Travel

One of the best things about Europeans is when they invite you to come visit them, they actually mean it. When a co-worker of my husband’s found out we were journeying across the pond, they not only let us stay in their London flat, they insisted we come stay with them at their house in Deia, Mallorca. I initially didn’t want to intrude, but once I saw pictures of this beautiful Mediterranean island, I changed my mind.

Since this visit was off the original itinerary, I choose places I wanted to go by looking at the local postcards. One of our first stops was Sa Calobra. My husband and I aren’t exactly sun-worshippers, but this beach locked between mountain cliffs was a sight I had to see.

With directions from our hosts, Lanny and Shelly, which included a description about the road to get there and all the tourists we would find at the end of it, we set off. Not needing to see this natural wonder yet again, they agreed to meet us later for lunch.

Though given fair warning, nothing can prepare you for this journey, which takes you from mountaintop to seashore in 7 miles while descending 2000ft.

Have you ever tasted Limburger cheese?  So you think you're eating a pair of regular socks.  Then you realize you're eating your brother's socks. 

How did I come to enjoy this delight?  As it turns out, flights around the holidays to Costa Rican crunchy granola yoga ranches are unusually pricey when you attempt to book them a few weeks in advance.  Vacation #1 scrapped.  Vacation #2 born - depart home-base (Chicago) with my partner in crime and spend a few days enveloping ourselves in the beer and cheese of Wisconsin.

Day 1. Monroe, WI

In Monroe, I fell in love with an unattractive older swiss man, seduced by his cheese tour of the Roth Kase plant.  Did I know that parmesan sat in the salt brine for 2 weeks?  No, sir.  I didn't even know what a salt brine was before this tour.  I'd been consuming passionately but ignorantly for 30 years.  The tour group discussed and debated what gave cheese it's flavor -- the cultures!  the aging!  the milk!  the land!  whilst I peppered them with questions and succumbed to the brain tingles.

Spring is the perfect time for an off-season weekend in California's Sonoma Valley. Premium rates don't begin until just before the Memorial Day weekend.

Off-season extends from the end of harvest in November through mid-May. In December, January, and February there can be a bit of rain, which is good for the grapes. Even for visitors, the inclement weather adds to the valley's charms, especially with so many restaurants serving comfort food and great wines.

During March and April, day time temperatures hover in the mid 60's to low 70's, with the nights still in fireplace-cozy mid-40s. Only a few buds appear on the vines, but brilliantly colored wild flowers are already in full bloom.

Fields of bright yellow mustard plants spread as far as the eye can see. Tall green grasses wet from the coastal air surround mile after mile of still dormant, grape vines. The lifeless looking vines mask the vitality that will burst forth as the day time temperatures climb into the 70's.

Olympia is a charming little city in the Pacific Northwest, set down on rolling hills surrounded by forests of Douglas-fir, bigleaf maple and red cedar – a pretty, speckled egg resting in a nest of twigs.

This is the old part – the far end of the Oregon Trail, settled on Native American land by Europeans in the 1850’s – where Leopold Schmidt founded the Olympia Brewing Company in nearby Tumwater Falls and sold his beer, if you recall, with the slogan, "it’s the water," which I’m surprised none of the hundreds of water bottlers has adopted now that Leopold’s beer business has folded.

This is Downtown Olympia, with its century-old buildings, its perfectly-proportioned Capitol, its tree-lined streets on which people drive politely and you can always find a place to park – often without a meter – near the still-family-run bookstore or café or bike shop you want to go to.

But that’s not where I wanted to go, or rather needed to go, to help my son move into an unfurnished apartment.  We needed to head over to the other part of Olympia and it is this part – which I imagine you’d find outside most other American towns of its size – that I’m still trying to figure out as the plane banks over Puget Sound taking me home.