from Paris: with a traveling companion

A city of light, love, food, fashion, art, architecture, politics, personalities, a city of great beauty, with probably the best people watching opportunities anywhere. A place to share, with someone, anyone, with, for example, an occasional traveling companion.

But mostly, over the years, I have traveled to and through Paris alone. I’ve learned how to do it. So much so that when Ed does join me here, like, for example, for these two days, I’m at a loss on how to proceed.

Much as he does not hide his dislike for all things urban, he knows not to dislike Paris to my face. It would be like me telling him that his two cats are flawed. We aren’t that unkind to each other. In conversations about it, we talk about the parks, the good food we have eaten here, the walks we have taken, the art we have seen.

But in making plans for a day here, we are at a conversational volley that often ends with the ball falling off somewhere beyond reach.

Where do you want to go?
Wherever you want.
Where do you want to eat?
Don’t know.
How about at that bistro with a reasonable fixed price menu?
Maybe.
Anything there that you like?
I’ll find something.

I tell him he is merely going along, that the enthusiasm just isn’t there.

But then come the good comments.

Let’s just sit for a while and enjoy the scenery.
Just for a minute.

You want to stop for a refreshment?
Okay...

I remember this shop from the last time.
I once bought a dress for my daughter there.

A smile, fleeting, but there, in the entryway to a shop, on a park bench, looking at a statue, a bridge, a person on a rented bike speeding by.



We arrive in the early afternoon, unload our gear at a still less expensive left bank hotel (the perennial challenge here is to find a place that is special and cheap; you cannot get to attached to any one choice, because some time in the future it will leave your budget range and you will have to search again) and set out.

Where to? Oh, green spaces of course. With Ed, there’s no hope for even a polite nod to the city if you don’t spend at least a little time in traffic free zones.

We walk through the parks where children ride ponies and chase balls between old trees.


Jardin des Plantes





Jardin des Plantes





Jardin Luxembourg


The skies turn partly cloudy and the air loses the Scottish nip that had been with us up north. We watch people take time out to be alone or with friends, or companions.




















Past shops, food shops, so many food shops. Ice cream places. I eat a cone with the absurd combination of salted caramel and cherry ice cream…

Don’t you want any?
Still full of breakfast.





…and drink a kir at an inconsequential sidewalk café.

What will you drink?
Nothing.
You can’t drink nothing. Have mineral water.
It’s more expensive than wine.
Have wine.
You have mine.

(Correction then: I drink two kirs at an inconsequential sidewalk café)





… and we walk again. Endlessly, until we can walk no more.

We do eat dinner at the bistro with the good fixed price menu (La Petite Chaise). It’s a fine meal. A good fit for us, just on this day.


[Note: I’ll post after my flight back home.]

from Scotland, one last time

In truth, neither of us is in the mood to be in Edinburgh. Ed dislikes most cities that are noisy and chaotic, and me – I prefer to keep my images of this place as I had them when I was young: I thought of it then as a cold and dark city, but one that grew on you, especially in the afternoon, especially if you stopped for a long tea and let it roll into the evening meal. With a pint after, to end the day.

Still, we could not pass it by. For all our time in Scotland, for our love of this tremendously beautiful country and its generous people, I thought we should at least spend a day poking around the capital.

In the end, a full day proved to be too much. Indeed, I can truthfully say that the best part of our stay here was within the first few hours, when we searched for Pickham’s -- the store with good cheeses for supper.


And the day after that? It could be that we were stuck in another world – of mountains and lakes, of sheep and fields of heather – it could be that. For both of us, the city felt like a trap. Around the commercial downtown, you could not escape the chaos of the tram construction. And so we placed our hopes with the Medieval Royal Mile, up there on the cliff, stretching from the castle to the palace.










But there we found a different sort of chaos – of tour buses and souvenir shops, of kilts and imitation kilts for sale, of fast eateries with prepackaged scones, prepackaged everything. You could not shake it. I could not shake it. There was no room for strolling, for contemplation. The place of historic momentum, of old buildings where poets and politicians spun their stories over the centuries appeared to have sold its soul to t-shirt shops and tattoo parlors.


The rain came and went and the afternoon turned first somber then downright sad.





