Travel – Page 2 – Grace Mattern

February 10, 2016

On the Water

A sudden shift to port, then a slow thud back to starboard, followed by a gentle swaying. The hanging lamp over the table sways, the view out the long, narrow porthole windows floats up and down, back and forth, the railing of the dock on one side, the neighboring boat on the other. Water is my ground. For four days I’m living on a houseboat.

We had trouble finding Hermitage Moorings when we arrived in London on Sunday night, but we had a friendly taxi driver who was fine about driving up and down Wapping High Street, not wanting to let us out in the rain and wind without knowing we had close shelter. We finally located the address and John, our AirBnB host, came to greet us at the top of the ramp leading to the docks. As we walked down I looked up. Glorious — the Tower Bridge and the Shred building lit white against the black sky, just down river.

At the boat, Paul stood in the doorway and helped us get our bags on board and pointed out the steep stairs to our apartment, dark and narrow and low enough even I had to stoop. Then I opened the door and stepped in. “Oh, this is fantastic,” I said and I heard both John and Paul laugh in appreciation. They love their Maxime and it shows in every detail of design and decor. Boat living is tight, so smart, tidy arrangements work well and they’ve worked wonders. Our apartment is both ingeniously compact and beautifully appointed.

After three days living on a boat I don’t feel cramped or annoyed by the pumping in and out of water for the toilet and shower, the small refrigerator and tiny galley, the way I have to squeeze between David in a chair at the table to get to the small living room space. I’m not here to cook or do a living room chill, I’m here to enjoy London.

Which I have. David and I have walked over 17 miles in the last two days, and I’m doing my half marathon training runs on top of that. We’ve walked along both sides of the Thames, up river past three historic pubs, down river to the Tate Modern twice (the Alexander Calder show is brilliant), through Parliament Square and Piccadilly Circus, past Buckingham Palace and through St. Jame’s Park, hunting down the Grenadier pub, with its 400 year-old tin bar and reputation for being haunted by a soldier who was flogged to death there after being caught cheating at cards. It wasn’t easy to find, but it was fun, the ceiling plastered with US dollar bills with sharpie markings, mostly declaring the origin of the bearer but one unfortunately proclaiming “Trump 2016.” I certainly hope not.

No, I don’t feel cramped. I feel soothed.

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February 6, 2016

Gratitude

If you include healing meditation in your daily meditation, which means calling to mind people who need healing of some kind and repeating phrases like, “May they be safe, may they be healthy, may they be peaceful, may they be free from suffering,” you’re supposed to start by first calling for those things for yourself. So I do that, and one of the things I ask for is gratitude. “May I be grateful. . . . ” So, today I’m grateful for:

the time, resources and opportunity for the next adventure David and I are embarking on today — London, India, the Canary Islands. Over three weeks of new sights and experiences.
having a body strong enough to train for a half marathon, beating my race pace goal in a training run this week by more than 30 seconds (8:40 average over 4 miles), and running 9 miles today. I’m currently icing my knees, but I did it. I’m pumped!
the creative space I’ve created for myself, both physically in my study/studio, and in my head and heart, giving myself time to write and engage with other writers and make collages and cook and knit and plan another week this summer at a writing conference because I am going to finish my memoir.

There is so much more I could list, but this is what came to me this morning over the course of those 9 miles.

I am so lucky.

November 22, 2015

Sadness Moving — Reflections

When I write about grief and sadness my blog gets a lot of hits. Same when I write about my travels. What’s the connection? What if I wrote about both at once?

Thursday I went to Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts, meeting up with my youngest sister Meg and her husband John and Chris’s Jon. Family disappears so I’m hanging on.

Wednesday night I went to Portland to hear Ry Cooder and Ricky Skaggs play such accomplished music, accompanied on piano by Buck White (85 years old!) and his daughters singing exquisite harmony, I remembered how to be happy.

I’m hunting art. Moving. Years ago a friend from my work life spent a weekend here. She came to NH to do a half marthon with me so I would think she’d have known what she was in for. But a day in to our visit, before all our mutual friends showed up as running support and talking-drinking-eating buddies, she watched me move around the kitchen as she sat at the table.

“You really can’t sit still can you?”

“Nope.”

For years she made a joke of the fact that 4 miles into the half marathon I abandoned her and moved off ahead. I couldn’t run that slowly. It hurt.

If I could slow down I would.

