in the Basque region. I stay in a place called Pension Izar Bat in the old part of town.I am excited to be here and quickly go out to explore the streets. There are bars and restaurants everywhere, full of animated people standing at bar, eating, talking, smoking, etc. and I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy this place.For my first meal I select a rather modern-looking place, which is quite out of character with the neighbourhood, but it's menu in the window wins me over.I stroll along the bar, eyeing the assortment of pintxos (Basque for tapas) and scanning the blackboard list of wines, before sitting down and happily mulling over in my mind what I'm going to have (this is a serious endeavour and takes a bit of planning as there are a lot of choices and I can only eat and drink so much). I have the following:Pintxos - stuffed sea urchin, bacalao confitado (prepared salted cod with caramelised onions), pulpo (octopus), Hongo con yema de corral ( mushrooms with fried egg), foie gras con manzana (fried duck liver and apple),Wine - Albariño (white), Marques de Vitoria Crianza Rioja (Tempranillo), Altos de Inurrieta Reserva (50% Merlot, 50% Cab Sauv).It was an excellent start to this trip to Spain and I retire to my lodging very happy indeed.I have always been fascinated by the Basques (actually that is the French name for them, they are called Vascos in Spanish - the Basque "country" extends from the south-west tip of France to northern Spain). Their language is unrelated to any of the Indo-European languages which totally prevail throughout the rest of Europe, and is thought to be part of a much wider language group that was spoken before the Indo-Europeans came). It's one of those fascinating riddles I love about humanity.Donostia/San Sebastian is set around a beautiful bay, La Concha Bay, with an island in the centre valled Isla Santa Clara. I walked the full length of the beach (a couple of kms at least) and it is bookended by 2 sculptures on the rocks ar either end (see photos). It was wild and windy (and rainy) in my few days there, and enormous waves came rolling in and crashed against the sea walls, with spray of 10 metres and more washing over the promenade. I saw a young man in a wet suit walking the city streets with a boogie board and fins and followed him to the river, where surf waves from the sea were rolling for several hundred metres upriver.I had a great time in Donostia, notwithstanding the weather. There are a great many beautiful streets with lovely apartments, buildings and churches, but also a number of very modern museums and exhibition spaces, eg the Koldo Mitxelena Art Centre, and the Salle kubo-kutxa in the Kursaal where I saw an exhibition called H2O, in which one of the most striking exhibits was of a film showing a man's face floating down a river while singing Bach.Walking the streets I saw a few ETA (the main Basque separatist group) signs painted on walls, and during my stay the head of a road construction company that had won a tender to build a freeway in the area was shot and killed by them in broad daylight only a few blocks from where I was staying. After this sobering event (but not because of it) I hopped into my car and drove for around 5 hours to Madrid. The city was unbelievably packed with people and I had a little trouble finding accomodation. I found out that I had arrived at the beginning of a holiday long weekend, comprising the 30th anniversary of the 1978 Spanish Constitution the next day (Dec 6) and the festival of Mary Immaculate on the Monday, so lots of people had come to celebrate. My hostal was only a couple of hundred metres from the Congreso (Parliament) and all the streets for some distance around were cordoned off so I put my car in a car park in Calle Madre de Dios (Mother of God street) and left it there the 6 days I was in Madrid. For some reason I have not been able to fathom there was a huge, modern Scientology centre around the corner from my hostal - it's hard to imagine many Madrid people sharing similar ideas with Tom Cruise and John Travolta, but there you go.My landlady had a policy that you had to hand the keys in every time you went out. As there was a tango festival on I told her I could be coming home at 5 or 6 in the morning, but she said it was no problem, and when I did she shuffled to the door in her nightdress and slippers and opened it for me, treating me as if I was her son and she had been waiting up for me.My time in Madrid was a combination of frequenting museums & galleries during the day and tango at night, interspersed with trying out lots of bars and restaurants, of which there are an inexhaustible number. My favourite bar was a sherry bar called La Venencia - the walls, floor, bar, in fact everything (including some of the waiters) looked like it has been stained by tobacco smoke for the last hundred years. On shelves on the wall behind the bar there are hundreds of old sherry bottles covered in a thick layer of dust, and there are 6 barrels of sherry lined up alongside. La Venencia is nearly always full and it's hard to get a table so most times I dropped in I squeezed my way to the bar and stood and drank my sherry (normally a manzanilla, or a fino), and ordered a plate or two of the small selection of tapas - queso (cheese), salsichon (dried sausage), various other smoked meats called mojana, cecina, and lomo, slices of hueva (salted pressed fish eggs, a bit like Sicilian bottarga), all quickly cut to order on a small wooden board, and bright green olives. The barman would write down what I had on the wooden bar counter in front of me with white chalk, which he rubbed off once I'd paid, ready for the next customer - very simple, fast and efficient.Another very fun experience was at El Brillante, a big, noisy fast food place brightly lit with neon lights. I entered on a rainy lunchtime and it was heaving with people, there was a constant coming and going, and virtually every inch of space was taken up. I stood around for a few minutes and as soon as someone left I quickly took their place at the counter and ordered their famous Bocadillo de Calamares, a 30cm long baguette filled with tender, juicy fried calamari, then zarajo de Cuenca (deep fried skewered lamb intestines), washed down with a couple of cañas of cerveca (glass of beer). One other meal of note was at La Biotika, a macrobiotic vegetarian restaurant in Calle Amor de Dios (Love of God street), which made me feel virtuous the next day. Madrid has some fabulous museums and I spent literally days in them. When I visited the Museo Reina Sofia there was a special exhibition about the Spanish Civil War - the original of Picasso's Guernica is there along with the preparatory sketches & drawings, archival films, etc so you can see the whole process involved in its creation. The Prado, where I spent over 8 hours is the most impressive and wide-ranging collection