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.
After limiting our travel each year for the past several decades to 1- and 2-week trips abroad due to work responsibilities, retirement by the second of the two travelers in 2023 eliminated this constraint. So, we kicked off WolfeStreetTravel’s 2023 journeys with one-way tickets to Italy with no plans to return.
The original vision for this prolonged foray to Europe assumed that we’d have an itinerary and lodging planned for the first week or two, then we’d wing it from there. However, this approach proved to be completely unbearable for the travel-planning arm of the consortium. As a result, our entire itinerary, including all destinations, transportation, and accommodations (and about a half a dozen dinners) were planned for the first 7 weeks of the trip.
We still had no return plans, maintaining fidelity to the spirit of the trip, but we definitely weren’t winging it, either.
The trip, which began on May 5, can be logically sequenced into the following legs:
Italian peninsula road trip (17 days)
Sardinian break (4 days, including overnight ferry to Palermo)
Sicily road trip (18 days)
Malta break (4 days)
Normandy bike trip (8 days, including a day before and after biking)
Portugal (8 days)
The color coding of each leg above aligns to the destinations depicted in the interactive map below:
In addition to the color coding, the map breaks down our travels using the following icons:
Bed = hotel stay
House = villa / Airbnb stay
Pin = day trip
Hiker = uh, a hike
Biker = a stage in our Normandy bike trip
We’ll file detailed posts on the trip later, but each of the legs is summarized in this post. We really have tried to keep this overview to a bare minimum, but it’ll still be the longest update we’ve ever posted – sorry!
Italian Peninsula Road Trip
The trip began in Tuscany, where we’d spend 5 days with the Brandts and KJQ in a beautiful area just northeast of Siena.
Overlooking the Val d’Orcia:
We hiked w KJQ one day to the Abbey of San Lorenzo a Coltibuono (and, about 5 miles later, to a harrowing shortcut escaped only through an opening KJQ dubbed The Gate to Salvation):
Tuscany wasn’t all sunshine and Brunello, though – it freaking poured in Montepulciano:
Gracie joined us for a portion of the stay, as well (and a team comprised of her and Madison cleaned up on two successive nights of Trivial Pursuit)
From Tuscany, we drove north, to Portofino on the Ligurian coast – a town that had been on Lisa’s wish list for several years. It did not disappoint.
We continued our hiking habit in Portofino, hiking one day to the Abbey of San Fruttuoso:
And the next along the coastline to Santa Margherita Ligure:
Portofino also was the jumping off point to scores and scores of Aperol spritzes consumed as aperitivos throughout the trip.
From the Ligurian coast, we drove south, back through Tuscany, and over the border to Umbria, and the medieval town of Orvietto for a stopover on our way to the Amalfi coast:
We continued south the next day, to Herculaneum. A smaller town than Pompeii, Herculaneum also was nonetheless lost due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, but it was covered in ash and pumice, rather than being flattened by rocky debris, preserving it much better, including numerous, intact, Roman snack bars:
After a quick overnight in Naples (in which our only goal was to score some iconic Neapolitan pizza), we headed to Capri for a couple of days, leaving the car in Sorrento:
Our stay on Capri was one of the highlights of the trip – we will definitely be back. View over Capri Town from our place:
Hikes each day, including to the ruins of Emperor Tiberius’ villa:
And a hike from Capri to Anacapri, followed by a hike up Monte Solaro because fog reduced visibility to zero for a ride up the cool little cable chairs:
But the weather cleared for a chair ride back down:
We ferried from Capri back to Sorrento, retrieved our car, and began the most harrowing aspect of our peninsular road trip: driving on the Amalfi coast. Seriously – really treacherous.
Luckily, relief was at hand in Praiano, our home for the next 3 days:
We headed a few miles down the road to Positano the next morning, only to retreat back to Praiano after a half a day there. A lot of travelers characterize Positano as the “Jewel in the Crown of the Amalfi Coast.” It’s not. Its a cruise ship packed full of tourists and shitty shops that happens be be tumbling down a cliff in a picturesque way.
We enjoyed Positano much more from a distance, content at our place in Praiano:
The next morning we hiked the Path of the Gods from Praiano to Positano:
Once the path paralleled the coastline, the going was a little technical, but not a big problem. The challenge to the 5-mile-long Path of the Gods hike was the >2000 feet of incline and decline, almost all of which is straight up from Praiano and then straight down 1700 steps into Positano.