If all my reflections on life created an infinite pattern, I doubt it would be as beautiful as “Endlessly Repeating Twentieth-Century Modernism” by Joshiah McElheny. His piece at the MFA is stunning and brilliant, a perfect, mirrored box of glass objects that reflect into an unending distance as each object holds its own jeweled reflections.

Now I’m wearing some of Chris’s jewelry along with her shoes and socks and jacket and jeans.

I’m not planning to go anywhere for a while.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

October 30, 2015

City Week

A year ago I was in New York, picking up my number for the NYC Marathon on a rainy Saturday, then running the windy streets the next day. It was glorious. Earlier this week there were trucks along Central Park West unloading and connecting massive coils of cable, wiring the park for the end of the race on Sunday. This year I’ll be watching rather than running (Matt is all trained and ready to do it again) and I’m not sad about that. In fact, I’m excited. This wasn’t a year for marathon training, but it’s still a year to enjoy the city.

“You’re four for four,” David said to me Wednesday night as we walked back up town after seeing “An American in Paris.” I didn’t know what he meant at first, then he pointed out I’d chosen two plays and two restaurants over the previous two days and each had been excellent. We were both surprised by the skilled mix of classical, modern and show dancing (with a heavy emphasis on ballet) in “An American in Paris,” all of it smart and sharp, set against back drops that danced across the stage too, the streets of Paris and the Seine coming in and out of view as panels whisked across the stage on free rolling wheels swirled by dancers, a dazzling art show in motion.

“A View From the Bridge,” directed by Ivo van Hove (excellent profile of him in last week’s New Yorker), with a set as stripped and modern as Paris was 50’s and lush, was gripping on Monday night. This revival of Arther Miller’s 1953 play had the unmistakable stamp of van Hove, wringing the heart out of a play. David and I had started the morning packing the car in New Hampshire, and by 11:00 p.m. we were walking up Broadway to our AirBnB on the Upper West Side, stunned.

We had dinner at ABC Kitchen on Tuesday night and lunch at Gabriel Kreuther on Wednesday — fantastic foodie experiences that we were hungry to enjoy, having walked 20 miles over two days by then. We walk when we come to NYC — into and around Central Park, up and down Broadway, back uptown from the 9/11 Memorial, through Soho and Noho and Union Square and Herald Square and in and out of the overload of Times Square multiple times on this trip, with tickets to three plays.

Yesterday we walked another 7 miles on a day when we’d planned not to move around too much. But between a morning stroll through Central Park marvelling at the massive sycamore trees, a visit to the American Museum of Natural History and a walk back down Broadway for the play “Hand to God,” we logged a lot of miles again.

Walking back up Broadway last night we were still talking about “Hand to God,” an outrageously funny play that stars Tyrone, a sock puppet brilliantly played as an alter ego by Steven Boyer. With its irreverent take on religion and incisive portrayal of the pain that can arise from mistaking emotional silence for morality, it’s a deeply affecting play that cuts much deeper than the laughs foul-mouthed Tyrone draws with his dark monologues on religion’s failure to truly lift the human spirit.

Our spirits are certainly higher after a very full week in the city, a much needed mini-vacation when David and I only focused on what we wanted to do. A week for us. And we’re not sad about the week coming to an end, because now we have a weekend with Emilio and Ava, and we’ll be back in the city on Sunday, watching Matt, and tens of thousands of others, run.

September 25, 2014

Attenzione! Silenzio!

The Vatican Museum was mobbed, and I don’t mean just crowded, I mean Extreme Tourism in the number of other human beings moving through room after room of frescoed walls and ceilings and gilded moldings and marbled walls. As David and I by-passed the thousands (it seemed like that many) of people waiting in line to get in to the museum, having bought tickets ahead of time online (a must for many of the museums we visited in Europe), we were thankful we at least didn’t have to wait.

But being inside, with all those thousands who had already gotten through the line, felt suffocating. The crowd was so thick it was almost impossible to do anything but move from room to room with the mass, streaming along and then backing up and getting stuck at narrow doorways. The museum map was the worst I’ve ever seen, so it was difficult to know where you were or how you might exit the mess.

But we wanted to see the Sistene Chapel and the rooms of Raphael frescoes, so we kept moving. The art was extraordinary, and we especially enjoyed the room of geography, mapping ancient Rome, as we could see the cities we’d visited in Provence. And the Raphaels and Sistine Chapel were as terrific as we expected.