of European artists I have seen in one place so far: Italian - Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Veronese, etc (but no da Vinci or Michelangelo): Spanish - Goya, El Greco, Murillo, Velasquez, etc; Flemish - Rubens, Rembrandt, Bosch, Cranach, Dürer; as well as many French, Dutch, and German artists.The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum had a special exhibition called 1914 The Avant-Garde (who were also known as Futurists)& the Great War - it's hard to imagine now but many artists at the time glorified war as cleansing a corrupt society and volunteered and died (some friends on opposing sides).In between these cultural activities I walked kilometres around Madrid visiting the Royal Palace, La Almudena Cathedral, the Debod Temple (a 2nd century BC Egyptian temple relocated to Madrid when the Aswan dam was built on the Nile), and the huge Sunday morning El Rastro flea market. Everywhere there were long lines of people buying tickets for El Gordo de Navidad, the Christmas lottery, which apparently 98% of Spanish play - it had a total of 2.32 billion euros in prizes. After a very full and interesting time in Madrid I decided to follow Don Quixote's footsteps and drove to Toledo as the base for this journey.I have now been driving for over 6 months and covered over 30,000 kms. I have driven the length of Italy a couple of times, gone through some of it's most crowded and dangerous cities, covered thousands of kms in Morocco, etc and driven into numerous cities in the rain and dark, lost, often peering with my reading glasses at a map propped against the steering wheel, traffic bearing down on me from all directions and drivers beeping at me and pushing me along - and not had an accident.As I enter Toledo on a clear sunny day about midday, on a dry road with little traffic, I go around a roundabout on the outskirts of the city, and all of a sudden there's a car in front of me on my right and I hit it on the side. It's a glancing blow, neither of us are hurt, and although the cars have dented panels they are still driveable. What an annoyance! The other driver pulls over - he is a nice man, about my age, and it's the first car accident he's ever had. He says we should call the police and wait for them, but after exchanging names and addresses and waiting for 20 minutes or so, he says he has things to do so, vamos.I continue on and fight a nice little hostal just outside the walls. I didn't know much about Toledo except that it's famous for steel. It's a lovely little city - a mixture of Spanish, Arabic & Jewish - some churches are converted mosques and synagogues, there are Arabic baths, etc. Wandering around Toledo I came across the Sinagoga del Tránsito y Museo Sefardi, with a fantastic interior which combines Islamic, Gothic, and Hebrew geometric motifs, topped by a beautiful wood ceiling. El Greco lived in Toledo for a good part of his life but unfortunately I couldn't visit his house as it was closed for renovations. However I went to the Cathedral of Toledo, which apart from the magnificent retable and choir has over 20 El Greco paintings of Christ, the apostles and saints plus a Titian, Caravaggio and Rafael.On a high promontory above the Tagus river, which surrounds Toledo on three sides I came across the Museo Victorio Macho - he was sculptor born in north-west Spain who lived in Madrid, Chile, and the USA, etc then Toledo where he built a beautiful house, which now houses his art. There was a fantastic exhibition called Geographies of Islam, which was a selection of works from The Aga Khan Museum, and displayed Islamic art works from Africa and Europe to China and Sulawesi.I also found a great restaurant called La Abadia. Like many Spanish bar/restaurants it's very crowded in the evening and once again I had to wait a few minutes until someone moved from the bar so I could squeeze in sideways and claim the 30 cms in front of me. From the bar menu I ordered:Crujientes de langostinos (raw shrimp) with guacamoleGrilled goat's cheese & fried tomatoes in crunchy wafers made from ground almondsParillada (grill) of mixed meats - pork, chicken, sausages, beef, lamb, morcilla (blood sausage) - all cooked perfectlyDessert - tart of fresh white cheese with chocolate and berriesAccompanied by a glass of Albariño, a tinto from Galicia, and a brandy from Jerez I waddled home down the hill. I know it doesn't sound very relaxing or enjoyable standing up tightly squeezed at a bar, eating and drinking, but I find it fun - these places are full of energy, you can banter with the bar staff, talk to the people near you, and it's great being in a place where people are really enjoying themselves, without the formality so many restaurants have.Next day I returned for lunch, which was much quieter and I was able to get a table. Once again I had a delicious meal: Ensalada de Codorniz Escabechada (salad of pickled quail)Perdiz a la Toledana - Estofadado (partridge cooked in casserole).Partridge is a specialty in Toledo as I saw it on quite a few menus.Tarta de citricos con nata de almendras (citrus tart with almond cream)Extracting myself with difficulty from Toledo in my slightly battered car I followed a small section of Don Quixote's meanderings in La Mancha. Most of the time I was in this area it was foggy and very cold, which gave a particular atmosphere to my journey. I arrived in my destination, El Toboso as it was getting dark, just like Don Quixote and Pancho. El Toboso was the home town of Dulcinea, his true love, in whose name he performed many of his knightly activities. This is how he describes her: "her name is Dulcinea, her country El Toboso, a village of La Mancha, her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare". Going by this I think men have regressed significantly in their description of women since that time! The joke of course is that Dulcinea was a simple barefoot village girl living in a dusty remote village and his image of her was dreamed up in his deluded brain. Anyhow, I love the story so I just had to go and see the town (maybe I was looking for my own Dulcinea? :).Next morning was freezing, with a thick fog blanketing the town, but I ventured forth to follow Don Quixote's steps. I walked the "ruta literaria" (literary route) which follows a series of plaques quoting verses from the book, set around the town at the appropriate locations, then I visited Dulcinea's house and Don Quixote museum. After this very satisfying ritual I drove on to Campo de Criptana, the site described in the book as "At this point they caught sight of thirty or forty windmills which were standing on the plain...". There are 10 left now and they looked fantastically eerie through the fog. The weather was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, so after an hour I retreated back to my car and set off due west, across the region of Extramadura for the almost 700 kms drive through rain and bad weather to Lisbon, which of course you will next hear about.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1242367260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1242367260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1242367260/tpod.html Fri, 15 May 2009 02:29:14 -0400 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Melbourne
