Q & A with Grantourismo round-the-world slow travel bloggers

by Meg Nesterov on

With all the holiday travel madness just beginning, sometimes it’s nice to take a breath and think about taking travel more slowly. I recently had a chance to meet up with blogger Lara Dunston and her photographer-writer husband, Terence Carter, of the round-the-world travel project and blog, Grantourismo while they were traveling through Istanbul. Lara and Terence hosted me at their fabulous terraced apartment with glasses of Turkish wine, travel chat, and views of nearby Taksim Square and the nostalgic tram.

Grantourismo is a yearlong grand tour of the globe to explore more enriching and ‘authentic’ (and they get how those words have been debated and abused by travel bloggers!) ways of traveling, which began in Dubai this February and will wrap up in Scotland in January. In order to slow down and immerse themselves in each place, they are staying in vacation rentals (rather than hotels) in one place for two weeks at a time.

Read on for more about their slow travel philosophy, tips about renting a holiday apartment, and how they found Austin’s best tacos.

What’s the essence of Grantourismo?
We’re attempting to get beneath the skin of the places we’re visiting and to inspire other travelers to do the same. We’re doing very little sightseeing and if we’re taking tours, we’re doing small group tours with expert local guides ran by sustainable companies, such as Context. Mostly we’re experiencing places through their food, markets, music, culture, fashion, street art, sport, etc, and doing things that locals do in their own towns rather than things tourists travel to their towns to do. We’re trying and buying local produce and products, and seeking out artisanal practices we can promote. We’re also highlighting ways in which travellers can give something back to the places they’re visiting, from planting trees in Costa Rica to kicking a football with kids in a favela in Rio. And we’re blogging about this every day at Grantourismo!

How did you make it a reality?
Our initial idea was 12 places around the world in 12 months, learning things like the original grand tourists did. Terence, who is a great musician and a terrific cook, wanted to work in a restaurant kitchen and learn a musical instrument while I was going to enroll in language classes and learn something different in each place. But we couldn’t figure out how to fund such a project. We were lucky in that I saw an ad from HomeAway Holiday-Rentals (the UK arm of HomeAway) looking for a travel journalist-photographer team to stay in their vacation rentals and blog about their experiences for a year. I presented Grantourismo to them, they loved it, and here we are! We’re in the 10th month of our yearlong trip, we’ve stayed in 27 properties in 18 countries, and we have a ski town and five cities to go! We’ve written 369 stories on our website – and only 27 of those have been about the properties, the rest have been about everything from winetasting to walking – and we’ve done loads of interviews with locals we’ve met, from musicians and chefs to fashion designers and bookbinders.

What’s the biggest difference about staying in an apartment vs. a hotel?
The biggest difference and best thing is that when you’re staying in a vacation rental you’re generally living in an everyday neighbourhood rather than a tourist area, which means you can meet people other than hotel cleaners and waiters. You can pop downstairs or down the road to a local café or pub that’s full of locals rather than other tourists. You can shop in local markets or supermarkets that are significantly cheaper. Sure if you’re staying in a hotel you can go and look at the markets, but your hotel mini-bar probably won’t hold much, whereas we go with a shopping list or we simply watch what the locals are buying, and we go home and cook.

You can generally get off the beaten track far easier than you can when you stay in a hotel. If you’re relying on the concierge for tips, you’re going to see other hotel guests eating at the restaurant he recommended. Then there’s the beauty of having lots of space, your own kitchen so you don’t have to eat out every meal, and a refrigerator you can fill that doesn’t have sensors going off when you open it. There might be shelves filled with books or a DVD library – in Cape Town we even had a piano, which Terence played every day! The privacy – we got tired of housekeeping ignoring DND signs, people coming to check the outrageously-priced mini-bar, and the phone always ringing with staff asking, when were we checking out, did we want a wake-up call, could they send a porter up. It became so tedious, especially as we were spending around 300 days a year in hotels on average. There are downsides to holiday rentals too of course. If something goes wrong the property owner/manager isn’t always around to fix it, whereas in a hotel, you phone the front desk to let them know the Internet isn’t working and they’ll send someone up.

