Chef Tom Hits the Road – a multi-part foodie travel adventure
A while back, I put together my fourth culinary tour to Europe. My first was called Ten Days to Tuscany. We did Florence, Sienna, Rome and some of the hill towns in Tuscany. Twelve people. The second and third were both a week’s cruise along the Canal di Midi in the South of France, on a slow-moving hotel barge, then most of a week in Paris. Twelve people each. One big reason I wanted the barges was because of their pace. Sometimes you could actually walk along the shore faster than the barge would meander up the canal, a clear opportunity to slow down and savor the moment.
On theses adventures we did agritourism cooking classes, shopped the local farmers markets, hunted for wild asparagus along the canal, visited goat cheese, sea salt, and olive oil factories, tasted local wines, cooked as a group for the barges and their crews, saw a lot of beautiful country, history and art - and mostly ate and drank our little hearts out. We even did a cooking class at the famous Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Despite the inevitable human drama that happens with group travel, the trips were glorious. Plus, putting these trips together allowed Dan and I to see some country.
Couple of years had passed and it was time for the next one. People kept asking me when. So, I came up with a new adventure and called it Bordeaux to Barcelona. The plan was to see three cities: Bordeaux, Barcelona, ahttps://mimofood.com/ennd San Sebastian, Spain (which happened to be within a few hour’s drive to Bordeaux). I contacted my friend Jean-Francois who runs a barge cruise brokering company called France Cruises, out of San Antonio. Jean helped me put trips two and three together. He said there was a special boat in Bordeaux with a captain who was an avid food and a wine aficionado. Though bigger than a barge, we’d still have the entire boat to ourselves.
We’d spend a few days cruising the Dordogne River around Bordeaux and her tributaries, visiting wineries, local markets and restaurants, then we’d take a bus south along the coast of France, just over the Spanish border to a former fishing village called San Sebastian. There we’d connect with a wonderful company that was then called San Sebastian Food and now called Mimo Food.
There we would do three things: a Pintxos Tour (pintxos are small Basque appetizers), dinner at a Sidreria (traditional cider house) and a meal with a local Txoko (pronounced choko), a Basque fraternal order of gourmands – some have been around for a hundred years. Then off to Barcelona for most of a week to connect with Culinary Backstreets for more food tours and special meals.
Despite the demand for what’s next, I had a hard time selling the trip. So frustrating. Could have been timing. Might have been the price, or the itinerary. I never did find out and the deadlines for deposits and such kept getting closer and closer until, in great disappointment and frustration, I ultimately called the trip off completely. Man was that tough.
At one point in my subsequent few weeks spent mourning the loss of this grand adventure, Dan looks at me and my long face and compassionately says, “Ok, here’s what you should do. Just go. Go by yourself. Go and just stay. You’ve done all the research and the hard work putting the trip together, so go. Enjoy yourself.”
He said a few more things, but I had stopped listening after “go and just stay.” In my heart I was already on the plane.
God, I love my husband.
So I went. My itinerary changed quite a bit because I wanted to see what I wanted to see, when I wanted to see it. Ended up with the first stop being Paris for four days (where I’d spend my birthday), then Barcelona for a week, then San Sebastian for a week, then, because it was there and I was craving something exotic, I would spend a week in Istanbul! After about a week in Istanbul, Dan would join me for a few more days and then I’d show him Barcelona. Now THAT was going to be one hell of a culinary adventure!
What informed a lot of my decision making while putting this journey together was “I want to stay in one place long enough to feel more like a local than a tourist.”
Before I left, I told my peeps that I would be sending out blog posts and that they would have the opportunity to vote on where I went and what I ate. Throughout these posts you will read references to the voting process.
Part 2 will include my blog posts from that nearly six-week excursion, including a lot of my culinary adventures.
Thought you might enjoy the ride.
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