Hej Grimsö!

PPS More food!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:59:00 +0000

Our new Melbourne-based food blog is up and running... check out www.herestheveg.blogspot.com .

P.S. Grimsö

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:05:00 +0000

This morning I got an email from Johan. In addition to the usual work stuff, he attached a few photos he'd taken while I visited.

Skiing around Johan's house (read the original post here):

Owl-twitching on a Saturday night (original post here):

Checking out the eiders from Öland (original posts here, here, here and here):

Much more importantly, Johan has put together a twitch list for our Öland weekend. Here it is in Swedish:

Smålom
Storlom
Storskarv
Gråhäger
Knölsvan
Sångsvan
Bläsgås
Grågås
Kanadagås
Vitkindad gås
Gravand
Bläsand
Snatterand
Kricka
Gräsand
Stjärtand
Brunand
Vigg
Bergand
Ejder
Praktejder
Alförrädare
Alfågel
Sjöorre
Knipa
Salskrake
Småskrake
Storskrake
Röd glada
Brun kärrhök
Sparvhök
Ormvråk
Fjällvråk
Fasan
Sothöna
Trana
Strandskata
Skärfläcka
Större strandpipare
Ljungpipare
Tofsvipa
Kärrsnäppa
Morkulla
Storspov
Skrattmås
Fiskmås
Gråtrut
Havstrut
Tamduva
Skogsduva
Ringduva
Gröngöling
Spillkråka
Större hackspett
Sånglärka
Ängspiplärka
Sädesärla
Gärdsmyg
Järnsparv
Rödhake
Koltrast
Björktrast
Taltrast
Rödvingetrast
Dubbeltrast
Gransångare
Stjärtmes
Blåmes
Talgoxe
Trädkrypare
Skata
Kaja
Råka
Kråka
Korp
Stare
Gråsparv
Pilfink
Bofink
Bergfink
Grönfink
Steglits
Hämpling
Gråsiska
Domherre
Gulsparv
Sävsparv

He also translated it into English:

Red-throated Diver
Black-throated Diver
Cormorant
Grey heron
Mute swan
Whooper Swan
White-fronted Goose
Greylag goose
Canada goose
Barnacle Goose
Shelduck
Wigeon
Gadwall
Teal
Mallard
Pintail
Pochard
Tufted duck
Scaup
Common eider
King eider
Steller's eider
Long-tailed Duck
Common scoter
Golden eye
Smew
Red-breasted merganser
Goosander
Red Kite
Marsh Harrier
Sparrow hawk
Common buzzard
Rough-legged buzzard
Pheasant
Common coot
Common crane
Oystercatcher
Avocet
Golden Plover
Lapwing
Dunlin
Woodcock
Eurasian curlew
Black-headed Gull
Common Gull
Herring gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Rock Dove
Stock Dove
Woodpigeon
Green woodpecker
Black woodpecker
Greater-spotted woodpecker
Skylark
Meadow Pipit
White wagtail
Common wren
Dunnock
Robin
Black bird
Fieldfare
Song Thrush
Redwing
Mistel Thrush
Chiffchaff
Long-tailed Tit
Blue Tit
Great tit
Treecreeper
Common magpie
Jackdaw
Rook
Carrion Crow
Raven
Starling
House sparrow
Tree Sparrow
Chaffinch
Brambling
Greenfinch
Goldfinch
Linnet
Redpoll
Bullfinch
Yellow hammer
Reed Bunting

... and gave me the scientific names!

Gavia stellata
Gavia arctica
Phalacrocorax carbo
Ardea cinerea
Cygnus olor
Cygnus cygnus
Anser albifrons
Anser anser
Branta canadensis
Branta leucopsis
Tadorna tadorna
Anas penelope
Anas strepera
Anas crecca
Anas platyhynchos
Anas acuta
Aythya ferina
Aythya fuligula
Ayhya marila
Somateria mollissima
Somateria spectabilis
Polysticta stelleri
Clangula hyemalis
Melanitta nigra
Bucephala clangula
Mergellus albellus
Mergus serrator
Mergus merganser
Milvus milvus
Circus aeruginosus
Accipiter nisus
Buteo buteo
Buteo lagopus
Phasianus colchicus
Fulica atra
Grus grus
Haematopus ostralegus
Recurvirostra avosetta
Charadrius hiaticula
Pluvialis apricaria
Vanellus vanellus
Calidris alpina
Scolopax rusticola
Numenius arquata
Larus ridibundus
Larus canus
Larus argentatus
Larus marinus
Columba livia domesticus
Columba oenas
Columba palumbus
Picus viridis
Dryocopus martius
Dendrocopos major
Alauda arvensis
Anthus pratensis
Motacilla alba
Troglodytes troglodytes
Prunella modularis
Erithacus rubecula
Turdus merula
Turdus pilaris
Turdus philomelos
Turdus iliacus
Turdus viscivorus
Phylloscopus collybita
Aegithalos caudatus
Parus caeruleus
Parus major
Certhia familiaris
Pica pica
Corvus monedula
Corvus frugilegus
Corvus corone cornix
Corvus corax
Sturnus vulgaris
Passer domesticus
Passer montanus
Fringilla coelebs
Fringilla montifringilla
Carduelis chloris
Carduelis carduelis
Carduelis cannabina
Carduelis flammea
Pyrrhula pyrrhula
Emberiza citrinella
Emberiza scoeniclus

I guess if a twitcher's going to do it at all, it must be done properly.

Roll credits

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Sun, 28 May 2006 10:46:00 +0000

A final holiday post from Singapore airport. There's free internet access here! I suppose there are still 12 hours remaining in our holiday and several airline meals that could be reviewed, but that's probably overdoing it.

Our trip highlights:

Most livable city: Copenhagen (the alcohol's too expensive in Sweden, otherwise Stockholm would come a very close 2nd).
Best holiday city: Paris, for its range of galleries, architecture and rich food. London would have come close if the weather had been more spring-like.
Best weekend away: Venice. Beautiful scenery, horrible tourist trap. Take some photos and then GET OUT.
Best natural scenery: Swiss alps and lakes. (For me, Öland was also very special.)
Best fancy restaurant: The Gate, London.
Best casual restaurant: La Potager du Marais, Paris.
Best museum: Vasa Museum, Stockholm.
Best art gallery: Tate Modern, London. Can't believe it's free!
Best hosts: ... we're not going to do that. My thanks go to Johan, Johanna and Henrik for the entire Grimsö experience. Thanks to Lynda, Stefan, Melissa and Dylan for fitting us into their apartments and sharing their home cities with us. Also to Ian and Anne for offering us free and well-positioned accommodation in Paris (and also for the 2€ bottles of wine).

Several readers have noted our (particularly my) attention to the food we've eaten. I'm considering starting up a new blog in a few months, documenting our vegetarian culinary adventures in Melbourne. If it happens, I'll add a link to it here.

Until then, my plate is almost licked clean.

Saturday 27/5: London/International airspace

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sun, 28 May 2006 10:41:00 +0000

Our final day in London was (unsurprisingly) wet and gloomy. To make matters worse, the cold that had been threatening all week had finally overwhelmed Cindy and left her unfit for active tourist duty. We pressed ahead with our original plan to explore the Portobello Road Markets and trudged off through the drizzle to find them. Along with about 10,000 other people. The markets take up almost the entire length of Portobello Road, from Notting Hill to North Kensington and it seemed that every square metre of them contained five people.

Lugging the laptop on my back and my coat under my arm, it was all a bit of a struggle. The markets would probably have been fun (there appeared to be some vaguely interesting shops in between the more tourist-centric fare), but once the rain started to get heavy we both decided we’d be better served inside somewhere. Somewhere was a conveniently located Internet café where we spent a good couple of hours sorting through emails and battling to get this blog up to date. Seeing that the rain had eased, we eventually headed back out for a final scout of the markets but again the weather had fooled us and within minutes the rain had come back stronger than ever. Our refuge this time was an overcrowded café we had some wedges and juice before deciding that it was all too hard and it was time to quit this tourist lark. Luckily when we arrived back at the hostel (intending to pack our things and leave for a 10pm flight at 4pm) we found the staff starting to watch The Virgin Suicides on DVD in the communal lounge room. We joined them – finally finding an activity suitable for our energy levels and the weather – and then headed off for the long trip southwards.

