There’s nothing quite like Paris in the rain. The forecast called for showers upon our arrival, and the thunder and lightning show we received after arriving at the hotel certainly delivered. But as the weather goes in Europe, if you wait five minutes, it will probably change. And it did just in time for aperativo hour on the 34th floor of our hotel.
I was a bit nervous about the dinner I had booked if it was going to be raining. You see, Bustronome brings new meaning to the term “meals on wheels.” The idea here is that you see the sights while eating your meal as the bus winds around the different arrondissements. I feared that the visibility might be compromised for us diners, not the driver. But Mother Nature cooperated and we were treated to a unique and excellent culinary experience under the domed glass roof of a double-decker bus.
Dinner Starts at L’Arc de Triomphe
Bustronome Upper Deck
Our evening started adjacent to L’Arc de Triomphe. As the six courses (and wine pairings, if you opt-in) were delivered, I had a lovely conversation with the owner’s daughter. Once she discovered that I spoke French, she insisted that we only converse that way for me to practice. Bien sur! The six courses included a raw salmon starter with yuzu, chestnut cream soup with roasted morels, a roasted cod with barley risotto and crisp carrots, a filet of beef with parsnip purée and beef jus, a cheese course of Ossau-Iraty, and a decadent Opera Gateau chocolate mousse cake for dessert.
This gourmet travel experience cost €120, and the wine pairings were extra. The food was excellent considering it was being served from the lower level of a double-decker bus navigating Paris’ sometimes unforgiving cobblestone streets. And the menu rotates just like the wheels on the bus, so there are often repeat guests. That should tell you that it’s a lovely way to dine in a city that has the most One Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. 639 to be exact.
Customized Acrylic Glass Holder
Musée du Louvre
We snaked from the right bank to the left bank as the sun set over Paris taking in sights and monuments like Place de la Concorde, Musée du Louvre, Hotel de Ville, the Pantheon, Place Vendome, and more. It ended up being a completely clear evening, which gave awesome views from the bus’s large picture windows and glass domed roof. This made the final stop at the Eiffel Tower picture-perfect, as it was timed at 10:00 p.m. for the light show.
When you only have 24 hours in Paris, you have to make the most of it. Mine came on a work layover, or a paid vacation as I affectionately refer to it as. So, Bustronome was a genius way to kill two birds with one stone. If you’re headed to Paris with a limited amount of time, I definitely suggest this as an option. It’s easy to book on OpenTable.com, and they were extremely responsive over email with a quick question that I had.
The Eiffel Tower at 10:00 p.m.
Bustronome operates three buses in Paris, along with a London bus as well.
As many of you know, I just returned from some time away in the South of France. It should come as no surprise that I love spending my travels learning new things, and this was hardly an exception.
Several months ago, I got the idea of going to France for an immersion-style getaway where I would stay with a family during my time there. The hope was to improve my French speaking skills, and what better way to accomplish that than by living with at least one native speaker? I had been looking around, but wasn’t really finding anything that felt like the right fit.
Port Campus: Above the Irish Pub
In doing additional research and talking to coworkers, I stumbled across something even better. A French school called Centre International d’Antibes. They’ve been around since 1985, so they’ve been doing this for quite a while, and it seemed like it was worth looking into. Especially because they are accredited by my airline in the event that I decide to take our language of destination (LOD) test to be a French speaker.
I looked over what they offered, submitted my intent to enroll, took my placement test, and a few months later, I was on the nonstop flight from Atlanta to Nice.
Le Figuier de Saint Espirit
Several people asked me to recount the experience after I returned, and I figured the best way to capture this information was on my blog. I mean, let’s face it: I stuffed my face along the way too at some pretty incredible restaurants. I’ll include the names and links to those at the bottom of the post! For consistency, of course.
But first: a recap of my week as a student in the South of France!
Plage de la Gravette
The first thing that comes to mind is just how happy I am that people arrived from all of the world to study a foreign language that wasn’t English. We’ve come to a time where English has become the default language around the world. You say something in a foreign language to be polite or try your hand, and the person invariably replies in English, because they also want to practice. But sitting in my French classes (where, of course, everyone in the room spoke English in some capacity), it wasn’t allowed. We were there to speak French. Et c’est tout.
Pan Bagnat Cooking Class
My class was filled with all walks of life from around the world. It was fun to be one of the only Americans, and they were shocked that I came from so far away for just a week’s worth of classes. But such is the life of a flight attendant, which I explained to them on day one when we introduced ourselves. We had someone as young as 15 years old in our class; a young girl from Switzerland spending three months studying. All the way up to a 65-year-old hoping to better his French skills. It was an all ages affair.