Except, because the Sistine Chapel is supposedly a sacred space, as determined by the Catholic Church, every five minutes or so, as the hum of thousands of people crammed into a small space would start to rise, a stern male voice would announce, “Attenzione! Silenzio!”

Really? The Catholic Church is letting this many people into a “sacred space,” and then expecting them not to be human? To be totally silent? For all the reasons I’m sure you can imagine yourself, I found it difficult to be told to be silent by the Vatican, after touring the on some level obscene riches of the Vatican. Who was silenced to build the wealth of this church? How can they honestly reconcile inviting this many people into a chapel and then expect them not to make any noise? How much money is the church making off this museum?

On a positive note, the Borghese Galleria was outstanding. Again, it’s a museum showcasing the riches of the privileged, in this case the Borghese family, which extended its wealth in part because a member of the family became a Pope. The smaller scope of the museum made it easier to take in, and aren’t all museums, to some degree, showcasing what the rich have collected? Our advance purchase tickets gave us two hours, strictly timed, in the museum, so there were never too many people. The Bernini sculptures were astounding, and the frescoes and decorated rooms and Caravaggio paintings were well worth a visit.

And afterwards you can walk in the Borghese Gardens, a wonderful green space in Rome. Tomorrow I’ll be walking in my own garden, not an unwelcome thought.

September 22, 2014

Umbrian Gardens

Enough of Tuscany? There’s always Umbria, where I went almost every day last week. I’ve been continuing my marathon training on this trip (marathon training while traveling in Europe is certainly interesting), and had two 4 mile runs, an 8 and a 12 to do last week. Cetona is on the border between Tuscany and Umbria and running across the valley from the farmhouse where we were staying to Umbria was my best option for a flat route. I’d walk down the steep, gravel road from the farm, then follow Via del Gore across the flat farm land of grape vines, corn and sunflowers until it ran into the bottom of the Umbrian hills we could see in the distance from the garden of the farmhouse.

On Friday David and I decided to explore a bit more of Umbria, especially the town we could clearly see as a long smudge of reddish buildings on the ridge directly across the valley from us — Citta della Pieve. A lovely town of old brick buildings, winding streets and cafes that had at least as many locals as tourists, we found it delightful. We’d visited some of the more popular Tuscan cities earlier in the week — Montepulciano, Pienza, Sienna — and found plenty to enjoy, but also bus loads of tourists.

As we walked around Citta della Pieve, I looked for gardens created in the stone streets and around the brick buildings.

Garden on a corner in Citta della Prieve

We drove on to Panicale, and again I took note of the many gardens created from potted plants or in tiny pockets of green between or on top of buildings. I’d been enjoying potted gardens all week as we walked through many ancient hilltop villages, such a contrast from the large gardens and sprawling yard and pastures of the farmhouse where we were staying.

The most stunning gardens I saw were at the Monastery de San Francesco, a few kilometers up in the hills behind us at the farmhouse. Now a rehabilitation center for young men with substance abuse problems, the church and former monastery is beautifully landscaped with cypress trees and hedges of rosemary, flowering pots of plants strung along the side of the road, and large vegetable gardens terraced on the hillside below. We were given an enthusiastic tour of the church with frescoes that date from the 1400’s by a young Spanish man. I marveled at it all, especially the peaceful and beautifully created landscape.

Of all the cities and towns we explored during our week in Tuscany, we didn’t find any place we liked better than Cetona. It’s charming, authentic, surrounded by a beautiful countryside, and, for me, has some good flat running routes outside of town.

Now we’re in Rome, the hills and gardens of Tuscany and Umbria behind us as we immerse ourselves in three days of frenetic antiquity before heading home on Thursday.

September 19, 2014September 19, 2014

Lunch On Italian Time

Restored Ceiling of a Chapel in Sienna Duomo

On Wednesday Alison and John, the hosts of this farmhouse gathering in Cetona, treated everyone (13 of us at that point) to a celebratory lunch at a restaurant on the Piazza Garibaldi in Cetona. I’d gone to the restaurant with Alison on Monday morning so she could meet with the chef and plan the menu — we’re celebrating many birthdays, both recent and current, while here, and Wednesday’s lunch was one of very many celebratory eating events.

“We’re here to talk with Nilo about Wednesday’s lunch,” Alison said when we arrived at the restaurant.