Friday 26/5: London

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sun, 28 May 2006 10:25:00 +0000

Friday was intended to be ‘Museum Day’ – we were aiming to visit the Natural History Museum and, if we were still enthused, move on to The Science Museum afterwards. Things started with a stroll through Hyde Park, enjoying the waterfowl and the ongoing blustery conditions (check out the deckchairs in the third picture for some idea of the wind).

We eventually reached the Natural History Museum, housed in a rather grand old building just south of the park.

The museum housed a fairly impressive collection of fish, insects, reptiles, mammals and birds (as well as a geological section that we didn’t explore). The whole thing was informing and well organised, but it all felt rather dated. Admirably, the museum is no longer in the market for animals to stuff and thus all the mammals looked rather faded (particularly the big cats). Additionally, the interactive and video displays all seemed to date from about 1992 – just before computers were widely used for these kinds of things. Regardless we had a lot of fun – I particularly enjoyed the fish (who knew that flying fish can fly for 400 metres?), reptiles and birds, although the centre of the action was clearly the blue whale.

The bird section was full of species that are now extinct and included a few displays that highlighted the kinds of practices that helped to kill them off. Like giant glass cases filled with dozens of stuffed hummingbirds. For example.

After fighting through the school groups and tourists, we decided against moving on to The Science Museum and instead went for a wander around Chelsea (with a highly-regarded chocolatier as our final goal).

Along the way we stumbled into a mini French district and had a crepey lunch.

After browsing through the shops of Chelsea’s King Street (not just browsing – Cindy bought a couple of pairs of socks that, when the currency conversion calculation was done, meant that she could never tease me about buying books again), we hit upon our main goal: L’Artisan du Chocolat. And here I think I’ll let Cindy take over:

L’Artisan du Chocolat is a small and exclusive shop that we found in a ‘best shopping in London’ guide. I was determined to buy a small box that would allow me to sample a variety of the flavours on offer, regardless of the price. Michael actually persuaded me to buy the second-smallest selection of 20 chocolates!

As well as selling dark chocolate by the region of origin, they have a range of unusual flavours including jasmine tea, pine, sesame, basil and lavender. The flavours are very subtle, and all are made of the most pure melt-in-the-mouth dark chocolate. They were so pretty and fragile and so carefully wrapped up that I insisted on carrying them levelly back to the hostel on the tube, then took about 10 photos to ensure that I had a record of them in perfect condition.

By the time we finished our walking and found our way back to the hostel there was just enough time for a quick rest before we headed off to dinner. The plan for the evening was to go to Drummond Street – my tourist map of London mentioned that this street was known for its vegetarian Indian restaurants. We’d done a brief scouting the day before and found about eight Indian shops, at least half of which were vegetarian specialists. We settled on Ravi Shankar as the best of these and squeezed into one of the few remaining tables. I chose the largest of the thalis on offer. Cindy and I discovered thalis in New York a couple of years ago – they’re basically set meals made up of a starter or two, bread, rice, a range of curries and condiments and a dessert, all served on a large metal tray (in a number of smaller containers). They seem to mainly appear on the menus of vego Indian places. Because I’d gone for the primo option, I got a soup and pappadum to start:

The soup had a scattering of lentils and coriander in it, but its main flavour was ‘hot’. Lucky I’d ordered a large beer. The rest of my meal consisted of: rice, chapatti, four pakoras, a potato and pea curry (with a similar flavour to the soup), some sort of mixed vege curry (with corn prominent), aloo saag (spinach and cheese), channa masala (chickpeas), raita and gulab jaman (sweet balls of weird milkiness that somehow ends up a similar consistency to dougnuts). So much food. It was painful to stand up afterwards.

Cindy, sensibly, opted for the daily special: a biryani served with vegetable kofta, salad, raita and a rice puddingy dessert. The kofta sauce was quite spicy, but the biryani was exactly to Cindy’s taste. I was so full I only sampled a smidgen of one of the kofta balls and can report that it was among the finer I’ve had.

Thursday, May 25: London

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Sat, 27 May 2006 13:27:00 +0000

The plan on Thursday was simply to walk the streets of a few neighbourhoods that seemed interesting, and we began by taking the Tube further east to Aldgate. Here there is a large Bangladeshi and Muslim community, and consequently many tempting curry shops. Unfortunately we turned up about an hour too early and no-one was particularly interested in selling us said curry, so we continued walking north with rumbling stomachs.

We were walking towards Shoreditch and Hoxton, reputed to be trendy/alternative areas. Things looked promising when we encountered a couple of vintage clothing shops and a café advertising vegan-friendly lunches. We stopped at the café for a roast vege sandwich, muesli with yoghurt, and a couple of great fruit juices (it was all packaged take-to-the-office food, so we didn’t bother with pics). However, the rest of the scene either hadn’t rolled out of bed yet or had moved to the next London hotspot, as we didn’t see much more of interest until we encountered the African neighbourhood. Strangely this was where we stumbled on a cute organic grocery with heaps of things that I’d love to fill the home pantry with. Given our luggage constraints, Michael settled for a meatless mini-salami and fruit juice while I grabbed some cherry and coconut bars for the long flight home.

The mini-salami had reasonable flavour and texture, a very convincing smell, but wouldn’t fool a butcher by a long shot.

We made a brief visit to the Covent Garden markets via the tube. It was all really touristy and we didn’t stay long because what I was really after was at Camden Town:

This is the original Doc Martens shoe shop. I’ve been wearing my green Docs for 7 years: they’re the most expensive pair of shoes I’ve ever bought, but probably the best value on a cost per hours worn basis. After finally dragging them through the snow, ice and slush at Grimsö, I thought I’d treat myself to a new pair right from the source. Check ‘em out:

With my major London purchase successfully completed, we retired to a nearby pub for a pint and a snack:

Next was yet another tube ride, further west to Hammersmith. Here is a fancy vegetarian restaurant called The Gate:

It was a light and airy space, modern and classy but still reasonably casual. The prices were fancy, and so was the food. We shared an entrée of pakora and each had a pear and raspberry juice:

"Portobello & oyster mushrooms, spinach & julienne vegetables deep-fried in a chickpea batter, with an apple & green chili salsa & tamarind sauce."

For the main course, Michael selected a aubergine teriyaki:

"Char-grilled aubergine layered with wasabi, shitake duxelle, roasted red peppers & spinach, coated with crispy breadcrumbs & served with stir-fried purple sprouting broccoli, wakami & noodles."

I had a chipotle-glazed aritchoke:

"Globe artichoke poached in a chilli & lime leaf stock, stuffed with avocado and feta cheese, served with spiced polenta & sweet corn salsa."

This was the best high-end meal we have ever eaten. I was particularly impressed that the menu didn’t rely heavily on tofu or other soy meat substitutes, or on cheese. Instead each dish listed was a celebration of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices.

The waiter handed us the dessert menu and although I had actually considered skipping the sweetest course that night, there was one item I couldn’t leave without sampling. The waiter returned and asked, “So have you decided to order the cheesecake?” Of course I had. He brought out dessert cutlery for two, initially presenting me with an oversized soup ladle instead of a spoon. Although he had clearly spotted my weakness, he had it the wrong way round: I’d much prefer the tiniest teaspoon, the better to stretch out and savour every mouthful.

I present to you the white chocolate and Bailey’s cheesecake, served with dark chocolate sauce:

What can I say? It was exquisite.

We encountered this cute fella on the way out and gave him a gentle pat:

As the sky darkened we strolled along the Thames, then returned to our hostel thoroughly satisfied. At the day’s end I had a new pair of shoes temporarily charged to someone else’s credit card and the lingering taste of chocolate cheesecake in my mouth: what more could a girl ask for?

The answer is black snot. On the first afternoon in London, I overheard another pedestrian and (seemingly) new London resident discussing how the air pollution caused all her nasal secretions to be tainted sooty black. I fell victim on this, my third evening in the city. Ergh.

Wednesday 24/5: London

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 27 May 2006 12:56:00 +0000

Our first morning in London dawned grey and miserable. The forecast for the week was showers, clearing by Sunday (we leave on Saturday night).

We soldiered on regardless and headed off to Buckingham Palace to begin our touristy sightseeing. Of course, by the time we got there, the weather had already cleared - this became a theme of the day, with the weather cycling from sunny to cloudy to rainy approximately every 15 minutes.

The palace held our attention for all of five minutes and we quickly decided to wander off through the park towards Westminster and the parliament buildings. Along the way we got glimpses of Big Ben and some sort of practice parade by the Royal Guard.

The trip towards the river took us via Trafalgar Square, where Nelson’s Column was regrettably covered in scaffolding.

