The penultimate leg of our prolonged foray to Europe: France! We’ve already hit mainland Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta (trip overview, including legs, is here).
We flew from Malta to Paris to bike through Normandy with Thomas and Lisa, but left a day early to guard against any flight issues or other delays that might impact our connecting with them when they arrived from Atlanta the next morning. Rather than stay in Paris, which we had visited three times and which, frankly, we didn’t particularly like, we headed about 30 miles north to the Chateau de Chantilly and its little town.
We checked in to our hotel a short walk away from the chateau, headed down the street for some lunch, then headed to the chateau itself.
The chateau largely dates from the 19th century, when the Duke of Aumale rebuilt the structure on the foundations of a medieval fortress.
The chateau’s formal gardens were designed by the same landscape architect credited with designing the grounds of Versailles.
Barrel-vaulted, highly decorated ceiling above the grand staircase:
Mosaic above the fireplace in the Salle des Gardes depicting the Rape of Europa by Jupiter:
But it’s not just a 19th-century French mosaic, it’s a Roman mosaic dating to the 1st century AD recovered from around Herculaneum, where we wandered just a month or so ago on this trip. Freakin’ crazy to have this just mounted here.
Libery:
The Rotunda of the Musée Condé at Château de Chantilly, created by the Duke of Aumale to display his art collection, with Henri Chapu’s marble Joan of Arc at Domrémy beneath Paul Baudry’s ceiling painting of the Abduction of Psyche
Just your normal decorative French fire screen; nothing to see here. . .
Heading to the stables. . .
Just as grand as the chateau itself.
Stables: huge. Horses therein: not so much.
Old-school carriages:
Just a pretty cool suspension and paint job.
Stage coach driver uniform:
His boots were not worn, but instead affixed directly to his saddle.
We spent the night at a nice Relais & Chateau hotel next to Chateau de Chantilly, then woke up the next morning to meet Thomas and Lisa upon their disembarkation in CDG from their redeye from ATL. But WolfeStreetTravel’s Chief Adventure Officer, who’s in charge of the entire itinerary, mistook their takeoff time (at around 6:30 PM) for their landing time (at around 9:00 AM) and so we left the hotel WAY too early, missed a nice breakfast, and ended up trying to sleep a little more in the lobby of one of the airport hotels at CDG while we waited for Thomas and Lisa. One more screw up, but luckily a minor one (although the WolfeStreetTravel Navigator was pretty annoyed that she lost sleep over this, literally).
The first trip to Europe, as it happened, where both WolfeStreetTravelers passed through EU immigration using our EU passports:
We had two, segmented goals for this trip:
Explore three towns in France that allegedly were comparable in some ways to our home town, Old Town Alexandria, and were therefore potential home base candidates in Europe
Plus, as an added bonus, a little appendix to the Greek islands jaunt with a leg on the mainland to join the Seattles in checking out epic, millenia-old Orthodox monasteries perched on the clifftops of Meteora in northern Greece.
More South of France Leg
Our ongoing quest to locate a suitable home base in Europe has intensified, now that we also have Irish and German citizenship and can stay / reside in Europe without time restrictions. Home bases we’ve previously considered include Uzes in French Languedoc; Arles in French Provence (home to WolfeStreetTravel’s Gallic fountain avatar); Ronda in Spanish Andalusia; Lucca and Sienna in Italian Tuscany; and Rovinj in Croatian Istria. None of these fit the bill exactly (although Lucca, Ronda, and Rovinj are all high-scoring candidates that we’ll visit again [and already have, in the case of Rovinj]).
After quite a bit of consideration and research with our AI buddies, we targeted the South of France as the best place for us to continue our search – we wanted the southern European / Mediterranean lifestyle, cuisine, and architecture and France was more centrally located than Spain, Italy, or Croatia, the other Mediterranean candidates. We’d visited a couple of times before (for our first European trip [and first bike trip] in 2002, and then the Slow Roll in 2021), so we knew we’d like the area.
In evaluating potential South of France home base candidates for WolfeStreetTravel, we had several criteria (all of which reflected core characteristics of Old Town, Alexandria, the most charming and livable town in the world, as far as we’re concerned):
Medium-sized (we don’t like big cities and prefer more accessible, less intimidating towns that nonetheless offer all of the attractions of their bigger cousins); the population of Alexandria is 160,000 and 12,000 live in Old Town
Restaurant density that “punches above the town’s weight” in the parlance of one of our AI assistants; Old Town Alexandria is densely packed with restaurants due to the proximity to DC and now National Harbor in Maryland, with the associated tourists
Close to a major transportation hub, to enable seamless travel to other European locations (this is also why Spain, Italy, and Croatia were less attractive candidates than France, which is more centrally located for travel to Portugal, Sweden, and Greece, for example, with relatively similar distances); Alexandria is 10 minutes from DCA and 40 minutes to IAD
On a river or lake, providing both atmosphere and water-based activities; Alexandria’s Potomac riverfront plays a major role in our day-to-day at home
Good running paths / routes; we run every day at home, and if we are going to spend extensive time in a European town, we want the same running access, so we don’t fatten up on wine and cheese
Using these criteria, we identified three towns in Provence: Aix-en-Provence, Sommieres, and Vienne. Aix has a reputation as a medium-sized vibrant and charming town very much like Old Town (albeit not on a water body) and both Sommieres and Vienne were located on the Rhone River. After further consideration, we dropped Sommieres from the list as too small, but then added Annency in France’s Savoy region, due to its canals and lakefront location, even though it wasn’t strictly in the Mediterranean cultural belt of the South of France. (We found out about Antibes, Cassis, and Menton on the French coast too late to be included in this evaluation, but Antibes, in particular, is now on our radar for future exploration.)
