NYE

We had new years eve at our new expat friends' place in St. Pancrasse. It was a wonderful meal, and it turns out that one of their friends works at the same institute as us. We managed not to talk to much shop, however. Chloe made her Valrhona chocolate caramel walnut tart, which was a big hit. The kids were running around acting a little crazy, but were pretty well behaved, all things considered. At the end of the evening we all blew into chemical breathalyzers which took some figuring out even dead sober and went home. Hank and I talked a lot about cycling of course, and I was suitably lambasted for not having ridden up the alpe d'huez yet.

anyway, Happy New Years!

Sledding?

We tried to go sledding with un-napped kids, which did not work out well. It ended up being Cloe and I dragging them up slushy snow, punctuating the constant wail of both kids with our gasps for air. I put Zoe on her skis from the Trocathlon, but she did not seem to understand what to do with them: If I wasn't holding onto her she would obviously immediately fall into the snow, but if I WAS holding her, or actually touching any part of her body, she would interpret this as the cue to go completely limp, and would slump into the snow. It was like one of those mutant goats that faints when you clap.

Here is alex in a rare moment in between screams. Although not red with anger, you see that he is not impressed.

Planfay+mont saint-martin

here's a video of my standard ride up to le Gua + my newly discovered extension into Planay, and then the mont saint martin. There was a bit more ice today, but generally manageable except for one steep section under the trees where I lost traction. Otherwise, another beautiful day. I saw quite a few people gearing up for ski touring at the turnarounds.

Planfay

Did my usual lower motivation/cold ride but found a cool new road that I had somehow missed. Cold, but beautiful weather!

I was trying to decide where to turn around, and the decision was made for me:

Merry Xmas!

after tearing through waaay too many presents for the kids (thank you Grandparents I mean Santa!) we went to the Aussies for lunch, which was a lot of fun.

Drive home

After settling up, we hit the road for Pisa. Neither of us had been, and since it is basically on the way back we decided to go. Unfortunately, a torrential rain started after about fifteen minutes of driving, and the thought of carrying the kids around under those conditions made us rethink the Pisa connection. Instead, we continued North for home. Along the way, we passed the port that serves up huge blocks of Carrara marble to go into the bathrooms and kitchens of the 1% and the peninsula beyond which is the Cinqueterre. We had hoped to visit the Cinqueterre or one of the nearby towns like Tellaro during this trip, but they were recently devastated by strong rains an mudslides.
The Autostrada Azzura is pretty fabulous, and takes you through some dramatic landscape, even if it does require a bit more attention than your usual autoroute! I'd really like to spend some more time in this area at some point. I noticed that Range Rover Sport HSEs with heavily tinted windows seem to be the car of choice for this part of the world… no idea why.

From the A12, we continued on past Torino and encountered savage head and crosswinds. Not so fun, but the wind was kicking spindrift off the peaks which was beautiful

Last day in Florence

Today we started out with a visit to the San Marco museum, which was quite interesting. I fixated on the schematic for the beautiful chairs they have throughout the museum:


I guess I'll have to try to make one of these some day, when I have a workshop again.

On the way to the museum there is a very cool little bike shop called Cicli Sergio Bianchi. If you look carefully, you will see a lot of bikes in Florence with his head badge. I couldn't help wandering in and checking out some of the bikes. One of my favorites was this lugged city bike, complete with sewn leather grips and a sprung Brooks saddle. Pretty stylish.






Next it was off to another item on the culinary tick list: Trattoria Mario next to the central market. This is another unostentatious place with wonderful food:




What can I say, other than that it was delicious, simple and wonderful. I guess I need to either learn how to cook like this or find a new metier and move to Florence!

After lunch we wandered over a bridge to the other side of the Arno for another fruitless and feeble hearted attempt at shopping. Then it was gelato time near the Bridge of Overpriced Jewels, and on to the Uffizi. There was no line at the Uffizi and we walked right up to the hallowed halls that I last visited when I was five years old. I remember my feet hurting a lot and feeling very resentful that the parents were dragging me through yet another european museum. It feels satisfying to inflict the same torture upon my progeny now. I'm sure we didn't spend as much time as Kenji though. Halfway through, we took a little break in the rooftop café, where Alex ran around the chairs amidst coos of "Ciao Bello!" despite the fact that he was eating candy that he would periodically drop off the floor. The rest of us ate biscotti and drank espressos or mint water



Finally, we went on a mission to find something nice for Chloe. After a few stores it became obvious that the same purses were getting sold from every store, so I went off in search of an artisanale leather store (Pelletteria Artigiana, 3 Via Guelfa) I had seen on the first day. Here, we finally found Chloe a beautiful, well made and non-ubiquitously available purse. We had a few problems with our stupid bank cards, as usual, but managed to get enough cash out to get a simple last dinner in Florence of pizza and a bottle of Chianti!