What should travelers consider when renting a holiday apartment?
Location first. What kind of neighbourhood do you want to live in, how off the beaten track do you want to get, do you want to walk into the centre or are you happy to catch public transport or drive, what kind of facilities are in the area if you’re not hiring a car, and is there a supermarket, shops, restaurants, café, bars in walking distance? After that, the quality of accommodation – in the same way that people decide whether to opt for a budget hotel if they just want somewhere to lay their head, or a five-star if they want creature comforts, they need to think about how much time they intend spending at the property and the level of comfort they want. We stayed in a budget apartment in Manhattan, which was fine as we were out a lot. In Ceret, France and Sardinia, Italy we had big charming houses with terrific kitchens, which was perfect as we stayed in and cooked a lot. If it’s a family reunion or group of friends going away together and they want to enjoy meals in, then it’s important to ask detailed questions about the kitchen and facilities, as we’ve had some places that only had the bare basics, while others like our properties in Austin and Cape Town had dream kitchens.

Favorite destination/apartment?
We’ve been to some amazing places but my favourites have been Tokyo and Austin. We’d only visited Tokyo once before on a stopover, stayed in a cramped hotel and just did the tourist sights. This time we really saw how people lived by staying in an apartment, we discovered different corners of the city we didn’t know existed, and we made new friends. In Austin, it was all about the people, who must be the USA’s friendliest and coolest. We spent a lot of time seeing live music and met lots of musicians, and we also got into the food scene – locals take their food very seriously in Austin! We even hosted a dinner party there with Terence cooking up a multi-course tasting menu for our new friends. In terms of properties, I’m torn between the rustic traditional white trullo set amongst olive groves that we stayed at in Puglia where we had our own pizza oven and bikes to ride in the countryside, the penthouse in the historic centre of Mexico City, and the two houses in Costa Rica, one set in the jungle and the other on the beach, literally within splashing distance of the sea!

Funny story about one of your stays?
The funniest moments weren’t funny at the time but we look back at them and laugh now. At our the Puglia trullo we had terrible internet access. It barely worked in the house because the walls were so thick, yet internet is crucial to what we’re doing so we had to work outside, which wasn’t much fun in the rain. Terence discovered that he could get the best access in the middle of the olive grove next door; you can see him working here! The monkeys that visited us everyday in our houses in Costa Rica were also hilarious. One morning I was enjoying a rare moment reading in the sun when I saw a rare red-backed squirrel monkey run across the fence, and then another leapfrog that one, and then another join them! I quickly got up and raced into the kitchen to make sure there was no food left on the bench, turned around and there was a family of 30-40 monkeys trooping through the house. These guys are endangered, but it didn’t look like it from where I was standing in the kitchen in my bikinis and towel, trying to protect our food as the property manager had warned us that they know how to open the cupboards! The manager also told us to leave the lights on at night, because otherwise the bats will think the house is a cave. She wasn’t kidding.

How is social media playing a role in your travels?
We decided not to use guidebooks this year and rely on advice from locals, many of which we come in contact with through social media. We’ve met many locals via their blogs or Twitter. We use Twitter every day, as a research and networking tool, to make contacts ahead of our visit and get tips from people when we’re there. We’ve had some amazing advice from our followers, from restaurant recommendations to suggestions on things we should do. When we were in Cape Town, loads of tweeps said we had to do the Township Tour offered by Cape Capers and we did and they were right, it was life-changing.

Terence learns how to make the quintessential dish of each place we visit and often asks tweeps what he should make. We’ve had great tips from food bloggers who use Twitter such as Eating Asia and Eat Mexico. We’ve ended up meeting loads of tweeps, including a bunch of New Yorkers – bloggers, writers and travelers – we met for drinks one night, including Gadling’s own Mike Barish and David Farley, while in Austin we had lunch with ‘the Taco Mafia‘ from the Taco Journalism blog and got the lowdown on Austin’s best tacos. We also use Twitter to share our own travel experiences and let people know when we have new stories on the site and we run a monthly travel blogging competition which we promote on Twitter (with very generous prizes donated by HomeAway Holiday Rentals, AFAR, Viator, Context, Trourist, and Our Explorer); the aim of that is to get other travelers to help spread our messages about the kind of traveling we’re doing.