We eventually reached Parliament, but unfortunately things all turned rather gloomy and most of our pictures didn’t turn out very well.

We crossed the bridge towards the south bank of the river and wandered past The London Eye. Even if it wasn’t expensive and busy, there was no way Cindy was going up in it, so we just strolled by.

The weather, having briefly turned pleasant again, started to look pretty threatening, so we hurriedly found ourselves somewhere to shelter and eat lunch. Pizza was the order of the day and we enjoyed a mushroom pizza, salad and garlic bread as the rain and wind really picked up outside.

The next stop was the Tate Modern , a short walk along the river from our lunch spot. The museum is housed in an old industrial building (a power station of some description) and is spread across five floors. We started with the free collection on level three and thoroughly enjoyed almost everything. The floor was split into three sections: photography, surrealism and abstract expressionism – each of the sections included works that typified the style of art in a main room and a series of smaller rooms containing various related movements or artists. The layout made it easy to see the connections between artists. Some of my favourites were Andreas Gursky's '99 cent', Mark Rothko's 'Four Seasons Murals', Jackson Pollock's 'Summertime: Number 9A', Cindy Sherman's 'Untitled Film Stills' and Juan Muñoz's 'Towards the Corner'. By the time we’d made it through the third floor (which represented only half of the main collection) it was after five and we were tuckered out, so we promised that we’d return later in the week and headed out.

From the south side of the river there are some pretty impressive views of St. Paul’s Cathedral

Of course, as we got closer, we realised that the entire bottom half of the building was covered with scaffolding, with a tricky drop cloth to fool unsuspecting tourists.

A short tube ride later, we were back in Marylebone for dinner. The venue for the evening was Eat and Two Veg, which tagged itself ‘the world’s first meat-free diner’.

We started with cocktails and nuts as it was only just after six, probably a little early to dive straight into dinner. I opted for a mojito and Cindy had an appletini.

It was nice to find a vegetarian place with a few different options on the menu and, after knocking back our drinks, Cindy went for a ‘chycken’ BLT, while I chose a proper British meal – Lancashire hotpot with mash. The hotpot was great – just like the real thing, but missing the gristle and fat, and the mash was creamy and delicious. Cindy’s BLT was tasty as well – the chycken patty was moist without being soggy and the mayo was liberally applied. The fake bacon was adequate, but there’s really no substitute for the real thing. And of course there were chips. Lots of chips.

Tuesday, May 23: Zürich to London

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Fri, 26 May 2006 21:36:00 +0000

Melissa departed for her train commute to Basel at about the same time as we needed to head to the airport: 6:30am. We had just enough time to grab some breakfast between checking in and getting to our boarding gate, and just enough leftover Swiss francs to buy another sampler of Sprüngli chocolate. (The Sprüngli stand was directly opposite our gate, REALLY.) Almost before we knew it we were in London negotiating the tube. We had a friendly and distinctly Aussie reception at our hostel, where we stored our bags, and then ventured back out to explore the area, at least until our room was available.

Our hostel was located just north of Kensington Gardens, and so we walked eastwards along the northern edge, resting at the fountains and then continuing along Hyde Park to Oxford St.

The grey weather we first saw from the train had transformed to a blue sky and warm sun, but the wind was still as cold as any we’d encounter during a Brissy winter.

Oxford St is a long and busy strip of shops, particularly department stores. The highlight for me was seeing the imaginative window displays at Selfridges. Myer and DJs should really lift their game!

We had lunch at a trendy new burger café along a side street. We were pretty shocked at the prices (£7 ~ $17 for a burger, then extra for chips and sauce) but soon worked out that all food in London would be expensive and if we didn’t want to heat up baked beans on toast in the hostel for every meal, we’d have to put up with it. This café had three different tempting vege burgers on the menu and crisp, non-greasy chips:

Michael ordered the standard. The patty was the most reasonable meatless replacement for a beef burger that I’ve ever encountered, and it was topped with tomato relish and fresh salad. I ordered ‘the Goatee’: roast veges, goat’s cheese, pesto and mayo on a light but nutty bun. It was quite a mouthful:

The waiter commented afterwards that it was the biggest goatee he’d ever seen. A burger and chips could probably never justify that price tag, but the home-made condiments and fresh ingredients were top-notch.

In the afternoon we checked into the hostel and rested for a few hours, then went out for more exploration before dinner. We bypassed our previous path via the tube, emerging at Oxford Circus and taking a walk along Regent St and the edges of Soho. Lots of very exclusive and expensive clothing stores. We tired of that quite quickly, returned north along New Bond St back to Oxford St and beyond to Marylebone High St (it’s all very Monopoly, isn’t it?). This area was also quite affluent, but had more pubs, restaurants and small businesses.

Just as the now-grey sky began to rain, we ducked into our restaurant of choice, Rasa. The small chain of Rasa restaurants around London have a reputation for excellent vegetarian Indian food, and we were pleased to see a few unfamiliar dishes on the menu.

To start, we shared Mysore Bonda :

"The tea time snack in Kerala, but delicious at any time. Potato balls laced with fresh ginger, curry leaves, coriander and black mustard seeds, dipped and fried in chickpea flour batter and crisply fried. Served with a moist, creamy coconut chutney. " They were indeed crisply fried, but not greasy, and surprisingly spicy.

For the main meal, I couldn’t resist a dosa! This is a huge pancake with a hidden spiced vege filling and a variety of sides for extra flavour.

"Nair Dosa: A speciality dosa from Kerala, usually eaten during festivals and celebrations. A rice and black gram flour pancake filled with a mixture of potatoes, beetroot, carrot, onions and ginger. Served with sambar and fresh coconut chutney. " I probably got through about half of it, with Michael eating another quarter. He ordered Beet Cheera Pachadi with paratha:

"An amazingly vibrant dish, traditionally only served at wedding feasts. Fresh beetroot and spinach are blended together in a yoghurt sauce with roasted coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves - a must for the adventurous." It looked and tasted much better than that picture suggests. We’ll be hunting down a recipe in the hope of reproducing it at home. We also sampled the mango lassi, which had a delicate flavour that probably came from fresh green cardamom pods. It satisfied my dessert urges!

Monday 22/5: Zürich

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 26 May 2006 09:16:00 +0000

Monday brought an early start – the plan for the day was a daytrip to Lugano (which was one of the places Cindy and I had admired from the train) three hours away and to ensure we arrived at a decent time, we were all up and about by 7. The trip on the train provided a chance to eat breakfast and catch up on sleep and we were all shown the meteorological power of The Alps when we emerged from a tunnel to find that the sunny weather on the Zurich side had been replaced by squally rain. Thankfully by the time the train pulled into Lugano, the weather had settled into a pleasant cloudiness.

We started off with a wander through town and coffees to get our energy levels up.

(Note: The last photo is about 4 separate photos stitched together – because we couldn’t force passers by to stand stock still for us, there are some weird effects going on)

Energised, we bravely tackled a few giant flights of stairs on our slightly random explorations.

After deciding that the ferry tickets were too expensive, we attempted a bus trip to Gandria (a small town around the lake from Lugano), but ran into the bus siesta – no buses in that direction from 12 to 3pm. So we set off on a walk around the lake, hoping to eventually find Gandria and some lunch.

On the way we stumbled across a swan on her nest (and one standing guard in the water).

Gandria is (as Dylan noted), the kind of town M. C. Escher would design – all narrow alleys and steep stairways. After hunting in vain for a restaurant that sold pizza, we settled on an Italian place with a balcony over the lake.

I opted for polenta with porcini mushrooms and Cindy had a mushroom risotto and lemonade.

The polenta was mushy and garlicky and the mushrooms added some texture and flavour. I polished it off in about 10 minutes – delicious. Cindy’s risotto had a similar flavour, which I thoroughly enjoyed as I finished off the last third of her meal.

Despite being unable to eat her main, Cindy was quick to agree to an order of tiramisu for dessert (as was I). Dylan opted for something called Nonna’s Cake.

Having lunched for a couple of hours (and been entertained by swallows and hawks over the lake), we eventually dragged ourselves down to the ferry stop to return to Lugano and then to Zurich.

Since Melissa had skipped dessert at lunch, it was decided that we should all have some gelati before boarding the train home.

We arrived home (via a Sprüngli shop) and after some leftovers for those of us still eating, spent the night packing our things and preparing for an early flight the next day.

