Travel

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.

A couple of nights before we left for Paris my sister came to my house for dinner and told me she heard a story on NPR about this man in Paris that invites guests for dinner every Sunday evening at his house. “Do you want to go, sounds interesting, don’t you think?” This did sound interesting, it could be very interesting or not, but either way it surely would be an experience. Jim requested that anyone that wants to come to his house send him an e-mail and tell something about yourself, pressure was on to say something short and creative to get his attention. Waking up in the morning I opened up my e-mail and there was a response from Jim. He said that there was a waiting list for the Sunday night dinner which he added us to and we should call him at noon on Sunday to see if anyone had cancel making room for us. He also invited us for a glass of wine sometime during the week if we had time. I guess the e-mail sparked his interest.

I called exactly at noon on Sunday, Jim answered and said we were on, and he looked forward to meeting us at 8. After riding 3 different lines on the Paris Metro we arrive following his directions, taking a left and going 30 steps, then a right 11 steps, well, you get the idea, we arrived at the large green gates. He had given us the code to punch in which we did and the the gates opened to a long, very dark, crushed stone walkway. We continued with our directions in hand illuminated with our cell phone, we found his door. We were early, miscalculating how long the trip would take but decided that he probably could use some help, there were 60 people coming.

What was supposed to be nothing more than meeting my good friend Robert – who is like a brother to me – in Dublin, Ireland to celebrate our birthdays in December, turned out to be something of an excellent extravaganza. Robert is the CEO of Clive Christian, "the world's most beautiful kitchens" according to their monthly ad in Architectural Digest. He had a meeting in Dublin that happened to fall on my birthday 2 days after his. He appears to be a stuffy, British guy with his finely tailored 3-piece suits with Hermes ties who speaks the proper "Queen's English", but his biggest claim to fame is that he was a 'roadie' for ABBA back in the 80's. Depeche Mode, another rock band from that decade was playing in Dublin at the time, so that's what we decided to do for our birthdays. 

Word got out and next thing I knew, six of my closest girlfriends signed up to come along. It is no easy feat to organize a trip with six women, traveling across the big pond. However, I had some things working in my favor. Being a 'stewardess' for 20 years, I have a bit of seniority and get 8 buddy passes per year to give to whomever I want. Don't get excited as they are not free and you have to fly standby. Thanks to a fancy computer program I have to see the bookings and the fact that few people travel to Ireland in December, the odds were stacked in my favor. It was amazing that we all managed to get Business Class seats coming and going.

Open and become a part owner in a restaurant in Italy?  Sure, why not?  That’s exactly what happened several years ago when chef Jeremiah Tower and I decided to try our hand at operating a ristorante in a small hill town in Umbria, Italy.  What no one tells you before you arrive to attempt such an endeavor are the hoops you must jump through, and the circus-type feats you must attempt to get the necessary licenses and permits to start a business in Italy as a foreigner.  Madonna! It was like trying to squeeze olive oil out of Cararra marble.  Endless meetings with lawyers, police chiefs, and building inspectors and we still didn’t have the necessary permits and documentation to operate a business. 

It all started in 2003 while on a three week trip to southern France and Italy.  Italian friends told us about a small restaurant where the owner of the property (a small hotel along with the restaurant) was looking for a chef to become a part owner in the restaurant.  Ristorante Carleni was located in Amelia, a small hill town in Umbria not too far from the well-known town of Todi, and relatively close to the A1 auto route.  The A1 connects Rome to Florence and is heavily traveled.  We looked at the restaurant and were intrigued.  We initially thought that we might operate it on a seasonal basis opening in the spring and closing in the fall.  We went back to try it out in the spring of 2004.  After much effort and hand wringing we both decided that there were far too many roadblocks and difficulties, and opted not to proceed with the project.  But this post isn’t really about the restaurant, it’s about beans.