Field Trip to Grasse
And because I enrolled in the Cultural Program, where we went on field trips each afternoon post-class, I met even more people. As a quick recount, there were students in the program from Denmark, the UK, Bratislava, Brazil, Norway, Botswana, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and several from both Switzerland and Germany. Plus, I’m sure many more.
Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild: Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
There are actually two school campuses, and most of us spent our week down in the Port of Antibes location. It was really cool because we were right in the middle of it all, and could go grab a croissant and something to drink on our quick, mid-morning school break. I even had a laid-back lunch or two before rejoining the group for our afternoon excursions. I will say that it was quite a hike from the “Dormtel,” a word that I made up to capture the spirit of where we lived. Was it a dorm? Was it a hotel? Who could know. But this is where we were assigned to live for the week near Juan-Les-Pins, and we braved the heat and humidity each morning on our journey to school. I suppose that’s how French women don’t get fat; they walk. Everywhere. Rain or shine. C’est la vie.
Le 1939 Hotel: Quinto Cielo
Some other observations I had were just how many returning students there were! One guy in my class (a train conductor…how cool is that?) comes every year, and he knew our professor, Patricia, and also knew that it was her birthday the final day of class. So he brought Swiss chocolates as a gift that we all shared in the classroom.
Another new friend, a Lufthansa flight attendant named Suz, said she plans to come back monthly and pop-in for a week here and there. You can only imagine how my geographical jealousy took over when she told me that! There were actually a number of flight attendants (past & present) who I met during the week. Maren was the first person I spoke to while we waited for our rooms to be ready in the “Dormtel” courtyard. We got to talking, and she had been a flight attendant for 27 years with various European airlines. Suz, Maren and I swapped stories all week at dinner, while the others laughed and listened to our wild tales. And Maren got to live vicariously through us since she now has an office job.
Wine Tasting at Château de Crémat
The real takeaway here is just how big the community of international travelers is who take foreign language holidays. It was really incredible! I almost cried on the last day of school because I was genuinely sad to leave. It was by far one of the most rewarding and fun experiences I’ve ever had. I made fast friends with a small but unique group of people who I have no doubt I will see again. I’ve already started brainstorming work trips to see some of them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s nothing like this job if you’re an international citizen with friends in all corners of the globe.
But back to the classes. My class was level A-2, and it was taught rapidly and entirely in French. There were only 12 of us in the tiny (and sweltering) classroom with varying degrees of French speaking ability, so that made the classes both fun and challenging. Occasionally, we would whisper something to each other in English for clarification. And Google Translate helped us search for words we didn’t know or needed to see for ourselves. It was so weird to be a student in the 21st Century with technology at my fingertips!
Would I go back and do this again like some of the friends that I met? Absolutely. In fact, I plan to. Maybe even with some of those friends. But I will definitely go for longer than one week next time and I will stick with an Airbnb in town. The one I rented for my first two nights in Antibes was less than a three-minute walk from school and it was perfect. I would choose that next time without a doubt.
Port Vauban: Antibes
I also want to speak on Antibes, where the classes were held. I didn’t do a ton of research ahead of time, which is unlike me, and I didn’t really arrive there with any expectations. But I kind of liked it. It allowed me to take it all in and form my own opinion with boots on the ground. And that opinion is, Antibes is magic.
It’s not flashy at all. It honestly reminds me a lot of Newport Beach before so many nouveau-riche people moved in and have changed it for the worse. It’s really just a beach town with a giant port (2,000 slips, to be exact) attached. That makes it the biggest anchorage in Europe, so you can bet that there were some pretty incredible yachts bobbing in the harbor. But you would never know it on-land. On the last day of class, our assignment was to take a list of questions and interview people around town. Three of us set out, half expecting to be shut down at every turn. But it wasn’t like that at all. People were friendly, interested and truly excited that we had come from three different countries to learn their language and enjoy their port city.
Domaines Ott: Bandol
Sunrise in Bandol
After Antibes, I took the train to an even smaller town to the west called Bandol. The French rosé we love most in the world hails from there, so it seemed like a logical choice since I was already so close. I stayed for two nights with assistance from an amazing Airbnb host. She helped me correct an idiotic oversight that almost left me homeless there for a night. I guess there are worse places to be without shelter than a beach town on the Cote d’Azur though! In fact, the little town is so small that I think it only has one Uber. She was appalled when we looked up the price to go five minutes back to the train station on Monday morning, and she couldn’t take me because she had to work. So, she phoned her Mom & Dad and they came and picked me up. When I tell you that I continually run into the most hospitable people around the world, I mean it. They spoke very little English, and were thrilled to hear about my courses in Antibes as they whisked me to the platform for my train to Marseille and then onto Paris.
