Travel

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!

Eat the local food: I know that this can be scary for some, but just do it. Even though Peggy and I were on a cruise, we found plenty of chances to eat off the ship, and part of the fun of traveling is trying what you’ve never had before, or just the better, more authentic local versions of the dishes found at home. For Peggy and me, this meant mounds of homemade pasta in every shape, size and texture – and pasta is never scary. In Sardinia, the pasta was fregola, which looks like big couscous, tossed with local shellfish and bottarga, a local specialty of cured fish roe that has been salted and preserved and then grated over the pasta (okay a little scary, but amazingly good with a briny deep sea flavor). In Malta, we were told rabbit was the local staple and while the few times Peggy and I have eaten rabbit it has felt a bit like eating the Easter Bunny, the fried rabbit was fantastic, with a crisp and sticky garlicky outer shell covering the tender sweet meat. (Once, in Sweden, we were told to try the reindeer, which we ate and enjoyed, but then it felt like eating Rudolf.) In Hvar, Croatia, a small beach resort town, the fish is brought in fresh, and then grilled with coarse salt. We were told to eat it and we did. No regrets.

Last week I endured the two most dreaded days of my life each year for the past 20 years. FAA mandated 'stewardess training,' formally known as "CQ." Stands for 'Continuing Qualification.' Ladies and Gentlemen, this has nothing to do with serving you drinks and meals, listening to all of your problems, helping you stow your 100 pound compact suitcases, with an everlasting smile on my face.

An excerpt from  "Hungry for Paris"

Some ten years ago, I went to dinner one night with no expectations. A London newspaper had asked me to write about Lapérouse, an old warhorse of a restaurant overlooking the Seine on the Left Bank—it was doing historic Paris restaurants, and this one’s been around forever. I politely suggested that there might be better candidates, because as far as I knew, this place was still a slumbering tourist table flogging its past: it has several charming tiny private dining rooms with badly scratched mirrors—as the legend goes, these cuts were made by ladies testing the veracity of newly offered diamonds (real diamonds cut glass).

The editor was unyielding, so off I went. The stale-smelling dining room was mostly empty on a winter night, and though the young mâitre d’hôtel was unexpectedly charming and gracious, I was more interested by my friend Anne’s gossipy accounts of a recent visit to Los Angeles than I was by the menu.

Individual cabins. The dining car. Pre-dinner aperatifs in the lounge. While some people may believe that these amenities are relics of a bygone era of travel, their features and comforts exist on The Ghan, part of Australia’s Great Southern Rail Line that connects the Northern Territory to South Australia.

All vintage idealistic notions aside, this Thoroughly Modern Matthew wanted to see if it was possible to go from point A to point B in a velocity I don’t travel in that often: S-L-O-W. Would the lack of crowds and technology compliment or confuse me along my journey? Would I tire of a trainride that is the antithesis of fast, modern travel? And could I even survive without wifi?

Well, I did. And I loved every minute of it.

After spending a few days in a very muggy Darwin, I boarded The Ghan as a band played on the platform. It added a vintage send off as I imagined Australian travelers might have experienced decades ago. Had I not been lugging audio and video equipment I might have forgotten I was standing in 2012.

Train travel was once a major method of getting around, and The Ghan, formerly the Afghan Express, has been doing so since 1929. As it cuts through the outback, you realize that this massive area is where camels and trains excel; not much else would be able to make it across this inhospitable trek. The trainline itself was expanded in 2004, allowing travelers to make it completely across Australia, from The Northern Territory all the way to Adelaide in South Australia. I had stops in Katherine and Alice Springs and met such lovely people.