Sunday, May 21: Zürich

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Fri, 26 May 2006 09:06:00 +0000

In the morning we took the bus to a brunch date arranged by Dylan and my dad Ian, at Sprüngli towards the city centre. Ian and Anne had been in Zürich for a couple of days, staying with Ian’s ‘cousin’ Elvira. But first here’s a photo from the closest bus stop to Melissa and Dylan’s apartment:

Any incredibly observant chocoholic readers might have noticed that the word ‘Sprüngli’ appears on the packaging of Lindt chocolate. Indeed, there was an impressive (but sadly closed) chocolate shop below the restaurant. The brunch buffet at Sprüngli has a long tradition as a meeting place for high society, and was quite a treat for all of us. Naturally the hot chocolate is one of the best in the city…

… and the pastries are extravagant:

Everyone splashed out on the buffet, which included three varieties of the very Swiss Bircher muesli as well as bread, pastries, meat and cheeses:

I was so taken by the food that I failed to take any pictures of my co-gorgers. Whoops.

We attempted to work off our luxury meal with a wander around the city, towards the lake.

The weather was grey and sometimes windy, and we stopped for coffee, beer and/or cake at a café by the lake, a re-decorated ex-warehouse frequented by arty types.

Next up was a train trip further along the lake to Halbinsel (half island) Au and a walk through the countryside…

… which led to a lovely old building where a classical music concert was being held. Melissa and Dylan had booked tickets for us all, offering Michael’s and mine as early and late birthday gifts, respectively.

They voiced their disappointment that the weather hadn’t lived up to the sunny spring day by the lake that they had planned, but it was still a great success as far as Michael and I were concerned. It was topped off by a picnic dinner of beer and couscous salad by the river, near their apartment.

Saturday 20/5: Zürich

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 25 May 2006 09:02:00 +0000

Dylan and Melissa had us up early to sample a Swiss breakfast at the local café. We joined their friends Nuno, Gudrun and Tobe for Bircher (pronounced beer-[throaty sound]-uh) muesli and gipfeli (a kind of pastry that I would describe as similar to a croissant, but apparently Swiss people wouldn’t approve of that description).

Breakfast was a precursor to a daytrip to Luzern – Melissa and Dylan had put together a pretty thorough itinerary for our three Zurich days under the assumption that the weather would be good enough for us to do outdoorsy things. Of course the forecast for Saturday, Sunday and Monday was ‘rain’, but things turned out beautifully in the end. Luzern, like every city, town and village in southern Switzerland, is set on a magnificent lake and is in the shadow of the Alps. It’s a very foreign landscape for Australians, and an incredibly beautiful one.

We spent a short time wandering about the town, stumbling on a lakeside food market and admiring the painted facades of the old buildings:

Just to add to the picturesque scene, the lake was well populated with ducks (including an orange-coloured type that I hadn’t seen before) and dozens of swans.

After our town tour, we boarded a ferry that serviced the lake. Our destination was Treib, a small town that Dylan had visited previously. The trip was pretty spectacular

(taken by Melissa)

The lunch restaurant was in a small building by the lake (built in the 1400s? and apparently the site of some of the plotting that led to Swiss Federation). In Dylan’s plan, we were to eat lunch by the lake, soaking up the sunshine and admiring the view. Alas, the weather had turned a bit cold and grey, but we nevertheless chose the outside tables, much to the amusement of the staff. The menu was a bit lacking in vegetarian options, but Cindy and I both enjoyed hearty cheesy pasta – perfect food to fight off the cold.

(photo by Dylan)

As the boat made its way back to Luzern, the weather began to clear and it was decided that we should spend some more time exploring the city.

We checked out the wall of the original city and the old clock (the oldest public clock in Switzerland I think).

As well as ancient buildings, Luzern was home to some pretty excellent snails.

Too tired to mount any sort of expedition for the evening meal, we returned to the flat and feasted on a Channa Masala that Dylan and Melissa had cunningly prepared earlier. Served with bread and salad, and prepared from scratch (right down to soaking the chickpeas), it was a fine end to a fine day.

Friday, May 19: Firenze to Zürich

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Thu, 25 May 2006 08:51:00 +0000

The American college kids continued their partying through Thursday night, and again I struggled to get much sleep. The lowlight occurred at about 3am when a girl discovered that her holiday fling actually had a girlfriend back home. We made it to the hostel breakfast, seeing a number of hung over faces but none looking more seriously wounded. We checked out of the hostel and stopped to admire some of the murals around the reception area:

There were three or four hours to fill before our train departed and we had no plans or inclinations. Fortunately, in amongst the worst of the tourist markets, I noticed an opening into an indoor market of the consumable kind:

The preserved meats and pungent cheeses didn’t do a lot for me, but the herbs and fresh produce had me mentally composing my first shopping list for when I arrive home.

I satisfied myself with the dehydrated variety as a snack for the train trip:

I was especially keen to try the cherries, kiwifruit, limes and oranges.

We slowly made our way towards Caffellatte (another vego establishment) for lunch.

The café was small and relaxed. On any other day I would probably have been irritated by the slow service (given the café was empty), but we had time on our hands and it was pleasant just to sit there.

We shared crunchy toast with a ricotta spread and a vegan quiche, accompanied by orange juice…

… and had plenty of room to share a slice of chocolate cake:

Our train trip was seven hours long and made tolerable by the scenery, passing through Italian countryside and then the Swiss Alps:

There were several beautiful towns, set into the base of the mountains and perched on huge lakes. We scrawled down the names of the closest train stations so that we might be able to return someday.

It was almost 11pm when we arrived at Zürich HB and were met by Melissa and Dylan. They kindly squeezed us into their zero-bedroom apartment for our time in Switzerland and supplied us with cheese, vegemite and knäckebrot before we collapsed onto the sofa bed.

Thursday 18/5: Firenze

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sun, 21 May 2006 20:13:00 +0000

Our one and only full day in Florence started slowly. The hostel we stayed at was spacious and we had a large, clean private bathroom, but it seemed that their predominant target market was American college students who liked to sit in the courtyard all night drinking and talking about America (“No way! You’re at Eastern? My brother went to Eastern” etc). Until 3 or 4 in the morning. Since sleeping is pretty much my best skill, it didn’t bother me too much, but combined with some annoying mozzies, it meant that Cindy didn’t fall asleep until the birds had started singing and needed some catchup rest in the morning. So we missed out on the hostel provided breakfast (which finished at 9:30) and headed out find something for ourselves. Opting for one savoury (cheese and tomato foccacia), one sweet (gooey chocolate croissant) and two coffees, we were finally ready to face the day at about 11:30. Florence was the stop on our trip that I had done the least preparation for. In fact, apart from booking the hostel and figuring out our trains in and out, I’d done nothing at all. The Florence book was borrowed out of the Brisbane library during my last minute panic. So armed with our A4 map, we decided just to wander around past the Uffizi art gallery and down to the river.

Like most of the central parts of Florence, this area was crammed wall to wall with tourists.

Even more annoying were the ubiquitous and repetitive stalls selling repetitive souvenirs. I’m still not sure how many people can make a living selling ‘Ciao Bella’ t-shirts in the same street. Seems like there were about 40 trying. Scattered throughout the legit stalls, were small squads of counterfeit goods pedlars, with collapsible cardboard stalls (for a quick getaway) loaded up with Louis Vuitton handbags and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. In the end, Cindy and I decided that we’ll have to come back to Italy and visit cities or towns that are a bit more off the beaten track – as it was, between Venice and Florence it felt a bit like we’d spent five days in Italy World ™. Of course, as with Venice, there were bits of Florence that compensated for some of the crassness.

Not to mention the hilarious 3-wheeled ‘trucks’. They made everything worthwhile.

After a few hours on our feet, we headed back towards The Duomo to hunt down some chips and (impressively sized) beers. This sustenance gave us enough energy for some more exploration, but eventually the lack of sleep caught up with us and we headed back to the hostel for some rest. After a few lazy hours we complemented our earlier ‘lunch’ with some crackers and dip on the back deck overlooking the hostel’s garden. When not full of loud, drunk people, it was really quite pretty.

