If you just want the photodump, it’s at https://cheese-run-2024.cliff.omg.lol/.

Map

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Dijon

This was just a pit-stop along our drenched trek across France, not terribly far over the border from Germany. But we happened upon their Marché de Noël, and we are pretty sure we were the only tourists there. Quite a different experience compared to Nürnberg or even Colmar.

Bordeaux

Last summer we had such a nice time driving the little roads between Bordeaux and Épernay (avoiding the traffic jams on the toll roads – longer but cheaper and much more scenic) that we decided to try our luck with that again. Our GPS took us down hours of little-more-than-one-lane forest and straight-the-through-the-village roads. It was certainly less boring than toll road driving, but the rain sorted counteracted any scenic relaxation benefit we might have otherwise had.

Originally this too was supposed to be just a pitstop, but it was more targeted wine-focused in two ways:

1. We wanted to get some more Chateau d’Eck after our first visit to Bordeaux in summer 2023. There is a long story there about the Mairie and ordering a salad that came with more duck meat (including gizzards) than vegetables, and how good the wine was with that salad.
2. We wanted to hit Aux 4 Coins du Vin again, which we did, after catching a train from the Chateau into Bordeaux and using the tram to get around in the city. In case you missed it last time, Aux 4 Coins du Vin is a hip wine bar whose concept is that you serve yourself small, medium, or large glasses of wines from the region or around the world out of a dispenser automat. And their wine snacks were excellent.

So we did both of those things.

Asturias is up in the clouds of the Picos de Europa mountain range. We oohed and ahhed at the dynamic landscapes at different times of day.

We stayed at a stylish hotel high up in the hills outside of Durango called Garaiko Landetxea. I think the building used to be the rectory for the church directly next door. Clearly they have put a lot of work into the place, and our room was great. The breakfasts were inspiring; the views at sunrise and sunset from the tiny balcony overlooking the hillside even moreso. It was a good base from which to visit cities and landscapes and museums in the area.

Buy in advance (https://www.ekainberri.eus/) and then plan your day around that. Don’t look for much else to do in Zestoa, apart from pintxhos and a glass of sidra.

Deba hills and coast

Parkin was convenient near the top of that hill.

This was an overnight stop on our way back from Spain. We stayed at Mas des 2 Platanes. It was fine – a little pricier than we wanted, but the pickings slim. The restaurant recommendations from our host were all well out of our price range, so we scoped out a North African restaurant in city center (Goúts Orientaux: Cuisine Marocaine](https://restaurantguru.com/Restaurant-Gouts-Orientaux-Arles)), which thrilled us with its vegetarian and lamb and prune tagine dishes. Go there and don’t be bashful if your French skills are as bad as ours; the host/waiter/cook is very patient and helpful.

This time we stayed in Wachenheim (first time for us), and used the train to get to Deidesheim (been there a couple times) and the main event on Saturday.

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We rolled in as usual on Thursday afternoon and did a simple dinner in the Ferienwohnung with our pals from Berlin, who arrived a few hours after we did. Friday we spent exploring Wachenheim on foot and with our mouths at Hambels Restaurant. We tried for a dinner reservation a day in advance with no joy, but they squeezed us in for lunch on Friday and boy are we glad they did: Sarah and I split a “Rondell” of Saumagen for two, and every single portion on that lazy susan they brought out was more delicious than the last: Rotkohl, Maultauschen, Kartoffelstampfer — it was all wonderful. Don’t miss Hambels if you’re in Wachenheim.

Saturday was the Weinwanderung, and we got there just before 11:00 with the train, largely before the masses arrived. This meant shorter lines, cleaner port-a-potties, and less crowding on the paths between the vines. Perhaps a good model to follow for next year!

Full set of pics at: https://france-aug-2023.cliff.omg.lol/

This is Part 4 — Bordeaux.

After our long drive to Bordeaux, we needed a day to catch our breath. Unfortunately it was only a little cooler, temperature-wise than Toulouse. Being closer to the Atlantic coast, I’d hoped for more breeziness. Or something.

We had good public transit options: a rechargeable 10-trip ticket costs €14.50, and it can be shared by two people, and used on busses as well as trams and you can transfer from one to another and only get charged once per hour. We were staying in Pessac, a 30-minute walk from one end of the Ligne B tram line, or a 5 minute walk from a bus that would take us to that tram line. We made good use of that system.

The waterfront area appears to be attempting a renaissance or something. Lots of wannabe nightlife or touristy eatery, but it was mostly closed down while we were there. August in France — they were probably on vacation.

We spent a couple hours doing at tasting at the Cité du Vin. That was cool.

The BETASOM submarine pens were a real treat to beat the heat.

Sarah picked out a restaurant for us that had simple, but very tasty food to accompany their amazing selection of wines, available at the perfect temperature in 3 different sizes for self-service via a pre-paid chipcard.

Groceries

We ate a ton of goat cheese and peaches and nectarines over the course of this trip. And of course butter. But we were expecting those. We were not expecting these:

Our Ferienwohnung in Pessac

Frittenmobil

We were driving “back” away from Bordeaux towards Regensburg along toll-free backroads when I spotted this beautiful creature on a roundabout. Spoiler: the fries were delicious.

Épernay

It was as good a place as any to break up the drive from Bordeaux back to Regensburg. And why not stop in the Champagne region?

Full set of pics at: https://france-aug-2023.cliff.omg.lol/

This is Part 3 — Toulouse.

