Beyond New England

We had not been to Quebec City in 15 years, so a return trip was way overdue. We did it over Columbus Day 2016, adding Friday to make it a four-day weekend. That was enough time for a fun little expedition with plenty of sightseeing. 

The Canadian dollar was worth about $0.75, so some things looked more expensive than they were. Overall it was easy to stay on budget. Gas is expensive there, but if you fill up in Fort Kent then you won't need to buy much or any gas until you get back over the border.

We spent Friday driving north through the length of Maine, departing I-95 at Sherman to take lonely Rte 11 past Mount Katahdin due north to Fort Kent, and then on to Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, on the mighty Saint Lawrence. There was no foodie excellence that day, but we love that drive up Route 11 and the scenery was excellent. We spent the night at the Auberge de la Point in Riviere du Loup, a sprawling complex not far from the ferry terminal. 

Lorna and I spent 15 days in Ireland, dining out every night. We learned a few things that you might want to know if you are planning a vacation to Ireland.

To dispense with old stereotypes, there is plenty of good food in Ireland, including many excellent preparations of traditional old dishes. We never did see corned beef and cabbage on the menu, or any corned beef at all, for that matter.  There is mediocre food to be found, of course, but if you plan ahead, you can do very well indeed.

Guinness is everywhere, of course, and they have a new hoppy lager offering called Hop House 13. It is not clearly marked on the tap handles as a Guinness product, so you may think that you are giving support to the local craft beer scene when you're actually supporting their common rival!

Beyond that, though, there is a thriving craft beer culture. In every part of Ireland we found local offerings. The Irish craft beer scene is not as established as the US craft beer scene, and it has to work extra hard against that constant Guinness headwind, but with some research you can find some exciting new Irish brews. Perhaps if American tourists get into the habit of asking for something other than Guinness, some restaurants and pubs will open new taps for the local products. 

Regular readers know that we drive quite a lot. Our favorite Saturdays are spent in the car, exploring scenic locales and discovering foodie goodness.

In June of 2016, we took a long-anticipated vacation in Ireland. Naturally we spent most of it driving through some of the most sublime scenery we had ever explored. Of course we also found lots of foodie goodness, which is documented elsewhere in this blog. This post is for those who are considering a vacation that involves driving in Ireland.

The first thing to know is that it's expensive to drive in Ireland. Gas is expensive, of course, as it is in most of Europe. But the car rental is pricey, too. We rented from Avis at Dublin airport, and were disappointed to learn that they do not honor the CDW (collision damage waiver) insurance that many credit cards provide automatically when you use them to rent a car. The CDW cost nearly as much as the car rental, and it has a thousand-Euro deductible! They also had a super-CDW with no deductible.

Travelers from New England soon learn that Ireland has a very different coffee culture. While Americans consume on average .931 cups of coffee per day, the Irish consume only .215, or less than one quarter of the coffee their American counterparts consume.

We explored the countryside and also the biggest cities, Dublin and Belfast, and of course I was on the lookout for good coffee. Here's what I discovered: 

When we finally left the broad western horizon of the Pacific Ocean behind us, we had good incentive to cross the rugged coastal hills to the valleys of the wine country. It's a gorgeous area everywhere you look, fine for driving and exploring down roads that barely appear (or don't appear) on the maps. Drive by hunch! This is no place for a GPS. GPS devices come with built-in serendipity destroyers.

We have been to the Wine Country several times, and each time we get better at it. The first time, back before the turn of the century, we drove up the Napa Valley, visited some wineries and tested their wares, and thought it fun. On the next visit we planned ahead and drove up the Sonoma Valley, dutifully stopping at whichever winery we had on our list, checking them off as if we were still at work.

After one more morning in Santa Cruz, we spent a wonderful day in San Francisco. We covered a lot of ground; fortunately we had a plan going in and we hit all of our objectives.

