Looks a lot like Christmas

After not doing much travelling this year (as compared to other years) we headed off to Vienna for a long weekend last weekend.  This time of year the city is  known for their Christmas markets which have various stalls of ornaments and other gift type knick-nacks.  There are also the food and drink stalls  (our fave) which serve mulled wine or gluvine as it is also known (warm spiced wine) and winter punsch (no idea but its warm, fruity and full of rum) along with other goodies like roasted chestnuts and bread with some sort of pate which was lovely.

We hit on a fantastic weekend as we had beautiful weather for 3 of the 4 days we were there – the last day was overcast but we didn’t mind as we were leaving anyway.   We ate Weiner Schnitzel (breaded thinly sliced veal), beef goulash (beef stewed in a thick gravy) and Sachertort (chocolate cake with a layer of apricot jam).  We also ate some weird potato hash brown thing that was brushed with garlic butter and sold at various stalls along the street and I got cotton candy because it’s my favourite treat ever – yes, the trip seemed to revolve around food and drink as most of our trips do.

Weiner Schnitzel

Hashbrowns

We visited a bunch of Christmas markets throughout the city and on Saturday went to one of their famous street markets Naschmarket which had everything from fresh food to antiques and was packed – it was amazing to see what incredible antiques they had though.

We were even cultured enough to take in an Opera – Mozart’s Magic Flute (my first and probably last unless the dudes from the Muppets narrate the next one).  I was amazed however that each and every seat had their own mini teleprompter that provided an English translation for what was going on on stage…pretty sure we wouldn’t have made it to intermission if not for that.

Opera translator

 

These guys would have livened up the show

It definitely got me in the Christmas spirit – and by Christmas spirit I mean sheer panic as to how little I have done and how quickly Christmas is approaching….I need another glass of punsch!

Happily ever after…

Since we moved here, we have had been able to witness two weddings out of the country, one in Austria and the other this past Bank Holiday weekend in Barcelona….unfortunately, we haven’t witnessed any UK weddings but are putting adequate pressure on some of our friends to take the plunge so we can go to one.

The wedding this weekend was in an absolutely beautiful venue slightly outside of Barcelona.  We arrived by coach and were given a fruit smoothie and fruit kebabs to give us something nice and nutritious before moving on to beverages of the alcoholic variety.

The ceremony was outside under slightly threatening skies but as luck would have it the rain held off and it turned out to be a beautiful and clear night.  Because the groom is Swedish and the bride Spanish, bits of the ceremony were done in each language as well as English which made me feel utterly ashamed of only  being uni-lingual (and not very good at the one I do speak).

Following the ceremony we were ushered to a garden terrace area where we had drinks and were served more varieties of tapas than I even knew existed.  My favourites included spinach balls rolled in almonds and drizzled in honey, tempura shrimp, toasted bread with parma ham and a pork/veggie/almond dish just to name a few.  This went on for ages until our bellies were almost bursting at which point we moved to our table under the stars for dinner.

Dinner was also fantastic and throughout the meal we were able to witness  Spanish and Swedish wedding traditions.  It started by greeting the bride and groom by spinning our napkin above our heads like a helicopter and cheering them in.  Then was the ‘table wave’ where everyone at the table banged their hands on the table top and screamed at which point they then all point to another table who then had to carry on the banging/screaming/pointing until one table screws it up or every table has a chance to participate.  The next tradition was brought by the Swedes and includes all the women at the wedding going up and kissing the groom on the cheek whenever the bride left her spot at the table and vice versa. I tried my best to make up some random tradition that I would claim was Canadian but couldn’t come up with anything.

Overall it was a great night that bled into the morning as we didn’t get back to our hotel until 5:30 am which apparently is another of the great Spanish traditions.  All in all it was a spectacular weekend and we are very happy for the newlyweds (and thankful for the invite!)

El wherea??

We are back from our week away to get some winter sun. We were looking for somewhere hot and weren’t planning on doing much more than tanning and reading.  Based on a that brief, a friend of a friend recommended El Gouna, Egypt. After doing some research on Trip Advisor we decided it sounded exactly like what we were looking for (let me point out that although we were heading to the culturally rich country of Egypt, we didn’t intend to venture near anything cultural…except for observing the resort camel or tasting locally brewed beer).

