I’m not a foodie. I seldom watch the Food Channel. The one cookbook I
own came with my microwave. I only go to Williams-Sonoma to get a gift
for someone else. So I’m surprised that some of the best memories of
my bicycle trip in France last summer are of food.
I was the only American in our group of 14, the rest were Irish or
British. Every day we biked 20 to 35 miles through the beautiful
Provençal countryside and every evening we had dinner at one of the
many restaurants in the village where we stayed. Even the smallest
towns had dozens to choose from. Sometimes we were the only ones in
the place.
Dinner was our evening’s entertainment. The group would meet in the
hotel lobby, then wander the narrow streets checking out menus in
restaurant windows until we reached a consensus. Usually, the only
dissenter was a snooty vegan, a London financial planner studying to be
a yoga instructor. She would frown as she studied a menu. “Can’t eat
that. Won’t eat that. Ugh, no way.” Then she would drag her poor
husband off for a salad somewhere. Once, I offered her some of my
sunscreen. “I don’t put chemicals on my body,” she told me. She came
back at the end of the day with a spectacular sunburn.
What do I look for in a travel experience? The answer is simple: culture, nature,
world-class shopping + food and the best nightlife, parties + events I can find. Sometimes in one day! Like many world-class cities London offers diversity, and my trip there this past fall provides a great example of how I was able to combine my favorite vacation pastimes.
I grew up on a farm in south Georgia. I had no appreciation for the fact that we grew our own crops; I never once had a meal from a can. Everything we ate came straight from the farm to the table. We even had a pond and stocked fresh trout and other fish.
My wife, Peggy, and I recently returned from a cruise from Barcelona to Venice with a few extra days in the Veneto for wine tasting and despite being an occasional internet food blogger (and therefore a food expert without any real knowledge or training – I do so love the internet), we still learned a few things that might help you eat and drink your way across Europe. Enjoy!
When I told friends I was going to spend four weeks in St. Tropez last summer, more than one of my foodie friends told me I must try the Tarte Tropezienne—which was described to me as a giant brioche filled to the heavens with a creamy vanilla custard. This sounded like a dream come true. As I child I loved pudding—homemade butterscotch pudding, or bread pudding, or crème brulee, were the best—but mostly we ate packaged pudding, the Jell-O Brand. I liked vanilla and my brother, ten months older, liked chocolate, and my father told us that as toddlers we would sit facing each other in twin highchairs and smear our respective puddings all over our faces, smiling in ecstasy.