Midnight trains from Paris through the south of France. Heading towards the Spanish coast. First stop Hendaye, then San Sebastian, then small Basque towns. The month of June. In love. With questions and drink and time and food to help get some answers.
Sounds like a story. Okay, so it's the plot of Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises, but it's also the story of my life. Really.
Midnight on the first of June my lover and I were out of our berths, heads half hanging out the window trying to catch whatever glimpses we could in the waning moonlight-le clair de lune. Munching a chevre and sun-dried tomato fougasse purchased earlier from another of our favorite bakeries, Coquelicot, we reveled in the night's magic. The magic that comes from silence broken only by the clanking of the train running on silver rails. Magic that can only exist when one is leaving an incredible city like Paris, for the more wild and wooded hills and coasts of the Basque region of Spain. No more metros. No more Louvre. No more streetlights on the Seine. But heading towards...
...Rainy hillsides ten thousand tints of green, dappled with sun-baked tile roofs and stunted horses and fat sheep. No more bustling museum-bound tourists, just the hollow bells hung on goats necks that roam fairly free through the steep hillsides. Bocadillos, Spanish omelets, and pintxos(better known as tapas, but served with heaps of the Basque pride of their local ingredients). My much loved Rose has been traded for txakoli-an INCREDIBLY tasty Basque white wine that is almost ciderlike and, much to my delight-somewhat sparkly as well.
Unlike Hemingway's protagonist, instead of fishing for trout in the hills we stay at a beautiful caserillo in the hills, taking short walks up to a small Spanish church that looks out over fog draped mountains. We take our time.
San Sebastian still beckons, as does Bilbao, Pamplona and Barcelona. I doubt I will fall in love with a bullfighter, and Jay probably won't get into any bar fights, but no two stories are exactly alike. Our story is stranger than fiction, but Hemingway would be proud. Our last evening in Paris crested with a beautiful sunset, but on a midnight train bound for España, we dreamed of what we would find when the Spanish sun rises.