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228273920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228273920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1228273920/tpod.html Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:46:35 -0500 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France

My first sight of Mont-Saint-Michel is across flat green water-logged fields dotted with sheep. It seems a mirage at first, a tiny protrusion above the landscape. As I get closer it grows, and seems even more surreal. Eventually I reach the causeway which now allows you to drive across to the car park below the walls, which gets flooded by the tide every day (tide times are published to prevent your car being flooded or washed away). Before the causeway was built you had to walk about a kilometer across the sands, between the tides.I arrive on a freezing cold night with no accommodation booked and wander up and down alleyways and steps and eventually choose a place to stay. Inside there are nooks and crannies and stairs everywhere, and along the corridors there are signed pictures and photographs of many of the people who have stayed here - among the assorted royalty, film stars, writers, etc, I find one signed by Leon Trotsky (who was later to be bludgeoned to death with a pick-axe in Mexico). There are hardly any restaurants open and I choose the vastly less expensive one of the 3 available, and have one of the worst meals I've ever had - nearby is a famous oyster-producing area and naturally I order oysters as an entrée, salivating with anticipation, as I've never eaten French oysters. Six shells arrive in which there are the scrawniest oysters I have ever seen - the oyster meat barely covered the bottom of the shell and the meat from the 6 would barely have been equal to one good oyster. This was followed by an omelette, which is a famous specialty of this area, and at the expensive restaurant further along the way cost around 25 euros - it´s supposed to be whipped until frothy and light and my one had so much air there was virtually no omelette - I'm guessing it was only a one egg omelette (or at most 2). To cap it all off the white wine was warm and the bread soft and white and characterless, totally unlike the excellent bread you normally get in France. I understand that in a highly touristic area the food quality is generally going to be expensive and not great but this was really the most extreme example I've experienced.Anyhow after a good night's sleep, next morning I went out into the freezing wind and walked all over the rock. Mont-Saint-Michel is built on a rocky island in a huge estuary. A small sanctuary was first put up in 708AD and it became a famous pilgrimage site. The buildings there now were erected between 11th & 15th centuries, and a village grew around it. At its maximum about 40 monks lived there. The buildings are fantastic and I tour them with a young Australian couple - our guide is an incredibly enthusiastic middle-aged French woman and she points out every little detail and our tour goes well over the allotted time.I drive round the other side of the estuary to Cancale, the oyster-producing area I mentioned previously. I had a lunch there that more than made up for the last night. My assiette of crustaceans was a huge platter of oysters (big fat juicy ones), bigorneaux (tiny black shellfish), clams about 4cm wide, prawns, langoustines, and was topped with a large crab. I sat there happily looking out over the estuary with a pichet of white wine, sliding oysters down my throat, perfecting my technique for getting the bigorneaux and clams out of their shells, pulling the prawns and langoustines apart with my bare hands, and eating every last bit of the crab that could possibly be eaten (basically everything except the shell) - this is not as easy as you think and took well over an hour's assiduous and non-stop work - but it's the sort of work I love to do :).After this wonderful feast I drove on through St-Malo and into the Finistère (end of the earth) peninsula. I am now in Brittany and there is a distinctly Celtic feel to the place names - the northern coast of the peninsula is called Lèon, and the southern coast is Cornouaille (Cornwall). I meander around the northern coast for a while and eventually decide to stay in the beautiful little town of Tréguier (Landreger in Breton).There is a market next morning in the square below my hotel window so I go down to find breakfast and get into a conversation with the lady at a crepes stand (I have one with rhubarb jam & one with almond butter), and she is so enthusiastic about the area she writes down a few of her favourite places that she insists I visit - while my crepes get cold, but it's great talking to someone so in love with their area and she's so amazed to be talking to an Australian in Tréguier that we keep talking for a bit, while her other customers patiently wait. I have to admit that I felt guilty because I didn´t go to the places she recommended (I would have had to backtrack and I didn't have the time) - please don't tell her - you will recognise her easily if you ever have a crepe at the market in Tréguier, and they are very good.I continued on to Ploumanac'h and walked along the coastline of fantastically shaped pink granite rocks (Cote de Granit Rose), then near Ploézoch stopped at the Cairn du Barnenez, 2 burial cairns built between 4500 and 3900 BC. They are 75 metres long by 28 metres wide, and contain 11 tombs, and I scramble over them in the rain, completely alone - it's amazing that the people living there at that time went to such extraordinary lengths to build these tombs.Most of the towns and villages around here seem to start with Plou, as in driving to my stop for the night at the fishing port of Douarnenez I went past towns called Plouescat, Plouguernéau, and Ploudalmezeau. Douarnenez is almost the western most point in France, and I stayed in a hotel with a fairly fancy restaurant, and as there weren't many choices I ate there. Dinner was interesting: pumpkin soup with a couple of pieces of stewed apple and andouillette as garnish; then a piece of fish served with very good fine straws of frites on top, in a bowl of thick soupy brown beans. I liked the fish, I liked the frites, and I liked the brown beans - but not at the same time.The next day I go past the Baie de Trépassés (Bay of the Dead, so called because dead bodies from shipwrecks floated to shore here) to Pointe du Raz, the westernmost point of France. It is wild and cold