It’s Like Having Two Saturday Nights in a Row

Memorial Day, like many of the “Big Six” holidays, feels like Ground Hog Day. That’s because when you wake up on Saturday morning, it’s like Friday, and then on lazy Sunday, well, it feels like Saturday. It’s fun for me to look back at what I was doing over the past few years; last year I was just about to depart for the Loire Valley. A blog I wrote then showed twelve lovely feet, all wearing flats, in a cooking class I took in Tours that day.

France has the biggest pull for me; there’s something about France that I love more than any other country. I am excited about going back there in late June, taking a trip to Normandy where we will meet chefs and locals and stay in a town called Brix.

This morning I got a foreboding sensation of what can happen when I leave. A call-out at the cafe almost had me jumping in the truck and heading north, thank God other staff rallied and we solved the problem. I refuse to knuckle under, and keep planning trips; I just hope that everything survives in my absence. Portugal, Italy and New Zealand are coming up in the months ahead.

Today we’ll visit with old friends we met in 2004 when we all took a cooking class together at Mami Camilla, in Sorrento Italy. Alim and Laurel live in Geneva and are here for her Smith College reunion. It will be a lot of fun to have lunch here with them and catch up with their lives as expats. We’ve tried several times to include a stop in Geneva during one of our trips but it’s never worked out. Cindy and I are very pleased to be able to see there here in Holyoke.