The escape into a tearoom was the final slap: it felt far removed from the Scotland that I had loved so deeply up there in the Highlands.


Of course, the fault is our own. As I said, for many reasons, we were not ready and willing to take on this great tourist destination. And I have to note that there were some stellar moments to the day: the walk through the park, the visit to the Art Gallery, the climb up Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park behind the Royal Palace.





And the quick visit to the People's Museum, depicting life of the commoner in past centuries here was informative, if not a little depressing.






By late afternoon we were ready to call it a day. Though in the end, we rescued the mood with a wonderful meal of Shetland Island mussels at Fishers. We had begun our Scottish adventure at Fishers several weeks back and we were ending it there now.





Thursday should get us to Paris. Just for a day. Saturday, we’ll be home.

from Scotland: three bridges

First living on the islands, now leaving the islands and highlands, rolling back as if it were all a movie reel that is now spinning in reverse.

Our last night up north is at the Braeholm, the b&b that welcomed us when we first arrived on that windy evening in Skye. Tony’s off to teach on the mainland in the morning (are the British Isles “mainland”?), but his wife and son are here, greeting us with the breakfast foods we’ve come to love (and they get an extra high grade for offering fresh fruit, in addition to the large pieces of smoked salmon with the eggs, and home made jams from Skye berries. That, on top of muesli or porridge.)





Kristen, our hostess, speaks with such a strong Scottish accent that I am sure we are finally in the home of true Scots. And we are. But not from Skye! Skye people move away for work, mainland people come back and set up homes and new businesses. The Isle is a way of life and not everyone likes its laid back airs.





You’ve been here four years? Your son is a Skye boy then!
Actually, they don’t let you give birth to your first here. They make you travel to Inverness where there are proper facilities, just in case. So he was born there. But he’ll be going to school just up the hill.

Life in Skye. After a while, do you take the scenery for granted, sort of like the living room carpet?










We walk to the bus stop one last time and now we are crossing the bridge. We are no longer on island time.




We have many train connections to make (all on our cheap senior day pass!). The first is on the line that took as here just a few days ago, right to the water's edge.





But now we're rolling back, returning to Inverness. This is the most scenic stretch – through the heart of the Scottish highlands.





There is a tour group of Scottish seniors (they love to explore their own country; none of this stay home and watch the telly stuff – you see groups of seniors on buses, trains, in towns and castles – trotting up and down in groups, waiting at stations, moving in sync, happy with all that is bright and beautiful around them) and I glance to look at them. They're taking it all in, carefully, reflectively.





And we, too, are seduced by the scenery. For once, Ed takes his face out of the tattered magazines that have traveled with him from home, through the Great Glen Way, dunked in the waters of the Spey, stuck in his pants' pocket on the Isle of Skye. Because if you look out long enough, you'll catch a glimpse of a fleeing stag. Or of an RAF plane zipping low, right at the water's edge.















At Inverness we don’t pause: we hop on the next train out – to Perth. And this one is a roll back to an earlier set of days as we yet again speed along the River Spey, past Aviemore – where I waited for my man on the boat to come back. Oh! Snow fell on the hills in our absence! How can such a small country have so many different weather systems passing through it all at the same time?





And finally in Perth, we change to the train for Edinburgh. We go over yet another body of water, on a bridge parallel to this one…





…the bridges that all of us northbound travelers take to put us in the sometime heathered and sometime forested hills of the Highlands.


It’s evening in Edinburgh. Dinnertime. Except Ed has had enough of eating out. Do you mind if we just get bread and cheese and bring it back to the room?
How can I mind – he’s been good about meals, my occasional traveling companion who like nothing better than to hunt down odd foods in a refrigerator at the most irregular hours.

And so we amble out, on the streets of the city that is ripped by tram construction and still covered by the soot of history.





We’re staying near Haymarket, in a nice guest house at the edge of a rather scraggy side of town (but who can really tell when all looks hellish out there on the broken up streets). Our trip to the local supermarket brings out my loathing for these big food stores. If Ed wanted interesting cheeses, we weren’t going to find them here.