The takeaway here is that you’re never too old to be a student if you really want to be one. And as a lifelong learner who has intense intellectual curiosity, I’m always going to further my pursuit of education, whether that’s with a whisk in my hand or a pocket translator hidden from my professor’s view. Because let’s face it, there were probably just as many lessons learned outside of the classroom along the way as there were inside of it.
One of the awesome things about working for Delta is that we can pick-up trips from other bases. I’ve done this quite a bit internationally, as it’s an awesome way to score a 24-hour paid vacation to somewhere fabulous. While some people think it’s crazy to fly that far for a short period of time, I see it as an opportunity to do something unique and cool.
This time: Stockholm, Sweden!
Weeks ago, I took a gamble and booked a food walking tour in the city. The reason it’s a gamble is because any airline employee will tell you that the kiss of death for a layover is making plans. Delays, cancellations, re-routes often mean we don’t make it to our intended destination. But I had a good feeling and it paid off.
We landed last Sunday morning in Stockholm at 0745 local time, made our way to the hotel, and I took my usual two-hour nap. Having something planned is a good way to ensure you don’t sleep the day away, which is easy to do when you’ve been up all night working.
I got up, got ready, and went and found the metro. I was promptly mistaken for a Swede, with someone asking me for directions on the platform in a language I won’t even pretend to understand. After a relatively short ride in a subway car packed with soccer fans, I emerged at the department store meet-up point for the tour.
You can imagine my surprise when I ran into two customers from our flight. Well, and theirs too to be fair. They saw me and said, “Weren’t you our flight attendant from New York last night?!” I was. We had a laugh, considering we were 30% of the 10-person tour.
It turns out that booking with Food Tours Stockholm was an excellent choice. Their Culinary Södermalm tour took us around an old working class neighborhood in the city that’s now super trendy and packed with unique restaurants and independent shops. Despite the intermittent torrential downpours, we were able to hit-up seven culturally-diverse places, where we sampled food and beverages at each one.
Stockholm can be a pricey city, so at $85 USD, it was an amazing value. We spent 3.5 hours with our guide, Anna, and I was literally stuffed at the end! We snaked through Södermalm and feasted on Chinese, Swedish, Greek, Indian, and Japanese delicacies, with an intermediary stop for gelato/sorbet. And we finished the tour at a chocolate factory.
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how absolutely legendary they were in working with my egg allergy. Each restaurant had clearly been briefed, and alterations were made to my dishes so that I could fully participate. The hospitality was really amazing.
You all know that a culinary lens is the one I want to travel through, and this truly did not disappoint. My crew was so excited to hear about the tour on our flight back, and agreed it was a well-laid plan.
I ended the evening by running into two other crewmembers completely unexpectedly in Gamla Stan, the old town. Out of all the restaurants in Stockholm, we had made the exact same dinner reservations at the same restaurant and were seated at side-by-side tables. Of course, we commingled tables and ended up laughing hysterically over dinner, before capping our evening at a rooftop bar near the hotel.
Was it a whirlwind 24 hours? Yep! Would I do it again? Duh! Already planning my next out-of-base pick-up.
This job has its moments where you want to scream, so you have to take advantage of the perks. For me, that’s continuing to see the world as I always intended when I started CulinaryHopscotch. Only this time, it’s a paid ride, a paid roof over my head, and some walking around money to do cool things like this. Onto the next one!
Wow. To say I’ve had a little “jet lag” with Culinary Hopscotch is an understatement. Covid obviously contributed to the lull in posting, but I realize that I’ve let a lot of culinary moments go unshared even in the wake of the pandemic.
One major event is that I moved on from JetBlue to Delta, but most people probably know that by now. It’s been such a great decision, and one that has already given me the opportunity to not only see places I never dreamed of, but also to revisit some of the places I first visited as part of Culinary Hopscotch back in 2010.
I’ve had layovers in Milan, Paris, Venice, Nice, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, and Tokyo. And each time, I’ve made it a point to track down something that would rock the culinary Richter scale. I just never sat down and wrote about it! I need to comb back through my notes and document what I did, because I’m constantly getting asked for recommendations from people for their travels.
Up next: Stockholm, Sweden
I have a food-centric walking tour booked, reservations at two places for dinner, and probably way more planned than I could ever hope to accomplish in 24 hours. But that’s the awesome part about this job. Find a place, fall in love with it, and use those benefits to go back!
Anyway, it’s time to give this blog a renaissance. Make it a point to document these experiences after they happen, and share them with the people who love reading about it. So that settles it. Welcome back to Culinary Hopscotch!
I recently read an article about flying with children that was hysterical. Written by a man, it was a fantastic and self-deprecating look at just how painful it is to make the trip to grandmother’s house in the woods via airplane. And as we all know, the pain isn’t centralized to the family traveling, which got me thinking.