Dinner in the evening was at Ristorante il Vegetariano (I think: ‘The Vegetarian Restaurant’ – but my Italian doesn’t measure up to my tremendous French, so who knows really?). The restaurant was ‘self-service’, which basically means you order what you want, pay and then go and collect it from a different counter. It seemed they had most of the mains simmering in giant pots out the back awaiting orders, as they were ready within a couple of minutes. After easily polishing off a primi plati and a secondi plati the night before, we decided to try again. Cindy ordered a pesto pasta followed by a zucchini soufflé, while I went for some sort of risotto (I couldn’t decide what all the vegetable ingredients were: mushrooms were definitely involved, some olives and possibly zucchini or eggplant as well), followed by a seitan goulash. Unfortunately, the serving sizes were much more generous, and while I somehow made my way through everything, Cindy had a sizeable piece of soufflé leftover at the end. The food was simple, but very tasty – especially our ‘starters’. Unfortunately the cute little courtyard we were seated in didn’t provide sufficient light for any decent food photos.

Wednesday, May 17: Venezia to Firenze

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Sat, 20 May 2006 20:18:00 +0000

In the morning we just had time to take enjoy the hotel’s ‘free’ breakfast in the garden before we returned to the train station:

Michael braved the coffee flavoured yoghurt, which turned out to be OK. The three-hour train trip passed easily enough and our hostel in Florence was only a 10 minute walk from the station.

Venice has crowded uneven streets full of tourists. So does Florence, but bikes, scooters, cars and trucks had been added to the mix and I felt dirty more from the exhaust fumes in the air than from travelling. The footpaths are extremely narrow and consequently many people walk on the roads, which are often barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic anyway.

The first task was to locate some lunch:

The most common lunch available in cafes is a selection of sandwiches, often toasted. Predictably most options are full of meat, but there’s usually one with tomato and mozzarella. If you’re a lucky vegetarian, you might also score some spinach or roasted veges. Lunch was much cheaper than we expected it to be, but that was probably because we had unintentionally disobeyed local practice: ordering at the counter yields a lower price on the understanding that you will either take the food away or eat it standing up. (This means that even telling them you’ll ‘eat in’ is ambiguous.) Thankfully, the ladies running the café didn’t seem to begrudge a couple of confused tourists a table to rest their travel-weary legs.

We didn’t have any must-see landmarks planned for Florence, but the hostel provided us with an excellent map of the inner city, marking the main buildings of note. We had a wander around The Duomo on our way to dinner:

Amongst other tourist-centric repetitions, I noticed a lot of shoe shops. (‘Noticed’ is perhaps inappropriate, as it suggests that my attention was fleeting.) It seems every woman wants a piece of Italian sophistication. Yes, including me:

Ooh la la… high end fashion hostel-style. I bought those on the way to dinner, and spent the latter part of the evening perfecting the art of photographing one’s own legs. (I promise that’s the last time you’ll ever see me wearing these shoes with rolled-up jeans.)

[While I’m talking about Italian purchases, here’s the toothpaste we just bought:

It has a faint aniseed taste, and reminds me of the candy-coated fennel seeds you get at the end of a meal in an Indian restaurant.]

Dinner, again, was at a vegetarian-friendly restaurant that Michael found through the internet. This one was called Sedano Allegro (Merry Celery) and it had a lovely ‘garden’ area behind the restaurant building:

Primi (first course) was a pumpkin risotto for me, and cheesy-pesto pasta for Michael:

Both very tasty and the right portion size to enjoy our secondi (second courses). Understanding little of the menu, we had both more or less randomly selected a dish that we didn’t recognise from this list. Michael was served a cheese patty smothered in tomato sauce, which was the closest either of us had come to a McDonald’s cheeseburger in years (pickle flavour included):

I think mine was zucchini parmigiano:

Even though I enjoyed it immensely, I let Michael have the last third of it to ensure that I had room for dessert (hehe). I really wanted try some tiramisu while in Italy:

It was deliciously sweet and creamy, though it didn’t quite match the standard set by Melissa’s Nonna when I sampled her tiramisu in Brisbane last October.

Tuesday, May 16: Venezia

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Thu, 18 May 2006 20:37:00 +0000

This was our one full day in Venice. It began at 7:15am when the church bells first clanged outside our window. Then the day paused and resumed at 8:15 when the bells clanged a second time and we decided to get going. A pleasant breakfast downstairs was included in the price of our hotel room, so we took advantage of that before braving the busy streets at about 10am.

During the trip, Michael has made almost all the bookings, tends to take charge of the maps and negotiating transport, and likes to plan each outing a day ahead. It’s been one sweet ride for me, as the only tasks I’ve been left with have been taking most of the photos and reminding him when it’s time for ice cream. Still, I particularly enjoyed the random layout and lack of must-see landmarks in Venice so that we could both, for the most part, just wander about without Michael furrowing his brow over a map or hassling me about which sight I wanted to visit tomorrow.

Nevertheless, our meals on the previous day had been somewhat uninspiring (hence the lack of photos) and our first task in the morning was to locate La Zucca for dinner. A bit of internet research in the hotel had yielded a map that corresponded with neither the detailed map of the city we had nor our visits to the actual square. A restaurant review commented that the best approach was simply to visit the square and wander around the side streets. We made another lengthy attempt at this, methodically visiting every alley we encountered and turning up nothing. Well, almost nothing: there was one restaurant that was positioned similarly to a photograph displayed on La Zucca’s website, but its name was different and the menu was far from vegetarian-friendly. Hot and a bit annoyed at having failed, Michael suggested that we head back to that restaurant and ask for directions. I noticed a couple of chairs on the other side of a small canal, hinting at another café. La Zucca! Dinner was set. I jokingly suggested that we retrace our steps back to the hotel, taking photographs of our surroundings every 5 metres, to ensure we could find our way back in the evening.

We did actually retrace our steps almost back to the hotel, as it was located close to a ferry terminal, and we wanted to take a trip along the grand canal. It was a little bumpy and crowded. Michael took charge of the camera:

We noticed a market and restaurants at Rialto, and agreed to walk through on our way back towards the hotel:

Of course the walk back was packed with tourists and more repetitive souvenir shops, and we were keen to find some quieter alleys whenever we could. But first we needed gelato:

We ate lunch at a slightly expensive but excellent restaurant by the grand canal:

I had super-cold freshly squeezed orange juice and gnocchi with tomato puree. The best gnocchi I’ve ever eaten (not that I’m a connoisseur): they were light and not gluey, the sauce was tangy, and the ground parmesan cheese added some texture. Since the shadow of Michael’s head interfered with that shot of his pizza, here’s another one:

He cut me a generous slice and it was great: the base was light and crunchy and there wasn’t too much cheese.

We had a couple of hours break in the hotel during the afternoon and I lapped up some Italian MTV. We set out again for a walk at about 5:30pm, stopping for a beer, before eventually making our way to La Zucca.

La Zucca appeared to be quite busy, but we were able to get a table inside that was reserved for another group in an hour and a half. The menu was completely in Italian, but we guessed our way through it. It turned out that the man running the restaurant grew up in Canada, so his translation of a couple of options and recommendation of a side dish were very helpful.

I ordered an asparagus flan:

The fresh asparagus flavour was fantastic, and perfectly matched by the cheese sauce (parmesan and maybe also ricotta). The recommended side dish was a gratin of potato and zucchini:

Soft inside, with a bit of a crust: just the texture I like. Delicious, but I was struggling with the rich cheesiness by the end. Michael’s vegetarian plate with rice turned out to be a sampler of the side dishes:

Clockwise from the top: more of the gratin, beans in a spiced tomato sauce, carrots with soy and sesame, spinach, and roast capsicum. Good stuff. By the time we had finished our mains there was less than half an hour until the next party were due to claim their table, so we decided to skip coffee and head home.

Monday 15/5: Venezia

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 18 May 2006 20:28:00 +0000

We stumbled out of the train station tired from lack of real sleep and weighed down with all our bags, but even in that state, Venezia is a pretty spectacular city.

It’s also a freaking maze. We had a reasonably clear map showing how to get from the station to the hotel – all of about 250 metres. And we struggled. It turns out that the wide streets marked on the map were actually alleyways barely wide enough for three people to walk side by side. Anyway, after 20 minutes of wandering around laden down like packhorses, we eventually figured out where we were and checked into our hotel. As it was still only 10:30 in the morning, we couldn’t run straight upstairs to the shower and the bed and instead dumped our bags in the luggage room and headed out to explore, looking wistfully at the clean linen and comfortable sitting room as we left.

Having already realised that following a map in Venice was going to be problematic, we decided to just wander aimlessly through the alleys and over the canals and see what we stumbled across. After exhausting ourselves on galleries and old churches in Paris, there was nothing that we had to see during our stay and so we just followed our instincts and explored.