The final route for the French leg:
We’d fly into Marseille airport, grab a car, and spend 5 days in Aix, 1 day in Vienne (it seemed less and less appealing, the more we looked into it), and 4 days in Annecy.
Aix-en-Provence was exactly as we envisioned, with honeyed limestone facades and an charming centre ville:
But, as the “city of fountains,” we were disappointed – an ongoing drought shut almost all of them down (and they were everywhere):
The big event during our stay was market day on Saturday. Half the town turned into a market place:
The locals were all out stocking up on groceries for the week ahead.
We followed suit. . .
Alfresco dining throughout our stay.
And it wouldn’t be WolfeStreetTravel if there’s not some cool (ideally medieval) history. To wit: The early 6th century Baptistery of Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, built when Aix was transitioning from the Roman world to Christianity – the oldest surviving baptistry in France. Several of the columns are reused from the Roman forum in this location.
And Aperols each evening in a pretty cool AirBnB (the Chief Adventure Officer’s rule of thumb is to book AirBnBs for stays of 5 days or more and also every 10-14 days of hotels for laundry).
After those 5 days, it was time to move north; Aix was beautiful but, we decided, very much one note. We’re glad we visited, but this wasn’t the home base for us.
Vienne, just south of Lyon on the Rhone, offered the next potential home base location. According to our AI buddies, Claude and Chatty G, Vienne’s river utilization included a promenade along the Rhone. This was a lie. It did not.
It did have some pretty awesome Roman artifacts, dating to Vienne’s time as an extraordinarily wealthy Roman trading city. This includes the 1st century BC Roman temple dedicated to Emperor Augustus and his wife Livia, right in the middle of town:
And the town’s massive Roman theater, built into a rocky hillside just above town in the 1st century AD:
And, finally (there’s a bunch more, but this is a trip overview post), the 2nd – 3rd century AD Pyramide de Vienne, right next to our hotel. It’s actually the surviving central monument of the spina – the long central barrier – of Vienne’s enormous Roman circus for chariot races:
The hotel’s restaurant served as our only Michelin-starred dinner of the trip.
Meh. Good not great. Our anniversary dinner on Ios later in the trip was much better (as was our first, great, fish dinner on Naxos).
With the Vienne box checked, we roamed northwest to Annecy, which is decidedly NOT the South of France or Mediterranean in lifestyle, culture, cuisine, or architecture. It’s in the Savoy, just 20 minutes away from Geneva. But we kept seeing this place in our Instagram feeds, evaluated it thoroughly as a candidate, and thought highly enough of its potential that it bumped out Sommieres and consumed a day of Vienne time from our draft itinerary.
Good call. This place was awesome. Canals in the city (Annecy is the “Venice of the Alps”) and Lake Annecy just beyond.
12th-century Palais de I’lle in the middle of Annecy’s main canal leading to the river (behind us):
Annecy’s old town is full of 17th- and 18th-century structures and definitely punches above its weight in restaurants (and wine bars, as we’d learn):
During our stay, we’d swim in the lake, drive around it to another small village, and, the pièce de résistance (literally “piece of resistance” per Dave Barry), biking the 25-mile loop around the lake.
Little side trip to Chateau de Menthon-Saint-Bernard after lunch in the charming village of Talloirs.
And for lunch on the one rainy day during our trip, fondue – a Savoyard specialty.
Annecy was amazing. The town hit ALMOST all of the European home base criteria we had established, based on Old Town, Alexandria. Although it fell short in proximity to a travel hub (we did get a nonstop from Lyon to Athens for our next leg, but the Lyon airport cannot be considered a real travel hub, and Geneva’s is not in the EU). It also exuded Savoyard character, not Mediterranean. But Annecy is a four-season town with hiking skiing in the French Alps (Chamonix is about 75 minutes away), complementing its lakeside charm as a summer getaway. So we’ll be back.
More Greek Cyclades Leg
The second WolfeStreetTraveler had planned to retire in August 2022, immediately after which we would travel to Turkey and four Greek Cyclades islands – Paros, Naxos, Folegandros, and Milos. Supercomputing issues related to the worst high-performance computing vendor in the world scuttled this plan, and retirement was postponed to ensure the issues were resolved. The Turkey & Greece trip of 2022 contracted to include just one Cyclades island: Paros. (Which was amazing – still our favorite island.)
To the missing islands of Naxos, Folegandros, and Milos, we added little Ios to our itinerary, simply because it was there:
We would spend 5 days on Naxos, then 3 days on Ios, 3 days on Folegandros, and 4 days on Milos (all determined sort of based on their size). We’d connect from Lyon to Naxos through Athens, then fast ferry from Naxos to Ios to Folegandros to Milos, then fly back to Athens for a bonus leg, renting cars at each stop.