What’s next?
As far as Grantourismo goes, we just left Istanbul (where we were delighted to meet another fascinating Gadling contributor!) and are in Budapest. After this it’s Austria for some fun in the snow, then Krakov for Christmas, Berlin for New Year’s Eve, and our last stop is Edinburgh end of January. After that? We’ve been invited to speak at an international wine tourism conference in Porto, Portugal, about Grantourismo and wine, as we’ve explored places through their wine as much as their food, doing wine courses, wine tastings, wine walks, and wine tours, and really trying to inspire people to drink local rather than imported wine. Then we’re going to write a book about Grantourismo and our year on the road, and later in the year – after we’re rested and energised – we’re going to take Grantourismo into a slightly different direction.

All photos courtesy of Terence Carter.

The Other Side of Basque Country

by David Farley on
It’s midnight and I’m standing on a bridge that runs across the wide Adour River in southwestern France. In front of me, thousands of screaming people, clad mostly in white, are crammed into a large, irregularly shaped square. They’ve taken off their red scarves and, with both hands, are displaying them toward the second story balcony of an arcaded town hall where an overstuffed effigy of a king (not unlike the kind you might see traipsing through an amusement park) sits on a gold throne. “Bayonne, the party has been great,” mouths the bulbous king whose raspy, purring voice is similar to a clichéd French cartoon character. “I’ll see you next year. Merci, Bayonne,” he says, like a rock star ending his final encore. And with that, the king disappears behind a yellow and purple striped curtain.

I’d been in Bayonne, a small town in French Basque country, for almost a week, taking part in the annual Fetes de Bayonne, a five-day street party that turns this ordinarily sleepy, two-cathedral town into one raucous miasma of nonstop sangria-inspired insanity. The highlight of the fete, which takes place at the end of July, is the Course de Vache, which is often mistaken as a “running of the bulls.” Unlike Pamplona, however, Bayonne uses bovines instead of bulls and, as I was told, it’s often the people who do the charging and not the other way around. But I was equally curious about this part of France. This is Basque territory, but the side of the border that gets less press than its Spanish counterpart. Basque France seemed overshadowed and off the radar of most tourists. I figured the best way to experience it would be to cannonball myself in via the five-day fete.

* * *

When the Paris-to-Madrid train speeds by Bayonne halfway through its journey, few travelers crane to witness the cathedral of Sainte Marie’s skeletal twin gothic spires lurking over the town’s ancient red-tiled roofs. With the exception of military historians who know that the bayonet was invented here in the 17th century, and residents of Bayonne, New Jersey and Daytona Beach, Florida, who share sister city status with this diminutive town near the Spanish border, few people outside Europe have heard of Bayonne.

Ernest Hemmingway had. At least enough to say it was a nice town with one river flowing through it. He was sort of right. There are actually two rivers that slice through this one-time Roman outpost, separating the town of 42,000 into three parts. The Adour River hugs the more haggard neighborhood of St. Esprit on one side and Bayonne proper on the other. Its smaller tributary, the quaint Nive River, creates a Grand Canal-like intimacy as it separates the flat and more Basque Petit Bayonne and the hilly medieval Grand Bayonne. On both sides of the Nive sit Basque-style houses, marked by red, white and green shutters.

Despite so much “charm,” there appeared to be few non-locals in Bayonne for the Fetes. And those who came wisely disguised themselves as natives by slipping on the Basque-style gear: white shirt, white pants, white sneakers, a red handkerchief around the neck, and a red scarf tied around the waist (red beret is optional). I was ambivalent about wearing the costume. Would it be disrespectful if I didn’t, or would wearing it be too intrusive on a culture to which I didn’t belong? After much contemplation, I chose to wade through the red and white sea of Basque revelers in my usual darkly hued clothes.