We eventually found our way to St. Mark’s Square – the key tourist mustering point in the city. The Basilica looked very impressive from the outside and is supposedly even more impressive from within, but the lines to get in were too long and our enthusiasm was too meagre.

We quickly rechristened the square – Pigeon Town. It seems that the native rats of the sky have become quite a tourist attraction. You can buy some feed for a few euros and stand with your arms out while flea-infested vermin peck about at you. Good times. (There’s a crouching woman in the photo below, but she’s half blocked by the standing man and half swamped by rabid pigeons).

Deciding that St. Mark’s Square wasn’t really for us we started to head back towards the hotel, intending to get lunch along the way and arrive at around 1ish for check-in, showers and naps. The walking continued to be pretty aimless and the confusion began to set in after we passed the 400th shop selling exactly the same Venetian glass trinkets. In a lot of ways, Venice is basically a giant Italian-themed amusement park. Every block contains an assortment of shops selling the same tourist-targeted pap (glass, masks, prints, maps), an assortment of pizza shops and gelati stands and swarms and swarms of tourists. I’d almost guess that on any given day English would be the most common first language of everyone in the city. Despite all this, it remains a beautiful setting, so you can forgive its flaws (particularly when you, as tourists, embody them).

We had the obligatory pizza for lunch and decided it was time to figure out where we were and how we were getting back. The only way to use a map at all in Venice is to: wander around randomly until you stumble upon a square, locate said square on the map (not nearly as easy as I thought it would be), figure out the rough direction of your end-point and try to walk vaguely in that direction without running into dead-ends or canals. It’s a struggle. So by 2:30 or so, tired and hot (Venice is the first place we’ve been where the weather could be said to have gotten ‘hot’ – 25 degrees anyway), we finally stumbled back into the hotel and dragged ourselves into our room for a rest. Never has a shower felt so good.

Before we knew it, four hours had passed and it was time to head back out for dinner. My list for Venice featured very few options and only one that sounded really delicious. Thankfully, it (La Zucca, which translates as The Pumpkin) was quite close by – it looked like only a 20 minute walk on the map. Ah the map. How I cursed it. After about 40 minutes we finally found the square where La Zucca was (supposedly) located. After another half an hour of lapping the square and poking our heads down sidestreets and alleys like this:

we conceded defeat and stumbled into the nearest trattoria to eat. Between Cindy’s creamy tagliatelle and my tortellini, we ate reasonably well, but it felt like food that we could easily have made ourselves and after our high hopes for La Zucca, was pretty disappointing (hence the lack of pictures). Thankfully, wine is cheap here and by the time we left the restaurant for home my spirits were high again.

Sunday, May 14 to Monday, May 15: Paris to Venezia

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:22:00 +0000

During his extensive holiday planning, Michael booked us first class tickets on an overnight train from Paris to Venice. It seemed like a more adventurous and scenic option than another cramped plane flight, and we had very comfortable rail experiences in Sweden and Denmark.

Given our previous ordeal of getting from the airport in Paris to our accommodation, we conservatively gave ourselves heaps of time to get to the long-distance train station. Naturally we were more adept at negotiating the subways, and as a consequence we arrived at the station almost two hours before our train was due to depart.

There was some nervousness about validating our tickets and reading the French/Italian signs correctly, but we found our sleeper cabin without any problems and were settled with about 15 minutes before departure. It was moderately spacious, and seemed about 20-30 years old. The bedsheets were frayed (mine was ripped under the pillow) but they were clean and starched. We had a basin with running water, but there was a sign advising us not to drink the water. I had eaten a packet of pistachios during the wait at the station and was looking for a plastic bag or bin. All I could see was this:

The only thing that looked like a bin was clearly not to be used as a bin. It turned out to be a chamber pot:

I had a brief moment of panic about the available facilities for the next 10 hours, but confirmed that there was a lit up WC sign at the end of the carriage.

We sorted out how to flip up the beds and transform them into a velvet bench:

Before the train had even moved, an attendant stopped by and gave us a ticket for dinner at the restaurant, allocating us a table 15 minutes after the train was due to leave at 8:30pm. It wasn’t clear to us whether or not dinner was included in the ticket price, but we figured we’d go along and try out the first class food.

The waiter was friendly, a little boisterous and clearly run off his feet. He seated us at a table with a couple in their sixties (they were the demographic dominating the restaurant car). We exchanged smiles and they offered us the menu. It seemed to be a set three-course dinner, with a meat-free entrée and meat-heavy main. We were feeling a bit confused about the whole process, but decided to see what happened, planning vaguely to eat the entrée and then head back to our cabin early. A few minutes later I noticed at the bottom of the menu: 28 euros. Hmm. We would be charged almost $50 each for the set menu. By that time the waiter had opened the wine and we’d eaten the bread sticks, so we didn’t feel like we could get up and leave. I hoped we might cut a deal where we’d pay a reduced price to eat just the first course. If not, we’d just put it down as a lesson learned.

The pasta arrived: spaghetti with tomato and basil. Qantas standard. The waiter heaped it onto each plate with a flourish and Michael explained that we were vegetarian. “Vegetarian, no problem!” the waiter confirmed then waltzed on, preventing further discussion. We felt a bit better, but not as if the situation was completely resolved. We ate; Michael had seconds since he knew he’d be skipping the main. Typically for me, I was still finishing my last strands of spaghetti when the waiter brought out the next course. A couple of thin, limp slices of red meat smothered in something gluggy and white. Even if I wasn’t vego I wouldn’t have been keen on it. I desperately waved my hand ‘no’ as the waiter began scooping some onto my plate and Michael reminded him that we were vegetarian. “Ah!” He moved on to serve the rest of the carriage, and Michael thought he saw the waiter duck into the snack cart to find something else for us. We had to wait for him if we wanted to pay and leave, anyway.

Eventually the waiter returned with two plates, each holding about half a kilo of cheese, neatly sliced and arranged. Half firm and rich, half watery mozzarella. Our main course was pure, unadulterated cheese. A man across the aisle looked incredibly jealous that we had somehow scored this instead of the meat. The cheese appeared to be quite good quality, but I couldn’t munch my way through more than a tenth of it. Michael finished the more digestible mozzarella on his plate, and courteously ate one of the other slices. By this time the other diners had had their plates cleared and the waiter was taking orders for dessert. Gateau or fruit? I thought that I might be able to get through a bit more cheese with a piece of fruit, and rejected the cake. Rejecting cake is a very unusual occurrence in my life, as you probably already know. Unfortunately for me the gateau chosen by the couple sharing our table looked like the highlight of the meal. My pear was juicy and ripe, but it didn’t ease the consumption of the cheese and I gave up on it before getting through another slice.

So, we’d had a three-course meal of sorts and we’d have to wear the 28 euro price tag. In a pathetic act of rebellion, I stuffed a second pear in my jacket pocket. Somehow when we lined up to pay, the price was now 30 euros each. We’d been completely ripped off, but no more so that anyone else in that carriage. It was 10pm by the time we got back to our cabin and we weren’t expecting a good night’s sleep. Our stomachs were full of rich but mediocre quality food. Michael had also consumed half a litre of red wine, while I piked out because of my tendency for motion sickness. The train was rocking quite a bit, so much so that my smuggled pear rolled off the bench and onto the floor, breaking the skin and bruising the flesh. Damn.

Surprisingly we did sleep reasonably well overnight, and had a few hours in the morning to watch the Italian countryside pass by before we would arrive in Venice.

I breakfasted on an apple and paprika Pringles; Michael had a black coffee, packaged pastries and a juice box served by the train attendant.

Sunday 14/5: Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:14:00 +0000

Our last full day in Paris and Cindy and I were both too tired of art galleries to make the obligatory trip to the Louvre to join throngs of tourists taking our brief glance at the Mona Lisa. So we skipped it. Instead, we joined a smattering of tourists wandering through Napoleon’s Tomb at Hotel Invalides.

Hotel Invalides was built in the 1800s as a place for wounded and crippled French soldiers to live and recuperate. From the name, I thought it was actually a hotel, but I guess that’s my Grade 9 French letting me down. Anyway, at some stage, a giant domed church was built for the soldiers to worship at.

The nobility also got to worship there, but to avoid any actual contact with the crippled soldiers, the church was built double-sided – there were two altars back to back, separating the two classes of worshiper.

When Napoleon’s body was repatriated in the 1860s, he was entombed at Invalides. In a fairly non-descript brown tomb.