and windy and you can see the two bodies of water on either side of the cape running into each other and producing white-capped waves.I get to Quimper (pronounced Kamper) around lunchtime. I read in a guide about the legend of the city of Y, which was drowned in the bay close by. The story is that it was a large city equal to Paris (in fact the other way around, Par-Ys, ie Paris was equal to Y), and that it will rise when Paris sinks.The most famous food of Brittany is crepes so naturally I gravitate to a creperie, La Krampouzerie. To give me an appetite I start with a cocktail of eau de vie (apple spirit), apple juice, and framboise (raspberry liqueur), then a buckwheat crepe of Coquilles St Jaques (other choices were: smoked oysters from Sarzeau, Basque Brebis (sheep) cheese with black cherry jam, and Goats cheese, lardons & prunes). For dessert I have a buckwheat crepe of chestnut paste with cognac & chantilly cream - other choices I would have liked to have tried were raspberry jam with lambig (Breton Calvados), and apple with handmade caramel & almondsThe owner of the creperie told me they also make a whisky in Brittany out of buckwheat, called Eddu, but unfortunately he didn't have any for me to try.Continuing my prehistoric investigations I stopped at one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe at Carnac. There are a number of sites containing rows of thousands of standing stones (called menhirs), which were put in place between around 4500 to 2000 BC, well before other sites such as Knossos, the Pyramids, and Stonehenge. Theories as to their meaning range from signposts, markers for burial plots, or sites for astronomical observation. I arrived in Carnac just before sunset which was the perfect time to see the stones.Leaving Brittany and the Finistère peninsula the first major town is La Rochelle. Even though it was cold and windy like all the places I'd been to in Picardy, Normandy & Brittany, there was a different look and feel to the town. Rather than slate roofs, they were of terracotta tiles, and the feel of the place was just different - I can only say it felt a bit more Mediterranean.La Rochelle has an interesting history - it is built around a Bassine, with 2 towers on either side of the entrance (Saint-Nicolas and the Chain tower, so called because a chain from this tower blocked the entrance and ships had to pay fees to berth in the protected Bassine), and a bit further along the sea wall the Lantern tower, which functioned initially as a lighthouse in medieval times (when it had a lantern suspended outside), and then a prison (with the walls covered in graffiti from the prisoners). After seeing the other towers I was told the Lantern tower was closed but after a bit of persuasion (I've come all the way from Australia and I'm only here today, etc delivered in pidgin French) a guide accompanied me, unlocked the tower and gave me a personal guided tour.My lunch at Bistrot Rémi Massé was one of the best meals I've had on my whole trip - Cassolette of oysters & rouget (like a red mullett) aux petits légumes (finely diced vegetables); Grilled Bar Sauvage (Wild Sea Bass), avec blettes legerment cremées, et lard fumé; Gaufre a l'Ancienne (waffle) avec caramel a la fleur de sel, with a half bottle of excellent white wine and an aged Calvados (10 years +) .My last escapade before arriving in Bordeaux was to visit the Maison de Pierre Loti in Rochefort. Pierre Loti (real name Julien Viaud) was an eccentric writer who lived at the end of the 19th century. He was initially a naval officer and travelled extensively around the world, then he became a writer and built an exotic fantasy house combining Gothic, Arabic and other elements, and held parties where he and the guests dressed up in period costume. Apparently he was very shy and blushed easily.Finally I arrive in Bordeaux. I stay at the apartment of Elodie, who I met at the last Sitges tango festival (remember, don't give me your email address if you don't want me to visit :).The next few days are a lot of fun. We start off with a bicycle ride to the Capuchins market on Saturday morning and have a great time shopping: we go to one of the many oyster stalls and ask advice about the best ones for eating raw and for cooking and buy a dozen each of the ones recommended (the man has a booklet showing where they come from and who grew them), then we move on to one of the cheese stalls and buy half a dozen different types, then Elodie buys a whole fresh foie gras (over 600 grams), then vegetables, wine & bread, and finally after all this exhausting shopping we have coffee with Elodie´s friends (who are all on bicycles too). We have 3 espressos each which gives us quite a buzz.The next few days is spent in an orgy of eating oysters (I learn how to open them), cheese, foie gras (Elodie has de-veined it and cooked it in the oven in a terrine sitting in a bain-marie, and we pan-fry the off-cuts), parties, etc. although I do get out and about a bit.One of my forays is to the town of Saint-Emilion. Bordeaux is the general name for the wine of the area but actually it is divided into many regions (eg, Medoc, Graves, Pomerol, etc) and there are significant differences in the wine. St Emolion is in a hilly area compared to many of the other wine areas which are on the flat, and it's one of the oldest towns and very picturesque. I have a very pleasant time walking around the streets and eventually find the L'Envers du Décor wine bar. Unfortunately I have arrived just after the kitchen has closed for lunch, but I cajole them into giving me a plate of local cured sausage and bread and settle happily down at the bar and work my way through several wines, which are delicious.Another excursion is to the Bay of Arcachon, a huge bay south-west of Bordeaux that has many facets - it has long sandy beaches, oyster farms, and a huge line of sand dunes on one side culminating in the Dune du Pilat which is 104 metres high. After exploring the beaches at Cap-Ferret (which have half-submerged WW2 bunkers in the sand) I stop at Port de Piraillan, one of the main oyster-growers villages in the area. I wander through the village, made up of little wooden shacks, bisected by narrow paths. You can really feel the sense of a close, working community. Elodie has given me the name of Sylvie Latrille, her favourite oyster-grower, so I go to her house and buy 2 dozen fresh oysters, collected that day, and we have a dinner party that night and eat them.Sadly, I have to leave all this feasting and partying and set off south towards Spain. Thw weather is atrocious, heavy rain, low clouds and a strong wind coming off the Atlantic, so I can´t climb up the Dune of Pilat, and I drive past all these famous resorts such as Biarritz (and a funnily named place, Soorts-Hossegor), and through the French Basque region, without seeing a thing.Thus ends my trip down the entire Atlantic coast of France.