It didn’t take long for me to wonder if I’d made the wrong decision. “Les touristes, les touristes,” chanted an indistinguishable glob of partiers as I crossed the Pont Morengo over the Nive to Petit Bayonne, the so-called wild side of town where bank windows had been boarded up and cash machines shut down. Banners stretched across Petit Bayonne’s straight, narrow streets proclaiming “Amnistia!” for an independent Basque state. Young people, mostly males in their late-teens and early-twenties, crowded around ad hoc outdoor bars, sucking down everything from sangria to beer to Izarra–a robust, locally produced liqueur that is supposedly made from “100 flowers of the Pyrenees.” A DJ, set up just inside a second floor window, spun Cuban tunes as a curb-to-curb crowd of dancing partiers, drinks in hand, flailed their limbs below. Five houses down, another impromptu dance party was underway, this time with Eurotrash techno. The song, “It’s Raining Men” played somewhere in the distance.

A large procession of horn tooters marched down a side street, adding to the cacophony. Men stood on the river banks–legs confidently spread apart, leaning back–urinating into the slow moving water. A girl stumbled by, using her boyfriend’s red scarf-cum-belt as a leash.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Nive, in Grand Bayonne, the decidedly tamer opening ceremonies of the Fetes were taking place at the town hall. After a speech by the mayor, in which throngs of people chanted “Pays Basque” (Basque country) in unison, a 15-minute fireworks display followed. It was near 11 o’clock in the evening, but the first night was far from over. The official conclusion of a Fetes day ends at three in the morning.

But as I quickly found out, endings and beginnings are just a formality in Bayonne. While walking to a café the next morning, I noticed small groups of people were still dancing in the streets as music blared from bars. Marching bands still wandered noisily. Lone, tired-looking drunks staggered across the long bridge over the Adour, hoping to find refuge. There were still four days to go.

* * *

When the Fetes de Bayonne began in 1932, no one could have predicted it would turn out like this. Originally, it was a locals-only affair with singing and dancing and one Course de Vache on the agenda. But the city has changed its stance, now marketing the Fetes as a party for everyone–evidenced by the hundreds of flags of countries from around the world which adorned the Saint Esprit Bridge over the Adour–and by the extension of the Course, the Fetes’ most popular event, to four.

But according to the friendly middle-aged couple who owns the hotel where I stayed, the Fetes is about one thing: money. “The bars sell more alcohol during these five days than during the entire rest of the year,” said the husband-owner in a moment of frankness. “It’s now a part of the economy and is unfortunately necessary.”

Necessity or not, city leaders seem to be having as much fun as anyone during the Fetes. At least it seemed that way when I stopped by city hall where, in a posh, mirrored back room, a party–billed as a reception for international journalists–was taking place. I was the only non-French person there and was treated as somewhat of a novelty when introduced to people. One of those people was Jean-Louis Dulas, the deputy-mayor. Clad in the typical Fetes outfit, the fifty-something Dulas sipped from a long stemmed wine glass as he talked to me. “It’s just easier,” he said, when I asked about the red and white outfit everyone was wearing. “When you spill wine or sangria on your shirt, you can bleach it that night and be ready to party again the following day.”

Point taken. But, according to the Fetes’ president, Henri Lauque, who was mingling through the reception, there’s a deeper historical tradition involved. Saint Leon, Bayonne’s patron saint, was beheaded by Norman invaders in the year 892. Partygoers wear a red scarf to symbolize the saint’s bloody end, and a white shirt and pants for his piety.

Which raises an interesting question: so then who is King Leon, the plus-sized, blond-haired mascot-like monarch that looks like it wandered off the set of H.R. Pufnstuff and ended up in French Basque Country? “We invented him,” Lauque said, nodding in the direction of the balcony where the faux monarch sat. “We needed a party mascot, so, three years ago, we created King Leon. He is now king of the people here. But he only makes appearances during the Fetes.” I waited for the irony to appear on Lauque’s face. It never came. Instead, he handed me a free pass to participate in that evening’s Course de Vache.


* * *

Translated, the Course de Vache means “running of the cow,” but it’s much less a run than a frantic stampede around a half-football-field-sized enclosed ring, while thousands of spectators in bleachers cheer drunken young men trying to prove their bravery. I was among them, standing in the center of the ring (actually a town square). I giggled nervously as the “cow runners” formed two lines stretching out from the door where the beast would be released. They locked arms and swayed, singing Basque songs, creating a kind of human red carpet for the cow’s grand entrance. Meanwhile, concessionaires walked up and down the bleachers selling peanuts and popcorn.