I was fairly tired and grumpy throughout our exploration of Napoleon’s tomb and, while our tickets to the tomb gave us access to both The Museum of Relief Maps and The Museum of The Army, I decided that coffee and pastry were more important and we moved on. After sorting out my chemical dependency issues, we continued our wandering up towards The Sorbonne. The university building itself was fairly unimpressive, but we found a nearby Garden L’Amour to sit in for a while – Cindy’s need for chips had become as urgent as my need for caffeine.

We continued on to the Panthéon (although we decided that 7 Euros each to go inside was more than we were willing to pay – at some point every domed ceiling starts to look the same).

With our legs tiring and hunger kicking in again, we decided to return to Le Potager du Marais. Our only disappointment the night before had been that it had taken us until our last dinner in Paris to find such a delicious restaurant. To get there, we had to stroll across the river past Notre Dame again, getting our last look at some of the famous Parisian sights to which we’d almost become used to.

Cindy was in the mood for the eggplant curry at lunch, while I opted for the (slightly blurry) curry lentil balls that had severely tempted me the night before. Both were fantastic again (I ended up eating a good portion of Cindy’s meal, so I feel I can speak for her). The curry was full of cashews and capsicum as well as the eggplant and, while not especially spicy, was deliciously flavoursome. The chickpea balls had a mild curry sauce and were served with the same delicious spinach as my vege burger the night before. One day we’ll have to return to try the two types of gratin, the lasagne and the zucchini and basil soup.

Saturday, May 13: Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Thu, 18 May 2006 08:16:00 +0000

During the day we visited Musée d’Orsay. After waiting more than an hour in line we reached the security check. My belt (or was it the knife strapped to my ankle?) set off the metal detector but the security guard couldn’t have cared less and waved me through. After the wait outside, we allowed ourselves to skip straight to the café to share a lunch plate:

FOOTAGE MISSING

Sorry, I forgot to take the camera. We had crunchy toasted bread topped with roast veges, olive oil and herbs, and a lightly dressed green salad on the side. It was very tasty, but overpriced as museum cafes always are. As an aside, I found that salads always had just the right amount of dressing in Paris: a light flavoursome touch that has the leaves glistening, but not so much that it pooled up in the bottom of the bowl or plate. I was particularly impressed, after repeatedly encountering gluggy puddles of cheap mayonnaise on my lettuce when I was in the US.

Although we were refreshed by the snack we knew we didn’t have the time or energy to see everything in the museum. We decided to begin upstairs with the impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. Our enjoyment in seeing paintings by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Manet and Degas (among others) was tempered by the popularity of this floor. We were constantly edging around school groups and other tourists, rarely getting a chance to examine the works up close without feeling pressure to move onto the next one quite quickly.

After an hour or so we took a break for coffee and a slice of raspberry pie, then worked our way down to the lower floors, also stopping to admire the central area of the museum. In a former life the building was a train station, and it has a high domed ceiling with lovely decorations. Again, sorry about the lack of photos (you can read about the building here and see a pretty good picture of it here). Over the next hour our enthusiasm waned and eventually we walked back towards the apartment. It rained a little on our way and it was too early for Ian and Anne to have returned from their excursion to the Louvre (we didn’t have a key), so we overshot our street by a block to have beer and pomme frites in a pub and watch the passers by.

In the evening Ian and Anne gave us their museum passes to check out the Louvre. We were a little disappointed to find out that it was closed, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With a bit of extra time and lightness of feet, we pushed on to vegetarian restaurant that would otherwise have been a little too distant. Le Potager du Marais is not only vegetarian, but has a focus on organic produce, and we managed to grab the last unreserved table for two. The space is very narrow, with all of the indoor tables arranged in a line with a parallel line of chairs on one side and a long cushioned bench along the wall. The waiters carefully pull out each individual table to seat the customer opting for the bench.

The beer and chips we consumed earlier meant that we skipped the entrees, but they had a mouth-watering list of dips on offer. The selection of main courses was equally appetising. I chose the mushroom pie:

I couldn’t believe it was vegan! The fleshy oyster mushrooms were coated in a creamy, cheesy-tasting sauce and flavoured with fresh chives. The pastry tasted as if it contained wholemeal flour yet it was light, crunchy and deliciously browned. This was easily the best main meal of the holiday thus far for me.

Michael order the vege burger with mushroom sauce:

I snuck a couple of bites and it was also excellent. The vege patty had a perfect crispy fried shell but was soft inside. The mushroom sauce was comparable to the filling of my pie, and the spinach was a surprisingly complementary side.

After dinner walked back towards the apartment, through the Latin quarter. It’s a pretty tourist-heavy area with lots of restaurants and shops selling souvenirs. There are also plenty of stalls where you can buy crepes!

Michael chose Grand Marnier with sugar:

I opted for Nutella:

It was so rich. I should have just stolen a couple of bites of Michael’s and not ordered my own.

Friday 12/5: Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:34:00 +0000

On Friday we decided to explore Montmarte – supposedly the artists’ end of town, but from all reports a bit of a tourist trap. So, armed with the knowledge that we were going to be mobbed by shoddy portrait painters looking to scam us out of our ‘hard-earned’ Euros, we headed off on the Metro (by this stage we were expert metro riders – no more standing on the wrong platform for us).

Our first surprise was altitude – sure, we knew Montmarte was going to be higher than where we had been (after all, my grade 9 French could easily translate ‘Mont’ as ‘Mountain’), but we were kind of hoping that the train could do most of the climbing for us. After ascending what seemed like a dozen flights of stairs to escape from the Metro station, we were confronted with this:

On the left are the stairs. On the right is the cable-car type device that we opted for. The views from the top were pretty impressive:

The main attraction of Montmarte is the Cathedral De Sacre Couer:

We wandered inside and enjoyed the impressive architecture. And the ubiquitous signs suggesting we pay 10 Euro to light a candle.

We strolled around some backstreets and the main square for a while – the whole place is a bizarre mix of ridiculously tacky tourist nonsense and laneways filled with impressive old buildings, all in the shadow of the cathedral. Strange.

For lunch, we settled on one of the many crepe options in the area. Despite the array of crepe shops, we could only find one place that would offer cheese and mushrooms on our crepes.

After eating and paying (and earning a pretty impressive scowl for failing to tip on our overpriced and slightly disappointing meal), we decided the stairs that seemed so impossible uphill, could probably be managed on the way down.

We caught the train home, exhausted again, and fell into what was becoming an enjoyable, but worrying (at least as far as my arteries were concerned) routine. Late afternoon wine and cheese with Ian and Anne.

After pasta leftovers for dinner, worse was to come (for my arteries), with the revelation that Ian had bought up big delicious patisserie treats.

Thursday, May 11: Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Tue, 16 May 2006 08:30:00 +0000

The day was spent visiting two of the more modern art exhibits in Paris. First, the Pompidou Musée national d'art moderne: a squarish building emerging from the more traditional architecture like something made of LEGO. The escalators and lifts are built on the outside, and various pipes and other constructions are colour-coded according to their function.

My fear of heights was just starting to kick in as the escalator in the transparent tube got us to level 4, our first destination. The level was dominated by an exhibition with a cinematic theme. The films exhibited ranged in age from present-day back almost as long as film has existed, and most were experimental rather than narrative. There were also paintings, drawings and other artworks that were in some way influenced by cinema.

After visiting the Pompidou we walked towards the Picasso museum, discovering the Jewish district along the way and grabbing some more falafel rolls for lunch. The chronology of Picasso’s works weaved around the building, up and downstairs and through galleries of different sizes, in particular detailing his artistic (and personal) relationship with the photographer Dora Maar and including some of her works.

In the late afternoon we returned to the neighbourhood where we were staying, shopping at Rue Cler for dinner. We prepared vegetable ravioli in a tomato sauce, sprinkled with shaved parmesan, served with French bread, butter, roasted garlic and an undressed salad. Easy-peasy to cook even though it sounds impressive. It was appreciated by Ian and Anne, who provided wine and pre-dinner snacks.

Michael and I cheerfully left the washing up and walked to the Eiffel Tower at about 8pm, still in full daylight.

We stood in line for at least half an hour to get a ticket to the second level, so it was getting pretty dark by the time we got in a lift and ascended one of the four ‘legs’.