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Falaise, Normandy, France

I'm back in France again, this time planning to explore the Atlantic coast and hinterland. I start off in Amiens and stay at the Hotel Central Anzac. Just goes to show how little I know about the First World War, but it's named this to attract the large numbers of Australians (and I guess New Zealanders) who visit the battlefields nearby (the Somme, Villers-Brettoneux, etc),where Australian troops fought - the receptionist actually asks me if I'm there for this reason, and I sheepishly answer no. My first evening I walk past the Cathedral and it was wonderful to see at night. The way the stone has been carved it looks like lacework, so light and delicate, yet it's a massive building, the largest Gothic Cathedral in France (I find out later it is generally considered the Gothic church most beautiful and pure in form). Much of the city was destoyed in WW2 but fortunately the Cathedral and the area nearby escaped serious damage. The small central core of the city is interlaced with a network of canals. I walk along these to the edge of the city and come across les hortillonages, which are market gardens built on islands in the waterways, where the soil is very fertile. On market days some of the farmers still take their produce to market in long black boats with high prows.The main citizen of note from Amiens was Jules Verne, but unfortunately his house, which is now a museum, is not open when I go there.I eat at a restaurant called T'chiot Zinc (t'chiot is the local word used instead of petite, so I guess the name means small zinc - very unusual and original, I think for a restaurant):My menu is: Flamich Picardie (leek pie), Dos de Cabbilaude (cod in a creamy sauce), & La coupe Amienoise (macaroon, tuiles, sour cherry ice-cream, berries and chantilly cream), washed down with a pichet of Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine.At an adjacent table there was a young woman digging in to a plate of marrow bones, the only place I have seen them on a menu apart from one restaurant where I ate them in Budapest.After just one night in Amiens I followed the Somme down to its mouth at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, which is where William the Conqueror set off in 1066 to conquer England.The mouth of the Somme is a vast area of salt meadows (basically grass growing on sand in sea-water) and at this time of year is chilly and wind-blown. I stop in at a restaurant called Les Pilotes where they have over 30 types of moules (mussels) dishes on the menu (including with ginger cream and tropical fruits - true!).There have been any number of opportunities to eat moules in Belgium, France and Holland and I have avoided them until now, but I succumb today and have Moules Picardie, which is with shallots, champignons, cream and wine, and of course frites. Everywhere in the area there are signs that the Beaujolais Nouveau is here, so I have a glass of that to accompany (Beaujolais Nouveau is the year's new wine that has just been bottled - everybody goes a bit mad and there are races to see who can get it first).A huge bowl of moules arrives - I don't know how many but somewhat more than 50 and less than 100, together with at least half a kilo of frites (served separately, thank goodness, not underneath the moules as I have usually seen them). The moules, again thankfully, are small and sweet, but I just don't see what cream and mushrooms does for them (nothing, in my opinion), let alone many of the other possible concoctions on the menu. I have to go for a walk after this, so with a kilo or 2 of moules and frites in my stomach as ballast, I lean forward at a fairly acute angle into the cold Atlantic wind and tack my way along the riverside towards the sea.I pass a number of colourful sailors houses, then climb up to Saint Martin's church. There are a couple of unusual features - it has 2 naves, and is made of a mixture of different types and colours of dressed stone and pebbles arranged in many different patterns (this is the first time I've seen it but I find out this is common in churches in Picardy and Normandy). Very near the church is an arched gate and the sign says that Jean d'Arc was taken through here when she was transported from her jail at the town of Le Crotoy (just across the Somme river estuary), to Rouen to be tried and condemned. Once again I feel the tingle of history, and follow up by travelling next to Rouen. I arrive in Rouen on a freezing cold night. First thing I do is head for the Place du Vieux-Marchè, the site where Jean d'Arc was burnt at the stake. A large cross and a colourful flower bed mark the site and an unusual-looking modern church dedicated to her dominates the site (it's said to resemble the shape of the pyre). Right next to the church, in fact virtually under the same roofline, is the daily market - it's one of those things so typical of Europe (and no doubt other places that have seen lots of history) - the sacred and profane are intermingled and people are laughing, eating, shopping, etc where momentous and tragic events have happened. Unfortunately the church is closed so I can't go in.There's a huge number of restaurants in Rouen and my mind gets dizzy (and my body freezes) perusing the menus displayed outside, especially as the restaurants all offer many different "formules" (pre-packaged menus at different price levels which save you money over a la carte). I eventually settle on Le Toque d'Or and my formule is 6 snails in garlic butter (very good, not canned snails), skate wing in cream & cider sauce, a cheese platter of Camembert and Pont l'Eveque (both towns where the cheeses are made are nearby), a dessert of what's described as cottage cheese (nothing like what we get in Australia, it's a fresh slightly acidic cheese) with berry sauce & cream, and again I have Beaujolais Nouveau, and a Calvados to digest(it's a spirit of around 40% alcohol distilled from apples, and a very enjoyable drink).After dinner, I walk along the Seine, which is quite wide here - across the river, strung out for a kilometer or so is a fun fair, with every sort of thrill-ride imaginable, all lit up in flashing neon