Paris for Newbies - Guest Blog

Sometimes you’re lucky enough to have your friends fall in love with each other. Sometimes you get really lucky and they write a guest blog from their trip to Paris. Such is the case below, as Michael Corcoran and Kathleen Hoye, have provided a special post about their recent visit to the City of Light.

Mike and Kathleen, or Corcoran and Hoye as I've known them (the former for almost 20 years and the latter for more than 10), are getting married. Yup, two of my closest friends got together, slipped into that mushy place filled with unicorns, rainbows and shirtless Milan Lucic posters they call love, and are currently staring down the barrel of forever, fixing to pull the trigger in a few months.

But before any of that can happen, they embarked on the tried and true tradition of testing a relationship through international travel (whether that was their intention or not). Nothing stresses a couple more than stepping into line at a café and not knowing how to order a cheese sandwich, or attempting to cross a street with a neverending flood of homicidal vespas. On the other hand, nothing brings a couple closer than conquering a country together. There is usually a point during the trip where one begins a sentence in a foreign language and the other finishes it - this is not simpatico, but rather an example of how each of you only knows half of how to ask where the bathroom is. Regardless, those are the moments when you realize you've made the right choice, both in companion and travel destination. From that moment on, there are no photos or trinkets that can compare to the stories you share.

When Mike and Kathleen told me they were going to Paris,  I asked if they'd be willing to put together a guest blog about their experience. Mike had never left the U.S. (save for Canada and well, that just doesn't count) and Hoye, the avid travel bug that she is, ventures around the world frequently for work and pleasure. It is an interesting combination and I was interested to see how these two travel backgrounds would meld.

I could write a weekly series about my friendship with Corcoran and Hoye, both individually and as a couple (and maybe someday I will - I could see Pulitzer in that, or perhaps a Razzie). They are two of the most passionate people I know, intelligent and eager to consume the world around them. As someone who helped push them, not so gently, towards each other a few years ago, I was eager to hear about their first international opportunity to do just that.

Merci et bonne chance!

GUEST BLOG - by Kathleen Hoye and Michael Corcoran

We both love formage, vin rouge and pain au chocolat (cheese, red wine and chocolate croissants). That’s probably why we’re getting married. We both can appreciate the simple and wonderful things in life. We realized we enjoy them more when they’re consumed in early September in Paris. No talk of wedding plans or home improvements. We acted French and sat outside for long lunches and watched the world go by (in skinny jeans).

After some consulting with our travel guru’s Rick Steve’s and one “American Husband in Paris”, we were ready for a whirlwind three days in the City of Lights. We decided that we just wanted to stay in the city proper and crossed Versailles off of our list. (We’ve been to Newport, RI and toured the Breakers. It’s just the French version, right?) We had our priorities straight and decided to focus on the fine works of art and architecture and enjoying culinary delights.

Here are the highlights:

·         Night bike tour and boat ride with Fat Tire Tours – we peddled through the city like experts as the lights came on and made the days sights glow in a whole new way http://paris.fattirebiketours.com/

·         Sainte Chapelle – pictures and postcards can’t do this place justice. It’s one of those places you just have to open your eyes, drop your jaw and try to memorize all the colors in your mind.

·         L’Orangerie Museum – better than Orsay. A great collection of Impressionist art that’s not too crowded. Huge murals of Monet’s Waterlilies make you feel like you’re not in the city, but surrounded by color’s they don’t have in the paint aisle at Home Depot.

·         Rue Cler – a great little neighborhood street where we went from formagerie to boulangerie to marchand de vin and gathered a delightful picnic in the park. It’s completely socially acceptable to drink wine straight from the bottle in a public park as long as it’s accompanied by a loaf of bread and chevre.

·         Taking it easy. No wonder the French are happy. Aside from nutella crepes, it’s expected that you will sit for lunch, eat it slowly and enjoy the company of the people sitting beside you. There is no rush. Bon appetite. (Despite our love of food, we both lost weight while in Paris as we walked everywhere and up everything.)

American observations:

·         Sushi and bagels in the same place? [insert photo]

·         We made a great effort to speak French, even though Kathleen couldn’t help but pronounce French words in Spanish (who drops the last consonant?). Our mercies, sil vou plaits and madames were plentiful and sincere. We noticed that most Americans didn’t even bother and figured out that’s why most people hate us.

·         The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t exist France. Come visit while you’re still able bodied. Join the gym so you can climb the 700 steps up to the second floor of the Tour Eiffel.

·         What’s with all of the Asian bride’s getting their photos taken surrounded by pigeons and tourists outside of Notre Dame?

