Category: Travels for Fun
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A CATALAN FRIENDSHIP
The Pyrenees, that long mountain range extending east to west and creating the border between France and Spain, have captivated me for years. As a university student I read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Summer Morning, which became one of my favourite travel books. At the end Lee secretly crosses the Pyrenees and enters Spain at the onset of the Spanish Civil War and I began to feel a calling to one day visit the region. It wasn’t so much the jagged, snow-capped peaks, shimmering lakes and raging rivers…
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OUR LITTLE CLIO
Fifty years or so ago, the French government wanted to encourage tourism by offering long-term car leases to tourists. The Government offered an incentive scheme to the French car companies – Renault, Citroën and Peugeot – to offer the leases. Padma and I are travelling for two months so we took advantage of the program. On arrival in Rome, we picked up a Renault Clio Hybrid straight from the factory. A brand-new car for us. A rep of the agency gave us a tour of our new car and showed all…
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AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and during one visit declared to Bernadette “que soy era immaculada concepciou” – I am the Immaculate Conception. In 1862, the local bishop endorsed the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes and in February 1876,…
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THE LASHERMES OF VACQUIÈRES
The second principal destination of our Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour was Vacquières, a village of no more than 600 people just north of Montpelier, France. Two long-time residents are our friends from our Syrian Football Night Dinners, Philippe and Catherine Lashermes. Philippe and Catherine left Syria in 1992 and after a short stint in Cote d’Ivoire they bought an old farm home in a village and fixed it up and had three children along the way. Philippe commutes to work in Montpelier as an agricultural researcher by ebike. We…
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A PITSTOP IN MONACO AND A FATAL HAIRPIN TURN
We could have driven through Monaco in 15 minutes, but Padma and I decided to park the car and explore the city-state. At 2.1 square kilometres Monaco is the second smallest sovereign state after Vatican City. We drove through the heart of the city, and I found a patch of very good bitumen which beckoned me to put the pedal to the metal. I remembered the Monaco Gran Prix was just weeks away and workers were busy erecting the spectator stands and setting up barricades. As usual we had no idea…
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MEANDERING ALONG THE RIVIERA
I don’t have the patience to read travel guides and figure out what to see and where to go. Padma and I just drive and discover along the way. There are countless cute and picturesque seaside villages along the Riviera. How do you choose where to stay? I let booking.com do it for me. I just brought up the map and searched for hotels that matched our criteria. I found one in Menton, France … which is really more Italian than French. As I studied our approach to Menton, I saw…
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THE WORLD’S MOST PHOTOGRAPHED LAUNDRY
Padma and I were loving Italy too much so we drove a short distance from Florence and spent an afternoon exploring Cinque Terre, a string of five seaside villages on the Italian Riviera. We had dinner in Manarola and hurried to catch the sun setting from the Vista Panoramica di Manarola. We weren’t alone. The pathway was lined with people catching the last light of the day as it illuminated the village. Interestingly, the pathway was also lined with a gaggle of photographers all vying to capture the iconic image of…
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ONE ON ONE WITH DAVID
Padma, Nahed, Peter and I were lying under a soothing Tuscan sun after a hearty lunch in the Piazza del Compo in Sienna, Italy. Having our heads to the ground gave us an impressive view of the Torre del Mangia. The plan was to go and see Michelangelo’s David later in the afternoon in Florence but nobody wanted to budge. ‘We’ve seen pictures of him,’ we all concluded. No need to see him live. But a policeman changed the mood. He politely informed us that it was prohibited to lie in…
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WEST COAST TRAIL, BRITISH COLOMBIA, 1980
On 22 January 1906, the 253-foot passenger vessel Valencia ran aground along the perilous west coast of British Colombia’s Vancouver Island. She lost 133 of her passengers and crew due to high seas, rugged terrain and the inhospitable, remote area with an almost impenetrable rain forest. The coastline lived up to its name of the Graveyard of the Pacific. But it was one tragedy too many for the Canadians. The Government of Canada set out to implement better navigational aides and to construct a lifesaving trail along this infamous section of…
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