The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
My flights back, while long, were mostly boring and pain-free. Security, customs, baggage (ok baggage drop in Montreal was automated and the machine didn’t want to work until it did, but baggage claim was worry-free), connecting flight, all good. But now I’m jetlagged to hell and gone.
This year, the Nestle wine club chose Porto as its destination for the wine trip, and this weekend was the culmination of months of planning.
I left on Thursday – travel plans were up to individual participants – and I arrived in Porto in the afternoon after a fairly straightforward trip. Dinner plans were a bit convoluted after lots of last-minute changes, including Markus and I getting into the wrong Uber to get into Porto… In the end, Markus, Grietje and I found a little hole in the wall restaurant and we had a nice dinner. I realized that I’d really need to be careful about my allergies, as even after letting the server know I was allergic to garlic, my plate of olives were covered in it. Still, no harm done and we had a nice meal. As we were walking back to the hotel, we noticed that Porto doesn’t have pigeons in the parks and streets, it has seagulls!
Friday morning was a free period, as we’d agreed that planned activities would start in the afternoon, when everyone should have arrived. I walked around the old town, saw the Chapel of Souls, the Church of Saint Ildefonso, Porto Cathedral, then crossed the Luis 1 bridge over the Douro river into Vila Nova de Gaia to go scope out all of the Porto warehouses. I visited Kopke on my own, Sandeman with Patrick and Denise, and then we met everyone to visit Ramos Pinto and Corvos. After the last tasting, we had dinner reservations in a restaurant in the Bolhao market. Although there was a miscommunication of my allergies (you’re only allergic to bug chunks of garlic, right?), dinner was sorted out and was quite (!) filling and tasty. After dinner, I was dragged out to find a cocktail bar that could accommodate a group of our size – easier said than done. In the end, we found the bar attached to a 5* hotel, that had the advantage of being almost empty, snazzy, and where we could hear ourselves talk. One thing that really, really shocked me about Porto is the number of times I got accosted in the street to buy drugs (cocaina! hashish! marijuana!).
Saturday started out with a bit of drama, when our coach went to the wrong hotel and the driver waited until the dispatch office opened to get confirmation – but the confirmation was still the wrong address. He didn’t speak English, no one spoke Portuguese, but we managed to get the point across using broken Spanish :) We got it sorted out, but left an hour later than expected. We were worried that this would have a knock-on effect with all of the other visits, but our buffers managed to prevent this in the end. The driver also had the wrong stops programmed, but we got that sorted out.
First stop was Aveleda, which was a beautiful estate that produced vinho verde. The family that owns the estate is, in a word, LOADED. This is one of several domains the family owns – they have several. They own a zoo. The property is huge, boasts several beautifully manicured gardens, houses, cottages, nationally registered historical monuments, a goat tower, and a chateau. It’s also their weekend estate… The wine was also really nice! After that, we were on our way to the Douro valley – about an hour away on the motorway.
Getting there went fine, until we starting going down the twisty goat passes to get to Nova. At one point, there was about an inch of clearance between a stone wall, a house and the coach mirrors. The view, once we got there, was superb. We also got lucky with the weather, as it was supposed to rain, but it was a really nice day. Nova gave us a tour of the biggest privately owned collection of historical wine making artefacts in Portugal, then we had a tapas buffet while we had the wine tasting.
The final stop of the day was Tedo. Personally, I think it was the best stop of the day. The ambiance when we got there was festive, as they had singers and accordions playing outside. In a slight miscalculation on my part, the meat and cheese boards were probably too much, esp considering that we’d just left the previous meal only 40 minutes before, but the food and the wine were very good, and they treated us to a couple of wines that weren’t actually included in our reserved tasting.
We headed back to Porto with full bellies and people nodded off a bit in the bus. We had originally planned to have some downtime before dinner, but that didn’t happen because of traffic so we went straight to dinner, which was very nice but in a room that was waaaay too hot and stuffy. I begged off drinks that night and went to the hotel to have a cool shower before bed.
Sunday was a relaxing day. We were back in Vina Nova de Gaia, where we had a 6-bridge boat cruise on the Douro and then a cocktail making workshop at Cruz. Rule of thumb: white port + ginger + rosemary + ginger ale is nice. Rose port + orange + mint + tonic is nicer. That was the last planned activity before people went their separate ways. I had a few things I wanted to do but because of timing, I could only go visit Ferreira before heading to the airport.