Toulouse

We stayed in a place that billed itself as a hostel, but…it was more like a B&B with some common kitchen privileges. Example: we kept a bottle of rosé chilled in the fridge. The innkeeper was away on vacation, but her substitute was a font of suggestions for local places to explore, like the monastery shown in the photos below. We’d had grand plans of taking the train to Carcassone and exploring that walled city while in Toulouse, but … honestly it was just too dang hot to be away from the ceiling fan (a rarity!) in our room at the B&B in the afternoon. That constant wind from the Nîmes region was absolutely absent in Toulouse. It felt like our environmental options were either

1. barely-tolerable shade, if we could find it
2. cassoulet

After a long, hot, expensive drive to Toulouse, we thought we might do the next leg to Bordeaux via the backroads and non-toll highways, and the ersatz-innkeeper concurred. Spoiler: that’s what we did, two more times on this trip.

Full set of pics at: https://france-aug-2023.cliff.omg.lol/

This is Part 2 — time we spent based outside of Nîmes, bopping around the region at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Arles as well.

Arrival in Manduel

This place looks interesting:

Might have to come back here and explore. “Aire de Mornas-Village” is on the road sign.

View upon arrival in (rather outside) Manduel:

Breakfast was the same all three mornings: juice, bread, homemade jams, fresh local fruit (including very local figs).

We stayed in the room behind the door on the right:

Arles and Nîmes

In Arles there is a necropolis going back to Roman times.

We visited a monastery there too.

After it started to cool off, we visited Nîmes at dusk.

L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue

We’ve been here a few times over the last 19 years. It’s still charming as all get-out.

We stopped in for lunch at a restaurant, hoping for something cool, and we got it: a peach and burrata drizzled in basil-infused olive oil. Yum!

Despite the heat, there was a lot of life in the town.

There was not a lot happening in Manduel; the only restaurant we were intersted in was full on Sunday evening and then closed until after we departed for Toulouse on the next leg of our journey. So we drove over to the closest supermarket and ate fruit and bread and cheese for dinner.

Full set of pics at: https://france-aug-2023.cliff.omg.lol/

This is Part 1 — our arrival in Alsace.

This map shows our as-the-crow-flies route, starting in Regensburg in the Northeast, and continuing clockwise. (Note that this is one of those Dalí melting clocks folded over.)

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Itinerary at the outset

1. drive from Regensburg to Colmar, overnight in Beblenheim
2. drive from Beblenheim to the Ardèche, stay a few nights with friends who offered to put us up there
3. continue to Toulouse for three nights and do a side trip to Carcassonne
4. press on to Bordeaux, explore the museums and the coast
5. big drive to Épernay, overnighting there on the way back to Regensburg

What really happened

• Number 2 got cancelled due to some unforeseen medical stuff on the part of our hosts. Instead, Sarah scrambled and got us accommodations in a weird old farmhouse outside of Manduel, a tiny town outside of Nîmes.
• Numbers 3 and 4 above got drastically downsized by the heat. In Manduel the wind was so constant that the heat was made pretty much tolerable.
• That all changed in Toulouse. We had to adopt a siesta lifestyle.
• In Bordeaux, we attempted a spontaneous visit to Arcachon, hoping to, I dunno, park somewhere and take a walk on a boardwalk or something, but it was STILL HOT and parking was absolutely BUPKIS. So we gave up and drove back to Pessac (where our Ferienwohnung was) and concentrated our remaining time in the area on activities using public transit.

Arrival in Alsace

There is a Steak-n-Shake in the rest stop Aire de Haut-Kœnigsbourg. We had a couple of shakes. They were great. They have more locations in France. This might not be a good thing to know.

Beblenheim

We stayed in an inn with a Flammkuchen restaurant baked right in since 1569. The room was adorable and the bathroom surprisingly modern and generous.

The next morning we started our drive to Manduel.

See the full set of pictures here.

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Llanberis and Departure

Snowdonia trails into LLanberis

Our taxi dropped us off at the foot of a trail heading up the side of a mountain and carried our bags onward to our room in Llanberis.

It was quite warm — even the sheep were seeking shelter from the sun.

Around the lake

That was the end of the active part of the trip; from Llanberis we took a taxi to Bangor Station, and caught a train to Birmingham airport. We overnighted in a hotel near the airport and flew out the next morning.

Final Thoughts

We like the idea of getting ourselves from place to place in general, with our bags moving via car — but there definitely is some calibration necessary for

• route instructions; signage and landmarks in the woods can be very unreliable, so next time I’d rely more on GPX downloads to follow
• intensity / difficulty levels; we upped our on-foot activity prior to the trip, but it was not enough
• weather (we got very lucky in that it never rained once on us, but it was also quite hot at times)

See the full set of pictures here.

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Beddgelert

We arrived via taxi too early to check into our rooms, but the innkeepers were kind enough to let us drop the bags so we could set out for a hike along a gorge and up over a mountain right away, even packing a nice lunch for us.

That hike wore me and Sarah right out, so the next day we opted for a less elevation-intensive route. My parents, however, were undeterred and got themselves happily lost on a mountain top, turning their 9-mile hike into 12 (or something like that). Some other hikers pointed them in the right direction and everything turned out fine.

On the next day after breakfast, we got into another taxi with our bags and got out at the foot of a mountain in the Snowdonia park, and our bags traveled on to the next inn in Llanberis.

See the full set of pictures here.

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Arrival and Porthmadog

Arrival for them was more taxing than for us, but for those of us awake on the train, the the place names teased our brains.

This is clearly a fancy-yacht-person kind of town.

The next day we got started hiking.

When we finally arrived at our destination town, we rewarded ourselves with some Welsh Rarebit.