Earlier that day at city hall when I had asked Deputy Mayor Dulas what to expect when the cow was released, he simply laughed. “You have nothing to worry about. Yes, occasionally we have injuries, but that’s just from people stumbling as they run. This isn’t Pamplona.”

“Here comes the little cutie,” the announcer screamed into the mic, using the French word mignon. When I finally caught a glimpse of the animal, it was neither little nor cute. This was a wild, bucking, so-enraged-with-fury-that-slobber-was-dribbling-from-its-mouth type of beast with ten-inch horns.

Across the ring, I could see people jumping up on the metal fences trying to avoid the mad bovine. In the center, handfuls of people began lying down side by side. A minute later, the cow stumbled upon them. It nudged curiously until a man jumped on its back. The cow twirled around and reared back, as the rider took off his red scarf and waved it over his head like an urban cowboy. The crowd roared.

By the time he jumped off, about twenty people had created a human tower by standing on one another’s shoulders. When it was three people high, the cow came charging, toppling everyone. The crowd roared again.

About fifteen minutes later, the animal was clearly getting tired as young boys ran after it, poking it. Finally, the door to its stable was opened and it nearly limped out of the ring. A few minutes later, the second cow was released. It was just as wild as the first had been in the beginning

* * *

During my routine early morning stroll on the Fetes’ fifth and final day, I had a flashback to when I checked into my hotel five days earlier. I’d been surprised when the owner, handing me the room key, announced that he despised the party. After all, his hotel was booked solid for five days straight. “There’s too much revelry,” he said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

That I did. Now, on this final morning, the town looked like it was suffering from a collective hangover. The streets, plastered with confetti and foul with the sour stench of urine, were littered with drunks, weaving through town, babbling incoherently to themselves. A young man, his Fetes outfit in need of a good bleaching, sat on a park bench, his face buried in his hands. Plastic sangria bottles floated down the river.

A three-person marching band paraded past me. I’d been seeing bands like this all week, though this one seemed particularly loud. The drummer had a snare drum belted to his side and the two horn players tooted instruments that looked suspiciously like kazoos. Their high-pitched music echoed through the town’s canyon-like streets, as they slowly roamed the cobblestones like a military band trying to rouse its troops back to life. The sangria-stained soldiers didn’t move.

After five days in a liquor-induced frenzy, fending off wild bucking beasts, sleeping on the streets, and trying not into fall in the river while urinating into it, the Bayonnese could now go back to their jobs or studies; the town would eventually be cleaned and get back to normal, my hotel owner would be happy, and all the cows in Bayonne could rest peacefully for another year.

Beaujolais Nouveau and old: a tale of two wines and two worlds

by David Downie on

Each year on the third Thursday of November, the world awakens with two words on its parched lips: Beaujolais Nouveau. The next morning it massages its temples and sighs.

In between, 40 million bottles of zingy Beaujolais Nouveau-the quaffable new-wine-are uncorked and spill their purple contents from Anchorage to Zhengzhou. Parties bubble into life, the biggest of them held on the eve of the official launch in the unlikely, homely little French town of Beaujeu, near Lyon. Long the seat of the aristocratic Sires de Beaujeu, it’s the mothership that squeezes and sends forth this annual vinous tsunami.

Under a tent the size of a sports stadium, penguin-suited waiters hefting giant wooden buckets pour gallons of Beaujolais Nouveau into the raucous gullets of some 1,500 merrymakers. The grapey, intoxicating scent of carbonic maceration from freshly fermented gamay grape juice fills the air. Performers in silly costumes belly dance or belt out folk songs to the sound of accordions, fiddles, drums and saxophones. As the fête reaches dionysian paroxysms, fledgling members of the Compagnons du Beaujolais-in even sillier suits-are sworn into the bacchic brotherhood of Beaujolais winemakers.

Outside, fireworks and torches, the latter fashioned from grapevine stumps, light up the façades of the town’s low stone houses and its hulking medieval church. There’s dancing in the narrow main street, and gluttony, guzzling and genteel debauchery behind half-closed doors. The extravaganza-in its 22nd year running-is called the “Sarmentelles de Beaujolais” and it lasts five days, this year from Wednesday, November 17 through Sunday, November 21.


