Travel

provence1.jpgI’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. 

 

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IrishCastleLately, almost everything is out of my comfort zone. Even a drive across town has been moved to my bucket list. A trip to the east side of the 405 Freeway feels like I’m a contestant on Survivor.

An invitation arrived in the mail. Come to a wedding at a castle in Ireland. Three days of free food and board. What to do? Are you kidding? Who could resist? I answered yes. And then went into a panic.

Too many planes, trains and automobiles. Being in a car in LA is unnerving enough. Driving on the “wrong” side of the road in County Mayo? That’s my idea of terror.

I decided to be my own travel agent. This would give me some control and help me get used to the whole idea of the trip. A trip, as Rod Serling might say, to the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, to the pit of man’s fears: My Discomfort Zone.

I enlisted an Irish actor I know and asked for travel advice. He was very detailed about which hotel in Dublin to stay at and even suggested a visit to a second castle.

My own research revealed that it would be silly to land at Dublin Airport since the wedding castle is closer to the one in Knock. But you can’t fly to Knock airport directly from the U.S. So we’d travel first to England and stay for three days. London is sort of within my zone of comfort. I’d been there several times and love it. And I’d be visiting with good friends who live there. More comfort.

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