lights. I consider going over there for a few rides, but my more rational side wins this time (yes it occasionally gets a word in) - it tells me it would not be wise to be dropped from a great height or whirled upside down after the amount of moules, frites, cheese, wine, etc I've consumed today. Rouen is in Normandy, which is famous for dairy and apple-based products. The cheeses I eat have a lot of flavour and I would be sure they are made from raw milk, which is still not allowed in Australia. What else - I visit the Cathedral, another French Gothic masterpiece; the Musee de Beaux-Arts, where they have quite a reasonable collection including paintings by Caravaggio, Rubens, Modigliani, and many Impressionists; and the home of Gustave Flaubert, who was born and lived in Rouen.I follow the river down to the sea and stop at the beautiful little town of Honfleur at the mouth of the Seine.I see a little sign offering rooms in a restaurant window in the prime position overlooking the boat harbour, and go in to enquire. It's early in the evening and the staff are sitting at a table eating their meal before the customers come. I am taken up a narrow wooden spiral staircase (and nearly knock my head on the stairs above as it's so narrow and steep) and shown this fantastic room. It's like the captain's room in an old sailing ship (or at least a romanticised version of such) - wood-panelling, brass everywhere, marine instruments, dining alcove & kitchen, and it looks directly over the boat harbour. It's more than I should pay but bugger it, I take it anyway. Dinner is very good - a formule comprising 9 oysters, grilled dorade (bream?) with olive oil and lemon (thankfully no cream), local cheeses, & berry & apple crumble.At the table next to me a family is dining and the daughter, about 14-15 years old, is tucking into a large crab, expertly cracking the legs, pulling out all the orangey bits in the body, etc - I enjoyed watching her eat every last morsel, finishing well after the rest of the family.The town is really pretty - a feature of this area is that the outside walls of many buildings are covered in slate tiles, yet the Church of St Catherine and the associated belfry are made of wood, and again the interior of the church has 2 naves. On Sunday morning I go to the 9.30 service, and unlike some other church services I've been to in other places, it's very well attended. A teenage boy comes in swinging the censer expertly and leading the altar boys (and 2 girls), all dressed in white and carrying large candles and singing, and finally the priest in his white & gold robe. The priest has a beautiful soft voice and it's lovely sitting there listening to him leading the singing and chanting.Then I brave the wind and cold again and visit the local museum (Musée Eugene Boudin), and the Erik Satie Museum. Satie was born in Honfleur and many of his music and painting friends visited him here (he knew Picasso, Braque, Cocteau, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky). The museum is extremely well done - you are given an infra-red headset when you go in and this triggers a multi-media presentation as you go through the various rooms. Just to give you an idea of the fantasies in store, as you enter there is a large flying pear (apparently an idea dreamed up by his friends the day he died), a pedalling machine which opens up as a carousel with a bizarre flying violin (with a boot attached), harp, accordion (best to see the pictures, which were very hard to take as I was pedalling furiously while taking pictures as these items whizzed by over my head - the things I do to get pictures!). The whole experience was backed up by Satie's music, and for the final part you sit in a stark white room with a white piano and listen to several of his pieces, which was extremely soothing.So after all this fantasising I dropped in at Le Cidrerie (the Cider House) and had some of their specialties:Aperitif of Pommeau - cider mixed with CalvadosLe galichot - made of farine de seigle et froment, a type of pancake of a thickness between a blini and a crepe, topped with potted goose, cooked onions and gherkins, and for dessert a crepe with cider and cream (rich and slightly acid).To warm myself before venturing outside I also had a Pommeau Episcopal - hot Pommeau with spices.After this I decide to cut across inland and drive through the beautiful green rolling countryside (along narrow and confusing country roads through low dark clouds and rain) to the cathedral city of Lisieux, whose claim to fame is Saint Therese, who is second only to Saint Jean d'Arc in the saintly pantheon of France. Her parents had just been beatified in October, so there were still lots of signs around for the event. I haven't fully worked out why Therese was made a saint, but she is called a Doctor of the Church, which is given for "holiness of their lives, the distinction and orthodoxy of their teaching, and their theological and spiritual learning".That night I made it to Falaise, where William the Conqueror, or William the Bastard, as apparently he is called by some people (he was an illegitimate child) was born and lived much of his life. It's a fair-sized town but it seems few people visit as there are only 2 hotels, and one is closed, so I have to stay at the ever-present Ibis.The site of the castle where William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquérant) was born is in a commanding position on the edge of a cliff. There's only a small amount of the original castle left, as it was later enlarged, then partially destroyed, etc and renovations have now been going on for some years. Nevertheless it's very impressive and the audio-visual tour gives a real feeling for his life and times - I am enjoying immensely being able to follow the trail of all these characters of European history.There were very limited options for dining in Falaise and I ended up going to a rather up-market, very chintzy and rather formal restaurant. The décor was over the top - the restaurant was painted bright orange, with deep pink curtains, ribbons on the candelabras, and other trimmings, blond wood chairs with pink seats, white tablecloths, etc. There were huge numbers of wine