Valencina de la Concepción

Arriving

We drove through Seville on our way to the villa we rented in Valencina de la Concepción and I was not impressed. From the top balcony, we have a beautiful view of the night lights of Seville. Seville, like most cities in Europe was small, old and extremely beautiful before it sprawled and those parts outside of the old city seem devoid of character in comparison. We drove through one such section on our way here.

We got into the villa about an hour early taking the housekeeper by surprise. She spoke no English and my Spanish is not quite passable. I’ve forgotten past, past-imperfect, and future tenses almost completely. I never spoke conversational Spanish in the first place and I’ve lost well over half of what I’d ever learned. This makes understanding difficult and asking questions nigh impossible.

I think one of the things that bothers me most about struggling with a language like Spanish is when the person on the other end is impatient. Most hispanic people I’ve met are so laid back that they just exude patience and understanding as you struggle to communicate. Here that hasn’t been the case; I’ve felt that people are just frustrated that I don’t speak their language — and they don’t speak English either. I think with other languages and cultures I will be more understanding, but this experience has left me uniquely disappointed.

A trip into Seville

Lisa has delegated planing of all our day activities to the girls. They did research on all the towns nearby and decided what they most wanted to do in each. Since Seville is at our doorstep relative to the others in the region, we started there.

Heading back into Seville was interesting and quite annoying. The traffic is fairly bad and the parking situation is entirely horrible. If you’re going to visit Seville, I’d recommend getting a taxi and staying at a hotel. We did not and spent at least an hour driving in and finding parking. From there we began to venture by foot into the old city.

There is something I particularly hate about waiting in line. I don’t enjoy meals or rides or other experiences when I've had to wait in line. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine waiting… just not while I can’t do other things of value. Tell me I can’t do something now, I’ll plan to do it in a few days instead… the important thing is that I’ll do something else enriching in the interim… standing in line is not enriching. Looking for parking falls squarely into the “standing in line” category of waiting. Fuck that, but back to the good stuff.

Seville is home of the Catedral de Sevilla, the third largest Church in the world… it’s big. We walked around it, but didn’t go in it on our visit as the young ladies had selected the Real Alcázar de Sevilla for our visit. It did not disappoint; it was absolutely gorgeous.

We had planned on hitting Seville before lunch and swinging by the supermarket on the way back to get lunch and dinner stuffs, but a slightly late start and the parking trauma derailed those plans. One thing that I’ve always been fairly good at (and continue to improve upon on this trip) is accepting that plans change. We found lunch in a little bodega serving tapas near the cathedral and had some delicious food: of note was the goat cheese with pine nuts and honey on bread chips. We swung by a sweets shop and picked up some delicate cookies for the dessert to be had later than evening and headed back.

Cooking

We swung by the local supermarket called “Dia.” I learned (much to my regret) that they have their own branded beer (think what Costco or BJs beer would be like). The quality and selection of everything here is so radically different than home and certainly less impressive than Sweden or Germany. Never-the-less, my internal recipe book is sufficient to compensate. I cooked homemade turkey-chorizo burgers on the grill for dinner.

Grilling, and specifically cooking over charcoal, is something I miss terribly from home. The convenience of grilling (and smoking) foods at home makes it an afterthought in the dinner planning process. On the road, it has to be central to the planning process (when it is possible at all) making it an infrequent treat. On that topic, it irritates me to no end when you rent a house with a full working kitchen but they have no spices other than salt and pepper (or none at all). You must have spices to cook and you’ll never use all of the spices you purchase for a short (week or so) stay. We end up buying spices (like oregano, paprika, cumin, etc.) and then we’re stuck with what we’ll do with the left overs at the end of the stay. Here in Europe, we can toss our “carry-forward” bag in the the Vasawagn and move on, but when we leave Europe this is going to result in a lot of over purchasing and abandoning leftovers.

Another difference from home (which is pretty serious) is not knowing where butchers are and which ones to trust. The reason grilling food is so easy is because the meat does all the work. If you have an underachieving protein, you’ll know it in every bite.

