Lunch in San Sebastian

Bordeaux, Bayonne, Biarritz roll past tantalisingly along the French Basque coastline, the names conjuring Belle Epoque glamour, but we're not stopping at any of them - we're bowling headlong towards the Spanish border at Irun, because there's a lunch date in Spain's Basque country ...

... in San Sebastian, where on this Sunday in June we found thousands of Basque citizens taking to the streets in a pro-independence march - the most orderly, organised demonstration I've ever seen, and very much like the city itself which is spotlessly clean, laid out in beautifully kept wide avenues with a wide river running through it and immaculate beaches all along its edge.

We wandered down to Playa de la Concha, where everyone in town who wasn't in the demonstration seemed to have congregated, to cool down in the lapping waves of La Concha Bay.

I loved watching el paseo in action - people walking in groups up and down the beach. It's all about the socialising.

I people-watched all along the elegant, beautifully kept promenade
from City Hall (below right with Carousel in front) to Café de la Concha at the far end, with the best views of the bay.

But lunch awaited. San Sebastian may just be the best place to eat in all Europe, considering that Basque Spain has not only the most Michelin-starred restaurants per capita in the world, but also a spectacularly good quality of everyday food, most famously pintxos (the Basque version of tapas) served in bars. 

At Akelarre, high on the hilltops overlooking the city, with these views over the bay

photo source

there was one exquisite course after another, a feast for every sense.

It may have been the effect of the lunch on my general well being, but driving along this scenic coastline afterwards towards Bilbao, I decided that the Basques have it all - a fabulous natural environment of mountains and sea, liveable cities, the best food, and true quality of life. I'm all ready to move.

San Sebastian, Spain June 2015
Day 2, Iberian road trip

From London to ...

Driving for the better part of a day along motorways across a large chunk of France doesn't really prepare you for the different world you encounter when you turn off the national road in the late afternoon near Bordeaux

into the village of Bouliac in the south west corner of France, the Aquitaine

for the warmth and colours of the south

and slow village life

Surrounded by vineyards - the Aquitaine is really a giant vineyard, home to the wines of Bordeaux, Médoc, Saint Emilion, Bergerac ...

and here in Bouliac, Le St James is so well worth a visit, if only for a brief lounge at the pool-in-the-vineyards, or a drink or dinner on the terrace

Le St James was designed by none other than Jean Nouvel (I've posted on his amazing buildings here, here and here; and see also here for his latest NewYork adventure) to draw the gorgeous natural surroundings in.

At sunset there were views over vineyards and the Garonne river, with Bordeaux in the distance

Bouliac, France June 2015
day 1, Iberian road trip

Oxford 4th July

What more pleasant way to spend a warm 4th July than punting down a river?

At the Cherwell boathouse with the edge off the heat of the day punters were taking full advantage of the late evening light.

Despite preparing for a wedding party about to descend, the boathouse restaurant offered us a drink and a seat on a warm stone wall with the ducks on the edge of the Cherwell

before we walked over to the garden of nearby St Hugh's college for a birthday party.

St Hugh's was founded in the late 1800s by Elizabeth Wordsworth (great-niece of poet William) to help the growing number of women "who find the charges of the present Halls at Oxford and Cambridge (even the most moderate) beyond their means". Good for you, Elizabeth.

Oxford July 2015

Spring at Somerset House

Stately Somerset House on the Strand was the venue last month for Photo London, an international photography exhibition of vintage, iconic, as well as contemporary photographs from around the world.

In the courtyard (transformed in winter to an ice rink), where fountains play in spring/summer, as well as children of all ages, there were poetry readings, stalls ...

and endless entertainment in the fountains.

And on the spot is the gorgeous Spring restaurant which opened late last year in Somerset House ...

It's the baby of Skye Gyngell, ex-Aussie/Sydneyite who, as chef at the Petersham Nurseries where she won a Michelin star, became famous in London for her simple, seasonal style of cooking.

I loved the decor at Spring, which like Skye's food is light and fresh with a courtyard garden that makes you oblivious to the busy Strand outside the huge picture windows.

Photo London and Spring at Somerset House, May 2015

In Norwich last month I was lucky enough to spend a day exploring an exhibition in four different venues of the city of extraordinary works by the Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco.

At the Gallery of Norwich University of the Arts is The Banquet - a grotesque, life-size scene ...

 in which four avaricious, gloating men in black are about to feast on a pleading naked figure prone on a table. The host seems to gleefully invite his guests to tuck in, while the figure on the right is already eyeing the buttocks of their defenceless victim. 

In the Cathedral of St John the Baptist is a small but powerful work: the severed head of John the Baptist, powerfully displayed in a spotlit nave behind a wrought iron door.

Pacheco's largest work of the exhibition is in Norwich Cathedral ...

Shadows of the Wanderer is a huge sculpture on a wooden plinth in a transept of the cathedral, below stained glass windows.

A group of black cloaked figures stand as shadows behind a young man carrying his ailing father on his back. The younger and older man are carved from a single tree.

 There are echoes of Greek myth here, but the work has generally been interpreted as portraying the vulnerability and fear of exile, displacement, migration or asylum, and thus has a very contemporary impact.

The faces are haunting: there are lifelike onyx eyes and expressions etched with fear and anxiety. As with her other sculptures, the mouths have real human teeth, embedded in wooden gums.

Her art is unsettling, but full of humanity: there is violence, cruelty, abuse of power and fear, as much as vulnerability, love, and the possibility of transformation.

In the words of Neil McGregor, director of the British Museum:

"The young man at the front ... fleeing from something we cannot see, carries nothing but his father - his past, his identity ... This man literally cannot leave his past behind, but must take it with him. And that young man is about to step off the plinth and be among us. How are we going to react? ... What will we do? Will we behave with justice and with love?"

Norwich, April 2015