The monumental Portara of Naxos, the start of what was to be a massive temple to Apollo begun in 530 BC. They didn’t get too far, but this baby has been standing for the 2500 years since.
Probably the best single fish dining experience of the trip at Sarris in the middle of Naxos Town.
Sea bass, before and after.
Naxos beaches in the low season were outstanding – water’s still warm, but the crows have abated.
Just as on Paros, some great restaurants right behind the beach for a pretty nice break in the day.
We drove into the middle of the island and up into the mountains to visit the villages of Filoti and Apeiranthos.
Which offered pretty atmospheric doorways.
Pretty OSHA non-compliant doorways.
A 5-day stay meant another AirBnB. Pretty good digs.
Our next stop was Ios, where we spent time immediately after our arrival to stroll around the island’s main town of Chora.
And later celebrated our 28th anniversary on Ios.
Our place had spectacular sunsets every night, elevating aperitivos hour.
Another Greek island, another beach.
Some pretty good fish at a Greek / Japanese fusion place on said beach.
And, since we were reading The Odysseus on this leg of the trip (it was a slog), we visited the purported tomb of Homer (which does not address the dominant theory that he was, in fact, multiple poets conveying the story through oral histories, but a millenia-old island tradition is a millenia-old island tradition, after all).
The tomb was an unmarked pile of rocks. Pretty underwhelming.
But there’s a pretty good view getting there:
Anniversary abode.
Ios was small, but Folegandros even smaller. It’s main town (also Chora – Folegandros is so small it can’t afford to buy a unique name for its main town; it had to borrow Ios’) is dominated by the Church of Panagia, accessed by a serpentine path up a mountain:
From which there is ALSO a pretty good view:
Chora’s Kastro, a remarkably preserved medieval fortified quarter built under Venetian rule to shelter Folegandros from pirates. Many of the town’s residents still live within its walls.
Folegandros had a sort of saddle across the middle of the island, where you could see both sides, so we hiked this one day. Pretty cool.
And also hiked to Agios Nikolaus beach from the larger Agkali beach one day; the island’s mayor wants to discourage tourism build up, and so prohibits organized beach businesses (read: sunbeds and drink orders), so everything’s pretty rustic.
Although lunch in Akgali over that beach was pretty picture perfect.
Also pretty good digs on Folegandros:
Thence to our final island of Milos, where we stayed in the harbor town of Pollonia (which was composed almost entirely of restaurants that formed an arc around most of the harbor.
Our first full day, we hightailed it over to Sarakiniko Beach, home to the limestone cliffs and rocks that create a dramatic shoreline against the Aegean blue.
Cliff diving turned out to be pretty good there.
We hiked up to the castra on top of Milos’ main town of Plaka.
Where we met Cena, a charming solo traveler from North Macedonia (by way of Toronto), waiting at the bottom of the steps for someone to accompany her. Very nice experience!
Cool ass boat trip the next day to Milos’ Kleftiko cliffs.
Where more diving and swimming ensued.
The picturesque fishing villages-cum-guest house community of Klima.
More good digs in Pollonia, where we laid low on our final day, and dove and swam off the rocks into the deep water right outside our place; pretty good setup.
Last evening on Milos.
And then linking up with the Seattles, who were just starting their Greek sailing trip with a leg in northern Greece to visit the clifftop monasteries of Meteora. This was not part of our original itinerary, but we realized that we’d have an overlap, and coordinated to overlap together.
A pretty great addition to the trip. We had not even heard of Meteora before, so the Seattles were adding value all over the place.
The monasteries began in the 14th century when Orthodox monks seeking solitude and protection from political turmoil established hermitages atop the region’s towering sandstone pillars.
We took a bike tour that lasted the entire first full day in the area, and were able to visit four monasteries.
Although we had not heard of Meteora before, we were familiar with one of the monastery’s roles in James Bond’s For Your Eyes Only. . .
The interior of an ancient Greek Orthodox church atop the nearby town of Kalabata, which was built (as so many were) atop a Roman temple to Apollo, and incorporates (as so many did) physical elements of the temple into the Christian church.
Wine tasting the next day 90 minutes north at the Monastery of Agios Nikolaos, where the monks have been making wine for centuries.
After 3 days, the Seattles continued on to Paros and the start of their sailing excursion, while the Old Towns spent an evening in Athens, and checked out the Acropolis museum there. It did not disappoint.
After 4 weeks, 3 legs, and 9 stops, we headed back home to prepare for our next outing. . . farther afield this time.
As noted on the home (“Map“) page of WolfeStreetTravel, international trips are punctuated by brief forays much closer to home: specifically, a quartet of towns and inns within a 2-hour drive of the actual Wolfe Street that we’ve been returning to for more than 20 years.
Three are located south and west of us in Virginia, but one is located east of us across the Bay Bridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: the Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels. This was our destination at the end of July (a notable annual milestone for one of the WolfeStreetTravelers). We typically visit these locations as a joyful getaway from Alexandria, but ended up visiting both St. Michaels and Orange, VA – home of the Inn at Willow Grove – in 2020 because we simply had nowhere else to go during the first summer of COVID.