I suggest we head in a little toward to the commercial heart. Along the way, I’m lucky enough to ask a person who knows food.
There’s just the place! Not too far. I go there myself for the good beers that they sell. Past this square, around the next two circles of houses, down the hill, across the bridge and to your left – Peckham’s.

And so we go down, just as he tells us…





… until we cross that bridge – not anything as magnificent as the Skye bridge, nor the one over the Firth of Forth, but a bridge nonetheless, my bridge not to nowhere at all, but to the wonderful little shop that sells great cheeses and wheat biscuits and breads, and my favorite Scottish shortcake for dessert.









And on the shelf, we spot them – dark and light, Black Cuillin and Hebridean Gold – for us, the king and queen of beers, from the Isle of Skye.


Up we climb now...




... with too many cheeses and too many crackers and breads, up to the rubble of the torn up city to the quiet of the room that, unfortunately, does not have a view onto the highlands.

from Raasay Island, the Inner Hebrides, Scotland

We’re walking back from our last hike on Skye. It’s evening, but the sun is still with us. June, the month of the white nights: even as it sets, the night light turns from dusk to dawn and in the space of a few hours the sun is with us again. I love this about the north, even as I dislike the seasons of darkness that inevitably must follow.

In someone’s front yard, there is a car with a For Sale sign on it.
How much, do you think?
I glance at the price – L550.
Really? That’s pretty cheap. Ed walks over to take a closer look at the ten year old Saab.
The owner comes out the front door. We’re just curious – we explain.
No problem.
Is it in good condition?
Yeh, we just don’t use it. Figure someone else could maybe take it over.
It’s a good price, but, unfortunately, the wheel is on the funny side – Ed says.
The owner laughs. I figured you couldn’t take it back in your packs.

We don’t have to take it back, I tell Ed. We’ll keep it here, on Skye and use it each time we come, which maybe should be quite often.

The Skye bug has bit me hard.

But in the morning, we have to leave, at least this corner of the island. The following day we’ll be making connections back to Edinburgh and there isn’t a good way to do that if you begin your journey in sleepy Elgol.

Sleepy indeed. People here work on Skye time, Leslie (Robin’s wife) tells us. We’re having the hot water tank replaced today. Several years ago, we were told that the old one is ready to explode. We said – change it! So now, today, they finally decided to show up.

We wave good bye and heave our sacks to the side of the road to wait for the bus back to Broadford. Send us an email when you get safely back home! Robin calls out.


We rumble back along the one lane road. Suddenly so familiar. Red Cuillins, Black Cuillins. Sheep fields, inlets, mountains across the sound.


We’ll be overnighting in Broadford, but we still have a good part of the day for other pleasures. I suggest a ferry trip to the further Hebrides island of Raasay.

In Broadford, at the bus stop (we need yet another bus to take us to the ferry landing up north), we weigh our options. We have all our gear with us. The bus is about to pull up. A Skye man listens to the deliberations. Just leave it with the ferry boys, they’ll take care of it for ya.

At the ferry landing, the wind is giving us a good whipping. I’m happy that there is an indoor space for the twenty minute ride across the sound. Skye weather. Always the subject before you, always setting the pace for the day. But how is it that an island so much farther north than Wisconsin never has snow? And can let you feel a sprinkle on the face, even as the sky looks mostly blue? (Ed tells me -- it's like you: you're the only one I know who can laugh and cry all at the same time!)

We leave our packs on the boat. We’ll be catching the late afternoon one back! I shout against the wind.


The island is a springtime marvel. Wild rhododendrons are crazily overflowing with pink blooms. And they grow everywhere – on hills, in forests, lining the sheep fields, the roads, the waterfront.





We have in mind a hike around the southern end of Raasay. This is a place of great tales of the MacLeod clan and the name still dominates the island. You can see it on the Memorial to island war heroes of the Great War (and then subsequently, on the other side of the monument, of the Second World War).





I want to see the Raasay House, where James Boswell once partied with Macleod and "his ten beautiful daughters" (so the books say). I never asked for whiskey in my porridge (some b&bs offer it), but I hear he had a splendid start to the day with it, before setting out on his own Raasay hike.

We stay to the shoreline at first. Past a lovely playing field, with a posted sign: "please do not use on Sundays."





