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Tuscany With the Whole Family

Posted by Jim St. George on August 1, 2018

Posted in: Europe, Italy. 2 comments

John, Mark, Pat, and Jeanne celebrate their parents’ 80th birthdays

Earlier this year Mark’s parents both turned 80 so to celebrate we rented a house in Tuscany and got all the kids, spouses, and grandkids together. It was honestly a wonderful experience. With the families spread out from California to Virginia to wherever we happen to be we don’t all get together very often. It’s great fun to watch the grandkids grow up and renew their friendships. And on top of all that the villa a bit outside the little town of Gavarrano was fabulous, big enough for all of us, lots of spaces to hang out alone or with others, a pool for playing in. All that and two women, Anna & Rosa, who cooked and cleaned. It would be a challenge to think of a single thing not to have loved about the week.

And rather than trying to describe it all, we’ll just let the pictures tell the story.

Meals were a major event during the week. We were a few miles out of town so we had dinner every night at the villa, with Rosa cooking most of them. The food was great and I was crazy about this semi-outdoor dining area in a passageway between the two buildings that made up the old farmhouse. Big enough for all 17 of us, with cool breezes blowing through, it was just about perfect.

And since we were celebrating birthdays, here’s Mark’s mother blowing out the candles

Our villa was a mile-and-a-half up this dirt road at the top of a hill, which meant it was incredibly private and quiet up there. And beautiful, with what seemed sometimes as all of Tuscany laid out in front of us

We did a few day trips around Tuscany, the first to Siena, our favorite spot in Tuscany

Siena’s Duomo

The ceiling

Then there was Pisa with the cathedral in the foreground and that crazy leaning thing in back

One day was a trip to the beach at Castiglione della Pescaia, a nice beach area with what looked like a beautiful town behind it

Jeanne is always the one taking the pictures but is never in the pictures. Here she is with her kids Jamal & Leigh

A little excursion was a hike up to some castle ruins just a little way from our house. In retrospect the ruins weren’t interesting enough to justify the climb (and the unsafe conditions up there) but we did at least get a good picture of Nico.

The excursions were fun but the best part was all the time hanging out with each other. Here’s Mark with a few of his nieces & nephews

Me and Ava

Ava, Alma, & Jasmine

Jasmine, Ava, and Leigh

Jasmine & Leigh

Jeanne & Mumpy

Love this picture of Pat & Jenny!

And just Jenny

Just Mark, looking very serious

And peering over his espresso

Me & Mark with Jamal & Leigh

Lydia, Jamal, Leigh, & Molly

Alma & John

And John, our purveyor of great wines

Early in the trip John and Alma drove up to Massa Marattimo, an impossibly cute hill town with a great wine store. After that he went back pretty much every day – this time with Jamal – to pick out wines for the evening meal.

Mark & Leigh

Jeanne wanted to read Irving Stone’s classic fictional biography of Michelangelo “The Agony & The Ecstasy” but had trouble finding it in print. Here in Tuscany, though, you can still find it on the bookshelves.

And finally, the food was great, as you would expect in Tuscany. And having your own cook and cleaning staff for most of the meals wasn’t all bad….

Félicité

Posted by Jim St. George on July 20, 2018

Posted in: Africa, Seychelles. 1 comment

Mark on a rocky point at our lodge on Félicité Island

Our last six days in Africa were on the island of Félicité, in the Seychelles. To get there required a taxi from Fisherman’s Cove on Mahe to the airport, a 15-minute flight to Praslin Island, a 20-minute taxi ride across the island and through the Vallée de Mai (a World Heritage Site), and then finally a 30-minute boat ride on to Félicité.

Our route to Félicité took us through Vallée de Mai (May Valley) on Praslin Island. A UNESCO World Heritage site, Vallée de Mai is home to the cocoa de mer, a massive palm that has the largest seeds of any plant in the world.

Once we got there though it was something close to paradise. Félicité is a private island, with the resort taking up only a small section of the land. And while technically the Seychelles are part of Africa, this felt nothing like Africa at all. In fact, one of the things we were surprised to find there was how American it felt. Not that the staff were American; they were from all over the world. The clientele, however, had a distinctly American cast, quite a change from our experience in Madagascar, Réunion, and Mauritius.

This five-night stay was definitely in the category of “luxury splurge” – a beautiful villa, great views, good food, utter relaxation. Even one long rainy day couldn’t detract much from the experience. There was one downside: our villa was way up the hill from the public part of the resort, the beach and restaurant and all that. It made for great views but was a really tough climb. Now, they had carts to take you up but that just seemed so lame. On the other hand, the climb was tough.

The view from our villa. We were way up on the island, which made for great views but an almost stunningly steep climb if you were walking.