Other than rain one evening, pretty great weather in Maryland.
And the obligatory reptile pic due to the still-not-abandoned herpetologist aspirations of one of the WolfeStreetTravelers; here, a fine example of a blue-tailed skink.
The old Tilghman Island bridge (retired in 1998) on display next door at St. Michaels’ Maritime Museum. It looks odd because it’s one of the few examples of a heel trunnion rolling lift bascule bridge in the US (or anywhere):
Unlike many drawbridges that rotate about a fixed pivot, the bridge’s span both rotates and rolls backward on a curved track as it opens.
Its most recognizable feature is the large overhead counterweight, suspended above the roadway. This made it Maryland’s only overhead-counterweight bascule bridge.
Because it crossed the busy Knapps Narrows channel separating Tilghman Island (just down the road from St. Michaels) to Maryland’s mainland, it opened roughly 12,000 times per year, making it one of the busiest movable bridges on the East Coast.
A WolfeStreetTravel tradition: feast on the water at The Crab Claw. Great crabs, as always (although a few were pretty small for “Large” crabs).
Sunset cocktails at the inn:
Another tradition: spicy Bloody Marys at The Galley.
And a fine local IPA.
Day trip for the first time to Easton, MD, right down the road.
Because one of us is a newly minted Irish citizen, we have the right to claim that there’s absolutely no way that there’s enough Irish recipes to fill this cookbook found at a local shop. Unless maybe each page is a different way to cook potatoes. . .
On a tree-lined avenue flanked by 19th-century mansions, an advertisement found multiple times embedded in stretches of sidewalk that did not, in fact, feature coffins.
The aforementioned rain. Luckily, this was the night we stayed in to eat.
Last evening in St. Michaels, featuring not only an amazing sky, but the rabbit that keeps the lawn mowed.
Our second trip this year turned out to be domestic – no new countries this time. Instead, we headed to Seattle and points north in Washington for our niece Gracie’s graduation and then to the American Southwest to hike and experience some iconic national parks – a longtime goal. Our original itinerary included the following:
Pacific Northwest for 6 days:
2 days in Seattle
3 days in Bellingham
Travel day from Bellingham to overnight stay in Las Vegas to pick up a car
American Southwest for 10 days:
Zion for 4 days
Bryce for 3 days
Lake Powell for 3 days
Travel day from Lake Powell (Page, AZ) to overnight stay in Las Vegas then fly home
But discussions with relatives in Tucson convinced us to nix the Lake Powell leg due to extreme temperatures. Then, during our stay in the Bellingham area, discussions with the Bostons and Seattles convinced us to add Page, AZ, back for a day so we could visit Lower Antelope Canyon. So, we lopped off a day in Zion and added a day in Page for the second stage of the trip:
American Southwest for 7 days:
Zion for 3 days
Antelope Canyon for 1 day
Bryce for 3 days
Trip is off to a good start! On arrival at SEATAC, we were picked up by the CEO of Crooked Spoon in his tricked out ice cream truck:
A little lawn bowling that evening – very cool. Played with oblong balls that arced when you rolled them, so it was like putting on a green with a rise on it.
The Extraordinary Creatures exhibit in Seattle, featuring real organisms and their real colors. A cool convergence of nature and art.
Brew pub group lunch after in Seattle:
Then a sail to Bainbridge Island on Tim and Anne’s boat:
The next day, a drive up to Bellingham for the graduation, with a stop at Taylor Shellfish Farms for a buttload of oysters and ceviche.
Hike up to Oyster Dome:
The graduation itself:
A final lunch in Bow Edison before we head to Vegas for the start of the second stage of the trip and the Bostons head home:
First ~hiking stop on the way from Vegas to Zion – Petrified Sand Dunes at St. George, a recommendation by the Seattles, who have St. George Frequent Flier status:
Very cool first taste of American Southwest landscape:
After arriving at Zion and chilling at our place for a bit in the late afternoon, we headed out to the first ~hike (~ aren’t really hikes – they’re more like decent walks), Canyon Overlook near sunset (but not too near, inasmuch as the Zion restaurants all close at 9 and we didn’t want to starve). The Grand Arch:
The next morning, we eBiked to the first of our real Zion hikes – Scout’s Lookout and Western Rim trail:
A view of Angel’s Landing, which we did not do:
The second hike (and best of the entire trip); 11-mile out-and-back trek / wade through The Narrows:
Weather in Zion reached >90 degrees, so we ensured that we booked a place with a pool; the iconic view behind it was an unexpected added bonus:
And the place came with resident wildlife for morning coffee entertainment:
Then, a drive southeastward to Page, AZ, and a Navajo tour of Lower Antelope Canyon:
Pretty amazing and a good last-minute addition to the trip.
