Hello, a little background, and letters never sent.
"The world, she thought, is certainly full of beautiful things." - E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
"The world, she thought, is certainly full of beautiful things." - E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
7 months
11 countries
112 train rides
1362 miles on foot
Hundreds of buses, subways, trams. Countless meals. Endless memories.
Starting in April of 2022, a friend and I spent just over seven months on a full-blown, old-fashioned, shoestring tour of Europe. We traveled from Holland and Belgium to France and then to the United Kingdom. After spending the summer in England, we sailed back over the English Channel to France again, and then on to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy, making brief stops in Scotland, Switzerland, and Hungary along the way. Eleven countries total…twelve if you count Vatican City (which I guess you should, but somehow feels like cheating).
Nothing fancy - not even close. But still: 227 days. 227 days of the things I love best: museums, bookshops, flea markets. Beautiful landscapes, and even more beautiful cityscapes. History: everywhere, every day. And, of course, food. Pastries and pasta, mulled wine and madeleines. Bakewell tart and belgian beer, cafe crème and cappucinos…
A little background - I currently sell antiques and old books for a living but studied art history in college. I spent the first ten years of my career in art gallery management in Chicago and then decided to switch things up and get my degree in Pastry Arts from the Culinary Institute of America. I worked for several years baking in the San Francisco Bay area & Napa, before switching gears again and starting my own little business selling antiques & books.
All of this is to say - I love beautiful (and delicious) things. A trait I no doubt inherited from my mother, who worked in fashion and who used to love to travel to Paris, London, Rome and all around the world for her career. She could not have been more excited for me when I told her I had the opportunity to spend part of 2022 exploring Europe. She knew that it would be a dream come true.
One of my favorite books when I was young was Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace. It was my favorite book in my favorite series of books - the Betsy-Tacy series, which follow Betsy Ray and her friends at the turn of the 20th century from her fifth birthday party to her first year of married life. Betsy and the Great World is the penultimate book in the series, and in it Betsy, an aspiring writer, spends a year traveling Europe so that she will eventually be able to write with first-hand knowledge of the places she visited. She writes multi-page letters home detailing every bit of her travels - starting on her ocean-liner trip over and ending at the outbreak of World War I - handwritten and so stuffed full of stories that they barely fit into their envelopes.
We communicate so differently now. I sent messages home, but it was through texts, and phone calls. I thought that when I returned I would be able to tell stories, show endless photos and re-create some of the foods that I had so enjoyed.
My mom had been sick with a variety of issues for the past few years, and fell and broke her hip in July, while I was in England. She spent several months in a care center, but was back home with my dad when I returned from Europe in mid-December. I meant to tell her everything, to sit and show her photos from every stop along the way, but she contracted Covid right before Christmas and went into the hospital. The infection was too much for her frail body and she never came out. She died on January 6.
And so I’m going to try to chronicle my journey in a series of letters that I wish I would have sent to my mom: letters like Betsy sent: stories, photographs, details - filled with all of the things that she loved, and that she taught me to love, too. Art, books, history, food...if you like these things, too, we might just be good friends. I hope you will enjoy the letters, as well.
I won’t claim to know everything. No lists of the top five restaurants in any city. No expert guide to a town I only visited for 24 hours. But I would like to tell you about some things I enjoyed, that were interesting, lovely, or delicious. I’ll try to show you, too. To paraphrase Lucy Honeychurch - the heroine of one of my other favorite books, - the world really is full of so many beautiful things.