Michael can take the credit for these photos. My fear of heights had my feet tingling again and I didn’t get too close to the edge. Actually this picture represents my experience pretty well:

Every night, on the hour, the Eiffel Tower glitters with hundreds of industrial strength fairy lights, and we were there to see them around us at 10pm. This isn't a picture of it:

... but if you want to see the Eiffel Tower sparkling, it's in Mariah Carey's latest film clip (along with Pharell Williams and Snoop Dogg). I saw it on Italian MTV last night. Paris looks good, but the song's awful. You could turn the sound down, but you're still going to see Mimi writhing around in a limo if you watch it. Probably just best to trust me that the sparkling tower's pretty cool, even though I can't show you a pic.

Wednesday 10/5: Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:03:00 +0000

After barely taking in any of the Parisian sights we passed on our hard slog from the train station the day before, we decided to make up for it by making Wednesday ‘Walking Day’. By my estimate we’d covered in excess of 10kms by the time we collapsed back at home in the afternoon.

We started with a brief scout of the surrounds of the apartment:

We strolled along the banks of the Seine, across the Champs Elysées towards the centre of town.

It didn’t take long before all the walking resulted in our first trip to a Paris Boulangerie.

Since I studied French in Grade 9 (more than 13 years ago), Cindy made all communications with French people my responsibility. I’ve been trying to find a way to work in the fact that I know how to say ‘hat’ in French, but strangely it hasn’t come up.

Our walk continued on through a small park, on towards the Opera House.

We admired the outside of the Louvre, but put off actually going in until a day when our legs were a bit fresher.

The route continued along the Seine and across the bridge to Notre Dame.

As part of the pre-trip preparations, I’d put together various lists of vegetarian eateries for most of the cities on our itinerary. The Stockholm list had been fairly successful and the first stop on the Paris list was a delicious and cheap felafel place. I was an inexpert felafel stuffer – some of the customers after us got at least twice as many toppings onto their lunches. But we made up for it with pommes frittes.

The walk home took us past Hotel Invalides, complete with impressive firepower:

After a brief stopover at the apartment, we ventured back out to take on another restaurant on our list (Le Grenier de Notre-Dame), which offered a reasonably impressive array of homely vegetarian food. We started with a cider and blackberry cream aperitif:

And moved on to crumbed faux-meat with potatoes and salad (Cindy) and vegetarian paella (me).

Exhausted and satisfied, we negotiated the trains back to Invalides and staggered the last few blocks home.

Tuesday, May 9: Stockholm to Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy) — Fri, 12 May 2006 14:26:00 +0000

On Tuesday morning we were packed and ready to leave the hostel half an hour before check out time. Unfortunately there were no bad American shows on TV, so we decided that we might as well head off to the airport. We lugged our backpacks to the central train station without too much fuss, and after a small amount of confusion paid 200kr each (~$40) to get a train to the airport. Our careful budgeting of our remaining Swedish cash had not allowed for such a pricey fare, so Michael pulled out the credit card to pay for the train. Consequently we had an abundance of Swedish currency to spend at the airport, and a couple of hours to spend it in. A lunch of roast vege sandwiches, beer and juice were the first purchases. Since alcohol is rather expensive in Sweden, the duty-free spirits cost roughly what they would in Australia anyway. Naturally I chose to spend on chocolate instead:

The one on the left is dark chocolate with cointreau. Enough said. The other two are ordinary sweets that can be found in the supermarket, but they are unique to Sweden (and maybe the surrounds). In the centre is a pack of Daim bars: crunchy sheets of caramel coated in chocolate, with a delicious burnt sugar taste. On the right is Kex (I think it’s pronounced ‘chex’), the Swedish equivalent of the KitKat. There are KitKats in Sweden, too, but this is the Dick Smith battler brand that Swedes prefer.

A magazine, coffee and snack later, we gave our remaining krona to the Röda Korset (Red Cross) and embarked on our flight to Paris. The flight and retrieval of our baggage went without a hitch, but we spent quite some time lugging our backpacks around, looking for the linking train. After a bit of backtracking we realised that we actually had to catch a shuttle bus to the train station. We got off the bus one stop too early, but still had trail of signs with a train symbol to follow. The trail went cold when we were close to the train station, and the station itself was incredibly confusing. We tried to operate three different types of self-service machines to buy tickets before being directed to a ticket office.

Here we had our first experience of what seems to be a typical Parisian practice: cutting queues. As we politely waited for an elderly lady with a large suitcase to pass through a narrow passageway, a young guy in a suit pushed past us and the lady, waltzing on to a ticket seller and ignoring a line of about 8 people. A fairly huffy exchange in French between the suit and one of the other ticket sellers ensued, with the suit reluctantly and unrepentantly taking a spot behind us in the queue. I was pleased to see that he didn’t get away with it, but have since discovered that most people have much subtler (though still quite rude) ways of getting themselves two or three places ahead in a line.

The train took us further into the city, until we were faced with changing lines. We stood on the wrong platform for about 20 minutes before we got it right. By the time we arrived at the station closest to our accommodation, our packs were heavy on our backs and we were looking forward to a comfortable seat and a glass of water. I didn’t pay much attention to the tree-lined walk, the Seine river flowing beside us, or Napoleon’s Tomb rising up on our other side. I was just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. We found the apartment building, but were faced with a locked door with a security code and no record of the apartment number we were looking for. Twenty minutes later we were a short way down the street in a dirty driveway, looking very shifty. Michael had started up our laptop computer, logged into the unsecured wireless internet connection of a hotel across the street, and was sifting through emails, looking for some more information that might get us into the apartment. I was keeping an eye on the door of the building, and probably looking a little like I shouldn’t be there. Thankfully there was some information, provided clearly and carefully in an email 10 weeks before, that neither of us had bothered to write down. We were in, almost three hours after our plane landed.

The apartment is a comfortable but small space being rented by my dad (Ian) and his wife (Anne) for the week. They’re taking a trip around Europe on their long-service leave. I think they must be paying a lot in rent for this space and by co-ordinating with this part of their itinerary, we get a sofa bed with the view below for free!

Monday 8/5: Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 12 May 2006 14:06:00 +0000

Our last full day of Scandinavian fun and the theme of laziness from Sunday continued. At dinner the night before we’d formulated a plan to catch a ferry to one of the islands of the Stockholm Archipelago (apparently made up of 24,000 islands!). Alas, the 10a.m. start proved too much for us and we eventually made our way out of the hostel by lunch time. The reformulated plan was to more fully explore Djurgarden, the park in which the Vasamuseet was located. We stopped by the supermarket to pick up a picnic lunch on our way and spent a few hours tramping around. The park basically takes up an entire island, so as long as you avoid the tacky theme parks on the Western side, there’s plenty of natural beauty to be seen.

Lunch: cheese, antipasto mix, fresh bread, apples and dark chocolate.

On our way back towards the bridge to the mainland, we heard the distinctive sound of a woodpecker (not that I’ve ever heard one before, but it really does sound exactly like the cartoons) and spent twenty minutes finding and observing a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. If birdwatching always takes place on beautiful sunny days in Swedish parkland, then I can really see the appeal.

We ended the day at Restaurang Malaysia, a veg-friendly place a couple of suburbs north of the hostel. The food was amazing – beautifully presented, fresh and delicious. I had a pseudo-beef stir-fry:

Cindy opted for a fake-chicken satay:

She couldn’t resist dessert either.

"Green pancake flavoured with juice of green Pandan leaf and filled with grated coconut and palm sugar. Served with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. (includes pine cernels)"

Sunday 7/5: Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 12 May 2006 13:18:00 +0000

After a fairly hectic few days of endless walking, Sunday inadvertently became something of a rest day. The plan involved washing our clothes, going to the modern art museum and having dinner at Herman’s (a well-known vego restaurant that we’d been saving up). The washing ended up setting us back about 4 hours – there were definitely naps involved in the delay as well. We headed out to the gallery, picking up a quick lunch on the way and eventually turned up on Skeppsholmen at about 3 o’clock. That gave us three hours until the Modern Art Museum closed – this wasn’t helped by our accidentally wandering into the wrong museum (the carved Buddhas from 1100 A.D. gave us the hint that the museum wasn’t particularly modern). The Moderna itself was very impressive and we easily filled our remaining two hours checking out the obvious parts of its collection.

We headed off to the ferry stop to catch a boat over to dinner, and waited for about 15 minutes in the park.

When a ferry finally arrived, we were told that the Slussen service had finished for the day, so it was time for a 2km walk to get us in good appetite for dinner. Herman’s is a vegetarian buffet style restaurant that was located up on the cliffs that we’d explored on Saturday. The view was fantastic and food was almost as impressive (if a little overpriced). We managed to restrain ourselves and skip out on dessert, only to be sucked in by a café close by the hostel on our walk home.