Anyone who associates France with regal history, the Enlightenment, cultural sophistication and high-brow intellectual discourse might want to think again. This mega-festival for Beaujolais Nouveau is pure populism and, given the zeitgeist, increasingly popular. French political pundits, anthropologists and peripatetic, telegenic philosophers such as André Gluxman or Bernard-Hénri Levy should consider attending.

If you don’t happen to be in Beaujeu on the 17th you must wait an extra day: Beaujolais Nouveau wine officially arrives elsewhere on November 18. It’s launched worldwide with greater precision than a smart bomb. The masterminds are the big négociants like Georges Duboeuf and the region’s giant co-op wineries. They’re responsible for the lion’s share of the 133 million bottles of wine made in the region. But even some mom-and-pop and upscale boutique wineries join in the Nouveau fun. A single word explains why: money.

This is the reason the medieval church of Beaujeu, lovingly restored, sports several crystal chandeliers with nary a speck of dust on them. It’s also why the spruce town and region as a whole are thriving despite the recession.


The Second City


Frenchmen have long joked that France’s second city, Lyon-20 minutes south of Beaujeu-has three rivers: the Rhone, the Saone and the Beaujolais. It’s surprising that the ancient Romans, builders of Lugdunum-alias Lyon-and makers of the first Beaujolais wines, didn’t build a vinoduct from the region’s vineyards to their capacious arena. Nowadays the environmentally friendly solution would be a pipeline. The French themselves guzzle two-thirds of the wines made in the Beaujolais.

Many regions of France produce wines, but few are so densely planted with vines or so dependent on le vin for survival. Of the millions of gallons of Beaujolais bottled annually, a third is Nouveau, and two in three bottles of that come from the vineyards of the region’s southernmost portion.

The lovely limestone hills of the southern Beaujolais have given that area its name, Pays des Pierres Dorées, “Land of Golden Stones.” Strange to tell, limestone and gamay don’t make a particularly happy match-the soil of preference for gamay is the decomposed granite and clay of the region’s central and northern districts. But limestone doesn’t lower the quantity of the grapes grown.

The wine of this golden land may not be remarkable, but it’s good enough for Nouveau-and the sightseeing makes up for it.

The high-yielding grape variety and the sheer volume of wine production explain why, historically, in terms of prestige, Beaujolais is Burgundy’s poor cousin, its homely sister, a Cinderella of the vineyards. It’s also eclipsed by the big, brawny, inky, outsized Rhone Valley wines-the kinds kingpin Robert Parker loves-made in the broiling climes south of Lyon.

The upside is that Beaujolais has no posses of Rhone Rangers or Burgundy Bores. Its main peril is the kind of populism that encourages boozers who can’t tell the difference between soda pop and sludge. And this does the Beaujolais region as a whole an injustice.

For one thing, the area grows dozens of fine Beaujolais Villages appellation wines and ten excellent crus. Many of them improve with time. The premium cru districts are, from north to south, Saint Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgan, Régnié, Côte de Brouilly and Brouilly.

For another thing, the Beaujolais is wonderful even if you aren’t into drinking, Nouveau or old. While billions of people know the wine and millions taste it, few seem to realize that somewhere out there a place exists geographically, a place called the Beaujolais. It’s filled not only with happy vintners but also with non-wine-related folk who busily animate the landscape year-round.

Unless you’re an anthropologist or you actually like Beaujolais Nouveau, you might want to schedule a visit before or after Les Sarmentelles de Beaujeu and the 100 other Nouveau fêtes held in most Beaujolais villages and towns from mid to late November. You might even want to do as I did recently and skip the region’s rich valley areas entirely, sneaking up instead from the side or back, via the ballooning Monts du Beaujolais mountains that hem in the south and west.

La Montagne

Whether you approach from Lyon and the Pays des Pierres Dorées, through handsome villages with wonderfully unpronounceable names such as L’Arbresle and Le Bois d’Oignt, or drive down from Cluny via the Col du Fût d’Avenas, a mountain pass, you’ll likely be as pleasantly surprised as I was by the scenery and the feel. “Diversity” is the operative word. The contrast between what locals call “La Montagne” and the rest of the region is absolute.