With less than a year under my belt as a flight attendant, I often get asked by friends, family and acquaintances about my pet peeves or other ridiculous things that I see or that have happened while working at 35,000 feet. Sadly, a lot of them involve children or parents or a combination thereof. Here are some observations from the top, and some things to keep in mind the next time you board a plane with your children.
Changing Diapers on the Seats or Tray Tables: You do realize, that seat is not your personal throne that you’ll take with you when you deplane. And contrary to popular believe, people do eat the snacks we hand them…wait for it…on the tray table! So for those people who change their child’s diaper there, here’s my question to you. Would you do that on your Crate and Barrel leather couch or your slab-granite countertops? No, you wouldn’t, so have the same respect for my “home” at 35,000 feet. And if you don’t want to, potty-train your kid earlier and take Amtrak where the waste falls by the wayside through the horror hole beneath the train.
Milk-less Mothers: Recently, I had a mom come to the back during boarding and ask me for milk. I gently explained to her that the milk we have is not refrigerated and it’s not something I would drink myself, but she was welcome to it if she wanted a carton. As she rolled her eyes at me, she asked for a pair of scissors to cut open the carton so she could pour it into the baby bottle she was holding. I don’t have scissors; they’re not allowed through security. She proceeds to ask me for another carton, and since I knew she was sitting in the front of the plane, I suggested she ask the flight attendant in the front galley. I could see the milk being sloshed up and down the aisle as she hurried back to her brood, and I didn’t want to smell that for three hours. As she’s headed back to her seat, she turns around to tell me she’s flying alone…with three children…as if this is going to elicit some sort of sympathetic response from me. Dear barker: wrong tree. First off, I wonder why you’re alone with that abrasive attitude, and secondly, our galleys aren’t a 7-11. They sell milk in the airport, and if you were a real “wondermom” like you claim, you would’ve packed your own, as that IS something they will let you bring through security.
Not Listening to Announcements: Okay, so this is a great time to remind everyone that flight attendants aren’t your personal butlers in the sky. We’re there for your safety, and that little window in front of our jumpseats isn’t a two-way mirror. We can see you rolling your eyes during announcements, pretending to sleep, etc… But I digress. On a recent flight after we landed, I had a mom who didn’t think my announcement applied to her. It’s pretty much common knowledge that you don’t get out of your seat while the airplane is taxiing, which we were. She got up and opened the overhead bin to retrieve a rollaboard suitcase. No, not a soft-sided duffelbag or a small purse. A rolling suitcase that she could’ve easily dropped on the people sitting below. Of course, I repeated my announcement that we were on an active taxiway, so she took the suitcase to her seat. During deplaning, the captain asked me if the woman coming up the aisle was the one who got up during taxiing. I said yes. He stopped her and asked her why she ignored our announcements, to which she replied in a snarky tone, “I had to get something for my son.” What she really got was a stern lecture from the captain who heard me tell her to sit down and watched the whole thing on camera from the cockpit (yes they have those).
Hot Laps in the Aisle: I get it…kids need to get up and move, but for the parents that let their kids do hot laps in the aisle from seat-belt-sign-off to seat-belt-sign-on, here’s some food for thought. This is when we do become temporary servers, and when we’re trying to serve drinks–scorching hot ones, full cans of baby-crushing Coke, etc…–we really don’t need two-foot tall speed-bumps slowing us down. Lets do a math problem: you’re two-feet tall, I have a tray of drinks in my hand and my face in an order tablet to see where I’m taking them, and we crash together ceremoniously in the aisle. Who wins?
Speaking of the Aisle: While this isn’t a personal story, it did happen to a friend of mine and is worth sharing to reiterate the importance of safety on board an aircraft and staying in your seats when we tell you to. Oh, and I’m most definitely talking to you, mom in the story above, who couldn’t wait to get her kid’s Teletubby out of the suitcase. It’s the same set-up: the plane is taxiing, only this time, a mother is letting her small child play in the aisle. My friend makes the announcement that everyone must be seated with their seatbelts securely fastened until we are parked at the gate. Crickets. So, they make a second announcement. Crickets. The kid continues to play in the aisle. Which prompts a third more specific announcement: “To the mother of the child in the pink shirt, please keep her on your lap until we are parked at the gate.” Not two minutes later, a plane pulls out in front of their aircraft, forcing the pilot to slam on the brakes. Said child in the pink shirt ends up face-down near row 1 (they were sitting in about row 9), teeth knocked out, mouth bleeding, and she got to deplane on a stretcher. This isn’t 3:47 minutes of free babysitting. Watch your kids or watch what happens.
Culinary Hopscotch 