After that, we took the train back to Porthmadog. The next morning we traveled by taxi to Beddgelert.

The Theater of Operations

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The Transportation

We rented a car. We would not have done that for just ourselves; we like our little car just fine for us. But with four adults, intercontinental luggage for half of them, and a week’s worth of winter clothing, we opted for something bigger and more comfortable than our little cold, weak, loud station wagon. I rented us something in the Passat class, but we were pleased to see an Audi A6 waiting for us. It felt more difficult to maneuver around parking lots and little European towns, but it was roomy and fancy. And, apparently thirsty for oil. Or at least it thought it was.

 

We pulled over in the dark about a third of the way to Frankfurt to see what we could learn from the owner’s manual about those warning messages. We considered buying some oil from a gas station and adding it, but in the end decided to press on. In the morning, practically on the FRA airport grounds, I called Buchbinder in Regensburg and they directed me to the EuropCar station at the airport. They saw the same warning and added a liter of oil and declared us good to go. ((Except that it was the day of the test of the nationwide Katastrophenalarm, and the blast doors in the parking gar where EuropCar FRA is closed with klaxons and flashing lights going off, trapping us and everyone behind us, for a few minutes until some brave soul got out of his car and simply pushed the blast door open for that long line of cars.)) An hour later, well on our way to the border with France, the warning lamp came on again and then finally stayed off for the rest of the trip.

The Lodging

We stayed in a little German town not far from the border to France called Rheinhausen (beware, there are dozens of German towns named that). Also beware that there are two restaurants nearby, both named “Schiff.” ((One of them is good. Guess how we know. We discovered that the Google review for one was attached to the location of the other. You want the one actually NOT in Rheinhausen.)) There are some parky, canal-adjacent walking paths around there, so if you get tired of the crowded Christmas market scene, you can go for a (long!) walk. Or maybe you like amusement parks; “Europa Park Rust” is less than 4 km away.

 

This town wasn’t our first choice, but we got moving on the lodging hunt a little late and La Mirabelle was all that was left in our price range near the target towns with two rooms available for the duration of stay in the area. But it was a good choice nevertheless: great breakfast selection, very friendly and helpful staff, and free parking on site were all much appreciated. Other perks of the town: its Thai restaurant was pretty good and the large, well-stocked Rewe opens daily ((But not Sundays and holidays of course. It’s still Germany.)) from 7am to 10pm.

The Target Towns

Strasbourg

We parked kind of far away from the action, but that didn’t mean it cost less. There were several different markets areas happening here. I snagged some pain d’épice to take home. Warming up with hot chocolate at a café on the river bank was a good idea.

 

   

Ribeauvillé and Kaysersberg

Driving across the border near Marckholsheim was very frustrating. There was construction work on the locks over the river causing long lines of cars in both directions. What’s more, the drivable part was reduced to just a few meters of width, and we were in an unfamiliar rental car tank. But once we got close, we started following signs for the Navette parking, and that was a much better deal: cheaper price, easier parking, so much better on my nerves.
   

Colmar

This was the town that inspired us to come back for wintry visit. We were hoping for a sit-down lunch at place that would serve us choucroute and maybe some munster cheese over potatoes, but we couldn’t find anything halfway traditional, open and not already marked as COMPLET — so we opted for an Indian restaurant. ((Incidentally, right next door to the Lebanese restaurant Sarah and I enjoyed during our visit in March.)) It was pretty good, but I think we would have been happier with some SAUSAGE and SAUERKRAUT.

Basel

Basel was a nice surprise, in more ways than one:

1. parking was fairly convenient
2. the city was very walkable, despite streets and hills
3. the rental car had a CH vignette still valid for 2022 in it!

So we drove down, crossed the border (no one was interested in checking our car), had lunch, cruised some grocery stores and spent our last hour (“Happy Hour”) between 16:00 and 17:00 browsing the Historisches Museum Basel at the Barfüsserkirche on Barfüsserplatz ((The fact that that neighborhood in Basel is nicknamed “Barfy” is a little weird, especially for their eating establishments – “Barfy Pizza”, etc.)) for free.

The next day was a big, long, slow, somewhat scary drive home. But the car behaved, and so did all the drivers in our vicinity. We were tired when we got home and very much appreciated the short walk to our favorite local Indian restaurant.

Take a look at the full set of our pictures from this trip if you like.

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We did a long weekend there, departing Regensburg after work on a Friday for Zurich. Staying in Zurich on the way to Milan made it convenient to reconnect with our pals P. and H. We stayed at a B&B Hotel near the Zurich airport, because it’s not far from their neighborhood. I’m not sure I’d stay at that B&B place again (or any franchise, it’s a hotel chain). It felt like it was mid-level between Easy Hotel and Motel One. It would do a in a pinch, but probably not my first choice going forward. After a lovely lunch and chat with our pals the next day, we pressed on towards Milan, arriving after dark in the rain.

Sarah used booking.com to get us a room at Porta Tosa from Saturday night to Tuesday morning. Our host Stefano kindly human-shielded a public parking spot across the street for me on our way in, and we only had to pay for parking on Monday. That was convenient; it worked great with EasyPark. Stefano had the paper logo pre-printed for us to show the meter-checker-person we’d paid that way.

Cibo

We didn’t have any major points on the itinerary besides the Duomo. Porta Tosa is basically a straight line east from the city center on a bus line and a tram line, so we used that a lot. Stefano provided a very useful map with some recommendations for food and activities in the immediate area, and there were good overlaps between his recommendations and Sarah’s own research. We ate at

• Cooperativa La Liberazione for dinner
• Locanda del Menarost for dinner
• Bacco for lunch

…besides some fast-food pizza (OMG with cacio e pepe supplì) al taglio and occasional coffee and pastries while out walking around. It was all wonderful, and not at all as fancy as I’d feared. Cooperativa La Liberazione had kind of a hipster socialist gourmet vibe. There we learned the word stinco – much more delicous than it sounds.