La Montagne is damp, brisk, mysterious and mountainous. Ravines are cloaked by fir forests and cleft by deep river valleys, with isolated hamlets and stone-built villages fringed in moss. Knotty pine décor, wood-burning stoves and heavy woolen sweaters are de rigueur. The food-served at roadside eateries-features slow-cooked beef or pork sausages braised in wine, rustic, rich in flavor, and appropriately caloric.

Arriving too early for wine or lunch, I walked to the summit of the region’s tallest peak, Mont Saint Rigaud. Breathtaking? Rising from a few hundred feet at its base, it tops 3,000 feet. Across the Rhone Valley to the east rose the Alps and Switzerland, close enough to touch. Needless to add, I had the place to myself.

Antiquity permeates La Montagne. The Roman road from Lyon to Autun ran through here, and along it sprang up Romanesque churches belonging to the Abbey of Cluny. In them are stunning sculpted architectural details even a freethinker will find divine. At atmospheric Avenas, a village clamped to the hillside, I discovered a 12th-century altar showing Christ in Majesty, among the finest I’ve ever seen in France.

Up the road at the pass I stopped to taste honey at Miellerie du Fût d’Avenas. There was bosky fir tree and mountain honey, piquant heather honey, tangy dandelion honey, and half a dozen others, all delicious. Honey-making, forestry, wood-working and cattle ranching are the economic mainstays-there is no wine.


The Beaujolais

Just beyond the pass, at a panoramic spot called La Terrasse-equipped with a fancy, glass-fronted restaurant, wine information center and souvenir boutique-I parked and hiked a short, ridge-top loop at 2,200 feet above sea level. Along it rise Druid rocks from pre-Roman days, and chestnut and hazelnut forests. Panels with folksy cartoon characters impart basic information about Beaujolais. I learned that Brulius, a Roman patrician, gave his name to Brouilly, now one of the great wines of the Beaujolais. Atop the Mont de Brouilly, in the distance, I could just make out an isolated chapel-a pilgrimage site for wine-makers. Closer to where I stood, Regnius, another wealthy Roman, had a villa under what are now the vineyards of Régnié.

La Montagne was right behind my back, but it already felt a million meters away.

From La Terrasse looking south into the sunny valley, what you see is a gently rolling, plump and prosperous universe of grapes, villages of sturdy granite blocks, the rushing Rhone River, plus highways and TGV high-speed railways. Scattered around are improbable New World-style, faux-hacienda wineries and ticky-tacky tract home developments, the French equivalent of Napa Valley sprawl. They have sprung up in the last few decades thanks in part to the wealth derived from Beaujolais Nouveau.

Cars and cyclists beetled up the looping two-lane highway from the valley bottom. I coasted down it and picked up the wine route to Beaujeu-which is hidden in a trough-and then to the more picturesque, hillside village of Lantignié.

At Morgon there was no there, there. But neighboring Villié-Morgon proved lively, with an outdoor market in the main square, and excellent vintage wines spurting from every crack and crevice. The most seductive sight appeared before my eyes unexpectedly: a chapel to the Madonna of the Vineyards, behind Fleurie on a sugarloaf knoll. From its porch I got an even better view than before of the Beaujolais vineyards shared by Burgundy’s southernmost Maconnais region. The two overlap.

Despite France’s ferocious secularism-espoused since the Revolution of 1789-many Vinous Virgins and Madonnas of the Vineyards were erected hereabouts in the 1860s and ’70s to protect vines from phyloxera and other blights. The Madonnas failed. But two Beaujolais native sons saved the day, discovering the secret of treating vine roots with boiling water, and grafting native varieties such as gamay and pinot noir onto phyloxera-resistant American rootstock. They saved not only local vintners but the winemaking industry of Europe.

Predating the Madonnas are an almost equal number of effigies of Bacchus, found even in holy places. They suggest that the paganism of the Romans has always been fine in France as long as it is drinkable. The cellar of the old church in Juliénas, now a wine-tasting room, is covered with scenes of bacchanalia. They seemed to me an illustration of how medieval churchmen seamlessly transmogrified the old lushes Bacchus and Dionysius into upstanding Saint Vincent, patron of winemakers-with an emphasis on the “vin” in Vincent’s name.