The only other downside is that we kept comparing it to our stay in the Maldives earlier this year. They’re alike in many ways – the Maldives are a few degrees north of the equator in the Indian Ocean a bit east of here, while the Seychelles are a few degrees south of the equator – but as much as we loved our stop here it was constantly in our heads that this just wasn’t quite as nice as the Maldives. You have to admit to being very lucky men when you can come to a paradise like this and say “Oh, it’s nice but it’s no Maldives….”

You really can’t complain about a sea like this, though “It’s not the Maldives” was always on our minds

When you read TripAdvisor reviews of places like this you always read people saying things like “It was beautiful, but the wonderful staff made it special.” Really common and often reasonably true. The staff there were great. But what can make a stay even more memorable for us is meeting other interesting travelers and this was a great example. On our first day there we met Rob & Mel, a couple from Houston. Now, when I heard “Houston” my warning signs went off but as you might expect from an interracial gay couple they weren’t your average Texans. Rob is a surgeon, head of trauma if I remember correctly at Baylor Hospital, and Mel sells real estate. Both fun, fascinating, interesting people. They were there to celebrate Mel’s 50th birthday and then, to top it off, Rob proposed. (Mel said yes.) And we got to celebrate all that with them. Such fun!

Mark, Mel, and Rob on our last day. By now Mel has turned 50 and they’re engaged!

All that was a nice way to close off Africa, though as I said in most ways the Seychelles couldn’t be more different from real Africa. From here we fly through Istanbul on our way to Rome and some Sullivan family time in Tuscany.

My favorite spot in the resort, a couple comfy chairs on a rocky point, perfect for reading and napping

Here’s what it looked like from my vantage point

And what it looked like when Mark came looking for me

Swimming right near there wasn’t too bad either

Our villa with some of the massive rocks that the Seychelles are known for

Another thing the Seychelles are known for are their giant fruit bats. These things are huge. Huge. In fact, apparently they’re known as “megabats” and we were told they are the largest bats in the world. As we would sit outside our villa they in the late afternoon they were flying all over, often surprisingly close. And did I mention that they are really big?

Another bat. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the locals eat the bats around here. Supposed to be quite a delicacy. I honestly think I’d have tried one if given the chance but they weren’t on the menu at our fancy resort.

The hills near our place in the early evening sun with bats flying around

OK, one last bat picture, taken on our rainy day in paradise

Pretty lizard!

And speaking of cuties, someone pointed out this little baby bird nestled into a tree right in the middle of everything at the resort. I was surprised its parent would let us get so close….

The rock formations in the Seychelles are pretty spectacular. I kept expecting some Jurassic Park creature to climb out.

A different day, same view from the villa. I couldn’t decide which picture I like better….

Mark’s selfie to say goodbye to Africa

Mauritius

Posted by Jim St. George on July 14, 2018

Posted in: Africa, Mauritius. 3 comments

The beach and the water by our resort was pretty wonderful

This was mostly a lazy stop. Mauritius is a little island nation a bit east of Réunion, still off the southeast coast of Africa. Formerly a colony of the Dutch, French, and – until independence in 1968 – the British, today it is multiethnic, multi-religious, multilingual. Moreover, unlike so much of Africa it as a highly stable country with the highest Human Development Index in the entire continent. The thing I was most struck with reading about the country is that when Arab explorers discovered Mauritius, they literally discovered it. Unlike Columbus “discovering” the New World – where lots of people lived and presumably knew they were there – there were no humans at all on Mauritius when the first Arabs happened along in the Middle Ages. And until the Dutch settled it in the late 16th century.

I’ll skip over that whole colonial period – first Dutch, then French, until the British took the islands during the Napoleonic wars – but for one little tidbit. Mauritius was the only known home of the famous flightless dodo bird. Having evolved over eons in relative isolation they had no fear of humans when we started arriving and were easy prey. By the last half of the 17th century, just a few decades after the Dutch started settling the island, they were gone.

That big rock was just behind our hotel and apparently is a World Heritage Site. Not sure why, though, and we didn’t climb it. But it made a nice backdrop for pictures.

We had five nights at a beautiful St. Regis resort and, because of that whole Starwood status thing, they upgraded us to a great suite. Made for a very pleasant stay. The one downside of a place like that is that ~~you’re~~ we’re always struggling to find good food that passes our low-carb threshold. And that isn’t crazy expensive. The best way to do that of course is to leave the resort and we did that for lunch a few times, going to a great little place called Mapalapaw maybe 30 minutes away. Other than that … we didn’t do much. Sat on the beach. Swam. Read. A little time at the gym. More time at the beach.

We were on the leeward side of the island, but maybe 300 yards up the coast you turned a bend and the wind was brutal. Not great for lying on the beach up there but there were a ton of kite surfers.

I could learn to like being here. I noticed, by the way, that there were all these pictures of me. I guess I’ve just fallen down on the “taking pictures” front; I’ll try to do better and get a little bit of Mark in here.