Locanda del Menarost squeezed us in without a reservation on Monday night, told us we’d have to eat and give up our table in 45 minutes, but then relented and let us stay when someone else cancelled their reservation. That was wonderful food too – particularly the desserts.

This was the main attraction, mostly by default. We didn’t come to Milan seeking it out. It was thing the thing that’s there year-round. We opted for the expensive visit package, including the elevator ride to the roof, and the views were worth it. Even under cloudy skies.

You can see the entire set of photos from this trip here.

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The first night at our B&B in Colmar (Villa Elyané), Florence, our innkeeper, recommended Le Fer Rouge, a restaurant at the main train station. There, our waiter recommended a Pinot Noir from Ginglinger-Fix. Long story, short:

• Ginglinger is a fairly common name in the region, and there are lots of wineries named similarly.
• You won’t find their wine in shops. Why? They don’t do retail. Their customers are restaurants and exporters, or — if you seek them out at home, like we did — individual consumers.
• We never would have found them at all without Florence, who called them and told them we wanted to come out for a tasting.

We hit a few little towns in the region, like Ribeauvillé and Eguisheim and Zellenberg/Riquewihr, and tried to make sure the Flammkuchen and choucroute was equally good in every place. Good news: it was! We brought at least a little wine back from everywhere we stopped: mostly whites, but also a few reds we liked.

On our way out of Colmar the last morning, we sought out the model Statue of Liberty. It’s there because the original’s sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, hailed from Colmar.

The pictures are all up over here for posterity. Here are a few of our favorites:

“Happy Cadaver” is how my host dad used to refer to Fronleichnam — the Corpus Christi holiday on the Catholic calendar — because literal translations are hysterical. We used it for a long-weekend escape to Northern Italy with some first-timers.

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We rented a car (for some extra leg and headroom, and got an unexpected free upgrade!) and took it to some of our favorite spots, and a couple new ones. We did a return to Mantova (it had been over ten years). We explored Castelfranco Veneto again. Some more. And of course we returned to Ca’ de Memi, who are always so gracious and helpful and just downright charming. Love that place!

Some impressions of Mantova

• It’s cuter than it looks at first glance. Give it some time after arrival to grow on you.
• We had a great location for the two rooms we rented there fore the two nights, but parking was not ideal — that’s frequently the trade-off.
• It’s pretty easy to get from there to other neat places in the area, like Modena, Parma, or Vincenza.

We had lunch one day at La Smorfia, which, besides the cool-sounding name ((Google Translate says it means “grimace” — is that appetizing?)) , had really cool pizza varieties on offer.

Dipping a toe into Vicenza

We’ve driven past it for years on the way to Piombino Dese and Venice and whatnot, but we’d never stopped in for a look. It’s a beautiful city. We ate at a cafeteria-style restaurant called Righetti: You gather all the stuff you’re going to need/eat and pay at the end. It was good and fast and cheap ((Those magical mutually exclusive properties in software development don’t appear to apply, which is great for the hungry traveler.)). I didn’t detect any other tourists there; it appeared to me to be all people on their lunch breaks from businesses in the area.

Castelfranco Veneto

Our whole trip kind of centered around a grocery haul from the iPer La Grande i in this town. We brought back the usual goods:

• cheese
• pasta
• rice
• olive oil

But the town is cool by itself, even without the draw of the big supermarket. We had a nice stroll inside and outside the gates of the old town. We stopped for drinks and snacks on a city square in the shade. We had a nice meal with great ambience as the sun started to set.

Wine shopping

Check out the selection at Ferrowine! Rest assured, some of these made it home with us.

This was a nice retail experience, but we had plans to sample the bubbly goods directly at the manufacturer recommended by our hostess at Ca’ de Memi. She did not steer us wrong!

We drove towards the “Prosecco Road,” finding dal Fabbro in Valdobbiadene after a little navigational confusion. It sure was a beautiful drive getting there!

We did a visit to Bassano del Grappa, hit the Grappa Museum and marveled at the scenes on and near the Ponte Vecchio…including this very shiny rhinoceros sculpture:

Lunch was a delicious and quite priceworthy stop at Nuovo Borgo, where we took refuge from the heat in the shade of their garden. It was close to a large, free municipal parking lot, so that was a big plus. We got in there in the nick of time, right around last call for hot food before their kitchen stopped preparing lunch.

Arrivederci!

It was a great trip. The drive back was quite a bit longer than expected due to the G7 summit happening in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and all the extra police presence around the border to Austria and in the region in general. We were all exhausted by the time we made it home, safe and sound, and definitely earned a bottle or two of that prosecco.

Feeling refreshed and unstressed after those two weeks in PV, we steeled our nerves and got on a plane to Mexico City for our very first visit there. Sarah had meticulously researched the area and decided on Coyoacán as our first dip into the most populous city in North America. She found a great place for us to stay five nights in Casa Tamayo in the heart of the borough.

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Our first night was basically just the arrival; we were exhausted by the airport and taxi activity (even though we started the day unstressed and refreshed!). Casa Tamayo recommended taking a taxi from the airport, which we did, but we waited in line over an hour for our turn to get a ride. The drive itself was less than half an hour with kind of dense traffic, but at least it kept moving. We had the opposite of that on some bus routes back towards our home base from the anthropology museum…an hour bus ride (due to traffic) for something that would have been 15 minutes at most under moving traffic conditions.