At Romanèche-Thorins, in the bustling bottom of the valley which I’d meant to avoid, I skipped the wild animal park-a huge tourist attraction-and hesitated before heading to the “Hameau du Vin” in the village’s former train station. This is the Beaujolais’ answer to Frontier Village or Disneyland, a theme park of wine, dreamed up by Georges Duboeuf, the négociant who helped put Beaujolais Nouveau on the world map. He too is a local hero of sorts.

As always, the Hameau was crowded with French families. Initiation into the mysteries of wine comes early hereabouts. Children of all ages-from toddlers to childlike super-seniors-were having a ball. Automatons act out the Four Seasons of the winegrower, and there’s an audio-visual show with a short history of wine, from Noah’s drunkenness to the present. The displays brought to mind the Sarmentelles de Beaujolais, and I realized that one of the real miracles of the Beaujolais, performed perhaps by the region’s Madonnas, is that the reputation of the area’s fine wines remains intact despite the millions of gallons of Nouveau.

Charging back into the hills as fast as I could safely drive, it occurred to me that Don Quixote would have gone wild at Moulin-à-Vent, an appellation named for the centuries-old windmill that is the northern Beaujolais region’s greatest landmark. Moulin-à-Vent happens to be one of the best growing areas. Ironically, like several other premium appellations, part of Moulin-à-Vent is actually in Burgundy.

The windmill belongs to the Château Portier-Denys Chastel-Sauzet winery. It’s not a theme park and has been in business since the 1800s. Alas, in November, you can visit the monument only on weekends. Feeling more like Sancho Panza than Don Quixote, I consoled myself by buying a few bottles of Moulin-à-Vent and Chénas, the antithesis of Beaujolais Nouveau. They would be ready to drink, said the solicitous winemaker, looking like a cross of Bacchus and Saint Vincent, in three or four years. That seemed reasonable to me. With Beaujolais, it’s the vintage wines and antique wonders of the region that win hands down.

Photo Credits:

Beaujolais: AP
Lyon: Flickr/Romainguy
Viaduct: Flickr/Hellolapomme
Beaujolais: AFP/Getty Images

Ryanair passengers stage sit-down strike

by Sean McLachlan on

What would travel bloggers do without Ryanair? From trying to get rid of co-pilots to arresting passengers for complaining about the sandwiches, the budget airline provides endless grist for our mill.

Yesterday more than a hundred passengers refused to leave their plane after their Ryanair flight from Fez, Morocco, to Beauvais, France, was diverted to Belgium. It was one of four Ryanair flights diverted to Liege due to foggy conditions in France. Passengers were offered a bus to their final destination, a journey of 225 miles. While passengers in three of the planes agreed to go, those in the fourth flight refused, insisting to be flown there instead. The flight had departed Fez three hours late and landed in Liege at 11:30 PM. The passengers didn’t leave the plane until 3:30 in the morning to catch a 4:30 AM bus home.

That’s the story both sides agree on. Beyond this, there are two stories. Passengers say they were then abandoned by the crew, who even left the cockpit open, and were not given any water for several hours. The toilets were also locked.

Ryanair said the crew stayed for an hour and only left when some passengers got disruptive. They also say that they would have gotten an earlier bus if they had agreed to leave.

[Photo courtesy user Yap S S via Gadling’s flickr pool]

French and Mexican food put on UNESCO heritage list

by Sean McLachlan on

Good news for fine dining: Mexican and French cuisine have made it onto UNESCO’s list of Intangible World Heritage.

At a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, the UNESCO committee named several cultural practices as important for world heritage and in need of preservation, including Spanish flamenco and a dance called the huaconada performed by the Mito people in the Peruvian Andes.

The BBC report is only preliminary and there’s no news yet about whether the Spanish practice of making human towers that we reported on Monday has made it on the list.

So now you can tuck in to baguettes and burritos with the knowledge that you are preserving important world heritage. As we’ve reported, eating French cuisine the way the French do can keep you thin, and if Mexican food is more your style, check out the best Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles.

[Image courtesy user Styggiti via Gadling’s flickr pool]