A Little Scottish Mussel

One of the best dishes I've ever eaten

Cuisine is not necessarily at the top of anyone’s tourism to-do list on a visit to Scotland. After all, their most well-known dish is comprised of a sheep’s stomach filled with a spiced intestine stuffing (haggis). But just because the United Kingdom’s culinary reputation lacks the luster of other European destinations, does not mean there isn’t a pearl to be found in some oysters.

The town of St. Andrews revolves around a castle, a cathedral and of course, a golf course. All of it is situated along a picturesque stretch of Scottish coastline with rocky jetties and expansive beaches. A drive through the surrounding coastal region reveals fishing villages nestled between the tee boxes. If Scotland was going to excel at one type of cuisine, it would assuredly be coming from the sea.

I had just finished exploring the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral, situated at the tip of the town, overlooking a rock wall breaker, a beach and the sea beyond. I exited the crumbling walls through a side door and stepped onto a cliff walk that skirted down to the beach in one direction and off along the ridge in the other.

I heard crashing waves below and wandered to the right, declining downwards toward the water, past the small remains of a chapel and several signs identifying the historical significance of one of Scotland’s most important religious buildings. I strolled down to the breaker wall that projected out into the water, framing the adjacent beach, East Sands. At the tip of the breaker wall I turned to look at the St. Andrews skyline, which was made up predominantly of the cathedral’s jagged towers, roofs popping haphazardly and the silhouette of St. Andrews Caste standing guard castle further up the shoreline.

The panorama was spectacular, and a different perspective that I had not seen trekking through the village streets. I scanned the scene, noticing some fishing boats and smelling the briny water lapping up at the rocks. In that moment I was hungry.

My stomach rumbled as I retraced my steps back along the water and up to the cathedral. The smell of something delicious wafted along the sea air, prompting me to stop short and engage the man responsible. Since I had last been here outside the cathedral walls, a green umbrella had popped up and a young man with a pedal-powered food cart had positioned himself along the cliff walk. His setup was unlike a traditional hotdog or ice cream cart. It was a bicycle-powered mobile cooking unit - with large pots bubbling up on miniature stove tops and an elongated cooler at the end. Neatly printed in gleaming white on the emerald green cooler was, "The Wee Caboose."

He was selling mussels – that’s it. He had no other options besides freshly caught, local mussels gathered about an hour earlier a little ways up the road. Did I want some? My growling stomach almost answered for me.

I attempted to hand him my money but he said not yet, wait until they were cooked. He pulled a small bucket full from the cooler and dumped them into a creamy broth bubbling on his cooker.

They’d be ready in four minutes, he said. That was four minutes I had to figure out how and why he had gotten to be here on this cliff walk. As it turned out, this was the street vendor’s first time selling his mussels in St. Andrews and I was his very first customer. We chatted about where he came from and where the mussels came from (both in a village nearby) and he gave me some advice on other seaside Scottish towns I should explore (which I did a few days later, to great acclaim). He described his homemade recipe and I compared it loosely to the way seafood is traditionally prepared in New England, which took us off on a tangent about traveling and my hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. We even covered the military and military bases, after a few fighter jets swooped by in the distance.

All in all it was quite an enlightening discussion with this local Scot, and a fair introductory course before my main meal.

He broke off our conversation mid-sentence, knowing exactly when the mussels needed to be removed from the heat. He pulled out a cardboard rub, roughly the size of a sand pail, and tumbled in a couple dozen cooked mussels. He then kept pouring the milky broth until the shells were swimming. I handed him six pounds, he handed me lunch. He clapped me on my shoulder, said it was nice talking and wished me well.

Two passers-by saw the exchange and stopped to ask me how the food was. I hadn’t tried it yet, nor had I barely stepped away from the cart but the smell alone told me it was going to be unforgettable. The couple got two orders.

I took my lunch to a bench sitting along the cliff a few yards away. Flanked by rose bushes behind me, the outline of St. Andrews Castle a few hundred yards further along the cliff walk and the ocean crashing on the rocks below, I dove in. The mussels were perfectly cooked, tender and juicy. I had never tasted shellfish so sweet, even in New England. The broth was creamy with a strong pepper and garlic flavor, and really nothing else. The simplicity was its strongpoint. After I gorged on the mussels, sopped up the juice with the bread, I drank the remaining broth.

The combination of stunning venue and savory snack turned this afternoon into one of my most memorable food experiences. As it turns out, reputations are flimsy things. All it takes to break them is a little mussel.