Mexico City is a big place. This is not a surprise. We tried various modes of transportation:

1. Walking
2. Uber
3. Taxi
4. MetroBus
5. Subway

They each have their benefits and disadvantages.

1. Walking is cheap and good for you…unless you wipe out on cobblestones, broken sidewalk, or (plenty of!) other hazards.
2. Uber is variable in price, but not fast.
3. We were warned by our hotel not to hail cabs from the street.
4. The bus network is extensive and cost-effective, but you need to be prepared for traffic jams.
5. The subway is fast (and frequent!), but you may have quite a walk to the station of your choice, and it is densely-packed with everyone who has learned lessons 1-4 already.

I am so glad we never even considered renting a car.

Coyoacán

There were plenty of places to get breakfast, have a snack, get dinner, go out for ice cream, etc. all within a few hundred meters of our hotel. A guy we “met” online about 20 years ago who lives in Mexico City came to Coyoacán for an afternoon with much of his family to meet us in person for the first time. And they were delightful people. We’re looking forward to visiting them again on a future trip — either to Mexico City again, or maybe to one of their other home bases, like San Miguel de Allende.

Museums

Anthropology Museum

You can spend so much time there. We went on Christmas Eve, and it was pretty much deserted. We reached our museum limit for the day and thought “oh great, let’s just do this again in a couple days to get the rest of the way through it.” When we came back on the Tuesday after Christmas, it was mobbed. The line to get in was several blocks long. But at least it moved rather quickly; I think our total wait in line was less than 45 minutes.

Also, lunch in the restaurant there on Christmas Eve was excellent.

Mucho Chocolate Museum

This was a little harder to find, but worth a visit none the less. It’s a small museum covering the historical and cultural influence of chocolate around the world, with a particular focus on early 20th century European consumption. Nothing in the gift shop really appealed to us, so we sat down outside for a delicious Sacher-like torte and cup of hot chocolate.

The Trip Back

Around the time we departed for Newark on the way to Puerto Vallarta, Europe was just waking up to the Omicron variant threat. While we were in Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City, reports came flooding in of flight cancellations to, from and in the USA. I guess were lucky in that our route back to Germany didn’t take us through the USA. We were as vaccinated as possible. We had all the documentation for that in electronic and old-school paper (signed in ink by pharmacists!) form. Stepping off the plane in Munich, there were border patrol agents waiting for us at the gate, who took a preliminary glance at our residence permits and then waved us through (and that didn’t excuse us from the normal border patrol and passport check at all). We were holding our breath the whole time that we wouldn’t get stranded somewhere, and … we didn’t. But we’re still pretty sure it’s going to be a while before undertake so much travel in the space of a few months again.

Our theater of operations (neglecting the overnight stay in Newark on the way down to Puerto Vallarta, because hey, it’s just Newark):

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Puerto Vallarta

Corona precautions kind of limited us in our activities in Puerto Vallarta; we got a lot of much-needed poolside relaxation in. Nevertheless, we did try a few new things, and they were all great:

• Sheraton Buganvilias Sunday Brunch (insider tip: the Mariachis arrive around 11; reserve your table for shortly beforehand)
• Chartered day trip to San Blas, including mangrove wildlife observation (birds and crocodiles) and a trip up to the old colonial outpost
• “Rhythms of the Night” show across the Bahía de Banderas from us

And, we returned to a few of our favorite activities:

• shopping for neat stuff (especially glassware) at Mundo de Cristal
• taco lunch at El Campanario
• hitting various markets downtown after a stroll along the Malecón

San Blas Day Trip

The Usual Holiday Snaps

Next up: Parte Dos

Theater of Operations

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First step was to finish work on Friday and get our butts into Italy. We got a room at a Best Western in Trento. We thought we’d stayed their before, but upon arrival, it became clear that this was a new venue for us. It was dark when we arrived after work, but the views the next morning were great.

After breakfast, we considered our options:

1. drive directly to Verona
2. joyride along some lakes
3. go off the beaten path and check out Lusiana again some more from last time

We discarded #1 and #2 above due to the expected tourist saturation based on German license plates on the roads on the way down. The drive to Lusiana was glorious: weather, scenery, atmosphere, and of course, company. We opted for a toll-free route, hoping for scenic views and were not disappointed. We stopped several times along the way just to ooh and ahh.

We sat on a city square at a bar open for lunch and drank Crodino and enjoyed sandwiches before setting off for our hotel in Verona.

It was a pretty easy drive getting to our hotel. Two things stood out:

1. the shower was excellent: a built-in shelf AND a bench!
2. the croissants the next morning were phenomenal

After a change of clothes, it was time for a night at the opera. We stopped off for dinner at La Pizza di Paolo & Rosetta and were pleasantly surprised by the selection and friendly service.

It was there that I first noticed something wrong with my shoe.

As we continued our walk towards Piazza Brà (the arena), large chunks of the sole started crumbling away. By the end of the performance, both soles were 80% gone. None of this was going to be a big deal, until the rain hit just after midnight. We tried hailing cabs with no luck until we were most of the way back to the hotel. The last chunk of sole detached in the hotel lobby. Walking home after dark on cobblestones in pouring rain in your bedroom slippers? DO NOT RECOMMEND

Fortunately, the weather the next day was glorious (at least where we were) and we motored off after a hearty breakfast to iPer la grande I in Castelfranco Veneto. We loaded up on non-perishables and even stocked the cooler in our car with some perishables. Who knows when we’ll get the chance again. GET VACCINATED SO I CAN SHOP

Driving back, we ran into a few of the usual traffic slow-downs approaching the Brenner Pass, but nothing too terrible. From Innsbruck, we took the B177 towards Zirl and the German B2 and Garmisch-Partenkirchen ((Note to future me and other takers of that route out of Innsbruck: your transmission will get a WORKOUT; that climb is STEEP!)) to visit some pals in their new place and bring them some housewarming Italian groceries. And use their bathroom.