Dinner was well received and we followed our meal with a showing of “Mocking Jay: Part I.” Zoe's phone ran out of batteries about 80% through an we had to call it quits. Zoe attested that his was the first time since leaving the United States that her phone has ran out of batteries. Tori responded: "Yeah.. like Zoe freaks out when her phone is at thirty percent. It's crazy." Love these kids.

The Vasawagn

It seems like forever-ago that we picked up our Citroën Jumpy C2 at London Heathrow and embarked on a crazy road trip around Europe. Interestingly, that was less than three months ago. We have spent a lot of time in that van. It has very little pickup, quite decent gas mileage, and perhaps the shittiest sound system I've ever had the misfortune of attempting to use in a vehicle. Yet as is true on so many voyages, it isn't so much the vessel as it is the crew.

We passed 11,000 kilometers on the van today. We’ve driven as far west as the Kerry Way in Ireland, as north as Stockholm, as east as Berlin and as south as Seville, Spain. That’s a lot of driving with a crew of kids and I can say with certainty that my kids are inhumanly well behaved in car rides; it’s just freaky. I remember my childhood, riding in the back of the Oldsmobile fighting with my brother... my relief that my children are not me is permanent and palpable.

Tori gets occasional car sickness and will operate her own bag and not even mention that it happened. They alternate between absorbing themselves in their devices (Nexus 9s) and peacefully staring out the window at the landscape streaming by… “oh, Mama! Look a another castle. Right on that hill” and, of course, sleeping.

My favorite thing about this road trip, hands down, was driving through the Alps. The Swiss Alps, the Italian Alps and the French Alps. I believe it is the most beautiful drive I have ever experienced in my life. Lisa and I have taken turns driving and have both had the opportunity to longingly stare at the landscape that most closely resembles beautiful paintings sewn together endlessly.

I was disappointed that it was foggy during our Swiss Alps drive; it made it difficult to capture the landscape in photos and I'm sure it deadened what would have been a euphoric experience into a merely exceptional one.

I found the landscape and geology to be fascinatingly different (though I plead ignorance here and they might all be the same while I only learned to look at different things along the way). My recollection is that Switzerland was green and vibrant and filled with serene lakes all along the path; truly picturesque.

Italy was drier, but still exhibited the same abrupt rock formations and tended to be more trees and less developed. The drive into Cuneo was breathtaking and our excitement level to see the town of Lisa's mother's side helped bolster that further. The little towns tended to be houses only with significantly less farm land along the drive.

In France, the towns were more haphazardly stacked along the rise of the mountain (and at the same time artistically beautiful), but all of that was hard to notice with the absolutely fantastic geological formations in the ravines. The (hundreds of) layers of rock, so meticulously exposed. It was like driving through a lesson on the age of our planet and the epics of destructive tectonic reorganization.

We only have to drive to Brussels (from Seville) to return our car and transition from our European tour to our African tour. It’s a long drive and I’m sure I’ll enjoy not having to drive for quite some time afterwards. I think the next place on our trip where we will really need to operate our own transportation is New Zealand. Frankly, despite the freedom of our own car, it’s a relief to just let it go.

I'll note that one thing that frustrates me continually is how difficult it is to capture good photos from a moving car at speed. The van is particularly square and suffers from horrible aerodynamics. Opening a window at 130km/h is a horrible idea. We have taken nearly a thousand pictures through horrible, often bug-smeared, glass, at awkward angles, with misjudged shutter-speed settings and bad apertures, and been the victim of unlucky timing. Of these, maybe ten are decent and one or two are good. None are great. We'll keep trying.

I wish that cameras could record ground-speed as part of the metadata for photos. Feel free to peruse our roadtrip gallery over on SmugMug.

A Picture of Cuneo

Cuneo was amazing. This is the town where Lisa’s grandmother Onorina was born. She lived here for a while before moving to the United States. Since before Lisa and I were married, we had a picture of the square in Cuneo hanging on our wall at home; it is a permanent fixture.