“He’ll be back in a few minutes,” the waiter who speaks English told us.

“How many minutes,” I asked, wanting to know if we should come back later, if we should do some shopping, if we should just wait there. “Five minutes, fifteen, an hour?”

The waiter smiled. “Italian minutes. How many?” he shrugged and gestured to the tables outside on the piazza. “Take your coffee. He will be here.”

So Alison and I sat with cups of cappuccino and soon John joined us, having walked in to town. He had an espresso. Before too long Nilo arrived and we began talking about the menu for lunch, with the waiter serving as translator. We talked about four courses, antipasto, primo, secondo and dolce (appetizer, first course, main course and dessert), but decided that would be too much food and asked for only the antipasto, primo — which consisted of two pasta dishes we assumed would be split and served together as one — and dolce. By that point, however, the translator was waiting on other customers, and I suspected Nilo thought we were still having the rabbit and chicken as a secondo. But I decided not to say anything. This was Alison and John’s party to plan, we’re all in Italy to relax and eat, why worry about it?

At lunch on Wednesday when the primo came out as two separate dishes — ravioli with tomato sauce and then pici with duck sauce — my suspicion of misunderstandings with Nilo about the menu got firmer. By then every one was in a jolly mood, as new bottles of wine kept appearing on the table and the pace of service gave us plenty of time to talk about everyone’s various adventures in Tuscany so far and the delicious food being placed in front of us. After the waiters cleared the pici dishes, Alison announced that next we would be having the apple cake with gelato. Except the waiters gave everyone forks and knives again.

“I think we’re getting meat,” I said, and sure enough, plates with chicken, rabbit, potatoes and small spinach souffles were set in front of everyone. Everyone who by then was more than full. We’d already been at the table eating and drinking and talking for hours — Italian hours. Now everyone was laughing.

So we did what we had to do. We ate some more. The waiters kindly gave us containers to take home leftovers, along with the apple cake. But somehow we all found room to eat our gelato at the restaurant.

We finished those leftovers last night. Good thing there’s a cook coming to the farmhouse tonight to create another delicious meal, and a new round of leftovers.

Here are some photos of what I’ve been doing besides eating.

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September 14, 2014

In A Garden In Tuscany

As if eight days in Provence wasn’t enough, now we’re at a farmhouse outside of Cetona, a hilltop village in southeastern Tuscany. There are nine of us here this afternoon with another coming this evening and four more coming tomorrow. Above is the table under a grape arbor in the garden where the action has been centered — lunch, French wine we brought with us from Provence vs. the Italian wine made here on this farm, snacks, seeing how many devices we can get on the internet at once with the extended wifi router from the house where the owners live and two pocket routers on the table. Everyone seems mighty happy so far.

Entrance to Upper Ruins of Marquis de Sade Chateau

The rest of our week in Provence was as wonderful as the beginning. We continued to embrace the concept of slow travel, and walked to Lacoste on Thursday (and toured the old chateau of the Marquis de Sade, now owned by Pierre Cardin), rather than do the usual tourist tour by driving from one adorable hilltop village to the next. Finding a good walking route through the peach orchards and vineyards between our rental in Bonnieux and Lacoste wasn’t as easy as we’d thought it would be, but lucky for us we met Frank, a friendly British man who visits his friends in Provence as often as possible. His favorite thing to do is walk. We ran in to him going the wrong way on a small road, and he showed us the path up to Lacoste. He also told us about the Gorges de la Veroncle, another beautiful canyon. We walked up the canyon on Friday, past caves and ancient mills.

We did visit some tourist spots, including the gorgeous Abbaye Notre-Dame de Senanque, a Cistercian monastery since 1148, and the restaurant made famous by Peter Mayles in his book A Year in Provence, Auberge de la Loube. It was a delightful meal and I can see why someone would want to spend a year in Provence.

Now I get to see how Tuscany stacks up against all the other places I’ve visited on this trip where I could imagine spending a lot more time.

September 10, 2014

France Sent Magnifique!

English translation = France smells magnificent.

As soon as I walked into Anny’s yard in Lisores three weeks ago, I noticed the fragrance. I couldn’t place the smell. No wonder, I don’t live in France. Anny’s gardens and house smelled enticing and exotic, smoky and salty and earthy, almost marine which made no sense, being more than 100 kilometers from the coast. Was it the stream gurgling through a lavoir on her property (a public place in France set aside for washing clothes — I’ve seen many in villages since being at Anny’s house), the vegetation, the gardens, France itself?

