The Old New York?

If New York is the New Amsterdam then isn't Amsterdam the old New York? oh well, anyway after leaving Provence via Lyon and Paris we flew to Amsterdam where strangely neither Dayne or I had been before. On the flight over we were told (warned) by fellow passengers that the big match between Amsterdam and Spain was that evening so be aware if heading to the bars, and wear orange if you have it!

As soon as we stepped out of the airport we could see orange everywhere- flowers, posters, outfits. The cab drivers were all lined up and watching the pre game on a huge teletron outside the main airport driveway. One luckily offered to take us to our hotel as he said it was 45 minutes to game time and he would head home after. The ride into town was FAST and SCARY as this guy was serious about not missing a second of the game! I honestly think that if we didn't have money when he dropped us off he would have just shrugged and sped off to his tv.

We had picked a great hotel, it was small with just 8 rooms- all were quite large and off the main tourist area on a small canal called Liligracht. t'Hotel included breakfast and these super steep stairs to help you burn off the calories!

We had such a great time in the city, it is soooo beautiful! We did most of the typical things0 took a canal cruise to get a feel for the layout, went to the gorgeous Van Gogh museum, ate lots of Gouda, cruised through the red light district both day and night and visited the Rijksmueum, toured the Anne Frank House and ate amazing Indonesian food.

A couple things we did were maybe not as normal. For one we visited the Bols Museum a cocktail museum. It was really fun and at the end of it you go to a computer and pick out a cocktail, print out the recipe and take it to the bar. In the bar there is a "flair" booth where you can try your hand at flair bartending (think Tom Cruise in Cocktail). We learned that the Dutch really like flair!

The other was spending some time with our friend Klary who lives in Amsterdam. Klary does market tours for visitors and took us to one of her favorites after meeting up for coffee. The market was huge! You could literally buy anything you wanted for your house, your cooking or your wardrobe. Of course we had to try the frites, this particular stand was selling Mad American Sauce which was like McD's secret sauce.


We also tried raw herring which was really good! Dayne and I had ours just cut up with raw onions and dill pickles that were strangely sweet. Klary had hers on a bun similar to a hotdog bun.

And on our last evening we had a wonderful dinner with Klary and her husband and another couple at a Moroccan restaurant. It was a great time, lots of laughing and story telling! We both decided we really loved the city and could absolutely see ourselves getting a couple of bikes, a little canal boat and an old canal house and living there!


The rest of the shots from Amsterdam can be seen here

Eating in Provence

Would you believe me if I told you we didn't go out for dinner even once for the whole week in Provence? It is true. And strangely it was very nice! I think we all just loved watching the view each evening from our porch.....

A few nights, after Dayne's delicious martinis, we just continued snacking on French cheeses, charcuterie and funny snack chips like roast chicken crisps and bacon cheese puffs. One night we went down to the only restaurant in town and ordered the only thing they make- pizza- and brought it back up to the house. It was soooo good with interesting toppings and the best salumi and olives of course.

A couple of times we shopped at the local town markets, there is an evening one in the town of Valleron that we thought was quite good. This was mainly locals, and most not speaking much English which made it really fun. A few stands had these strawberries that you could smell almost from the parking lot!


Have you ever seen such gorgeous squash blossoms?

We had chicken for dinner on that night...

One of the nicest days of dining happened when we went to visit our friends Abra & Shel in Uzes. First we took a walk and shopped at the market (in these posts the term market refers a local farmers market vs a grocery store) for our evening cook together dinner, coming up with the dishes as we saw ingrediants. The market was small, in the center of town, and very cute with venders selling everything from seafood to olives and perfumes. There was a basket of kittens and even a snail farmer.















It took us a while to make it back home. There was bread to buy, pastries to pick out for dessert (and a brief lesson in how to inquire about nuts and/or peanuts as an ingrediant) and of course wine to choose. Once we returned Abra set the table with an amazing lunch she had put together. It was so nice to sit on the beautiful patio and catch up with our friends and hear more about the area.

After some pool time, nap time and a stroll through town we all started working on an amazing dinner. Dayne, Paul and Forest made up some cocktails using a cherry liquor Abra had made. We noshed on tomato slices, dressed with fresh garlic and squash blossoms stuffed and baked. Then the appetizer of duck breast baked in a salt crust and served with a meurette sauce studded with foie gras. Main course of melons du veau and sauteed baby zucchini. Lots of wine. Amazing cheese and then a chocolate torte. It was quite a feast!

