It has been close to a year since my wife and I spent four days relaxing along the shores of Lake Como. As I have thought back on that trip, the memories from this particular part of two weeks in Italy have bubbled to the top as my favourite. That’s not because we did a lot. It’s because at that time, I really needed a true break and some peace, and the setting and backdrop allowed me to relax and soak in some very simple pleasures.
The idea for this particular trip to Italy, and more specifically, a day of wine exploration in and around the Barolo region, started at a wine dinner we attended back in 2024 at the Vancouver International Wine Festival. With friends, we attended a dinner paired with outstanding wines from around Piedmont and my wife and I became enamoured with the idea of traveling back to Italy and exploring some of the wines in that region. We have had some wonderful wine explorations in Burgundy and Champagne, the Okanagan, and Napa and Sonoma, and were eager to have a lovely day eating and drinking in another special place.
We secured a local guide and driver, Stefania, who arranged the details for our day with a focus of showing us a couple of smaller wineries. She met us at the train station in Asti and after some getting to know each other over an espresso she drove us to our first stop in La Morra. Luckily for us, it was day one of the nebbiolo harvest for Stroppiana. Look at all those grapes!
I have a strong bias for planning deeply wired into my DNA. Over years of traveling, I have slowly learned to lean a touch opposite my natural inclination and just to let things be when it comes to experiencing places away from home. I still research an enormous list of possibilities of what I might like to do, but I think I have settled into a good place in terms of having some good ideas, then approaching each day with a “what feels good today” mentality.
In the Netherlands last fall, I knew I would like to do a few days trips from my home base in Amsterdam, and I knew that Rotterdam was a place I did not want to miss. I knew there would be an interesting mix of old and new, of art, and of food and drink and that was enough to propel me onto an early morning train with a bag slung over my shoulder. Exiting the main train station, a modern looking marvel, I kicked off a day of wandering that fairly naturally and organically led me to Oudehaven, the historical part of the harbour in Rotterdam. Not really due to my planning DNA, but I think this occurred due to the salt water craving that still clings to me after so many years living next to the harbour in Halifax.
Over the course of many trips I have fallen in love with the idea of the “trip within a trip”. A day trip plunked down in the middle of the longer voyage is something that almost always brings me awe and rejuvenation. Going back to the first time my wife and I traveled to Europe, an expedition to Bruges in the middle of a two city trip to Amsterdam and Belgium is something that got this concept planted firmly in most of the plans I make to this day.
So, a spring training trip to Arizona for a week needed a day trip in the middle of it and after looking at some maps and talking to some friends, I landed on getting out of the Phoenix area for some hiking, exploring and even some wine tasting (yes!) in the general vicinity of Sedona. As I was battling morning rush hour traffic through what seemed like an endless Phoenix urban landscape I briefly doubted the intelligence of my plans. But soon enough, the the number of traffic lanes got down to a reasonable number and the landscape opened up to wider vistas and I felt myself easing into the day.
My first stop was just outside of Oak Creek. I had a spectacularly beautiful day for a morning hike…. the kind of day that gives you shivers of excitement. If I was hoping to feel awe, I had definitely found the place and day for that.
While waiting for the opportunity to reengage with travel over the past year, I have been looking through pictures of past trips to take some of the sting out of losing the ability to explore freely like during the pre-pandemic days. In all of those pictures are great memories. Some are grand experiences like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time… some are more subtle memories of the smell or sense of a place from sitting on a park bench somewhere far away from home. While I was looking back through photos from a trip in 2008 to San Francisco and Northern California, there were lots of memories in both camps, including what I still to this day think is one of the best travel days I have ever had.
We tried to do this trip on a relative shoestring budget using points for hotels and our flights (that resulted in a very restless night trying to sleep in Pearson airport before the onward flight to San Francisco… booking with Aeroplan almost always guarantees you something like this) but we were torn as to which of two more extravagant experiences we wanted to include… a hot air balloon ride over the Sonoma valley or dinner at the French Laundry. We settled on the hot air balloon ride, and turned it into an amazing day trip from Sonoma that we still talk about to this day.
