The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Laundry Day
One of the more civilized perks of renting an apartment is being able to do laundry when you need it. This means we can
travel with fewer clothes and make extended trips with only carry-on bags. Nobody needs more travel horror stories ... like
our neighbors who recently flew to Europe for a cruise. It took British Air a week to find and return their checked bags. In
the meantime, they were on the boat doing without!
In the interests of full disclosure, the fact that we can do it all with carry-on baggage doesn't mean we always
do. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Margene to manage and with my new knee still a work in progress, it can
be tricky for me to carry the load for both of us at the moment. Fortunately, my status with the airlines exempts us from the
need to pay checked bag fees, but there are still a couple of work-arounds to minimize the chances of you and your luggage
traveling on separate itineraries. We used both on this trip.
The first idea is not to check your bags all the way through to your final destination. On our way here, we flew from Seattle
to Nice via Paris. We had a six-hour layover, so we only checked our bags to Paris and then re-checked them to Nice. At least
we eliminated the chance that they would get mis-directed in an interline transfer. Don't be lulled by thinking a long layover
would provide a guarantee that your bags will make it -- our neighbors with the lost bags had seven hours between flights.
The second trick to minimize the chance of arriving luggage-less is to spend the first night in a hotel at your arrival
airport. If your bags aren't on the plane when you arrive, it makes it easier for them to be located, put on a later flight,
and find you before you head off. In twenty years of traveling abroad, I can think of two or three times when our bags were
(thankfully) delivered to our hotel in the middle of the night. This extra time cushion also means you can relax and catch up
on sleep before you jump in a rental car and head off on unknown roads. But I digress ...
Meanwhile, back at the laundry, we needed to run one last batch through the machine to have enough clean clothes to finish
the trip and that pretty much dictated the drill for today. Once we got the machine loaded and running, we headed off for the
morning croissants and cappuccino. To the Italians, cappuccino is strictly a morning beverage. Order one after noon and they
look at you like you've got three heads. The French could care less, but we've been trained ... so we still try to get our
orders in before noon.
We stopped to make lunch reservations for Christmas day and walked the whole town trying to find a sandwich shop that hadn't
already shut down for the holidays. Fortunately Pizz'Eric offered a Croque Monsieur, essentially a grilled ham and cheese
sandwich and our go-to lunch on the road in France. We hit the bakery before they sold out of everything and wandered back to
the house to set the clothes out to dry (clothes dryers are still a rarity in Europe).
We headed out in late afternoon for gelato and coffee. It may be cool and cloudy, but the action
was all in the outdoor cafes. As Christmas approaches we can feel things start to shift into holiday mode as the locals put
their daily routines on hold. A donkey cart filled with children made the rounds, surrounded by hovering parents. The snack
trailer on the street seemed to be a semi-permanent fixture, at least through the holidays. At least, I don't recall seeing
it on any of our last visits. It was so big it looked like it belonged in a carnival. It was certainly too big to get through
the narrow winding streets to be part of the weekly street market.
Then it was back to the apartment where your faithful scribe went back to work. Tomorrow I think we'll actually get out of
for the first time since we got here. Woo hoo!
© 2015 Restaurant Doctor
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