But then we had to drive back northwestward to our next park destination: Bryce Canyon, featuring its iconic hoodoos eroded rock formations:
And crazy, isolated, unbelievably tall Douglass Firs, growing where no tree should be:
Our highlight there was an 8-mile loop hike from Fairlyland Point, with a 7:00 AM start to secure one of the very few parking spaces at the trailhead:
The next day, we intended to head to a very cool slot canyon outside of the park that seemed to offer an appealing combination of the grandeur of The Narrows at Zion with the sculpted walls of Lower Antelope Canyon. But the dirt road to reach the trailhead included an uphill sandy portion that our rental could not pass, despite repeated attempts. So, we headed instead to Utah’s Kodachrome Basin State Park:
Awesome hand sculptures into the sandstone that we were hoping were Indian and centuries old. Nope. A range we later consulted said that they were from bored ranchers and settlers in the 19th century. Still pretty wild.
The spires of Kodachrome Basin, a park presumably established by the Society of Geologists Who Keep Elbowing Each Other and Giggling Like 9-Year-Olds:
Pretty good digs in Tropic, a town near Bryce Canyon:
From Bryce, we headed back to Las Vegas for a night (and a show), then headed home. More on each leg later, but we first need to posts the remaining stops on the 2023 Prolonged Foray to Europe.
After cooling our heels at home for the first several months of the year due to the actual Wolfe Street events noted here, we were able to get away sooner than we anticipated thanks to the crew completing the construction milestone that was putting our lateral line at risk.
So, where to go in April? Despite its proximity to DCA, we had never visited the Bahamas, so this was a candidate; as were Monserrat, St. Eustatius, Saba, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mustique, Bequia, and a few other Caribbean islands that WolfeStreetTravel has yet to visit (we’ll get to them all in good time). But which one now? We’ve never viewed Bahamas positively, probably due to Nassau and that unappealing stationary cruise ship of a resort, Atlantis, so this wasn’t necessarily the top of our list. But we didn’t want complicated travel logistics, which all of the others would entail, and we had been eying Kamalame Cay off Andros Island in the Bahamas for probably five Christmases in a row now. They had availability (and a 5th night free for a stay of 4 nights), and getting there entailed a civilized 10:15 flight from DCA direct to Nassau followed by a 10-minute puddle jump to Andros Island (plus a 20-minute drive to their dock). So, we booked.
Nothing compares to our puddle jump experience to and from St. Bart’s second-shortest-runway in the Caribbean (good thing we didn’t go to Saba this time – that island holds the record for the shortest), but pretty cool and super casual experience. (That’s someone’s Starlink dish just sitting there in the aisle behind the cockpit.)
The bustling Andros Town international airport – country 82 for WolfeStreetTravel!
And an on-time arrival at our destination. Kamalame Cay is both a cay off Andros and a self-contained resort.
Where you’re issued a golf cart upon check in, and you drive this sandy path to and from your cottage to the main house complex, where the pool and two bars and restaurants are located.
Pretty good situation at our North Beach Cottage.
One of our cottage’s resident curly tail lizards (travel without reporting on reptiles would be anathema to WolfeStreetTravel’s core tenets):
Super early dinner our first night, since we didn’t have any breakfast (as a matter of routine) or lunch (because we were on or between flights and had no opportunity). The pork belly bites with hoisin sauce and basil became an almost-every-night staple during our stay.
The cay’s overwater spa, indulged in on one of the WolfeStreetTraveler’s birthday.
Beach by the great house, which was nice, but the one just down the steps from our cottage was just as pleasant.
The weather was perfect – clear skies, upper 70s / lower 80s. BUT, we had to contend with wind 24/7 during our entire stay:
Each cottage had its own little palapa, which was pretty great.
As was the pool.
Whole fried snapper. Great in concept (who doesn’t like a whole fish?), but their technique to pull the fillets out and batter and fry the backs unfortunately ruined it. Still fun to look at though?
Little drive back to our place – the sound / strait, such as it is, is on the right, and all of the properties and the beach are on the left:
Pretty great cottage situation – every property on the place is right on the beach.
Sunset our last night:
Early morning ride across the sound / strait to Andros to catch the 7:30 flight (with a ridiculous layover for our noon flight home).
Another puddle jumper, another cockpit view:
Nothing to be alarmed about here:
Other than an engine fire?
Hopefully more posts on Sicily soon, but you never know.
In an unusual move for us, we have now spent two consecutive Christmases in the same country. Shocking! Last year, we visited San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This year, we returned to Mexico (albeit to a different region).
Mandarina is a new, Pacific-coast development an hour northwest of Puerto Vallarta, very similar in concept to Mayakoba on the Riviera Maya an hour(ish) south of Cancun.
Coincidentally, we also stayed at the same hotel collection in Mandarina as we did in Mayakoba (and San Miguel). Definitely did not disappoint.
And with us, as always, were the traveling Christmas stockings, which have accompanied us on almost every Christmas trip for the past 25 years, from London, to Latvia, to Laos (they were left behind for our Christmas on safari due to the duffel bag limitation). Lisa made the stockings for our first Christmas on Wolfe Street when we moved there in 2000 and, because we have traveled abroad each Christmas since that time, they’ve become world travelers in their own right. (One year I’ll remember to take pictures of the stockings when they’re full. . .)
During breakfast our first morning, we spotted a pod of gray whales cruising by right off the beach.