And then we come to a police tape. The road is cordoned off. A man in uniform ambles over.

We want to see the Raasay House.
Can’t. It burned down.
Oh! When?
Just this January.
Why?
Don’t know yet. The inspector is still investigating.
No clues?
No. He’s also the fire chief and the police chief around here. Small island.
You’re not from here?
No, from Inverness. They hired us to guard the place.

I point to the construction down by the waterfront. What are they building there?
A new dock. The old one is falling apart. This one should have been finished years ago.
They work on Skye time?
Actually no. They’re English. Slow on the job.
(Ah. Make no assumptions.)
Well, anyway, it’s a fine day!
Aye, first time in a while. Rains all the time here.

We bypass the tragically blackened skeleton of the Raasay House and head further north. Past "the gardener’s cottage" (whose gardens does he tend?)…



(to the gardner:) Good day! First fine one in a long time here, no?
Aye, fine day. But, not the first, no. Wee sprinkle in the mornings, then sun, two weeks straight now!
(Ah. It’s all in how you regard it.)

The views to Skye and the sea beyond are incredible.





From the shore up toward the narrow road, sheep fields are bordered by carefully built stone walls.





The island may be small (just 14 miles long and maybe 3 miles across), but it is handsomely tended.

We turn off toward the forest – a spooky place of fallen timbers (a wind storm? Island weather!) and secret walls and within them, secret gardens.





Raasay feels different. Greener than the craggy Skye.

We pause at the one place on the island where you can get a refreshment. It will remain in my mind as the most atmospheric café of this trip.





I ask for tea and scones with jam and we sit there, at the wooden table, letting the streaming sun warm the quiet space around us.





A child pokes her head out from behind the door. There is laughter on the other side of the wall. Family life. But whose? I can’t tell. Like the secret wall and garden, the fire, the fallen forest, it is a part of the island that will remain unknown to us, the strangers passing through.





Ed asks – can we skip the next ferry and stay a bit longer? It’s so nice here.

And we do. He reads a book he finds on the history of the iron mine here (worked by German POWs during the Second World War). I read a magazine about the Hebrides. Minutes pass. The last ferry will be leaving for Skye soon.

We head back. Past the row houses where miners once lived...





Past the laundry, fiercely buffeted by the wind from the north...




... to the boat landing, where the ferry is about to deliver provisions from the mainland and from Skye, and pick us up for the journey back.





Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward, the sailors cry
Carry the lad that's born to be king
Over the sea to skye



One last evening walk along the shores of the Isle of Skye …





One last dinner – of fish stew, along with the heady Skye beer, golden and rich…





One last white night on the islands.

from Loch Coruisk, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Elgol, the small fishing village to the west of Skye, has at least three claims to fame: it’s home to a good seafood restaurant – the Coruisk House, where we also happen to be staying…





(we’re in the building to the left – Robin, the owner, has turned it into a three room plus bathroom guesthouse); and, secondly, at the very tip of the village, there is a pier from which a small boat can take about a dozen people to the mouth of Lake Coruisk; and finally, Elgol is the beginning, or the end (depending on how you take it) of one of the most beautiful trails in all of Great Britain – from the lake, along the shoreline to Elgol.

You would think that hiking it would be a sure thing for us. But I’ve been waffling -- on account of the well known in the area, much talked about, and amply described in guide books “Bad Steps.”

But when you wake up to another splendid day of cloud and sun, you begin to think that maybe one should give the trail careful consideration. And so we set out – by boat to Lake Coruisk and from there, if the mood stays, hike back to Elgol.

I’m in a chirpy mood. It’s so beastly lucky to have this spell of bright skies. The breezes are strong and so the midges have stayed away, the rains have stayed away as well – all in all, it’s been near perfect out here, on the Isle of Skye.

We walk the meandering road down to the sea, passing the usual sheep of every size and hue.










At the dock, we look toward the mountains, hiding the lake that is our destination for the day. A small group has gathered for the trip. Most have binoculars. Bird watchers.










The captain of the tiny boat goes through safety advice and we set off. The waters are calm, the views toward the hills – magnificent!