Day 2, Florence

The hotel had advertised an included breakfast. Again, having seen some pretty meager hotel breakfasts, I was not expecting much. In any case they could have offered us cereal and I would still have been happy considering the marble and hardwood extravaganza upstairs! However, it turned out to be an excellent and full spread: fresh bread, yogurt, fancy butter, pots of jam, espresso, cappuccino, charcuterie, cheese, etc etc. They even offered to cook eggs if we wanted them. There was also a high chair waiting for Alex. Awesome.

First stop after the tourist office was the Galleria dell'Accademia. we started off in an extended exhibit of Bartolini sculptures, which I was not so into. The next section was the hall leading up to the David however. The David is magnificent: even as a "normal" sized statue it would be beautiful, but the scale of the sculpture is overwhelming and one of those things that I think is difficult to convey. I walked around it many times, and came back to it later to look at it some more. Also worth mentioning: no lines at all! No line for tickets, no line to get in, no one in front of the statue. On one of my many circlings of the statue I noticed a box stuck to the pedestal called a "SmartBrick", which turns out to be a sophisticated strain logger. The David has cracks in the left ankle and tree which have been known for some time, and the installation of the monitoring system is supposed to help the museum and researchers determine what happens during an earthquake or other shocks. It's pretty high tech stuff, and the same types of strain sensors have been used on high performance sailboat masts. It was also kind of cool to see that a U.S. based nonprofit had paid for part of this system(http://www.friendsofflorence.org/). Zoe was not as impressed by the statue of David. When I asked her whether she liked it, she responded "yeah, but it's too big!".

Afterwards, it was down the street

For lunch at da Nerbone. I discovered at the sandwhich place what "lampretto" is, and decided against it. I know that will expose me as a small palatted fool and is hopelessly unfashionable in today's "Let's eat every part of the animal including the disgusting bits so that we can be cool and get back to our roots", but I dislike tripe and anything else that needs to be sauced heavily and cooked for a long time to make you forget what it is. We went with the boiled beef sandwich which was tasty, but a little too fatty for my taste. I also learned something about line etiquette in Italy, which is that there is even less than in France! You just have to get in front of everyone and aim elbows and your back at people to prevent them from flanking you. Even then people will try to order over your head! Crazy, but entertaining. From lunch, we walked to the Duomo


and after a fortifying cafe and tiramisu at a cafe

walked up Giotto's Campanile.

Zoe walked up all 414 steps to the top.





From there, we tried to do a little shopping but were unsuccessful in finding anything we wanted but it was lovely just walking around. Florence is a really beautiful city

Next it was back to the hotel to get the kids to nap.

After a while it was finally time for dinner. I had been looking forward to this restaurant for a week. Chloe had managed to make reservations earlier in the week, after I had called them at least five times. The restaurant had exceptional ratings on trip advisor, which has so far not been wrong. The walk from the hotel was a bit long, but as usual it is hard to complain when you are passing beautiful churches and building every block, as well as interesting little shops

We eventually arrived at the restaurant (Vini e Vecchi Sapori), and we actually passed by it because it is so small. I had read that it was small, but it is REALLY small. As in, about the size of Zoe and Alex's bedroom. The main guy, Thomas showed us to our table and I knew immediately I was going to love the place. There was just a great homey atmosphere, and the tiny dairy case stuffed with excellent looking charcuterie also helped. We started out with the charcuterie and mozzarella di bufala plate which was excellent

and then moved on to the meatballs for the kids

which they devoured with extreme prejudice

I had the papardelle in a duck ragu which was possibly one of the most simple but perfect pasta dishes I have ever had

and chloe had a pasta in a sauce of saffron and zucchini flowers which was unique and delicious

Alex discovered my pasta about halfway through and began stealing it. The bits of duck did not however meet with his approval and he began yelling "CACA" and pointing at the duck meat. We would then try to quiet him down and remove the duck, he would then eat it, steal another piece, yell "CACA" and on and on. Here's Alex polishing the last of it off

Dessert was equally amazing: Raspberry Tiramisu, flaky biscotti with some kind of armagnac and a light (!) cheesecake.