One of the things that was really good about this trip is that each visit was somewhat different. Aveleda was vinho verde and the estate was magnificent. Nova was one of the oldest quintas, but completely modernized its production methods when they switched from Porto to DOC wines. Tedo is remains a very small quinta that still does traditional foot stomping in a lagar. Ramos Pinto, focused on the business and marketing decisions of its founder. Corvos is also a very small and traditional and boutique quinta that has its own spin on tawny blending (where in contrast to standard labeling, where the bottle age is an average or all ports within the blend, all the ports within a Corvos blend are _at least_ the age on the bottle). Sandeman and Ferreira are f’n monsters that product 20M+ bottles a year, but their cellars are also magnificent and HUGE! Ferreira had a wooden vat that could store 72K liters at once. Madness.
My flight was scheduled to leave at 19:30 but because of torrential weather in Geneva, the incoming flight was delayed. The flight before mine cooled its heels on the tarmac for about 1.5h before finally being able to leave – well after the time I’d already arrived at the airport. The flight was getting progressively more and more delayed. At some point, after the latest round of easyjet roulette, I decided to book a hotel room near the airport just in case I got stranded. It was 65 euro that I ate in the end, but like what happened with the train/ferry at Calais, if I hadn’t done it, things would have gone badly. At one point our arrival to Geneva was forecast to be at 2am – which would have been fun because Geneva airport has to close between 00:30 and 05:00 because of noise levels. Had that happened, we would have been diverted to Lyon or somewhere as equally inconvenient. Given the heat, noise, stress, booze and complete lack of information at airports these days, I’m always amazed that more people don’t end up going postal. I’ve only really seen that happen once, in Ottawa, a long time ago. In the end, we ended up leaving at around 22:00 and landed at around 00:30. Katy was there to pick us up – I was travelling back with someone from the group.
All pictures here: porto_jun_2024
We left Leicester on the morning of Jan 2 and made good time to Dover with no issues. On the way, I wanted to see if there were issues at the port, but the website is a bit shit so I googled and found the Twitter feed of the port. This is what I saw:
My heart skipped a beat, until I noticed that this post was 3 years old, pre-Brexit. FFS.
Once we made it to Dover, things started to go wahooney-shaped. We got there at 1115. Our ferry was scheduled for 1430. It took us over 1h to make it past the 1st (French) border check. There were 8 lanes of traffic, filtering into only 2 border gates.
After finally making it through, we got singled out for a random security check, huzzah. We discovered that no one knew how to pop the car hood open, so we looked like idiots, but besides that, everything was fine. Navigating the port was much simpler, and we found the right lane easily. Unfortunately, the weather made the ferry late for arrival, later for boarding, and even later for departure. The captain even commented that the weather would make things a bit exciting. We made it through fine, even the byby. In the end, we made it to the hotel for 7pm, which is mad because it took us less time to get to Calais from Morges on the first day of travel…
We had dinner at the hotel, like last time, but this time both Katy and Ben started feeling a bit green after dinner. This did not bode well. I got super anxious, with visions of food-poisoned family stuck in the hotel, with dog, until things got better. In the end, after a few hours of sleep, Katy felt that she was ok-ish enough to make the drive home.
The weather was truly horrible. There was a wind warning, flood warnings for Pas-de-Calais and the roads were rain soaked to the point where we couldn’t see the road markings and had to use the force a few times. Passing lorries, with all the spray, was anus-clenching at times.
Once the sun came up, driving became easier. Ben and the dog were sleeping in the back seat, so that was good. We confirmed out first impression that French services are a bit shit, and for reasons unknown, the toilet seats are all squat toilets, with no toilet seats. This is not pleasant. We finally found services that had an open Burger King for Ben. Another negative hit for French services – people don’t pick up their dog shit so there are landmines EVERYWHERE. In the end, the drive back was unremarkable. We tried to chew up the miles when the weather was dry and sunny, and stopped every 1.5-2h or so to stretch legs and let the dog pee. We made it over the Jura pass while it was still daylight, which was the reason we left so early, and crossed the French/Swiss border around 3pm. We were back “home”. Shortly after, we caught the first glimpse of the lake and a big weight lifted off my shoulders. It felt that my anxious thoughts were the only thing holding everything together. The A1 welcomed us home with a traffic accident between Morges Est and Morges Ouest exits, but we made it home.
And then the dog barfed on the carpet.
We were home.
After a night of little sleep (the beds were comfy but the hamster wheel in my brain started turning at 4am), we got up at 6, loaded the car and left for the ferry terminal. Our ferry was scheduled for 940 so we’d have ample time to get sorted. Which is a good thing, because we needed it. We’re all a bit crunchy at this point (except the dog), but Ben is extra crunchy and reactive. Allowances are made.