glasses, knives, forks, spoons, plates, etc on my table and I hardly knew where to begin - the (what can I call her, certainly not a waitress - she was too, well, not haughty, but she was certainly several classes above me) came to my assistance several times when she saw me trying to work out what to use for what from the maze on my table.In the background all night there was piano music, played by someone that sounded like they had taken lessons from Liberace - it went from Love Me Tender to Come Back to Sorrento, to New York, New York and even La Cumparsita - with about 3 times as many notes being played on the piano as I think the original music used.Before I left Falaise I popped into the War Museum and learned the tragic fact it was directly in the path of the Allies as they pushed inland after they landed in Normandy in 1944 and was heavily bombed, with over 350 civilians killed.My next stop after Falaise was Le-Mont-Saint-Michel, the tiny religious island off the coast of Brittany (which will be the stqrt of my next post). On the way, however, I went through the intriguingly named town of Villedieu-les-Poêles (if taken literally I think it means something like house of God of the frying-pans). The reason frypans is in the name became clear very quickly - it's the main centre in France for making copper cooking pots. I stopped at the display area of one of the workshops and it was all I could do to stop myself from buying several pots and frying pans. They were made from copper several millimetres thick and were so heavy that it needed a lot of muscle to lift them - they wouldn't last a lifetime, more like a thousand years. I was very sorely tempted to buy at least one frypan, but decided in the end it was just too impractical (as well as costly) - I still think about them though (I have one copper cooking pot but it's like a toy compared to these).Less than an hour later I have my first view of Le-Mont-Saint-Michel, a speck on the horizon ... (to be continued)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1227051720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1227051720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1227051720/tpod.html Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:13:47 -0500 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Well, now that I've got your attention, I can tell you about my visit to the so-called Low Countries, Belgium and Holland."The people of Ghent are headstrong and obstinate." are the opening words of the Ghent Visitor's Guide - continuing on "If we were not so proud of these labels, we would regard them as faults."I had entered Belgium about 100kms earlier and initially was going to stay in Bruxelles my first night, but it was busy and modern and the traffic was so bad that I drove on to Ghent. I did drive past the main European parliament buildings and other EU related buildings, but as I was trying to find my way out I got lost and drove through an area in which I saw a completely different side to the modern, rather sterile centre - rundown, small colourful shops, full of immigrants (mainly North African), narrow streets. with a slight hint of menace, etc. Back to Ghent - there is a fortress in the middle of the city, but it wasn't built to defend it, but to protect the authorities from the people of the city. Are you starting to get a picture of how they see themselves? They are also known as noose-wearers, as they were forced by the Emperor Charles V to walk through the streets barefoot, wearing a noose around their necks and ask for mercy, after they got particularly insubordinate one time.Anyhow, after reading all this, and getting myself mentally prepared to deal with these difficult sounding people, I found the people I did have interactions with to be very friendly and helpful. I was only in Ghent for a day and but managed to fit in: St Bavo's Cathedral where there are 2 fantastic works (among many others): The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a beautiful altarpiece by the Van Eyck brothers, and the organ, which when it was completed in the 1700s was the largest organ in the world - it has been played by Mendelssohn, Händel and Mozart (who played it when he was 10 years old). I particularly enjoyed the Museum of Beaux Arts, which had a special exhibition of Piranesi prints - cabinets and cabinets full of drawings which are amazingly detailed - he must have been incredibly prolific and seemingly worked day and night every day of his life, such was the volume of his work. The food was a bit of a change from the German & French areas I had been in for the past 2 weeks - for lunch I had carrot mousse & pheasant patè as an ameuse-bouche, 3 oysters (from NZ), fried fish with witlof and mashed potato, and an overly rich & heavy chocolate tart.So then it was a quick nip a few kms down the road to Bruges where I stayed at a buzzy hostel called the Bauhaus. Bruges, like Ghent, is a small city with a well-preserved centre and it's wonderful to walk around and soak in the atmosphere. I wrote an email to my son Michael patronisingly mentioning I was there and did he know where it was (expecting him not to know), and he wrote back saying he'd just seen the film "In Bruges", so yes, he did know where it was, thus wiping the smirk off my face :). An interesting sight in Bruges is the Holy Blood chapel, which contains a bottle of rock crystal, supposedly containing some of the blood of Jesus, and which is paraded around the city on Ascension Day. It's a never-ending fascination to me the religious objects in Europe that are venerated, and I have now seen a good number of them - Jesus' blood, fragments of the cross, the Turin Shroud, bodies of dead saints, etc.While I am wandering around town I notice posters advertising a beer festival next day, so I decide to stay another day. Can you believe I've been in Europe nearly 1 1/2 years and haven't yet been to a beer festival (not that I'm much of a beer drinker, but at least I'd like to go to one as a sociological study). So next day I head down to the centre of town and join the small throng waiting for it to open. As I said I haven't been to any other beer festivals so I have nothing to compare it