Feeling much better after that, and some light refreshments, we had an easy drive through the heart of Munich back to Regensburg.

I placed a carry-out order for dinner through their website today around 14:00. It was slick; I (generally) like a restaurant that has ordering processing built into their own website instead of farming it out to an order processor and delivery service.

I ordered a couple main dishes, paid through PayPal (another plus) and made a note of the pick-up time.

4.5 hours later, I showed up, parked my bike, and walked in, cooler in tow, enjoying the smells from the street on my way in. The young man behind the counter seemed flabbergasted. “But we are closed the WHOLE DAY! You can order for another day, OK?”

“No, it’s NOT OK!” I responded. “I have a confirmation email from your website, and a confirmation of payment through PayPal and now you are telling me you don’t have the food I ordered. Why do you permit orders to come in on days you are not in business?” He said it’s automatic through the website and they have no power over that.

He called someone to talk to me in German (my skillz are stronger than his in that language, apparently) and we went another couple of rounds on the clerk’s phone. When I told him I was angry that his company took my money and didn’t honor the transaction, he told me to get my money back through PayPal. When I asked what I should do with my dinner plans, he said I could do whatever I want.

After I cancelled the payment through PayPal, this blogpost is what I want to do.

After finishing up Mittagessen in…um…Essen ((Forgive me.)), we got back in the car and drove for like seven hours across most of the country to Berlin. We’ve visited Berlin many times, but we always try to do a mix of new and old stuff. Here are the bullet points:

• Indian food around the corner (practically) from our excellent hosts at https://karma-berlin.de
• Cool strolling and shopping in and around the Tempelhofer Hafen
• Breakfast not once, but TWICE at https://www.meyman-gourmet.de/
• Gluten-free baked goods (actually delicious!) and coffee at Café Pretty Hill in Schöneberg ((It is embarrassing how long it took us to get the pun on the name.))
• Angry Chicken – https://www.angry-chicken.com/ ((Note to future me: don’t get more than a “medium” anything.))
• BRLO Brwh near Gleisdreieck – https://www.brlo.de/en/ ((Does anyone definitively know how to pronounce this?)
• More delicious Indian food at https://www.amrit.de/ after the Dyke March

And, then on our way home to Regensburg, A BONUS VISIT with three Leipziger pals!

1. More delicious Indian food (and OMG, they were not kidding about the spiciness levels on that Paneer Jalfrezi) at https://www.safran-leipzig.de.

2. Scored some post-dinner drinks at a Späti to enjoy on a stroll and in a park (by the way, duck into the university library there in Leipzig — what a cool place!).

3. Even snagged a couple night shots on our way back to the hotel.

After that, it was a completely uneventful drive back home. Just what you want!

It felt really good. So good, that I can’t cover it all in one post. Part II will follow.

Wiesbaden

It was just a stop-over point for us because we departed Friday after work and didn’t want to undertake a big ol’ drive after a full week of anticipation. Plus, our long-term pal and host Matt K. wouldn’t even be there until Saturday afternoon. So we got to Wiesbaden after work (traffic was not as bad as I’d feared) and expected to crash out at the hotel.

But it’s much a cooler town than I’d thought. And it has a Five Guys. Note to self: don’t get a large ANYTHING.

Brussels

• We arrived on late Saturday morning, and met Matt G. at Place du Chatelain in the Ixelles neighborhood. He gave us a lovely impromptu tour and we got a delicious lunch on the street at Pizza Mamma Roma.

• That afternoon we got back in the car, headed out to the Zaventem airport, picked up our ol’ pal Matt K. and the merriment continued.

• He showed us his favorite parts of the city on foot, including a stop for a snack at the legendary Maison Dandoy for some Liège Waffles and espresso that blew our minds.

• Sunday, we visited the Horta Museum. If you like Jugendstil design, this will be your joint. As opposed to the Mucha Museum in Prague, the Horta Museum is a less of a gallery and more of a snapshot in time from the turn of the (previous) century of an idealized socialist paradise domicile.

• We walked around a bit more and then circled back to La Chatelaine Du Liban for a lovely dinner.

• Monday morning, we dropped Matt K. off at work on our way to meet Pam M. at her home for coffee. She baked us a delicious surprise zucchini cake! The airliners passing overhead reminded me very much of the first ten years of my life near Selfridge ANG.

It was so cool to catch up with Matt K. again before geography makes that impractical again, and meet Matt G. and Pam M. in person after only having interacted with them online before.

Essen

After departing from Pam’s, we hit the road for Essen to meet up with Aileen and Justin for…Essen. ((I bet they’ve never heard that joke before.)) It was almost directly on our way, and we have had a lot of fun with them online, so why not see if they are just as cool in person? ((Spoiler: they are!)) That was a nice way to break up the seven-hour drive to Berlin. If you ever get a hankering for a BIG SLABBA TOAST, I vouch for Miamamia.

First, I strained the liquid into a medium saucepan. I didn’t want any discernible floaty bits.

Second, I simmered it in a medium saucepan about 8 minutes over medium heat, to reduce it by half. The result from Sarah’s bean batch and the strained and simmered reduction was just over 240 g (a little more than a cup) of aqufaba. I put that into the fridge for a couple days until ready to experiment with it.