We get to the ferry ticket office, get turned around, and realise that we need to check in and get our tickets at the gate we were just at. Go back, get sorted. Byron passes with flying colors. Go through French border security. Get mildly, but politely, told off for not showing our Swiss residency permits (which would explain why we have no entry stamps in our passports). Then we have to queue for UK passport control.
This is where 10 years of conservative government austerity measures and brexit shine. They’d booked us for the earlier ferry, which we should have been able to make, but passport control took forever so we missed that departure. We had to get to a specific boarding lane. Calais port is F’N HUGE. The French border agent jokingly told us that it was well signposted and that even the Belgians could figure it out. Apparently stressed-out Anglo-Swiss people rate lower than Belgians because we got lost for a bit and Katy was at the edge of a full-blown panic attack (happy birthday!).
After a bit of turning around, we found the right lane and just waited until someone came and dealt with us, as promised. In the interim, Byron explored the port and left them a gift, which was properly dealt with because I’m a responsible dog owner.
So now Byron is chilling in the car, hopefully will have a nap while we cross, Katy and I have coffee and Ben is trying out black pudding for the first time as part of a nice-looking but overpriced full Irish breakfast.
The weather is fairly windy and the ferry rise is a bit choppy but not overly nautical.
The boat is swaying just enough to make it interesting to walk a straight line, but we’re nowhere near Deadliest Catch territory.
We’re on the motorway at the moment and the roads are starting to get busier. According to BBC Radio 2, today is the start of the holiday travel season when millions of people want to get from A to B. It is recommended to not be on the road between noon and 4pm. 🤷🏻♂️
Satnav says 2h to Leicester.
Also, the state of UK highways is shocking. These are definitely not Swiss standard, and they even make the French nationals look good.
Millions of people across the country are making their Christmas getaway on one of the busiest days for travel of the year.
There are long queues at the Port of Dover after a surge in demand for ferries caused by Thursday’s Eurotunnel strike action in France. Domestic train services in parts of the UK have also been disrupted.
The RAC has advised drivers to travel after 18:00 GMT to avoid long queues on the roads. The organisation has said Friday will be the busiest day of the festive season as those heading away will share the roads with commuters and those on the school run picking up children.
Some 13.5 million leisure journeys are predicted to take place between Friday and Sunday – a 20% increase on the three days before Christmas Day last year – with 21 million trips overall.
You have arrived at your destination.
Christmas plans this year involve us – all of us, including Bubba – to go to England. The easiest and cost-effective way we found to do this was to drive from Morges to Calais, spend the night there, then take the Eurotunnel shuttle from Calais to Folkestone the following morning and drive to Leicester. In total, it’s a 1000km+ journey.
We left at 7:30 this morning for the 750km leg to Calais. Byron was not impressed at the early start but he was a super good boy along the way. We averaged a stop every hour or so to stretch legs and let him out to pee.
The rest of the time he was either sleeping with his head on my leg or alternating between sitting looking at me or sitting snuggled next to me. We made it to Calais at around 16:30. It was a long drive…..
I was really relieved to have made it, because I had a lot of anxiety about Bad Things Happening. None of which materialized.
Then I get a text from Gino, while we’re in the hotel parking lot, telling us he hopes we’re taking the ferry tomorrow because the French just went on a no-notice strike at 11 this morning and all tunnel activity is suspended until further notice and nobody knows how long it’ll take to get resolved.
Fuck.
Unions called the strike at 11:00 GMT. Under French union law they can run the strike for as long as they like, and there is no indication at the moment how long it will go on for.
The tunnel operator is not covered by a 2007 French law that makes a 48-hour strike notice compulsory for transport operators, which is why the walkout took everyone by surprise.
Staff were offered discretionary bonus of a €1,000 (£867) bonus, but the unions’ request is for three times that much.
Of all the things I was fretting about, this was not one of them. We only expected to be in Calais overnight so only had one night booked. This could turn ugly quickly. Thankfully, I could reserve a (different) room for tomorrow night and cancel it if we didn’t need it.
In the meantime, Byron, Katy and Ben were getting comfy in the room – which is quite nice. It’s a dog friendly hotel.
While we were waiting for our dinner booking, we weighed our options. Our shuttle tickets were refundable, so erring on the side of actually making it to the UK tomorrow, we cancelled the train and booked a ferry crossing. Hopefully that goes well tomorrow, but that is a worry for another day.
Being dog-friendly, Byron could come to the hotel restaurant with us. He was very well-behaved, especially considering that there were at least 4 other dogs there – two of which were uber barky.
While we had dinner, surrounded by other people and their dogs, we started chatting with a nice older couple from Strasbourg who were in the same predicament as we were, but they informed us that the strike had already been resolved. Murphy’s law says that this is because we cancelled our booking and made alternate plans, because has we not done so, the strike would have lasted forever. I firmly believe that the universe hates me.
