A few weeks ago, C & I decided on the Grand Tour. It was going to be the European Tour, but geography which will become apparent, made that impossible.

In order for this to work, we had to dig out our holiday clothes and these are the only clothes we can wear for the week. The plan is to immerse ourselves in the culture and the cuisine and if possible send some postcards.

Monday – We began our trip by going to Portugal. We found our hotel very agreeable (housekeeping a little basic) and we were able to find a very good table on the terrace for breakfast. Avid readers of this blog may remember that last year we went to Lisbon for a city break. We loved it.

One of the things we did there was take a bus tour which passed along Av. de Berna where the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is to be found. But on the trip last year we didn’t have time to visit, so on Monday as part of our Portugal day, we did. It’s a lovely building, set in gorgeous grounds and some very interesting art work.

Later C spent some time poring over her recipe books – it’s a sort of cookery holiday – and created some wonderful Pasteis de Nata. They were creamy and delicious. She was left with what might be described as a gallon of the custard mix and so we have enjoyed Flan on several occasions.

In the evening we dined on a cod and fennel dish which surely must have originated in Portugal, with its long coastline and love of fish, despite the recipe coming from The Skinny Cookbook.

Tuesday – This was a hectic day, not least because I was giving a talk to the Chelmsford U3A Local History group about my novel, The Girls from Greenway.  And so, because of the lack of time, we took a detour from our European Tour to China, not least because it was going to be easy to prepare a vegetable stir-fry with noodles in the evening.

I  had been to Beijing in 2000 to talk about domestic violence and changes to the Chinese marriage laws. Beijing was a wonderful place to be – we ate some fabulous food there, and in between busy days at the conference, we were able to do some exploring. I even managed to have a (very short) conversation with a member of the Red Guard in Tienanmen Square, asking if we could visit the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong (shi, bu shi? Yes no?). The answer was ‘bu shi’ (no) as there was a meeting of the National People’s Congress.

So now, we quickly visited Namoc – the National Art Museum of China, again a rather lovely light building with some tantalising, delicate paintings. By late afternoon C was suffering from jet-lag and we had to relax with large G&Ts, which was very possible, of course, in our comfortable hotel.

Wednesday – We were in France, the country that I love, visiting Paris, City of Light, but also City of Dreams, City of Culture…

We nipped in, briefly, to the Louvre, but the Musee d’Orsay held our interest. It has so many wonderful pictures, not least Les Raboteurs de Parquet (the Floor Scrapers) by Gustave Caillebotte.

After watercress sandwiches for lunch – a little known French favourite, for dinner we dined on the Elizabeth David and Barbara Pym stand-by – omelettes, green salad and white wine. It was to have been steak and chips, but travelling so fast through so many different cultures we have been eating a lot of rich food – and we will always have Paris.

Thursday – Italy. We spent the day speaking Italian – si, non, buon giorno.  And then a wander around the Uffizi Gallery. 

The last time we were in Florence we tried to go to the Uffizi Gallery, but the queue was so long and the day was so hot. We contented ourselves with looking at the copy of the statue of David outside the building, and if memory serves me correctly, we went to a nearby cafe and had a cooling drink of something akin to lemonade. This time we meandered through some of the famous rooms, including the Room of the Maps and the Botticelli Room.

It was my day to cook. Supper was pasta of course, a simple sauce of smoked salmon, lemon, dill and yoghurt, followed by panna cotta. It was to be tiramisu but we couldn’t get the sponge fingers.

We were looking forward to Greece and Austria…