Last night, I set to work following this recipe for the ingredients and using our experiences with homemade egg pasta as a guide for method and resulting dough texture.

It worked! I liked the black pepper flavor embedded in the pasta. The raw dough didn’t taste the same as egg noodles we’ve made in the past, but rather more like the usual dried pasta — just in soft form. I would definitely make these again when there is another batch of aquafaba to be used up. Like all fresh pasta varieties, these cook fast and are less sturdy than store-bought dried pasta — so I don’t expect they would hold up to the vigorous mixing required for a dish like cacio e pepe (for example). But I bet they would work great in all other typical pasta applications.

Aquafaba (vegan) Black Pepper Pasta

Adapted from Egg-Free, Vegan Homemade Black Pepper Pasta for use with our equipment. The original method calls for a food processor with a spinning blade to form a ball. That method worked great for us making dumpling dough back when we had such a machine. For this recipe, we used a stand mixer with a paddle, dough kneading hook, and pasta rolling and cutting attachments.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (250 g) all purpose flour -OR- 00 flour
• 1/2 cup (120 g) reduced aquafaba
• 1 tsp (3 g) sea salt
• 1 tbsp (15 g) extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp (2 g) freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Mix together the dry ingredients (Tipo 00 is what we used) with the paddle on a stand mixer.

2. Dump in the wet ingredients and continue mixing a bit more until well combined.

3. Switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough starts to climb the walls of the mixing bowl and fall back in on itself. Interrupt the kneading and help it if necessary. All of this took no more than a few minutes of kneading time. We did not have to adjust the flour or liquid at all to get the text we needed it. Squish the dough together into a ball shape.

4. Let the dough rest in a ball, covered tightly, for 30 minutes. We put a silicone lid over the mixing bowl and let it rest inside that (rather than use plastic wrap).

5. Cut the dough ball into three or four pieces. One at a time, flatten them and run them through the pasta roller, doing the usual lather/rinse/repeat of folding the ends in and re-rolling at the widest setting at least three times before rolling progressively thinner. Our tagliatelle came out great on the #5 setting.

6. Cut the flat sheets into noodles, dust them with flour and let them rest in nests while you prepare to boil them. They will finish quickly.

Pro tips from last-night-me to next-time-me:

• you gotta microplane that cheese as finely as possible
• pecorino grates more easily than grana padano (which I subbed for the parm
  this time) or parmigiano
• our cheapo IKEA stainless steel skillet was fine for boiling the pasta, but with so little water (to encourage the starchiness) it really can stick if you’re not careful
• our 12″ cast iron skillet was a champ for everything else
• the proportions below are scaled down by 50% from the original; that was plenty for two adults as a primo along with some roasted brussels sprouts — steamed broccoli would be a good choice next time, too

adapted from this WaPo recipe

Ingredients

• 3.5 cups (800 ml) water
• 3/8 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for finishing to taste
• 1/2 pound (225 g) dried bucatini (or other long pasta, cooking time adjusted if necessary)
• 2 tablespoons (25 g) unsalted butter
• 1.5 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper
• 2 ounces (60 g) Parmesan cheese, very finely grated
• 1/2 ounce (15 g) pecorino Romano cheese, very finely grated

Directions

In a deep, wide skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, bring the water to a boil, then stir in the salt. Cook the bucatini in that for 9 minutes (or per package instructions) until al dente, stirring every now and then so they don’t stick together or to the bottom of the pan, and to ensure they are submerged. Add hot water if necessary to keep the pasta just-barely covered. Drain, reserving all the cooking water. (You should have about 1 1/8 cups (265 ml) water; if not, add enough hot water until you do.)

In a large, high-sided, nonstick saute pan over high heat, cook the butter until bubbling, then stir the pepper and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Pour in the reserved cooking water (carefully, watch for steam bursts), bring to a rapid boil and cook until silky and slightly reduced, about 5 minutes. Toss in the pasta and stir vigorously into the sauce. Add the Parmesan in two batches, continuing to stir vigorously as you go and waiting until the first half has melted before adding the next. Once all the Parmesan has melted, add the pecorino, continuing to stir, until it has also melted and the sauce is smooth and silky.

Serve hot.

I took a few pictures:

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And then some more today, when the sun finally revealed itself again:
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Our Siemens washing machine started beeping at the end of every cycle. As far as we know, it never did that before a few weeks ago (and we’ve had this machine for 16 years at this point).

I did some serious googling duckduckgoing to try to figure out whether it is a warning, like

hull breach imminent! locate your galoshes! get everything off the floor!

or just an unexpected reminder that the cycle has completed.

There were a lot of German-language posts on DIY bulletin board I found saying, essentially,

“RTFM! You can turn that down or off.”

Well, our manual doesn’t mention that function at all (I scoured it to make sure). I finally found this tip here that appears to have done the trick, even though our model number is off by one digit.

Wenn vor dem Start die Schleudertaste “1400 –> 600” gedrückt und gehalten wird, kommt ein Alarmton in diversen Lautstärken… und am Ende dann auch “aus”. Schade, dass das nicht in den Bedienungsunterlagen zu finden war…

Epilogue:

We still don’t know why it suddenly started doing this end-of-cycle beeping after all these years. Maybe our landlord or the Fußbodenheizungshandwerker nudged the washer at some point recently.

These are nicer.

