Arantzazu

It's lucky, now that our serious traveling days are numbered, that we found a place we want to go back to again and again. It's called Arantzazu, has a population of about forty monks, a couple of families, and two inns. One is called Goiko-Benta, and it is the best place in the world.  

The little inn is 400 years old. It shows. Its common areas upstairs look rather like a blown up version of Van Gogh's room at Arles (huge floorboards, light spilling in). Its tiny rooms have deliciously hot showers and big mountain views.

It has been in the family for ages, and the family is as lovely as the inn. They have a spaniel and a vegetable garden, and generations of the family share the house.  They took a strong interest in the smallest Halpern; as we were leaving, they presented us with gorgeously crocheted baby booties, knit in secret while we were there. 

Trails start just outside the door and thread all over the mountains. We ran all over the place.

Through forests.

High up, overlooking huge vistas.

Past megalithic stones & graves peppering the hills.

Up to precarious stony perches.

And through cow meadows (cows have lovely bells).

So, incidentally, do the sheep.

Of which there are many. Most days, we saw more sheep than people.

During the week we were there, we straggled repeatedly up a steep little path to a mountain hut amid the sheep fields, where we found blazing fires (even in summer it can get chilly!) and tremendous lunches.

But it was also easy to come back down around lunch time. Because Goika Bentu has the best food we've ever tasted. No exaggeration. It  was hard to determine which meal we looked forward to the most. It all began with breakfast: omelettes, almond breads, yogurts, peaches, and coffee. 

We went to bed each night excited for the breakfast to come. But lunch is equally serious business. Sit down outside after a long hike and a hot shower at around two or two thirty. Funny amuse-bouches will trickle out, maybe a carafe of wine, some delicious bread...and then three glorious courses. They are all perfect, every last one of them. (And surprising -- among other things, the kitchen appears to have mastered the home-made Bugle.) 

Come five (or six) pm, you will feel the kind of contentment that comes from being outside all day, suffused with the extra dose of well-being that comes from being on this particular veranda, having finished this particular lunch. You might be ready for a stroll, a game of gin rummy, or a chapter of Moby Dick. 

Whatever you decide, all will be right with the world. 

Let us know when you're going. We'll meet you there.

The Basque Coast

The Basque Coast was the first stop of our two-week slow-motion crawl through Northern Spain. At first, it made us wistful for California.

But slowly, we must admit, we began to feel downright disloyal. 

It was quite simply the most beautiful coast-line we've ever seen. 

(Yes, that's a church atop that tiny little island. And you can walk there. And it's not even a tourist trap.)

In fact, there are tiny churches at every turn. Here, a five-minute stroll from our little guest house in San Bartolome, is a chapel for fisherman, complete with fish statues dangling inside.

Unfortunately, there are so many churches that it would be impossible to keep them all open. (There were at least four others within walking distance!) We had to crain our necks to see inside them. "Churches in Basque country are usually closed," explained the lady at the Gernika visitors' center matter-of-factly. 

They were lovely anyway. And so was the land of the estuary (which stretches from Gernika all the way up to Mundaka, where the serious surfing begins) -- gray, full of birds, full of loveliness, with trails along the tidal zone linking the towns together. 

Or, more precisely, that sent Nick running happily through the drizzling rain. Talk about bliss. 

It was a half hour walk in the evenings to the most perfect picnic spot we could imagine.

A baguette and some cheese and olives.....and crazy sunsets.

And an hour run up the mountain trail behind our inn to find ourselves on top of the world.

It was a longer walk to the beach towns themselves, which boast uncrowded beaches and tiny islands to explore. Not to mention gorgeous pixtos (Basque country's version of tapas). Here's the Mundaka variety: 

And these gems are from Gernika. 

The Seychelles

We've been in honeymoon traps, including on our actual honeymoon, when Puerto Vallarta's slogan, "hey, honeymooners" made us feel perpetually foolish, a little defensive, and totally unwilling to purchase anything other than repeat tickets to the town's best veggie buffet (still unmatched in our vacation experience).

We admit that we expected that the Seychelles to be similar...beautiful, touristy, and lots of sappy marketing and over-sized, umbrella-laden drinks. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that," to quote Seinfeld.) We were wrong.

Not that there's anything wrong with being wrong.

We stayed on the main island, Mahe. Mahe is the most densely populated island; it's where the airport is, and where most locals live. And even Mahe is a sizeable chunk park: dense, lush, leafy, and jungly, with a few gorgeous hikes moseying around in it. Nick found one that meanders across cliffs and through forests to a secluded beach.

At least, it was secluded for us. We shared the beach with a few microscopic crabs (babies, perhaps?) and some bigger friends; in the water, we saw fan corals, brain corals, and hosts of neon-colored fish. As we meandered peacefully back, we discovered that the hike is best for early risers; we ran into dozens of people, including one local who heads out there to fish.

Further up, we found a trail wending through a mossy, almost Washingtonian forest, ending in this view. The Seychelles split off from India eons ago, and so it has mostly unique plant life, along with a few insects, birds, and reptiles that drifted or flew over from the mainland.



Unlike many jungly places, it is remarkably free of plants and animals that can kill you (and scientists are not sure why the Seychelles doesn't have malaria).  We spotted some snails, a wolf snake (harmless little brown guy), some huge spiders, and Nick claimed he got a bug bite....

....so we rewarded ourselves for our extreme bravery with roadside "takeaway," far and away the best beach food we've ever had: smoky fish mixed with shredded vegetables, tons of chillies, yellow dal, and rice.....

...for which it was necessary to scout out the best view.

But really, there were too many good views to prioritize properly. The island is completely ringed with gorgeous beaches.



Best of all (for two ghostly-pale people who miraculously avoid getting tan in Abu Dhabi, and who must therefore take care on vacation), the beaches are shady, an attribute we'd never even thought to look for on a beach. Sure, there are waifish palm trees, leaning out over impossibly clear water. But there is also good, serious shade.

We fell asleep on this beach, nestled into velvety sand, and woke up to a local urging us to choose a better spot: in addition to our shady trees, we were under a coconut palm, and in danger of being hit by falling coconuts. It's a tough life.

Apart from beaches and jungles, the island has towns, and the towns are messy and fun and full of interesting things. The Seychelles was uninhabited in the 17th century, when the English East India Company landed, and the island became a stopping point for ships trading in the Indian Ocean. Since then, the stake in the island rotated a little, but it wound up a British colony until 1976. This legacy is pretty visible: the island has several overgrown tea plantations (because where would the British legacy be without tea farming?).

Most locals are descendants of Indians, Africans (some from slave ships the English intercepted in the Indian Ocean), and Europeans. Many locals are gorgeous mixes of all three. The culture is, too. In Victoria, the tiny capital, we saw a mosque, three cathedrals, a Baha'i center, and a Hindu temple.

On the streets, there are croissants and baguettes for sale, alongside dals and dried fish and soft white snail-shaped breads that seem to be Seychelles originals. There are fresh fish laid out on wooden tables, ready to be chopped up with machetes and carried home. There are eggs, sold from the back of a truck; we carried ours home (as the locals were doing) loose in a plastic bag.

We grabbed a smoothie and a snail roll in Victoria, where the Natural History Museum is worth a visit (coral crabs!) and the art galleries are a delight. But mostly we enjoyed exploring the coast, stopping to go running and to explore each new wonder: beaches with velvet sand, plants with impossibly huge leaves, coral reefs, surprisingly patterned fish, and mountain vistas.

And we left from an airport that probably has the most gorgeous beach in the world. If only we could've waited for our flight out in the ocean....