Praiano also hosted the first of three Michelin-starred gastronomic dinners of the trip. Plus, a ridiculous perch over the Tyrrhenian Sea on the Amalfi Coast:
From the Amalfi Coast, we drove southeast for a couple of days in Matera, Italy’s oldest city:
Similar to our experience in Capadocica in Turkey, Matera sported tons of centuries-old troglodite homes, churches, and tombs:
And cave restaurants, too:
Our last night on the Italian peninsula:
The next morning, we surrendered our ride for the past 3 weeks (a dr, a brand none of us – not even KJQ – had heard of before), and flew to the island of Sardinia:
Sardinian Break
Between the end of one 3-week road trip, and the start of the next, we built into the itinerary a little down time on the the Costa Rei on the southeastern coast of Sardinia.
Not a lot to report – a few miles of walking each morning along the beach:
And some killer seafood, including and in particular, Sardinian oysters. (We thought these were the best we had every tasted until we later encountered even better ones in Normandy.)
Then an overnight ferry to Palermo, when we’d start another road trip leg across Sicily.
Sicily Road Trip
The surprisingly vibrant and enjoyable city of Palermo – very different from the gritty and sketchy image that we had prior to our time there:
And the first of many cool encounters with Arabo-Norman architecture in Sicily at the city’s 12-century Church of San Cataldo:
And our introduction to the ubiquity of pistachios on everything in Sicily:
And the most horrific of the catacombs of our entire journey below Palermo’s Capuchin Monastery:
And a cool, 3-hour street food tour, featuring a spleen sandwich (4/10: would not try again):
Our last evening in Palermo:
We drove from Palermo to the south-center of the island, to Agrigento, home to the most intact Doric Greek temples in the world, dating to 400 BC:
And spent a little time on the coast while we were there:
And continued the recommended daily doses of Aperol:
Final evening in Agrigento, with a view to the Temple of Juno and the sea:
From Agrigento, we headed due east to a cluster of Baroque towns, so called because they were all destroyed by an earthquake in 1796 and were all rebuilt in the Baroque style du jour. We based ourselves in the town of Modica for 6 days:
Which sported a pretty cool AirB&B that was built into a cliff:
The Baroque Church of San Giorgo in the nearby town of Ragusa Ibla:
The main piazza (such as it is) of the Baroque town of Scicli:
And the spectacularly picturesque Baroque town of Noto:
Modica also was just 20 minutes from the beach, so we started two of our mornings during our stay with some pretty great beach hikes along the Sicilian coast:
Second gastronomic experience on the trip at the tiny Michelin-starred hole in the wall of Accursio, featuring, among other things, Sicily’s orange wine (the color, not the fruit):
Modica’s Baroque Church of San Giorgio (same name as in Ragusa, same style, just different town) on our last night:
The ancient town / island of Syracuse served as our final stop in the south of Sicily – also another city we liked so much that we may return:
Sicily’s most captivating characteristic, at least to WolfeStreetTravel, must be the convergence and layers upon layers of different cultures that have dominated the island. We witnessed this with the mélange of Arab and Norman architectural styles in churches in Palermo and Monreal, for example. But nowhere was it more evident than Siracusa’s cathedral, which began as a Greek temple to Athena in 480 BC. In our travels, we’ve seen tons of churches build on top of pagan temples, replacing them. That was how they operated. Good site, but obliterate the offending structure. Not so in Siracusa. In the 6th century AD, the Byzantines just filled in the spaces between the Doric columns and incorporated the temple into their new church. Then the Normans added to it in the 11th century w crenellations reflective of their military-style churches. AND IT’S ALL STILL STANDING. You can see the ~2500-year-old Doric columns and capitals inside and outside the church (which was hosting a wedding while we were there, reinforcing how Sicilians simply live through their amazing history).
Another case in point, the Syracuse’s abandoned, 1st-century Roman amphitheater. . .
But just up a path lies the city’s even older, 5th-century BC Greek amphitheater, which is still in use today:
And, of course, we checked out the local catacombs:
Imbibing our daily recommeneded allowance of Aperol spritzes at one of the cooler little roadside cafes on Syracuse’s ancient Ortigia island old town:
And then north! To hike Sicily’s still-active Mount Etna. Twice.
The first day’s hike, from the caldera’s southern approach was okay, but not particularly thrilling. The next day, we hiked up from the eastern approach. Holy shit – absolutely stunning. First, a legit old lava tube:
And then, at the top, along the rim of the old caldera, a view of the still active peak, plus smoky evidence in the old caldera of still active volcanic evolution:
And finally, to the northeast(ish) of Sicily, and the now hyperpopular town of Taormina, setting for White Lotus Season 2 (although we didn’t know this when we planned the trip).