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In other news, I got a nifty little video camera. It’s quite small and comes with a protective case and plenty of fiddly little accessories for mounting and positioning. It mounts to my bike OK, I guess (I’d prefer something with a better quick-release snap so I can park at a Biergarten and take the expensive bits in with me — like my phone’s mount has).

Here’s a two-minute video segment of a 40-km bikeride from yesterday.

Bonndorf is a little town on the eastern edge of the Black Forest way down south, not too far from Switzerland. It is

• a two-hour drive to Reutlingen to visit some dear ex-Regensburg friends (so nice to catch up with them)
• a one-and-a-half drive to Friedrichshafen to visit the Zeppelin museum
• a one-hour drive to Freiburg to do some on-foot exploration

The town is laid out over a bowl in the foothills with a quirky little parky-zen-garden thing down in the center and wide swaths of hilly farmland to the south. Foot- and bike paths crisscross these, and lead through the wooded area to the east of town. We took several long walks, soaking up the sun at every opportunity: rain was in the forecast many of our 8 days there and overcast skies on for the rest. And besides, after all that time in the car getting there and driving up and down the Rhine on the previous leg of this vacation, it felt good to move around a bit under our own power.

Notes for next time in the area:

• Those little towns are serious about their speed limits. I don’t think I got any tickets via radar camera, but they were sure to be found in every little town (thanks Waze!).
• Call ahead and reserve for dinner at those highly-rated-on-Trip-Advisor little restaurants that are open in the off-season. More than once we rolled up to find that they are still full-to-bursting and taking tables only by prior reservation.
• Consider the public transportation options attached to your FeWo carefully. We were pleased to find a Konus Karte came attached to our stay, but having to learn the local bus system in order to make use of it was daunting. And getting to Freiburg, for example, would have taken twice as long as with our car. So maybe next time we’ll get a place in a town with a train station.
• Speaking of driving: we opted to drive the B-roads most of the way back, through all those little towns. But they were adorable and we got the best fuel economy ever and despite catchin’ a draft out many a trucker’s backdoor [breaker breaker one niner] and taking 20% longer than otherwise, it was a much more enjoyable drive. And we had the time for it, so why not?

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Most of our winey traveller activities in Germany have been along the Weinstraße but there are lots more spots to visit for a tipple. Like the whole Rheingau. So, with a lot of the travel demand reduced in general and all regions of Germany back to school (whether in classroom settings or otherwise), the selection of Ferienwohnungen on short notice when all the relevant regions of France hit the Risikogebiet list was surprisingly rich. We picked out a Ferienwohnung in a former nuns’ home directly on the banks of the Rhine in Lorchhausen.

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Truth be told: that area has nice vineyards for hiking, but NOTHING else going for it. Fortunately, our FeWo had very convenient parking and the house was about 200 meters from the train station (and about 10 meters from the tracks, so it kinda felt like being at home in Regensburg). We used all three modes of transportation:

1. vineyard hikes and
2. drives around the area
3. rode the rails with an RNV day ticket

in order to:

• hit up a winery in Eltville-Erbach (buying directly from the vintner makes us feel extra cool)
• walk along and above the Rhine in various towns
• chill out in our FeWo with its nice Rhine views, watching freighters and a few cruise ships chug by
• seize the opportunity for a fancy lunch when it presented itself, but otherwise ate a lot at “home” in the FeWo

Making use of the vacation apartment’s kitchen actually was more conducive to trying local wines than you might think. If you’re driving around, you can’t sample as much as you’d like. And if you’re town-hopping via train, carrying bottles around all day kinda sucks. Best compromise: hit up the supermarkets’ local wine shelf. They’ll have representative wines you can pack in your car, enjoy that evening at your vacation apartment and the next day you can buy more of the ones you like the most.

After four days of mixed weather in the Rheingau, it was time to head south towards the Swiss border, for … EIGHT days of mixed weather. Stay tuned!

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Corona squashed the big event in the town, but that didn’t completely shut down everything, so we went anyways. Couple reasons for that:

1. Before the cancellation announcement, we got a Ferienwohnung in Freinsheim behind the biggest church next to the Rathaus by some fluke (last year, right after last year’s event and well before Corona was a concern for anyone), and we wanted to go back to it next year (we have since learned that it’s already rented out for 2021, so we put in our request for 2022).
2. We just like that town an awful lot. Shout out to our ex-Heidelberg pals once again!

So we drove to Freinsheim, met up with our pal Snooker, and snarfed up the Saumagen and Weinkraut and Brodworsch and Zwivvelkuchl without 10k of our fellow revelers competing for our attention. Also, the weather kinda sucked, so maybe that was a silver lining. Still, for tradition’s sake, I took a selfie or two at my favorite spots on the Wanderung route.

Since the Weinwanderung was not happening at all, that gave us time to go check out Bad Dürkheim, an easy train ride further south from Freinsheim. We ate a nice lunch in a huge old wine barrel and strolled through the Gradierbau (“graduation tower,” ever heard of that? We had not!). Hat tips to old WEBMU pal Christie Dietz for the suggestions. We must have benefitted from the salty atmosphere, right? I mean, they wouldn’t have built it and maintained it all these years if it were good for nothing.

After our time in Freinsheim was up, we parted ways, but took a hint from Snooker to check out the Felsenkirche (“Crag Church”, set into a rocky outcropping along the river Nahe) in Idar/Oberstein before driving north to Wiesbaden to meet up with a friend there for Kaffee und Kuchen on our way to our Ferienwohnung in Lorchhausen.

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My routes:

Highlights:

• MOTU mural
• first ice cream of the season (whence the selfie)
• our favorite Italian market now has Packstation-esque fulfillment

Click ’em to embiggen ’em.