Seeing this place for the first time in person leaves me with the simple impression that his place is magical. Sitting in front of the Alps, the scenery is picturesque. the town was built up in a sensible way, well preserved and well laid out. The people are kind and happy. The food is the quintessential Piemonte food: delicate and delicious. The wines are fantastic. It is beautiful.

One of the things I wanted to do was take a picture of the square that matches the one we have at home. I would need a rig to do that as the angle from the street isn’t quite right. I did a passable job and got one with my four Marinis in the picture. Perhaps when we get home, we’ll enlarge this one and put it on the wall too.

Things to do in Cuneo?

Ride a bike around town.

The hotel at which we stayed offered free bike borrowing. I have to admit this is one of the most interesting and wonderful benefits I've experienced at a hotel. The bikes weren't in great shape, but they did the job just fine. Not everyone was up for a bike ride, but Zoe desperately wanted to go. Despite my foot killing me, I saddled up and we biked a few miles around town. We went up through the square and stopped by the Cuneo train station, then took the route along the edge of town back toward the square (and hotel). We thought about biking over the bridge, but the sidewalk there was tight and we didn't want to have to navigate pedestrians during our attempt. Zoe and I both haven't ridden a bike in a while. No helmets ('cause that ain't a thing in Italy for commuter bikes) and no accidents.

Have a Cuneesi Al Rhum at Caffè Pasticceria Arione (the hot chocolate there is pretty epic too)

One of the things Cuneo is known for (though I didn't know before we showed up) is the Cuneesi Al Rhum. I have never before experienced such a fantastic infusion of flavor (particularly the mouth feel of alcohol) that is accomplished by this magical creation. It was created in Cuneo by Andrea Arione some time in the early twentieth century. It is a custard infused with rum coated in chocolate.

We bought a bag from one shop, but I did have an original at Arione and it was better. The upside of the bag we bought is that it had a large variety of Cuneesi, both alcoholic and non. The grappa one is a marvel unto itself. The grappa sensation shot up through my nasal passages while I was savoring it; so true to form.

This things are amazing. If you ever find yourself in Cuneo, it would be a travesty to miss an original Cuneesi Al Rhum at Caffè Pasticceria Arione. Just do it.

Zoe had a chocolate (non-alcoholic) Cuneesi at the caffè. Several times since, the kids have bit into one of the Cuneesi we bought and been quite unpleasantly surprised that they selected an alcoholic one. Lisa doesn't seem to like the alcoholic ones either. I suppose they are bit intense for her.

Zoe also had a hot chocolate at Arione's and it was beyond decadent.

EAT and DRINK.

We went to the restaurant in Hotel Palazzo Lovera. There I had the most delicate and delicious veal ravioli I can ever remember having. It came out lightly coated in a browned butter sauce and I immediately thought it was under-sauced. I finished the rather petite portion (by America standards) completely satisfied, mind blown and slightly depressed in knowing that I'm unlikely to have a ravioli on parallel until I one day return to Italy.

I can also highly recommend Osteria Senza Fretta Di Daniela E Marco. We went there for dinner and had a wonderful experience. I had risotto with spinach pesto and anchovies; I found it fantastic, but I think that the taste was a bit pungent for Zoe who also ordered it. I shall make some homemade risotto soon that is less quirky to show her she likes risotto. I followed my Primi with a Secondi of Rabbit rolled in herbs. Paired with fantastic wine, the dinner was one I shall remember for quite some time.

Other past times

Also, if you have a beautiful daughter turning eleven years old, hug her hard in the middle of the square. Gianna turned eleven years old today. It's been pretty surreal watching all of them grow up and Gianna has always seemed so much younger and older than her age almost simultaneously. She is a wonderful conundrum.

Visit the square at dusk, it is beautiful at all hours... just another picture for the sake of pictures. I cannot get over how beautiful the square is. During the daylight you can see the snowcapped mountains in the background which is almost impossible to capture in a photo unless you have an elevated perspective on the square. The human eye is truly magical.