We challenge anyone to locate a more stunning, atmospheric setting for a classical theater than the one in Taormina. It began as a 3rd-century-BC Greek theater, then 1st-century-BC Roman theater, then 2nd-century-AD Roman theater, then 18th- 19th- and 20th-century restorations. Pretty freaking cool. And, like Syracuse’s Greek theater, still in use today.
Our digs for 5 days, perched above IsolaBella. Wins the prize for best AirB&B pool on the trip.
Last night in Taormina:
The next day, we flew from Sicily to Malta, dropping off our trusty Citroen C3 – the second time we’ve had one of these for a European road trip. It looks like a sneaker with the unnecessary side effects, but this car grows on you!
Malta Break
And then, Malta! Country no. 71 for WolfeStreetTravel.
Downtown Valletta, the tiny country’s capital, with its unique wooden balcony boxes (gallarija):
And on the heels of the best AirB&B pool in Taormina, the best hotel pool at our digs in Sanglea built into an old fortress and overlooking Malta’s Grand Harbour:
A side trip to Mdina, Malta’s golden limestone old capital:
Last night in Malta along the harbor:
To avoid potential flight issues to reach our next destination in Normandy, where we had a hard start, we flew to France a day early, and stopped over in Chantilly, home to Chateau de Chantilly. No delay, but good call – cool place.
Normandy Biking
The next leg of the our extended foray to Europe entailed our latest biking trip – this time with Thomas and Lisa, in celebration of their wedding (albeit delayed for 2 years).
The five stages of the bike trip spanned two invasions. The first in 1066, by William the Conqueror conquering England from Normandy, as depicted in the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, as seen in Bayeux, our starting town:
The next almost a thousand years later, this time and invasion of Normandy in 1944. On our first day we visited three bunkers in a German battery on Gold Beach:
And on the same ride, the first of our dozens and dozens of dozen oysters ordered in Normandy:
Invasion overview at the American Cemetary at Omaha Beach:
And a night in a 13th- and 14th-century chateau, which may have been the most surreal night of our entire travelling lives. There’s an entire story about this insane evening, but we’ll deal with that in a separate post.
The conclusion of our biking journey at Mont Saint Michel. Originating in 708, the site has attracted pilgrims who still trek across the sandy estuary at low tide for more than 1300 years, staved off an entire English army during the 100 Years War with a garrison of just 100 Norman knights, and is claimed to this day by both Normandy and Brittany.
Then, a day in Paris:
Of all of the legs of the trip, only Portugal was unplanned. We knew while in Malta that we didn’t want to go home after biking, and considered either grabbing a car after Thomas and Lisa departed Paris and then driving south to the Dordogne region for a week or two or flying to Portugal at the same time as their return flight. We’re going to save Dordogne for another bike trip, and so we decided to head to Portugal. Still without having a set itinerary there or a return flight home, though!
Portugal
We decided to first spend 4 days in Porto, in northern Portugal. This turned out to be the absolute best location of the entire trip. We’ll be back to spend a month or two here in the future.
Porto’s medieval Ribeira District and south Porto astride the Duoro River:
Everything in Porto is clad in tile:
And, after 7 weeks of Aperol spritzes:
Local port and tonics suddenly dominated the scene:
And an afternoon of port tastings:
Then, a train south, to Lisbon, the first European destination we had ever visited, back in 2002:
With some monumental areas:
And some more sketchy areas:
And a day trip to Sintra, home to the Pena Palace:
And a final gastronomic meal:
Final night in Lisbon before finally flying home, accompanied by July’s Blood Moon:
All told, we traveled for 2 months, experienced 4 countries, 41 towns, stayed in 19 hotels, 5 AirB&Bs/villas, and traveled by trains, planes, and automobiles (and ferries, trams, tuk tuks, and bikes). Amazing trip!
After 17 months of travel limted to the Mid-Atlantic and the Caribbean, we finally made it out of the country for real. This time to Europe, to finally execute a trip that we planned for this time last year.
As noted in our previous post, our ability to execute our plan very much depended on our securing a French passe sanitaire QR code, which would demonstrate to Air France and restaurants everywhere that we were vaccinated, a prerequisite to boarding or entering. After applying in early August and waiting more than 2 weeks, we received our passes at the 11th hour. Literally. The passes arrived late in the morning of the day we flew out of IAD at 5 PM. But we had them, and the relief in having this risk mitigated really was palpable.