W spotted another pod from our terrace later in the same day. Pretty cool, especially considering that we took a whale watching tour out of Bar Harbor last year, and saw none. Now, unexpectedly, they were everywhere.
Sunset stockings.
Santa!
Pretty cool Peruvian / Japanese / Mexican fusion at one of the restaurants, and a rather decent bar, to boot.
Perfect freakin’ weather the entire time, which was welcome.
Oh, and Roy Kent! “He’s here, he’s there, he’s everyfucking where! Roy Kent!”
And, as always, a little wildlife to delight one of the travelers (but only one of us, to be sure).
We spent one afternoon at the nearby polo field for our first polo game.
Just an exhibition match, but it didn’t disappoint. They were pretty good.
Fortuitous cervesa choice.
Pretty short stay of just 5 days, but definitely worth it.
“WASHINGTON—A report released Wednesday by the United Nations revealed that the U.S. continues to lead the world with the highest per capita density of Kevins of any nation. ‘Ranked against the rest of the international community, the United States is far and away the global leader in Kevins, with upwards of 27 Kevins per square mile in most major American urban centers,’ said lead researcher Gilbert Dujarric, who added that when factoring in the nation’s Kevs, the density figure nearly doubles. ‘There are certainly areas of Australia, the U.K., and Canada where the concentration of Kevins is high, but they all fall well short of the United States’ Kevin population across all demographics. And when we look at the benchmark Kevin-to-John ratio, no country comes even remotely close to the staggering .205 figure the U.S. posted in 2013.’ The report’s authors noted with surprise, however, that the United States had surpassed Denmark and risen to second place in Jürgen density.”
Right on the heels of our post Five Legs in Six Weeks trip overview, the New York Times slyly attempted to one-up our juggernaut media platform with this “One House in Four Countries” article:
Clearly a knockoff of WolfeStreetTravel and a blatant brand encroachment violation, but we’ll let it pass because the situation described in the article is very cool, and certainly aligns with our interest in European history and cartography. The gist (and hook) of the article is pretty much captured in the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article:
“ ‘Wait until you find out how everyone in my family has come from a different country,’ says Alex Zigante on a recent summer afternoon.
Mr. Zigante, a 30-year-old engineer, takes a breath and lays out the family tree: His great-grandmother, Angela, was born in Austria-Hungary. His grandmother, Maria, 90, in Italy. His father, Aldo, 61, in Yugoslavia. And Alex was born and raised in Slovenia.
And yet, all of them have lived their lives here in Portorož, a seaside village in what is now southwestern Slovenia, where the family’s roots go back centuries to the Venetian Empire, and where their modest three-story home has been a fixed point on an ever-changing map.”
Even better (for WolfeStreetTravel’s interests, anyway) is the series of maps included with the article, depicting the fluid and ever-evolving geopolitical construct that swirled around Portorož over a 100-year period:
Super freakin’ cool, from our perspective, to have your property caught up in the maelstrom of pre- and post-world war political territory restructuring; then revolution; then restructuring. Absolutely enthralling.
And who doesn’t want the occasional reminder of the scope and size of the extinct but still-mildly intriguing Austro-Hungarian Empire?
Following the strategy articulated in the overview for our 6-week trip up the Adriatic coast (and into the Dolomites and Bavaria) earlier this summer, we bookended the summer with another 6-week, shoulder-season trip. Last time, we left on June 1 and returned on July 15. After a 6-week respite at home, we left for this trip the last week of August and returned the first week of October, which still provided us with great weather in Mallorca and Cornwall, but without the crowds that would be there in July and August.
And, unlike the “pick-up-a-car-in-Sarajevo-and-drop-it-off-6-weeks-later-in-Munich” approach from the last trip, where we luxuriated in a car that we could hang on to during the entire, 6-week road trip, we popped in and out of five rental cars in as many trip legs for this journey.
A cartographic overview of the trip’s five legs is pasted below:
Treating the map above as a clock, our route rolled out like this:
We began our trip at the 3:00 spot, with an 8-day loop around Switzerland
Then flew counterclockwise south to the 5:00 location, with an 8-day loop around Mallorca
Then flew to Valencia at the 6:00 spot, after a couple of days there, we began an 9-day drive west to multiple locations in Andalusia in Spain
Then flew up to Portugal at the 9:00 location for 3 days in the Douro Valley and then back to Porto for day
And finally ended the trip at the 12:00 spot with a 10-day loop around Cornwall and back to London in the UK
An interactive, zoomable map of the legs is provided below:
The route around the Switzerland leg of the trip also proceeded in counterclockwise fashion (and provided a second opportunity to visit (or at least drive through) Liechtenstein!):
Although we’d spend all of our time on this leg in the land of cantons, we nonetheless began at the Milan airport in Italy, since this location provided a more logical start and end point for a loop route that would cover several mountainous regions as well as Switzerland’s lake-happy Ticino canton in the south.
