Springtime in Europe

Spring is a season of bountiful starts, a season of pomp and show. Each year at this time my mind takes off for Europe, even when my body stays home.

I envision myself driving along the winding roads of Brittany, that salt-breezy province of France.

I am meeting a friend for a seafood lunch--oysters, perhaps, or lotte --in the port town of Concarneau. We’ll dine inside the old walls at Le Galion, where the tables are set with white candles on crisp, blue linen and the stone hearth is blazing with poppies and buttercups.

Soft, taped music eases from Beethoven to the Missa Criolla. We will not be rushed.

I dream of a spring day in the white beech woods near Arhus on the east coast of Denmark’s Jutland. I am meeting a friend at a thatched-roof country inn called Moesgaard Skovmolle Kro.

Trickling Water

A millstream trickles over a wooden waterwheel near the door, which is framed with hollyhock. We share a platter of smoked salmon to start, then laugh on through cloudberries and Brie. We will not be rushed.

I yearn to be in Italy on a green hill above Florence, where the magnificent hotel Villa San Michele has just reopened for its March-to-November season.

A year ago I was there, savoring the quiet corridors of this former monastery with its facade by Michelangelo. An altar, sweet with roses, fills an end of the reception room. The restaurant serves the most sublime menu I found in Florence, from the Tuscan bread and the bean and garlic soup called ribollita to tender beefsteak alla fiorentina.

I sat in the golden light of the cypress-lined gardens and admired the city below, the city crowned by the massive dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, a cathedral simply called the Duomo.

The 28-room inn is on the winding road to the village of Fiesole, a pocket of sunshine and serenity topped by the chapel of St. Francis, which was guarded when I was there by pairs of strutting white doves.

From this terrace the view of Florence and the glint of the River Arno is as enchanting, though not so intimate, as from the tall, shuttered windows of the Villa San Michele.

The small piazza of Fiesole is marked by huge plane trees, their gnarled trunks sprouting hair-like branches of new leaves.

In their shade are sidewalk cafes: cane chairs and slat tables at the Bar Etrusca, orange tablecloths and wicker chairs at the Falli Bar next door.

The pleasant Italian custom is to pause here for vibrant conversation, or to read a newspaper while savoring an espresso doppio. On a balmy spring evening this is the place to sit and admire the passeggiata, the traditional promenade of those who live in Fiesole.

My heart also journeys to Salzburg, and is ensconced once more in the splendid old Hotel Goldener Hirsch just steps from Mozart’s birthplace.

Masses of daffodils trumpet spring, but they are not alone. This is the spargel season in Austria, when mounds of fresh asparagus--white and green--are featured on menus. At market stalls by the Collegiate Church, shoppers eagerly crowd to buy fresh spargel by the kilo, and then splurge on baskets of wild strawberries.

Last April my room was a country haven of hand-painted wooden armoires, shaggy lamp shades and thick down comforters buttoned into white slipcases; my window opened onto the pedestrian street called Getreidegasse, a narrow lane where shop signs of wrought iron coil artfully overhead.

I leaned out to see a baker hurry around the corner carrying a tray of rolls and cakes. Girls paraded in beribboned straw hats, and student musicians played violins as coins were tossed into upturned caps at their feet.

The Goldener Hirsch is a warren of creaky floors and twists of hall. Runners of carpet follow worn stone steps like trails in a forest.

The name means golden stag ; there are antlers on the walls of the bar in this Old World hostelry, which stands as proof that you can successfully mix schmaltz and elegance, a mix that is not unlike spring.