There was one other big dinner event, at our very own chateau where all 26 guest teamed up to make a big dinner on the last night that we were all together.


There was an amuse of cold soup with chicken, salad chevre chaud, incredible deboned and stuffed chicken, ratatouille, tarts and lots of wine. Lots.

Wine tasting around the Rhone

There is so much wine in the Rhone valley it is hard to decide where to start drinking, I mean tasting! Lucky for us we were with others who also were interested in some serious tasting so we got to explore the varietals and wine growing area.

The French love their wine as you know, look how civilized it is to have a glass on the train- in little glasses sealed with foil! And it wasn't the swill that you get on American flights!


But of course there is cheap wine in France also, and you can find barrels of it at the local Carrefour!

But we were there to taste amazing Rhone wines and so that is what we did! One day we spent the afternoon at the co-op just on the way of Beaumes-des-Venise, a charming tiny town that literally looks like it has sprouted out of the side of a hill. The co-op was great as you could taste from different producers with many different styles. There were pages of wines available so we all just picked a few and then shared tastes. The prices were amazing and many very nice $11 bottles found their way back to the chateau for us to enjoy with our dinner. A few dessert wines even found their way back home to Seattle!

The next day we all made our way to Chateau de Beaucastel, you'd be hard pressed to find 7 more excited wine enthusiasts! The grounds are small and quite ordinary but the wines are anything but. And the terroir here is very different with large river rocks scattered about holding in the water and making the vines very strong.



We were incredibly lucky as the gentleman who normally gives the tours and tastings had to go meet with the negotiant so we were with Marc Perrin whose family owns Beaucastel!

I can really go on and on about the amazing wine, winemaker pride and gorgeous house and cellars here. It was such a treat to see and taste it all!

After a bite to eat in Chateauneuf du Pape (another charming hilly town) we all headed into Cave du Verger for some more tastings. This is basically a wine shop that specializes in the wines of CdP and also does tastings. We had a fabulous time with Jean Baptiste who had us taste some very amazing wines, most completely unavailable in the states as the quantities made are quite small. And then there was a test! We didn't pass but we had a great time trying to name the fruits as we smelled them in order in one last glass of wine.

You might think that we would be a bit tired of tasting after all that but we weren't! Our friend Abra was nice enough to arrange a tasting at a small family run winery just north of CdP called Chateau Montfaucon.

The wine here is so good and the staff was over the top nice. As we bought some to take home there seemed to be extra bottles of wine being handed to us. "un cadeau", a gift. And that is exactly how we felt about our week of wine tasting- what a gift!

Well we might also have felt a bit fuzzy!

Photos

Provence!

What could be better than spending a week in Provence? Spending it with super fun friends in a chateau that had started being built in the 8th century!

I do feel incredibly lucky. We have wonderful friends who invited us to spend some time in Chateauneuf de Gadagne where they had rented an amazing chateau in years past. And when I say chateau I do mean it in the most medieval, French, palatial and stunning sense of the word! WOW!

We took a beautiful train ride down from Paris with our roommates for the week and rented cars in Avignon- just 20 minutes from our town. Well 20 minutes if you have GPS or are a French highway mind reader maybe! Armed with maps and directions it took us 3 hours to shop at the Carrefour for provisions and drive 11 km to our chateau. Oh well...... we were ready for cocktails once we loaded in!

Our village sat upon a hill giving you amazing views of the Rhone Valley that changed daily with the light. Some days you would notice red steeples, other days you'd see white cliffs and others you'd see many many castles and chateaus like ours.

There were 23 of us total, divided up into 3 main "houses"- ours downstairs and the old wine cellar was near the beautiful gardens and gorgeous pool. I really can't say enough about how amazing the chateau was and the pictures can't really do it justice. I was incredible being around such ancient architecture!
We were really lucky to be in the area on a Sunday when the awesome l'Isle Sur la Sorgue market happens. During the morning the entire town is set up with farmers and crafts stalls then they pack it up in the afternoon allowing you to have a nice lunch and shop the amazing antique shops that the village also has. People come from all around to this market and you can get just about anything here. We bought lots of sausages, cheese and herbs from various vendors but none of us got a slice of this roasted stuffed suckling pig!