And the passes made all the difference. Everyone required them in France. Not just the gate agents for our domestic flight from Paris to Montpellier, and not just maitre d’s guarding the doors to indoor dining, but small restaurants serving exclusively outside, where there’s really minimal risk. And not just in the bigger towns, like Avignon, Arles, and Uzes, but in tiny hamlets like Castelnaudary, halfway between the Mediterranean and Toulouse, where we feasted on cassoulet outdoors by a canal. Even there, they required verification of vaccination via the passe sanitaire. Luckily, we were able to produce them and do everything we wanted to; no constraints.
We encountered the exact opposite in Spain – no one checked and no one cared. And despite the reference to indoor dining in France above, we only dined indoors there three times. But they checked every time. In San Sebastián, Spain, where Michelin-starred dining was our primary goal, dining was indoors each time. And each time, there was no concern and no checking. This served as an interesting contrast between EU countries. We’ll see what Italy does, when we head to Tuscany in October.
We spent most of our time on the 2-week trip in Languedoc, west of the Rhone, and in Provence, east of the Rhone, basing ourselves first in Uzès, then Gordes, and finally Sète, on the Mediterranean. The itinerary, such as it was, is depicted below, starting at the Montpellier airport and heading northeast first to Uzès, with a bunch of day trip, then to Gordes, with more forays, then to Sète, Toulouse, and finally San Sebastián on the Atlantic coast. We’d pop back up to France to fly back out of Biaritz to avoid an absurd drop fee if we returned the car we picked up in France in Spain, instead.
Although we spent the last 4 days in San Sebastián, in the Basque region of Spain, to get there from the South of France required a 7-hour drive, which is why we stopped half way in Toulouse. The black pins are places we saw during the trip, further delineated by house icons (towns where we stayed) and fork and spoon icons (typically stopover locations between home towns):
Despite all of the risks – we wouldn’t get our health passes, there would be no rental car waiting due to the crazy demand, we’d encounter issues or delays on the road and in towns – the trip went exactly as planned. Almost for the first time for us. Plus, we had awesome weather for all but one afternoon and evening.
Quick highlights from the trip are below, before more detailed posts to come.
First, 4 nights in Uzès in Languedoc, a town we were hoping was a European version of Old Town based on a lot of research last year:
Close (and really charming), but no cigar.
A day trip from Uzès to the fortified hilltop town of Lussan:
Hiking the crazy, river eroded Concluses de Lussan down the road from the little hamlet:
And another side trip to a similar aerie: La Roque-sur-Cèze:
Followed by a return trip to Avignon, home to the Antipopes, for a little stroll and some lunch in front of the Palais des Papes:
Before finally arriving in Gordes – the crown jewel of the Luberon in Provence:
The dry-set rock huts of the bories a few miles’ hike away from town:
A morning drive to Roussillon, a hilltop town near Gordes built on ochre mining (in more ways than one):
Followed by a trip to another hilltop town in the Luberon – Menerbes:
Including a really great lunch at the edge of town that included “parsley knives” (an amusing quirk of translation that we’ll explain in a subsequent post). Also, both Languedoc and Provence are massive producers of rose, which we fully exploited.
And finally, a jaunt through the abandoned hilltop town of Oppedes:
Our last night in Gordes by the chateau at the top of the town and our only spot of weather:
Plus, a visit to the WolfeStreetTravel avatar in the town square. Our guy clearly had been gussied up since our last visit, compared to the image of our blog avatar.
Two nights in Sète, for which we had moderate expectations, having been described as a “gritty port town.” It was perfect, and a great, seaside contrast to the hill towns of the Luberon, so we were able to bike for miles along the sea. The Sète fishing fleet includes trawlers with piggyback Mini me boats that are deployed at sea to haul the other side of the trawl or net:
Having completed the South of France portion of the slow roll, we slow rolled to San Sebastian, Spain. But first, a stop in Toulouse, by way of Castelnaudary, the birthplace of cassoulet (which made our lunch choice there pretty easy):
And then, there was No. Time. Toulouse!
Our final destination – the gastronomic capital of the world, San Sebastián, Spain.
Where we participated in the age-old dining conflict between cheap, quick, delicious pintxos in the Old Town:
Or Michelin-starred fine dining in the outskirts:
A solid tie in this gastronomic war, in our view.