to, but I think this is vastly different to such events as the Munich beer festival. Everybody is very well-dressed and behaved, they study the beers intently and talk to the brewers, take a sip and swirl it around their mouths, etc - it's more like a wine-tasting. There is a large array of beers and I don't know where to begin - I don't have a big capacity for beer and I don't want to get drunk, so I buy a 6-tasting ticket. Fortunately at the very first stand where I decide to try a beer, I start talking to the man behind the counter asking what they are (there are lambics, krieks, etc which I've never heard of), and one of the other customers decides to adopt me and give me a crash course in Belgian beer. He orders different beers for both of us so we can taste each others, so I end up tasting 12 beers (small glasses only so didn't get drunk). All the beers at the festival were made made by small-scale brewers, amongst which were a number of Trappist monasteries, and even a beer made by the methode champenoise (the brewer sent it to a champagne house in France where it was treated exactly like champagne - it was probably my favourite beer), and there were also a number of "Christmas" beers, which they specially produce only at this time of the year. After this very pleasant diversion I drove up to Amsterdam, and amazingly the night I arrived there was a tango concert at a beautiful theatre on the edge of the central district, followed by a milonga in the grand foyer. The group was called Tango de Astillero and they were from Buenos Aires and were fantastic - their music was dramatic and contemporary but very much infused with the traditional tango feeling.By a lucky co-incidence my cousin Claude (who lives in London) was in Amsterdam doing a course at the time I was there. He had emailed me saying it would be fun staying on a houseboat, so I started searching around on the internet. Somehow or other I stumbled across a gay-friendly site (as they euphemistically put it) and Claude and I were offered to share a double bed. Houseboats were all booked up but eventually I found a 4 storey house in the middle of the red-light district for a very reasonable price. The house was amazing - you entered through a narrow door, then climbed tiny, very steep steps (about 40 degree gradient) to a very well-equipped kitchen & dining area (one of the dining tables was filled with sand and shells with a glass top); the 2nd level had a lounge with a huge flat screen tv, and the upper 2 levels were bedrooms (one with ensuite and spa bath).The red-light district is made up of a number of blocks bisected by canals - it is full of neon-lit windows in which prostitutes display themselves (I read in a newspaper there are 400 of them and the mayor wants to reduce the number), "coffee-shops" where you can smoke marijuana, sex shows, etc. It's not quite as sordid as it sounds as it's regulated quite well, and there are many restaurants, cafes, clothing shops interspersed among them, etc - there are many entertaining juxtapositions such as seeing adjacent windows, one with people dining and the next with a woman disporting herself with virtually no clothes on barely a metre away. I overheard a guide taking a group around saying the Dutch virtually don't frequent the area and they are quite low on the scale of countries in the usage of marijuana, but they were tolerant of it because it was relatively discreet, well-controlled and it was good for business as it brought in tourists. The real joy of Amsterdam of course is the architecture, the canals, and the museums, and Claude and I had a wonderful time at the Rijksmuseum, which had a large collection of paintings by Vermeer (it was stunning to see the original of the Milk Maid), Rembrandt, and other artists. Yes I know you don't believe me and that you believe I am only saying this to cover the fact that I spent all my time smoking marijuana and frequenting prostitutes, but it's true, and the only experience I had in that line was buying a few pieces of "special cake", which I had with a cup of tea. They were awful - very dry and tasting of nothing - they needed some almonds or hazlenuts, a drop of liqueur, maybe a little creme patisserie - after all if you're going to make something like this you should do it properly and it should taste good. At least, like Bill Clinton, I didn't inhale :) - I just chewed a dry bland cake - don't know which is worse. A number of Claude's friends (Geoff, Lisa, Jo, Thierry, Claire) from the course remained for a couple more days so one night we went out and several of them went ice-skating, which was quite hilarious, especially Claude, as he - how can I put it - hasn't got much experience and the inevitable happened.The bicycle part about Amsterdam is true - everyone seems to have one and they ride them everywhere, no matter what the weather. Other cities I have been to where there is a very high level of bicycle use are Copenhagen, Stockholm, and the cities on the plain of the Po river in northern Italy, like Ferrara. I really don't know why bicycles are popular in some places and not others, but it's great to see the places where they are used as the car traffic is substantially less. After Amsterdam I drove to the North Sea and followed the coast south. The coastline is actually made up of many long sandy windswept beaches (some had surf clubs) with quite a few wind and kitesurfers.Large stretches of the coastline have massive dykes built on them, and you can stand alongside them and see the North Sea battering the dykes on one side and the calm inland sea on the inside.Then the road led through the undersea tunnel to Belgium for a few kilometres and it was back into France again.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229893620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229893620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/everardt/3/1229893620/tpod.html Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:08:47 -0500 03 Chapter 2 Europe 2008 - unfinished business.

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Bilbao, Basque, Spain and Canary Islands

Happy Christmas & New Year
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