This town was so lovely, we had a great time walking around exploring until we realized that it was Sunday and we hadn't picked up any wine and it is very hard to find wine shops open on Sunday! After much searching and asking around we finally located quite an amazing selection at the local gas station mini mart. Only in France would you find aged Bordeaux at the gas station!

Ah, Paris

“Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.” -- Charles de Montesquieu



As a transit point, it's hard to beat Paris, especially when accommodations are gratis (thanks, Forest!) and we have a full culinary schedule. As a prelude to a week in Provence, we spent a packed two days in the City of Lights, and seemed to be eating most of the time! Arriving around noon on Thursday, we got to nap for a bit during the afternoon at our friend Forest's apartment while she was at work, in an attempt to offset our jet lag and be ready for a long evening.

By early evening, we were somewhat rested and headed out, dressed to the nines, with Forest, to our first stop:Bar Hemingway at the Paris Ritz. The space itself was fun, if tiny, and contained all the requisite Hemingway memorabilia. However, none of us were thrilled with our cocktails, and mine at least was made differently than I'd requested. Normally this sort of thing would not merit a mention, but at €28 each, there really was no excuse. My advice: skip it. We did have one minor celebrity sighting while at the bar; we saw Hildi Santo Tomas from Trading Spaces. Or her identical twin.

After Bar Hemingway, we headed off to the headline act of the evening, a meal at Le Meurice. Le Meurice was not our first 3-star Michelin restaurant, and it won't be our last. As could be reasonably expected from such a place, it was elegant without being ostentatious, the service was spot-on, the wine list was fantastic, and most of the food was excellent (and all of it was fantastically prepared and presented). There were a few things that were not especially exciting (nothing was bad, or even average, by any stretch of the imagination), but Le Meurice is not known for being on the cutting edge of gastronomy, so we hadn't been expecting anything along the lines of foie gras cotton candy or mother-of-pearl sorbet. I will say, though, that the blush is off the rose, at least a little, in terms of my personal take on the level of restaurant that Le Meurice represents. In other words, it was a great evening and I have nothing but positive things to say about Le Meurice, but at the same time it's hard to recapture the sheer novelty of our first time at places such as Taillevent, the French Laundry, or Arzak.

One thing to note for wine lovers: We ordered a bottle of 1998 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape in anticipation of the visit we had planned for the following week to that winery; if you get a chance, don't pass one of those up! Also, Forest and I both tried very old Bas Armagnacs; I had a 1942, she had a 1962. Surprisingly to me -- though I haven't researched to find out why this might be the case -- the 1962 was better.

As with similar experiences in the past, I was presented with a menu that included prices; the girls' menus just listed the food options. Very old-school. I wonder how the staff decides who gets the prices if the guest party is more ambiguous, such as two men, two women, adult children and parents, or some other combination where the "traditional" male host isn't clearly evident or is missing entirely.

The next day (Friday), Wendy and I had lunch reservations atL'Astrance. It was a beautiful day, and the two of us had never been to the Eiffel Tower together, so we took the opportunity to go there first. As a great option for skipping most of the lines, we elected to walk up to the second level rather than waiting for a lift. We were able to spend some time enjoying the view before heading acriss the Seine for lunch.

L'Astrance was a really fun space. The designers must have had an interesting time retrofitting an oddly-shapped room with a sleek, modern interior; one interesting decision was to shoehorn in a second floor, where our table was located (along with just a few others). The side effect of this was a very low ceiling. I think it was just over 6 feet (slightly under 2 meters) high, so I couldn't stand up straight! The food at L'Astrance is probably best described as whimsical. The lunch was fairly light (or at least it read that way on the menu), but somehow unlisted courses kept coming out! All of the dishes were inventive and beautiful; as a lunch option, the setting was less-obviously formal as well, so it was a great way to spend a few hours relaxing with each other in the middle of the day.

On Friday evening, we started the evening by meeting several friends of ours and of Forest at for drinks at the Experimental Cocktail Club. Great little bar; they have a good menu, fantastic spirits selection (especially for Europe) and really know what they're doing, plus they have extremely reasonable prices. Forget the €28 of Bar Hemingway; €8 was the norm, for far better cocktails.