He talks about the islands to the west of us. Once fishing communities (shark fishing was big here once), now nearly empty. These days, Skye fishermen bring in shellfish. Lobsters make their way to Spain, where they're sold at popular seaside restaurants. They're eating Skye lobsters and they don't even know it! -- the captain tells us. Yes, I've seen the traps on shore. Plenty of them.





As we get nearer to the lake, he shouts out – anyone walking back? Ed and I raise our hands. We’re the only ones. Well then, let me spin the boat around toward the Bad Steps. You should take a look and decide if you’re up for it.

We pull up close to the shore line: the Bad Steps are a cliff that shoots out at a very minor angle from the sea. There is no way to get around it except to lean flat against it and make your way across it (a distance of some 8 meters) by finding foot holds in the small crevices. There’s nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep you from tumbling to the sea below.





We heard stories about this place – how two tourists threw everything they owned into the water and plastered themselves naked against the rock, hoping to lighten the load, how two women started out bravely enough, then terror took hold and they remained for hours stuck, unable to move one way or the other, how our very own host, Robin, had to make his way across the rock to help someone who froze right there in the middle of the rock – on and on. Big tales, little tales, we’ve heard them all.

You would think that there’s no chance that I would want to join the list of tales. I remember well my most terrifying hiking experience to date – when I froze on a slope of endless scree high up in the Canadian Rockies. I have issues with heights and precipitous drops.

And in the end, this is why ultimately I decided to hike the Bad Steps: manipulating the rock is hard, but the drop isn’t significant: 10 meters down and you’re in the water. Rocky, sure, but I figure the price of a slip would be a few broken bones rather than certain death.

[I should insert a disclaimer here: in all our hikes, what I consider to be dangerous or terrifying, Ed calls tame and inconsequential. So do note that there is another perspective to all this. Neither is less real than the other. Robin, an expert rock climber, tells us of his friend who is world renowned in his ability to manage great climbs. When asked – how do you do it? He answers – I do very well at 10,000 feet what most people can do very well at 10. In other words – there’s a lot of mind play here. If you think it’s easy, it’s easier. If you think it’s hard – as I so often do – it becomes much tougher.]

The boat pulls away from the Bad Steps and moves slowly toward the tip of the lake. I take my mind off the hike and focus on the slabs of rock. Harbor seals are everywhere. Their heads bop out of the water and then disappear. Their cousins and friends are spread out on shore, resting, as if the very effort of lifting a flipper and rolling their blubber bodies over is too much on this pleasant day.





We pull up to shore and disembark. The boat will pick up the day trippers later. Except for Ed and me.

We hike to the lake first. Turner painted it, guides rave about it. Take a look at the jagged peaks, so majestic over the body of fresh water.






And now it’s time to start the hike back. It’s not a short walk under the best of circumstances. For us – five hours at least. If I can make it across the slab of stone.





This last photo shows just the beginning of the cliff part. I handed my camera over to Ed once I felt that even it’s slight sway was making me jumpy.

I wont go through all the minutes (hours?) I spent on that slab – the words of I can’t, alternating with I wont. My shoes had a decent grip, but often I could not find even a crevice to attach my hand to. My back against the rock, fingers searching for any nubbin of stone – it all was part of the drama. But the reality is that once you get your mind to let go of all the I can’ts, you move forward. (Especially if there is an Ed who makes the journey ahead of you and then comes back to suggest the best possible ways to navigate the cliff.) And so, eventually I inched across. As others have done in the past and will continue to do in the years ahead.


After that, I would like to say the hike was a breeze. And it probably would be for most anyone. For me, it remained a bit of a challenge because of sudden drop issues. Still, there was no more scrambling against stone slabs. In tough areas of sheer drop, I have learned to look anywhere but down.

And when it was okay to look across, the views were predictably stunning.


















We pass almost no one. Just sheep.















One last glance back at the sea, the hills and cliffs, the flowers along the trail...









And by evening, we are back in Elgol.





Exhausted, spiritually upbeat, hungry.

At dinner (of traditional Scottish cod and the most wonderful Skye beer), Robin tells us – then there was this couple who went over the Bad Steps with their little dog. That was tragic!
Oh! Did the dog die?
No, but he fell into the water and broke his foot.