Final evening in San Sebastián:
And the trip was powerfully reminiscent of our epic Micronations Road Trip of 2017. Although we did not move every day, like we did on that trip, we had an awesome little diesel family truckster (a Citroen that looked like a sneaker this time, instead of the trundling Skoda):
And we had some awesome downtime by pools at our base-camp towns, including one in the shadow of a cathedral, exactly like the one in Carcassonne in the Micronations Road Trip
During our roll through the Languedoc portion of the trip, we first stopped in Uzès, a commune of 8500 that, after quite a bit of prior research, we were thinking would be a South of France equivalent to Old Town. It wasn’t, after all, but definitely had the desirable balance of small town-ishness and lots of restaurants and shops, which is a critical characteristic.
The town began as an administrative center for the Roman empire and, at one point in the 8th century, served as the northernmost outpost of Muslim Spain, before ending up with the Franks.
Uzès’ most recognized feature has to be its Romanesque, 12-century Tour Fennestrelle:
The137-foot-tall tower, more in the style of those in northern Italy, is unique in France. It’s also one of multiple towers in little Uzès, transforming the town into a miniature version of San Gimignano, the tower town of Tuscany.
Below, the Tour Fennestrelle it’s tucked behind the 17th-century Cathedral St-Theodorit, built on the site of previous churches destroyed first during the 11th-century Albigensian Crusade, then the 16th-century Wars of Religion (a conflict that would feature prominently when we reached the Luberon in Provence later in the trip).
The Protestants spared the Tour Fennestrelle during the Wars of Religion only because it served as a useful watch tower.
True that: it’s visible from all over the place, including ours:
Definitely sporting some bells, too:
The most photographed house in town:
We had been following Uzès tags in Instagram since before we had planned this trip in 2020, and pictures with this house are one of the most common subjects. When we arrived, we both said, hey, before we go, we should try to find that corner house. It turned out to be two blocks from where we stayed, and we walked by it almost immediately when we set out on the afternoon of our arrival.
The absolute heart of Uzès on our first night: Place aux Herbs, for centuries the center of public and commercial life in the commune:
And the ubiquitous house on the way home:
The château du Duché, home to the Dukes of Uzès since the 11th century. The other two town towers – the duché’s Bermonde Tower, built between 1144 and 1181, , and the town’s Royal Tower – loom over the rest of the château:
The dukes apparently can trace their lineage back to Charlemagne. In the courtyard of the château, the four granite columns are repurposed from an older Roman building.
Atop the Bermonde Tower, with a view of the other two towers – and much of the town.
Inside the château, an armored helmet dating from the 100 Years War.
And a pilgrim’s lamp from the Crusades.
And everywhere, the Dukes of Uzès’ coat of arms, assembled from consolidations across the centuries:
Even in the tiles on the chapel roof:
And in the chapel itself, a mural of the various component coats of arms:
Cool little market one evening along the walls of the chateau:
The Place aux Herbs’ iconic fountain and plane trees:
After sampling the region’s wine, a break with a local IPA for a change.
A morning hike outside of town. The area has really great signposted hiking trails – you can hike from Uzès to the Pont du Gard, if you’re so inclined (we would drive, instead).
A centuries-old cart path worn into the rock:
And it was apparently snail season:
This was an identical find to our last day of biking in Andalusia, Spain, but without the reward of a bowl of seasoned caracoles in town, like we had in Seville, unfortunately . . .
We, uh, never posted pics from our time in Seville, but this is how the Spanish there took advantage of the explosion of snails in the countryside:
Another morning hike; this time to try to find the Roman flow regulator for the source of the Pont du Gard’s water, which, it turns out was the Alzon River right in Uzès.
Despite reasonable effort spent searching, we never did find the Roman ruin, but one of us, of course, found figs, as she inevitably does on our trips:
And not just outside of town – no wall garden fig tree can elude the figeater, either:
Uzès’ towers:
Uzès is part of the French Department of Gard, which produces the lion’s share of the country’s truffles. We had lunch one day in a little alley a few blocks from Place aux Herbs, where they had freakin’ truffle bier:
And truffle-infused tapas – awesome find!
Followed by some downtime at a pool with the best view in town:
The morning of our departure was market day in Uzès, and Place aux Herbs becomes an amazing grocery store:
After browsing around, we headed out of town east, to Provence.
Next up: returning to Pont du Gard and Avignon after almost 20 years.