We got a confirmation phone call that the weather looked good at the crisp hour of 3:30am, loaded into our car for the drive to Santa Rosa, and as the sun came up, we waited for our balloon to inflate.
Knowing myself to be a restless soul, once my wife booked our secluded cottage just south of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, I started looking around for what kind of trouble I could get myself into within a one hour drive. Don’t get me wrong… a cottage in the middle of nowhere sounded great, but sometimes when things are too quiet, I need an escape valve for a short diversion to give myself the ability to enjoy some more peace and quiet. Maybe a touch odd, but it has been working for me on my travels for years now.
Sylvan Lake popped up through my searching as meeting my criteria for a fun half-day excursion. My wife elected to stay back at the cottage, so I hopped in the car, popped open the sunroof, turned up the stereo and hit the arrow-straight highway east for about 45 minutes. My first stop was Sylvan Lake Brewing Company located on the east end of the town. I had visited far too few breweries in 2020, and sadly this would end up being the only “new to me” craft brewery I got to visit in the entire year. Sigh.
Our last day in the mountains in Alberta marked the midway point of our short, late summer vacation. We only had loose plans for the day – check out of our Banff hotel, pick up coffees for the road, then explore the Icefields Parkway before heading east toward a cabin we had booked for the rest of our vacation near Rocky Mountain House. This would be my second time driving the parkway, and I don’t think this drive will ever fail to wow me.
Having already explored Lake Louise a couple of days earlier, we passed that by on the highway and headed straight for the parkway. The post Labour Day roads were fairly deserted, the Tim’s coffee was tasting good (obviously helped out by the scenery), and our driving day was off to a great start. It would be a day of a lot of pulling off the road, including this first stop where the highway is elevated above Bow Lake.
Our “big trip” in 2020 was in many respects not as big as previous years. The ongoing pandemic narrowed our travel radius to driving distance of home rather than flight distance. Luckily for us, there are some amazing sights to see if you entertain a few eight hour road trip days. We planned a week away in Alberta split between its mountains and its prairie, and for everything that 2020 has thrown at us, I think we engineered a pretty impressive and needed vacation away.
After driving from Saskatoon to Banff where we made our home for three nights, an ominous longer-range forecast offered a glimmer of hope that we pounced on for a driving exploration of the Rocky Mountains. We started from Banff early in the morning and made our first stop at Lake Louise. I had been here a couple of times before, once with my Dad and another time with my wife, but never with the lake unencumbered by snow and ice. There is a reason many, including me, consider this the most beautiful place in Canada.
In the grips of a global pandemic, as spring turned to summer, it became obvious that the only way I’d feel comfortable scratching my travel itch was to get behind the wheel of my car for some good old fashioned local exploring. And while I’ve lived in Saskatchewan for a bit over four years and owing to my province’s immense size and my proclivity to wander in foreign lands over my own backyard, I’ve seen precious little of my home province. I made a list of places relatively close to Saskatoon, booked off a few Friday vacation days, and have set off on some prairie road trips.
First up was the town of Nokomis, population 436. Located an hour and a half drive away, the attraction for me was one of my favourite craft breweries in Saskatchewan – Nokomis Craft Ales. On the drive south and east to Nokomis, I had the sunroof open and the stereo up loud listing to the new July Talk album, “Pray For It”. The open road, never-ending prairie skies and some great tunes had me feeling like this was a true vacation day and an escape from the pandemic-induced feeling like no day was different from all of the others.
Under the threat of a severe thunderstorm, I arrived in Nokomis to have my first beer on a patio other than my own back deck since November.
A day trip to Kyoto was always in the cards for my trip to Japan. I had decided to stay in Osaka to allow more time to explore the food culture of that city, knowing Kyoto was just a comfortable 45 minute train ride away. The question of my trip wasn’t “if” Kyoto, but “when” Kyoto. After a fall typhoon bent eastward sparing the region a direct hit but still making for a pretty impressive wind and rain storm, it allowed me to hop a train the very next morning from Osaka to Kyoto.
Getting a jump on the crowds that descend on Kyoto’s attractions, in particular, its shrines and temples, my early morning train and a short walk got me to Fushimi Inari shrine to enjoy it in a relative state of tranquility.
Bluenose Traveler 