Our first stop in Switzerland – straight from the airport – was a gondola ride and hike to the Aescher Gashaus near Appenzel for a little lunch – pretty great perch to kick off our time in Switzerland (other than the first of the two parking tickets we’d get on this trip):
Just a normal day of traffic in Appenzel:
Our time in Appenzel, hiking and otherwise, was pretty damp the entire stay:
So onward we headed – first to Lucerne:
Really atmospheric and enjoyable – plus a great, historic footbridge!
Then to the car-free mountain town of Wengen in the Lauterbrunnen region:
From whence we experienced one of the most spectacular hikes ever, in the Swiss Alps:
View from the nearby, smaller hamlet of Murren to the Junfrau and Eiger:
Our final hike – the Eiger Trail – and more mist and rain, unfortunately:
But our digs in Wengen helped assuage this a bit:
After a week, we ended our loop with an 8th day in the Swiss town of Locarno on Lake Maggiore (strategically booked at an AirBnB with a washer / dryer – a key element to our long-duration trips):
Then spent the next morning in Locarno’s even more charming sister town of Ascona before heading to the Milan airport for a flight to our next leg in. . .
the Spanish Balearic island of Mallorca, where we’d spend the next 8 days:
Mallorca’s capital of Palma, the biggest town (and only city) on the island:
Cool pool in the shadow of one of Palma’s massive churches (very reminiscent of our pool sitch in Carcassonne in 2017 and Uzes in 2021):
Strolling Palma on the way to our 27th anniversary dinner:
Palma’s cathedral lit up at night from our terrace:
And strolling amidst its flying buttresses the next day:
On to a couple of days in Port de Soller on the island’s west coast:
Cool perch over the port and ocean on our last night:
On to Pollença on the north end of the island, which necessarily entailed driving the absolute most insane road we’ve ever experienced:
Super charming town of Pollença, with it’s 365 steps to reach the town’s Oratori del Calvari chapel:
After swimming in the ocean and trying the nearby beach for all of 20 minutes, we decided that this arrangement would better suit our interests for the day. We were right.
Our last town of Colónia di Sant Jordi (and another AirBnB laundry stop), in the southeast corner of Mallorca
On to the Spanish mainland!
Although we’d spend the rest of our time in Spain exploring more of Andalusia (after seeing and loving much of it during our bike trip in the region in 2017), we’d first bop around Valencia on the east coast for a few days:
Spectacular city – super vibrant and fun and very Beaux Arts-y. The unbelievably perfect weather undoubtedly had a lot to do with this impression.
Cool little bike tour one day around the city and out to the beach:
Including riding through Valencia’s sci-fi City of Arts and Sciences:
Then, a long drive west to our first Andalusian town that we missed on our bike trip: Cordoba.
Star of the show? The absolutely unique Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba. Originally built as a grand mosque in the 8th century under the Umayyad dynasty, it was converted into a Catholic cathedral after the Christian Reconquista in 1236. Unlike every other instance of these conversions, however, the existing mosque structure and architecture was not razed, but retained.
First of several times we’d see this street-cooling technique used in Andalusia:
At one end of Cordoba’s Roman Bridge lies the Moorish Tower (Torre de la Calahorra), a fortified gate built by the Moors in the 12th century to defend the southern end of the bridge.
On the drive from Cordoba to Malaga, a stop at an olive oil processing facility for a tour and tasting at the Almazaras de la Subbética cooperative south of Córdoba – winner of the World’s Best Olive Oil competition in 2024/2025. And the 10 previous years. Super cool.
That’s a LOT of olive oil!
Priego de Cordoba, another white-washed Andalusian town visited on the drive to Malaga:
Malaga, the second (and final) iconic Andalusian town we missed on our previous bike trip:
Right in the heart of town lies a Moorish calabaza atop a Roman amphitheater. The history half of WolfeStreetTravel was delighted.
Cool little tapas tour our first night; it turns out that maybe we DIDN’T need to pack 45 cigars for the trip (which we certainly did).
One of our goals? Chow down on espetos at a chiringuito – a beach fish-grilling restaurant (which we learned about on The Amazing Race, for what it’s worth).
Definitely lived up to the hype (especially accompanied by a few tinto de veranos).
A stopover in Marbella en route from Malaga to our next town. Despite high expectations for a super awesome area – meh.
After months of the Mediterranean (first in Croatia on the initial bookend and then in Mallorca, Valencia, and Malaga on this trip), we transitioned to the Atlantic after driving past Gibraltar to get to Playa Zahara de los Atunes.
Where we stumbled, during our only night there, into a cool little concert at a beach bar down the street:
Continuing our little U-shaped arc around Andalusia, we headed next to Conil de la Frontera (our third de la Frontera, designating a frontier town between Christian and Moorish territories in the 900s):
Fried fish frenzy.
And a little day trip to Vejer de la Frontera:
Even more atmospheric Andalusian town (and our forth de la Frontera):
More beach fish at Playa de la Fontanilla:
And our casita for 2 days right down the beach. One of the best AirBnBs we’ve experienced (plus a laundry stop):
Amazing sunsets from the casita’s roof deck:
Then, back to Seville, which we really enjoyed when we first visited in 2017.
Never got to see the “mushroom” during that visit; this has been corrected:
And we spent our limited time in 2017 visiting Seville’s storied cathedral and did not have an opportunity to visit its alcazar. This also was corrected:
And, reminiscent of our days feasting on pinxos in San Sebastian in 2021, a dinner in Seville that included baby eels. Delicious.