The weather was beautiful, and that's never a guarantee in the City by the Bay.  We parked near Fisherman's Wharf in an all-day garage that was not as expensive as I had feared. Then we walked along the waterfront, looked out at Alcatraz, and did more people-watching than window-shopping.

One restaurant we passed proudly proclaimed itself "Home of the 60-ounce Margarita" or some such silliness. It was really crowded, so we headed off toward the famous Ghirardelli Square.

Along the way it was impossible to miss the fact that Fisherman's Wharf is still very much about the seafood. Seafood restaurants are everywhere, and fresh fish markets with Pacific seafood piled high on great glaciers of ice. It was lunchtime but we were not yet even remotely hungry, and there's plenty of foodie awesomeness in San Francisco to we continued our explorations.

We spent the next day and a half in Santa Cruz, visiting with friends, shopping Pacific Ave, and exploring the boardwalk, the long pier, and the pleasant streets of that fine small city.

I posted a smallish (43-photo)  photo album over at Facebook; if you've never been to Santa Cruz, it's worth a look. If you have been there, you might check it out just for the memories.

We arrived late, after a long drive from Morro Bay along Big Sur through Carmel and Monterey to Santa Cruz. We met our Greek friend Hector, who naturally took us to one of my favorite restaurants in California - The Greek!

I went to Greece in 1995, and I remember drinking Greek wine and grazing on little bites at the taverna with my friend's family late into the evening. That's just what we did in Santa Cruz that evening, drinking Greek wine and feasting on dolmas, saganaki, skordalia, horta vrasta, spanakopita, and other Greek delights as we caught up with Hector.

Everyone who reads this blog knows how we love scenic drives, and one of the most famous outside of New England is the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway along Big Sur. We knew we would have time in Los Angeles at the end of the trip, so we got a car and hit the road! By lunchtime we were shopping in Ventura, and we spent our first night on the road in Morro Bay.

We stayed at the Best Western El Rancho just north of town and gave it good marks. I have reviewed almost all of the restaurants and hotels and many attractions that we saw throughout the trip; you can find them on TripAdvisor.

Morro Bay is a pretty harbor best known for the island in the middle, often referred to as the Big Rock. You don't see it in all its glory here because of the fog, but that's not unusual in Morro Bay.

Morro Bay is not a big town, but it is scenic and it enjoys close proximity to the celebrated Hearst Castle, which we planned to visit the next day.

The Lake Shore Limited and the Southwest Chief both have termini at Chicago's Union Station, so both coming and going we had some hours to explore the downtown area while we waited for the latter train to board.

There's a lot to see in downtown Chicago. To start with, Union Station is a big, bustling place for people watching (on the return trip we chatted with some zombies from a 5000-zombie flash mob that had just finished) and some fine Art Deco architecture. Just outside the door you can strain your neck looking up at the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) just across the canal. And about a 15 minute walk to the east is a string of parks and museums along the shore of Lake Michigan.

After a brisk walk to stretch our legs and work up an appetite, we had a very nice lunch at Russian Tea Time - a fancy establishment with a beautiful collection of samovars and an extensive bar. I could not resist trying the trio of house-infused vodkas (coriander, black currant, and lime) with a dish of pickled herring and some black bread.

Lorna was able to resist that gustatory delight and contented herself with a stuffed chicken breast and a Coke. 

This is the first of a series of entries that more or less track our Foodie Pilgrim Grand Transcontinental Adventure. I say "more or less" because it won't quite be a day-by-day relation of events, but more a series of possible day-trips that you might enjoy if you some day take a similar journey. This installment describes the trip to Chicago aboard Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited.  

We left Plymouth on the 9am Plymouth &Brockton bus, arriving at Boston South Station after a comfortable and uneventful ride.  Lorna had a light lunch at Cheeseboy, a small chain. I noshed on a kabanoszy from my store of provisions. I had stocked up on goodies from The Cheese Shop in Concord and from Baza Market in Newton because the food on the train can get pretty boring.