A big group of us then proceeded to dinner at Spoon, an Alain Ducasse restaurant. The idea of the restaurant is novel: each diner is, in theory, able to freely combine any of a selection of sauces and condiments with their ordered items to give them various flavor profiles. In practice, the menu was disjointed and confusing, and the food not especially good or memeorable. On top of that, the service was lousy (and unapologetic). Definitely skip Spoon.

Here's my quick report card for culinary Paris this time around:
Bar Hemingway: C-
Le Meurice: A
L'Astrance: A-
Experimental Cocktail Club: A
Spoon: D-

On Saturday, we boarded a train (just barely!) bound for Avignon!

Our full set of Paris pictures can be found here.

Walla Walla Wrap!

While having nightcaps at 26 Brix we met a great guy named Frank who is a vineyard developer- nice job hu? Frank was telling us about this property he was working on in the Blue Mountain and offered to take us on a tour the next day. Poor Frank was also doing shots with a guy from Texas so the next morning he wasn't feeling all that great but still rang us up and told us to meet him.

The vineyard was gorgeous! Sitting on top of Blue Mountain with 360 degree views of the Walla Walla valley. Much of the grounds were new plantings with others still young.

We headed back into town for lunch and after finding everything we had marked down closed on Sunday we ended up at Luscious by Nature for the second day in a row, it was good though and they have different specials each day.

Two quick stops on the way out of town at Reininger and L'Ecole and then it was on the road home with our trunk full of wine!
All photos here!

Walla Walla Wine Trip, Day 2

On Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast at our B&B -- our hostess was sick, so a friend was substituting as cook -- and then went back to the beautiful Waters Winery, which shares space with Gramercy where we'd been the night before. They make some fantastic wines; we especially enjoyed their 2006 Syrah (we both have a weakness for syrahs anyway) and their 2007 rosé.

After Waters, we drove out towards the Walla Walla airport, where quite a few wineries have set themselves up on land that was previously a military base. Many of the smaller and newer wineries are just using the old barracks or other existing buildings; our first stop, Dunham Cellars, was fortunate to have the use of a remodeled airplane hanger, which is a fantastically roomy space. I'd seen Dunham's 'Three-Legged Red' in several stores, mostly because I'm a sucker for a cute dog on a label. For some reason I hadn't really established in my mind the fact that the maker was in Walla Walla. When I discovered that Dunham was one of the wineries we were going to visit, I was looking forward to meeting Port, the famous 3-legged border collie.

We drove up to Dunham and were promptly greeted by a border collie named Maysy (with four legs) who made it very clear that I was expected to throw a tennis ball for her, but Port was nowhere to be seen.


After a couple of tosses of the ball, we went in to taste. I saw a table set off to the side with several bundles of flowers on it, along with pictures of Port. When I went over to get a closer look, I saw the note: Port had passed away the week before, at the age of 13; the flowers and pictures were a memorial. I know I never knew Port, but that news was devastating to me for some reason. He was obviously well loved and had a good life at and around the winery, but it's still terrible for anyone to lose a friend.

Dunham's wines were great, but we can get several of them locally already, so we settled on just one bottle of the '04 Cab-Sauv 'X', and two of their '04 Syrah.

Eventually we moved on to Buty. We'd heard good things, but didn't actually find their wines particularly to our liking. It didn't help that they were in one of the smallest of the older military buildings, and it was warm and muggy.

After a brief stop at the ultra-small 428, we left the airport area and went to one of the highlights of the day, K Vintners. It's hard not to like K; they have a beautiful winery, a fun attitude (the White Stripes were blasting out of the back when we were there), and best of all, fantastic wines.

Before heading back into town, we stopped in for a pre-arranged appointment at Abeja. Built on the grounds of an old, restored and modernized farm, Abeja is both a B&B and a working winery. Somewhat predictably, their wines tend to be a little on the high-priced side of things, but we still managed to leave with a few!

We stopped in Walla Walla at the magic-themed Sleight of Hand Cellars, and then were back out in the direction of Waters again, but this time to visit Va Piano. Our hostess was obviously tired after a long day of dealing with wine limos; we felt bad for her!

After that it was a change for dinner at Saffron, an after-dinner drink at 26 Brix again, then bed for a well-deserved slumber.