The delicious smells of France have followed me to Provence. Never having been here, but having seen many photographs of the hilltop villages in the Luberon area of Provence, I expected a French version of Tuscany. It’s more like an Arizona version — high, dry hills and mountains and canyons and the smell of sun-baked cedars and scrub oaks and lavender. Lovely.

Domaine de Coyeux Winery in the Dentelles de Montmirail

We spent Monday doing a Cotes du Rhone wine tour, circling the Dentelles de Montmirail, a small but magnificently scenic range of mountains south of Vaison la Romaine. Many of the vineyards we visited were tucked up against the slopes of the Dentelles, terraced lines of grape vines as high on the slope as possible until sheer rock faces made any further agricultural encroachment impossible. We have a plan (drinking and packing with bubble wrap and clothes) to get all the wine that ended up in the trunk of our rental car to Tuscany (we have a flight from Marseilles to Rome on Saturday), and if there’s any left, back to the U.S.

Yesterday we left Vaison la Romaine and drove south to Bonnieux, by way of Mont Ventoux, a 6,200 foot mountain that dominates the landscape of Provence, much higher than any of the surrounding mountains. The summit is all white limestone, giving it a unique color on the typically green horizon. We saw as many bikers climbing and descending the road over the mountain as cars. In fact, the summit parking area was closed because a Netherlands film company was shooting a film about biking on Mont Ventoux. The star (or the man at the center of the cameras’ foci) looked in his 60’s, which was consistent with the bikers we saw chugging up and zipping down the road. This is not a trip only for the super-fit — there were many older men with substantial bellies popping out of their biking shirts.

The biggest surprise was the Gorges de la Nesque, a spectacular canyon south of Mont Ventoux, where the River Nesque has cut through the calcareous rock of the Vaucluse plateau. Today we found another canyon driving over to nearby Buoux to check on a restaurant and a hiking destination for later in the week. This afternoon we walked through the ridge-top Foret de Cedres (towering cedars planted by a forester in 1860 for lumber), the town forest of Bonnieux, with striking views to the south. We could see the Mediterrean coast in the distance, and perhaps Italy, waving to Alison and John who we’ll be joining next week in Tuscany.

And I kept sniffing the air, relishing the odors of a hot, dry and astounding world.

September 7, 2014

Living in Provence (For A Week Anyway)

In the past when I’ve visited old stone cities in Europe, perched on hilltops, I’ve always imagined what it would be like to live in such ancient buildings, walking every day on streets paved with rocks or bricks, opening unscreened windows to the air with other houses tight up against my own walls.

Now I know what it’s like, at least for a few days. David and I are staying in Vaison la Romaine, a small bustling city with a “new town” and an “old town,” both being very old by American standards. First settled in the 2^nd century BC, Vaison la Romaine has a history of townspeople moving back and forth from the lower city on the north side of the Ouveze River to the upper side on the south, depending on what war was going on and who needed protection from whom. We’re staying in the medieval upper (as in further up the hill) city where the Count of Toulouse built a castle on a rock above the upper town in the 12^th century.

The lower town has impressive Roman Ruins, an outstanding Provencal Romanesque style Cathedral and Cloisters and streets busy with cafes and shops. The upper town is a maze of stone buildings (many built with stones from the Roman ruins during a particularly large exodus from the lower city to the upper) and streets with alleys and walkways circling in and out of squares centered around fountains.

We arrived late on Friday night after a long day of train travel and negotiating our rental car out of traffic in Lyon to head south for Provence. The friendly owners of the AirBnB where we’re staying had made us a reservation at Le Bistrot du’O and we ate our delicious dinner (what dinner on this trip hasn’t been delicious?) and fell into bed. Our small flat is a long room with one window on the front facing out on Rue de Fours, the bedroom behind curtains at the back. It’s like sleeping in a cave, which suits me fine. But the owners have made it clear that their three level terrace off the back of their apartment upstairs is ours to use as we wish, and we’ve spent hours under the grape arbor, having lunch, reading, and drinking Cotes du Rhone wines that are impossibly inexpensive here.

Yes, we’re enjoying Provence immensely, spending a few days living in a medieval city, which is as delightful as I’d always imagined it would be.