03 Jul Travels with Patt (Part 1)

Everyone should have a travel friend like Patt. They would need to be spontaneous, unpredictable, have a big sense of humor and love traveling and seeing new places.

In this Part 1 of my travels with Patt I’ll stick to our 2004 trip to France and Spain. Basically we took out a small map of Europe and drew a big “O” starting and ending in Paris. We decided to meet in Bordeaux about 360 miles southwest of the capital city. Patt would already have spent days in Amsterdam and I would be arriving from Washington, D.C.

However, we met earlier than expected in a way that would never have worked if it had been planned. I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport about one hour earlier than scheduled and realized I could take an earlier train than planned to Bordeaux. I needed to purchase the ticket quickly and to brave going up a shorpt 8 step or so down escalator. But I did it and rushed into the Bordeaux bound train to see Patt a few seats away from my entrance. She had observed the going up the down escalator with the thought that, “that is one crazy woman.”

Once in Bordeaux and settled in, we were hungry for dinner. Walking into the center of town I recommended a small basement restaurant we saw. I found the menu very favorable to eating an authentic French provincial meal in a very non presumptuous place. That’s when Patt explained that, “No, I don’t like French food.” After finding out that her favorite ethnic meal would be Indian (my least favorite), I agreed immediately and enthusiastically. We needed to get this Indian food idea off the table quickly. Fortunately the Indian restaurant met my expectations, I thought the food was terrible, and so did Patt.

After the requisite wine tours and wine tastings to the utterly fabulous St Emilion vineyards just outside Bordeaux, we headed for the Spain border and the stunning Pyrenees mountains in our bright azure colored car. Don’t ask the brand or model. The car was a gorgeous color that I noticed and can remember.

Our next stop after crossing the border and rolling up and down the Pyrenees was the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Just google it, for me the outside was so spectacular, that it eclipses any memory of its modern and contemporary art inside. That evening we continued to San Sebastian, a resort town on the Bay of Biscay in the mountainous Basque country where I had my first tapa (a small food dish accompanying a glass of wine).

As memorable as San Sebastian was, we needed to leave the next day to go through Zaragoza and Pamplona before reaching our Barcelona destination. Zaragoza was as calm and quiet, as Pamplona was bustling and noisy. Something was up in Pamplona, it felt electric somehow. From the t-shirt vendors I saw that it was the day before the week of the Running of the Bulls. The Running of the Bulls must be a very exciting event to produce electricity the day before even one bull charges down the narrow street. But we had a reservation and needed to leave Pamplona to reach Barcelona by nightfall.

Barcelona did not disappoint with its art and architecture. The fantastical Sagrada Familia church was in art critic Rainer Zerbst’s words, “…impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art”. After four to five days of sightseeing in Barcelona, we requested the car we had valet-ed. We were anxious to see the Costa Brava, a coastal region northeast of Barcelona to the French border. We needed gas and that’s when strange things started to happen. I was driving so Patt was delegated to pump the gas. She asked if I had been putting in diesel, as the little gas door indicated diesel only. I said no and we wondered what regular gas would have done to the car but since we hadn’t noticed any difference in the last several hundred miles, we figured we were ok. After winding forever through small roads on high cliffs we decided to take an exit to a seaside town. There were many one-way streets in this small town, and I made a turn that seemed to direct us to a small beach. Trying to correct the error, I was stuck facing several lanes of cars coming at us. When I tried to make a U turn, and needed to reverse, I could not find REVERSE in the car shift box. REVERSE was not in the same place it had been. Patt found the instruction manual and a paper that indicated we were in the wrong car.

Well, because we were in the days just before the cell phone explosion, we stopped at a phone booth, called the hotel who obviously had given us the wrong electric blue car. Apparently hotel staff had not taken many hospitality courses as they castigated us verbally for stealing the car. They had already contacted Patt’s husband in the US to report to him that his wife was now a felon in a stolen car on the run somewhere in Spain. In the meantime, for the three hours back to the hotel to retrieve our correct car, Patt planned for a dinner apology from the hotel staff as well as, “probably a night or two extra, as it was a really nice hotel.” It was not to be.

Arriving at the hotel the manager and the wronged business man whose car we had were waiting in an aggressive posture with arms akimbo on the top stair just outside the lobby. The strong exchange from them included these accusations, “don’t you know the difference between a French and a Spanish license plate?” (“NO”) and the equally undiplomatic, “How could you be so stupid?” Apparently a make-up free dinner and a couple of extra nights stay were not in the cards. So we quickly got back on the road.

We had lost a lot of time but looking at a map of Europe that was about 5” square we were confident we could make Montpellier (France) before midnight. We stopped in Girona and had a delightful meal. Continuing on to Montpellier was quite a bit longer than we estimated. We arrived in Montpellier about 2:30 am. Our hotel was in a pedestrian only zone, so after parking the car in an underground parking garage, we emerged to a strong smell of urine and several party goers in the town square who were in a downward spiral from too much partying.

The hotel was pretty sad but the back and forth with the manager for a decent room ended about 3:30 a.m. when I became too exhausted to argue with another hotel manager. We accepted a room that looked like a dilapidated school house meeting room with two hospital cots and a sink in the corner. We left early the next day for Nice and Cannes.

What can you say about the French Riviera? Gorgeous, backdrop of lavender fields and a calm that we desperately needed. After a few more days, we started driving straight north up the east side of France and stopped in Grenoble on a Sunday when the city seemed deserted. No wonder, the French Tour de France was in a particular stage up the hill to the east of the city. Should have guessed because the several story car park for our hotel was filled not with cars, but bicycles.

Continuing the next day, we continued north on the autoroute to the northeastern corner of France and the Champagne region. But while Patt was driving she became restless so we decided to stop at the next exit. That happened to be Beaune. What a find! This was the heart of the burgundy wine region and more wine tasting tours. Always free in France, at least at that time.

We did make it to the Champagne region the next day but it was too late for the information tourist center to direct us to some champagne tastings. We left Lille a little disappointed but the very scenic highway route going west out of town took us by several farms one after the other until we spotted a sign for a champagne tasting. We turned in and the farmhouse wife explained she would get her husband to give us a private tour but needed to get him out of the swimming pool where he was with the grandchildren.

The champagne was incredible, Patt bought the limit she could legally bring back to the US. And that region was just a few hours away from completing the circle we had in mind to bring us back to Paris after what seemed like a very sober but wine soaked adventure.