Tag Archives: Italian food

Aug6

Exploring Cassis

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Saturday, 06-July-2024 through 18-July-2024



I explored Cassis!

Technically this started before any of my previous posts… but I wanted to set the stage before we dove into the play itself. Seems right, you know?


So Cassis.

Small town on the French Riviera. The Cote De Azur, in French. A tourist town, a fishing town, and a sea-side town down by the Mediterranean. An absolutely cute town, with a billion different restaurants and shops and other great places to walk and explore.

Small alleyways with beautiful growing plants. A few friendly cats to say hi to. Limestone streets, worn smooth by countless sandals, with day markets and night markets every so often.

Siestas halfway through the day, to avoid the midday heat, followed by late-evening dinners that last past sundown.

It wasn’t a bad spot. Daniel picked well, when he first proposed the trip back in 2014, and I followed up beautifully when suggesting my Mom and Steve come visiting.



Keeping with Tradition, I kept a list of the various places that I, and we, ate. There’s a lot of them, so bear with me:

  • Le Luminyen – Actually by the University of Luminy, I ate here after my walk up Mt. Pugot. Still, very good and worth visiting for a snack
  • Alcazar – My first meal in Cassis itself. Excellent food, though a bit unexpected… I ordered Fries and Paella… but the “Fries” were actually fried Sardines! Unexpected, but delicious.
  • Le Delphine – A quick and simple brunch, with pastries and fried eggs and a latte. Can’t complain… but I found that eggs aren’t really a breakfast thing in Cassis, unless they’re in a quiche.
  • Midday Express – Excellent hot sandwiches, quick and easy and great for taking before my hikes into Les Calanques
  • La Voûte – Great rissoto, mediocre burgers. Lesson learned here – In France, order French food. Or Italian, if you’re in Cassis. But don’t order American… it’s just not worth it.
  • Bistro’quai – Solid food, though I frankly can’t recall any real details here.
  • Le 8 et demi – Means “8.5” in French, though I’d give them a solid 10. Great pizza, great food, excellent Crepes. We went here at least 3 times, if I remember right.
  • Nomade – Amazing bakery. Seriously, simply glorious croissants, pain au chocolate, everything.
  • Le Petit Oyster Bar – Excellent oysters, glorious mussels, amazing charcuterie boards… what more could you want? Ohh right, great wine! It’s France, of course there’s great wine!
  • La Tarte Tropézienne – Amazing place, went quite a few times to pick up pastries for breakfast and tartes for dessert!
  • La Stazione – Excellent Italian food in the heart of a French town. Good pasta, good wine, good times!
Dec28

Visiting Massachusetts – Hiking the Blue Hills, followed by a North End dinner

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Saturday, 16-Nov-2019

 

As I mentioned, the main goal of this trip was to visit family and spend time together.  But that doesn’t mean we had to stay in one place now, did it?  And I’m pretty confident that if I was able to carve out some time to visit with everyone when we were back for Daniel and Erin’s wedding, we should also be able to visit with friends for a bit this time, right?

Right.

Steve unfortunately had to work on Saturday, but never the less Sarah, my Mom, and I all piled into the car on Saturday morning, and headed into Boston to meet up with Daniel and Erin (and their dog Biscuit too!) for a short hike in the Blue Hills.  We weren’t really planning on any specific hiking… just a chance to visit and walk around, you know?  Get out of the suburbs and into some woods while the weather was nice.

And let me tell you – the weather was NICE that day.  Perfectly blue skies, crisp air, and just a tiny bit of frost on the ground… the ideal New England Autumn day, in other words.  Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely cold.  But we’d planned for that, and had some nice warm clothes packed with us that we pulled out.  But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so everything seemed just that much warmed and brighter, thanks to the shining sun and bright skies.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what trail we walked on… Daniel probably knows thanks to his fancy new tracking GPS watch, or maybe some sort of implanted auto-download data feeds, but the short version was that we did a lovely short walk around the hills, passing a neat little cabin and a beautiful bridge.  A bridge which, obviously, Daniel and I climbed the side of while playing fetch with Biscuit.

 

 

After the hike, my Mom had to head out to a “friendsgiving” dinner with some of their friends in Medway – we were welcome to join, of course, but instead Sarah and I took the chance to catch up with some of our own friends in the city!  Daniel graciously offered to not only drive us into town, but also to give us a ride back to Medway afterward!

With those logistics dealt with, we messaged Dillon and Liz and headed into town to rest before dinner – nothing huge, just hanging out at Daniel and Erin’s place for a bit to drop Biscuit off and see some of the new condo accessories before driving to the North End for Italian.

See, I’m sure that Portland has a good Italian restaurant somewhere.  But truth be told, I haven’t been able to find it.  I haven’t really spent that much time looking though… since we can always just go to the North End when we’re back in Boston visiting everyone!

We hadn’t been to this restaurant before, but it absolutely lived up to our expectations of perfect Chicken Parm and a good atmosphere to catch up with everyone.  Really, that’s all I need in an Italian place – a good simple dish, and a good environment to talk in.  The massive boat of oysters (literally, check out the below photos) was just a bonus on top.

Not much else to say, honestly.  The conversation was fun, and catching up with very appreciated.  It was an amazing chance to fully unwind and relax, spending time with good friends in a comfortable place.  Huge thank-yous to everyone!