It’s not as if my travels last year were exotic, but each trip served up an ample amount of delicious surprises.
Let me explain.
Last February my wife, Linda, and I hightailed it out of Chicago to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, just as the Midwest plunged into a deep freeze and San Miguel temperatures hovered in the 70s.
San Miguel, for the uninitiated, lies in Mexico’s high plains at 6,100 feet, 60 miles east of Guanajuato/Leon and the nearest international airport, and 170 miles northwest of Mexico City. We eschewed coastal resorts in favor of historic San Miguel, founded in 1542, now a national historic monument, part art colony, and a haven for American and Canadian expatriates.
Today some 85,000 people live in and around San Miguel, a colorful, hilly town with a skyline of bell towers, lots of good restaurants, artisan shops, art galleries and schools offering classes in painting, photography and Spanish.
On any day, San Miguel’s town square, El Jardin (the garden), a manicured plaza shaded by neatly trimmed, drum-shaped laurel trees and crisscrossed by bench-lined brick sidewalks, is a mellow gathering place for parents and toddlers, teens, lovers and expats.
Surprise No. 1.
One Sunday morning in El Jardin, the typically lazy scene had changed. Vendors were selling the usual inflated toys, balloons and pinwheels, but also cascarones - colored egg shells filled with confetti, flour, and sparkly gold and silver dust. All over the plaza, kids were shrieking with laughter, chasing each other and cracking cascarones over each others’ heads.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The confetti and sparkly dust and fragments of egg shell covered the paving bricks with pink, blue, lavender and white particles like psychedelic snow. One kid gleefully cracked an egg on my wife’s head, giggling, laughing. In fun, she gave chase to thwack him back with one of our eggs. The Mexicans cheered her on.
Then my bald head became a target. Everyone was a target. It was Carnival, a prelude to Ash Wednesday, celebrated not with raucous parades, but with colorful eggs. El Jardin was a scene of pure joy.
Surprise No. 2:
In April I flew to Los Angeles for a Society of American Travel Writers meeting. I discovered that L.A. really does have a downtown. Our group stayed at the Los Angeles Athletic Club at Olive and 7th Streets. After checking in, I took a brief walk past more bling than I’ve ever seen in my life. I was deep in the Jewelry District, with nearly 5,000 wholesale and retail jewelry stores. Store windows glittered, helped along by blazing halogen lights. Along Broadway, a scuzzy, intersecting street, theaters from another era sat shuttered, but storefronts selling electronic stuff and cell phones were thriving.
On a subsequent tour of downtown, I learned that a renaissance is under way, with old buildings being converted to condos and new buildings under construction. Broadway, I learned, was the forerunner of Hollywood as a center of moviemaking.
L.A.’s downtown renaissance has seen a more than 20 percent increase in residents as well as growth in retail business. Architectural gems include the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Our tour also covered the 90-block Fashion District, El Pueblo, Union Station and the Olvera Street areas, where L.A. was born. Yes, L.A. has a downtown that’s alive and thriving.
Surprise No. 3:
Our Midwest outing in August took us through central Wisconsin to La Crosse, then along the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River to Red Wing and Minneapolis. The surprise was the sprawling width of the Mississippi between Winona and Red Wing. Sailboats were gliding along on what signs identified as Lake Pepin. Glacially formed about 12,000 years ago, the 30-mile long lake is from 1 to 2 miles wide, a natural part of the river.
We based ourselves in picturesque Red Wing, known for its shoes and pottery. From there we explored towns on both sides of the Mississippi. Our Wisconsin favorites: Stockholm, a sleepy hamlet, population 93, with several sophisticated boutiques and galleries, and Pepin, where we dined well at the Harbor View Cafe, a bustling restaurant with an extensive menu printed on a big chalkboard over the bar. To my delight, the soup that day was an authentic beet borscht with a dollop of sour cream, something I hadn’t tasted nor seen on a menu in years.
In undersung Minneapolis, a city I’d not visited in decades, we window-shopped Nicollet Mall and dined in three excellent restaurants. But what really struck us was the city’s dashing modern architecture: the Central Library’s glass core designed by Cesar Pelli, the Walker Art Center’s new wing by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who did the Tate Modern in London; and most striking, the dark mass of the dramatic Guthrie Theater, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.
Surprise No. 4:
Finally, September, Paris. You’d think after so many visits, there’d be no surprises. But complex, layered Paris always offers up new, seductive facets to travelers who like to explore.
While we’ve stayed in the fashionable Marais on the Right Bank, we knew it just superficially - traditional spots like Place des Voges, Paris’ oldest square, the Picasso Museum and the Jewish quarter. A guided walking tour, offered by Paris Walks, focused on everything from its eight centuries of colorful history to its current vibrant demographic mix - gays, Orthodox Jews and young families who find good deals on housing here and less crowded schools.
Another day, we strolled along Promenade Plantee, a 2.8-mile elevated park built on an abandoned freight train track near Opera Bastille. The walkway’s arbors, trees, flowers, groves of lush bamboo, fountains and benches create a soothing green paradise above the rush of traffic.
We spent hours in Musee du quai Branly, the new ethnographic museum, which showcases some 3,500 rare and dramatically displayed artifacts from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. It’s hard to realize you’re still in Paris at this brilliantly designed building with undulating gardens of grasses, a streetside wall covered with growing plants, and a long red and gold metal facade.
Finally, we savored dinner at Taxi Jaune, a funky restaurant in the Marais’ wholesale leather district, operated by Otis Lebert, the young chef who prepares every dish in a tiny, narrow kitchen. It was no surprise that our meal was superb.
Alfred Borcover: aborcover@aol.com
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