So now Byron is snoring, Ben is watching Netflix on his laptop and Katy and I are going to try and get some sleep. It’s going to be another early start and another set of anxieties to deal with.
We’re not in Leicester yet, but hopefully by early afternoon we will be.
Pray for Omarion.
At the start of the year, I bought a QoQa experience, consisting of 3 days, 2 nights in Castiglione Faletto at Il Torre, a really nice hotel, and also including a gourmet 4 course meal and a wine tasting at a local vineyard. Getting there (and back) was a 5h journey each way, with lots of beautiful scenery and… roadworks everywhere. The highway toll system in Italy takes some getting used to, but we managed.
Once we got there, we parked the car and started on the serious business of eating and drinking. The Cantina Communale was nice, but overpriced (seriously!). Dinner that evening was gorgeous, but they killed us with food. After the pasta course, we were already both full, and there were still mains and dessert to come. We struggled through the mains but conceded defeat to pudding. Katy is now officially obsessed with braised veal cheeks in wine. Then… grappa. Oooooh, grappa. It’s a good thing that the restaurant was literally next door to the hotel, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it.
The next day, after breakfast, we walked down into Barolo. We took the goat pass that the hotel had kindly told us to avoid by car, as a shortcut. The scenery was gorgeous. The flies though…. FUEGO!! (didn’t want to keep swearing, so I’d just yell fuego randomly). We stopped at Vite Colte on the way into Barolo and had a tasting of some very nice wines, then carried on towards the old town.
Katy was not impressed with the incline getting into Barolo. Expletives were heard. We were happy to see that the corkscrew museum was open – according to their website, it shouldn’t have been. We then visited the WiMu wine museum, which was really interesting, then had coffee and ice cream before trying to locate the cab we’d pre-booked to get back up the hill to Castiglione for our wine tasting at Monchiero. The wines were nice, but the highlight of that visit was the handmade salame!!
We went back to the hotel, had a nap, and then got ready for dinner at Convino. They again killed us with food, but more gently as we shared the plate of the pasta course. But still so.much.food!!! Katy fell in love with our waitress. She must think we’re completely bonkers.
On Friday morning, we had breakfast, checked out, went to pick up a few cartons of wine from Vite Conte and headed for a quick visit to Marolo – a grappa distillery – for a quick purchase, then Alba before heading home. Sadly, we just missed the opening of the Alba white truffle festival by a day, but it is what it is. We left at 12:30 and made it back to Family Dog in time to pick up a very happy (and very tired) Byron then finally made it back home.
The Nestlé wine club organised a 3-day wine tasting trip in Verona, in the Soave and Valpolicella region. We left early by train on Friday morning and came back late on Sunday night. It was a 3-day wine, food and sightseeing fest.
On Friday, we had lunch at Locanda ai Capitelli and visited the Pieropan vineyard. The food was excellent, the wine was OK, though the vineyard is beautiful. We had dinner at our Hotel, le Muse, and that was excellent. I have discovered the joys of risotto made with Amarone and proper eggplant parmigiana.
Travel
Locanda ai Capitelli
Pieropan
Saturday, we visited Tenute Ugolini, where we spent a relaxing 5h visiting the vineyards (gorgeous!) and having a wine pairing meal on a shady terrace overlooking the vines. The wines were already a notch above what we tasted on the previous day but, IMHO, a bit overpriced. The final tasting was at Azienda Farina, and that was the crown jewel of the visit. Their wines were superb, and we’re paired with some of the best cheese and charcuterie I’ve had in recent memory. We got to sign our names to a cask – they do that with some visitors. That night, we had a buffet dinner at the hotel, paired with some of the wines we’d bought previously.
Tenute Ugolini
Farina
Buffet at Le Muse
Sunday was a guided visit in Verona, very pretty town, with lunch (homemade tagliatelle with truffles and mushrooms) and gelato. We had a bit of free time to explore, then headed for the train station. I managed to buy some of the cheese we’d eaten the day before, a sharp cheese matured in Amarone. We had an impromptu apero on the train with the meat, bread and cheese I’d bought because the dining car ran out of food, but that was still a really good time. At one point, we were chatting about absinthe and counterfeit money with the train controller.
Verona
Train
By happy circumstance, the train was stopping in Morges so I had an easy way home. Finally got home around midnight, where I was greeted by a very happy Byron and a very tired Katy, so we all went to bed.
It took me a while, but I finally made it to Montréal.
… and has to take an impromptu nap on the armrest.