The tiramisu was so good, and the kids stole enough of it that we had to order a second bowl. To me, this is the epitome of good Italian cuisine: nothing overly dressed up, no infusions, no foams, no need for the word "artisanale", as it is implicit. It is: perfectly balanced textures and individual flavors in a simple presentation. I could probably eat at this restaurant every day for the rest of my life and never need anything else. Afterwards, we found a taxi and went back to the hotel. Florence seems even more beautiful at night as you careen through cobbled piazzas and past colonnaded buildings lit up with the occasional string of xmas lights.

Day One, Florentine Adventure

We began our day the usual way: Alex getting woken up by the Tabac alarm system which woke everyone else up. A word of explanation: after the most recent break in at the Tabac, the resourceful Tabacconist screwed his side door shut and started entering through the main door. This trips the alarm every morning, and despite our asking for them to do something about it, they have cheerfully responded that there is nothing to be done, accompanied with the ubiquitous French Shrug. I'm not sure what his game is, other than being a dick, but I have a feeling that he is trying to get us to complain to the rental company so that the rental company will have to repair his door rather than him. I guess we will have to oblige him at some point if we want Alex to get full night's sleep. Anyway, we packed up the car and were out of the door by 9:30. There was a little snow and ice on the road from the previous two days of snowfall, but we now had snow tires on the car and it felt solid. In any case, the autoroutes were all well plowed. We drove through the Maurienne and past all the classic cols beckoning to me to be cycled, through the Frejus tunnel, around various ring roads and the maddeningly poorly organized toll plazas and finally into Florence. All told, with a motorway stop for food it took seven hours.

I had found a great looking place on Tripadvisor (The Villa Antea), which we had booked last week, and we were eager to see if it lived up to the photos and ratings. After getting a bit lost in the maze of one way streets around the Villa, we finally arrived. The courtyard and lobby were gorgeous, but I still was not sold, having been to several hotels with opulent lobbies but rooms out of Noir movies (mostly in Paris). When we were shown to our room however, I was extremely pleasantly surprised. I'll let the photos do the talking:



After de-luggaging, we walked around a bit, visited a nice coin store and then had pizza at an excellent local restaurant. I had the pizzaiolo special, which included had an assortment of flavors, including potato-onion, sauscisse, margarita and a something else. It was all excellent. Chloe got a vegetarian pizza: laaaame. After pizza, it was back to the hotel and collapsing in exhaustion.

Mont-Saint-Martin

I ticked off another of my season goals today: ride up Mont-Saint-Martin from the Rue Bach/Rafour intersection to the town limit sign in under 30 minutes... it was only a little under than but I am happy. Once at the top, I rode the little loop once, and then further up the fire trail for a while. It is very steep and with a lot of leaves but lovely. I descended to the town and took a few pictures, and as I was taking the last one an old woman walked up to me to see what I was doing, and we started talking about how "magnifique" it all looked at this time of day. She told me that there was snow in the trees in town yesterday, and told me to be careful descending, as apparently several cyclists have run into cars this year. I never descend very quickly on Mont-Saint-Martin because it's so damn steep, but I took it especially slowly today.

Spectacle!

Today was a work sponsored "spectacle" in Gieres. I really like this custom, and it is apparently done at many companies in France. I thought ours was pretty good until I heard about the one at a nearby Biotech which sounds even cooler: kids get a catalog of toys from which to choose, and they go to significant effort to make some kind of giant Xmas fair. Ours was a magic show, with the added bonus of Santa Claus! We all got onto buses at work and then took the inexplicably long ride to Gieres via the hateful Rocade Sud (a ring road where you always seem to be driving for hours to go a very short distance. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of Grenoble). Anyway, like last year, they kept the doors closed (WHY?!) while the kids and parents became irate, but eventually let us in. Next came the magic show, which involved things bursting into flames, ribbons out of the mouth, etc etc. With each trick I could see the audience full of engineers and scientists carefully dissecting the sleights of hands in their mind. There was lots of eyes squinting, cocked heads, and then slight knowing smiles. At various points, kids were called up to become assistants, but this backfired comically. The first volunteer was very nearly in tears by the end of her assistantship, and the second figured out the trick involving nested magic wands, and began intently trying to disassemble the trick wand. In each case, the magician reacted smoothly and was a real pro. The show ended with balloon animals, at which point the kids swarmed him. Despite a few cries for help, most of us parents left him to die. There weren't very many balloon animals to be had, and Zoe is pretty shy about things like that, so I was happy to see that the magician gave her a little balloon duck. Last but not least, it was time for Santa Claus, who was handing out bags of chocolates and books. Excellent!



Then it was back to the work cafeteria for snacks, which ran out very quickly.