Seville served as our last stop in Andalusia; from there, we flew to Porto, Portugal, picked up another car, and headed immediately east to the Douro Valley – Portugal’s wine country.
Our first stop – literally straight from the airport – was a tour and tasting at Quinta da Pacheca. Good wine. Great port.
And the Douro Valley wineries really DO still stomp grapes, a la I Love Lucy. Pretty wild.
Cool little sunset boat trip on the Douro River:
And a full day of biking through vineyards (none of which accommodated walk-in tastings – you had to have reservations, which we thought was insane:
Douro needs to learn lessons from the Virginia (and sure, California) wine region.
Pretty good digs for our 3-day stay:
The day after biking, we did end up calling and then visiting Quinta de Fojo, which offered an outstanding and authentic tasting experience at a generations-old family winery:
Then, back to Porto for a day; we first visited at the tail end of our inaugural post-retirement long trip in 2023 and definitely wanted to return, even if only for a short time:
Like our second visit to Rovinj, Croatia, a few months earlier, we stayed across the river from Porto’s core instead of inside – definitely a different point of view!
From Porto, we flew to our final leg: Cornwall in the southernmost tip of England:
Due to the length of the drive from London to our first Cornwall location (we try to keep drives between locations under 4 hours, and ideally no more than 3), we stopped halfway in the town of Frome, in Somerset:
Turned out to be pretty cool, and with a remarkably high ratio of pubs to people, which was a plus for us:
Then, to our first stop in Cornwall – Padstow:
Rather than stay in town, which was a little bereft of cool lodging options, we stayed about 10 minutes away, at. . . The Pig. Which was a cool lodging option, it turned out:
But we did get into town our second night to dine at The Seafood Restaurant, the flagship eatery of Rick Stein, who we had never before heard of, but who turns out to be a beloved English restauranteur and a seafood magnate in Padstow (the restaurant was one of at least three Rick Stein joints in town):
And on our first full day, our real purpose for visiting the region: spectacular hiking. In this instance, a quasi-loop hike between the achingly charming village of Port Isaac to the even smaller hamlet of Port Quin:
The hike exceeded all expectations:
Our excitement manifested itself in different ways, to be sure:
Port Isaac in the distance:
The local cows seemed excited to see hikers come by, since all of them crowded the fence when they saw us coming:
Our reward once back in Port Isaac? The first of several fish and chips (less than half a dozen during this trip, much less than the daily dosage we sought in our 2-week Cotswolds and Wales trip in 2022 that packed on so many pounds that we had to wear muumuus when we got home):
Our next hike en route from Padstow to St. Ives represented the most iconic views from the British TV series Poldark, which essentially inspired this entire leg. At the start of the hike lay the very tin mine that Poldark worked in the show, Wheal Coates:
Cliffside hiking at its best:
Our next base, St. Ives:
(Which always seemed to be at low tide during our stay, oddly enough):
But had a legit, picturesque English port town charm to it, even if most days were overcast (which seemed to amplify the Englishness of it all):
En route to our next hike, we stopped at the Minack Theatre, which was reputed to be an amazing venue for performances on a cliff facing the water. All of the facts were correct, but it was, in fact, meh:
The next hike? Around Lands End! The actual, for real most southwestern most point in England (and the UK):
More unbelievable Cornish cliffside walks:
Then, around the horn of Lands End and on to the first of our last two Cornish stops: Falmouth.
Meh.
The weather during our stay may have, however, influenced this assessment:
And the final Cornish stop, St. Mawes. More shitty weather, but a super picturesque Cornish seaside village:
And, of course, the weather improves the day we depart:
On the way back to London (by way of Sherborne), we literally drive right by Stonehenge. It turns out that we never actually needed to buy the entrance fee in 2022!
One of the many block-bisecting arcades of London, our final stop.
This was our fourth stay there, and we base ourselves in a different neighborhood each time – this time was Marylebone. Also, since we forewent the whole high tea experience on each of our previous three stays, we concluded that the fourth time was the charm:
The next day, a visit to London’s 3rd century Mithraeum, discovered beneath the modern city in 1954. This was a Roman temple dedicated to the god Mithras, a mystery cult popular among soldiers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and could have continued to be more popular than early Christianity as an alternative to the traditional Roman pantheon had it not been for the pivotal backing of the latter by a couple of Roman emperors.
And a visit to St. Bartholomew the Great church, founded in 1123 – London’s oldest surviving parish church and a rare masterpiece of Norman architecture. Its Romanesque nave and medieval chancel evoke nearly nine centuries of continuous use, surviving the Great Fire, the Reformation, and the Blitz.
Definitely a historic end to an epic 6-week journey of 5 legs!
We’re definitely done traveling for the next few months – we need a break and some recovery time to revel in the most appealing town of all: Old Town Alexandria. So, this is where we’ll hang and try (really try!) to post some of the growing backlog of trip photos that are piling up (and have, in fact, now contributed to maxing out the storage capacity to the home PC, prompting a replacement).