El Gouna, from what we could tell, was completely built to be a tourist destination…7 years ago it was pure desert now it is 14 hotels, a USPGA golf course, a marina and a downtown area.  The area is completely assessable via tuk tucks which you could take around the area for a flat fee of 5 Egyptian Pounds per person no matter where you wanted to go (about 62 pence or $1.14 CDN).

The downtown area was walking distance from our hotel and includes a bunch of restaurants (Thai, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, Pub, etc etc), a supermarket and various other shops.  The Marina was a bit farther away but also had a number of restaurants and a collection of private yachts that could rival Monaco.

The El Gouna tourist board (or whomever manages this mini paradise area) has encouraged the hotels not to offer just all inclusive packages to get hotel guests to leave their resorts and drive business to the downtown and marina restaurants.  We opted for a bed and breakfast option which worked out well as we were spoiled for choice when it came to food between the resort, marina and downtown.  There was a 2 hour time difference but the hubby adjusted to the LET (Local eating time) well and we started testing the restaurants out right away.  The food was excellent (minus the minuscule mini bar snacks)  and we couldn’t help but notice the effort that each restaurant took in their presentation.

The staff at both the restaurants and resort were incredibly friendly, honest and never did someone approach us to sell us anything or imply that they wanted a tip for anything.  One night we went to the Seventh Star restaurant at the marina, when we left I noticed that I had far less cash in my wallet than I thought we had.  We talked it through and convinced ourselves that I hadn’t lost it, that we had in fact somehow spent it.  Two nights later we went back to the same restaurant (because it was so good and they were so friendly) and the manager walked up to us and asked us if we had lost some money the night before…stunned we said yes at which time he said ‘don’t worry I kept it for you’.  Needless to say they received a good (and very well deserved) tip that night.

Our resort (Movenpick El Gouna) was great, it was immaculately clean, food was amazing and we were never at a loss for where to suntan as there were 3 pools, 3 lagoons and 1km of sandy beach along the Red Sea. All in all it was lovely and reminiscing about all of this makes me miss it already!

The view from reception

I could ramble on and on (as I do) but will stop and just throw in some pictures as they probably say it better than I could ever do.

The resort camel

The beach along one of the inlets to the Red Sea

A nice calm sunny day

Sunset from our back patio area

May bank holiday – toll booths and frozen fish

We just spent the (second) May bank holiday weekend driving around Normandy, France (which was lovely, more on that later). In preparation for the trip we did what every generation x-er would do and, (the night before the trip) went straight to Google maps, entered our start and end point and voila Google planned our trip! We quickly scanned the directions agreeing they looked legit transporting us from point A to point B on some fancy French highways, toll roads and around quite a few of those ingenious roundabouts (still not sure why we waste electricity on intersections with stop lights when whizzing through roundabouts is so much more fun).

Anyhoo we got our hire car once we arrived in France, followed the directions out the parking lot and straight on to a roundabout that shot us out on this nicely paved empty highway. We were excited to see that the speed limit was 130km per hour -except of course in rain when you have to slow down to 110….seriously? 110 in rain? can’t imagine what the French think when they come to Canada and are advised to go 100km/h on flat dry non treacherous pavement, (mon dieu, I can allée faster). Anyway we took off on this lovely highway and were greeted by our first toll booth (guess this is what google meant by a toll road), we slowed down slightly to grab the ticket and were off again (hubbie comparing it to a Formula 1 pit stop – clearly he was enjoying this increased speed limit).

After about 100km we hit the toll collection booth, hubbie handed in our ticket while I dug through my bag of euro cents left over from previous trips. We were both equally surprised when the toll lady said €6.95…WHAT? I was expecting €2 -3. I reluctantly handed over a 10 Euro note and we sped on. ….until the next pit stop. Ticket in hand we arrived at the next booth, another €6.50 for the privilege of traveling on this next stretch of road. We carried on past yet another toll booth which wasn’t even a booth it was a bucket you were to throw €0.50 for some unknown reason. We did, and carried on.

Finally, we approached this amazing looking (very high, very steep) bridge. As we marveled at the very high, very steep slope we were driving up, we arrived at the top to see the dreaded toll booth at the bottom…I knew there had to be a catch – these fancy bridges don’t just build themselves. Anyway this was another €5.00 which brought our toll road total to €18.95!! We considered picking up a hitch hiker to help subsidize the costs (coincidentally we did see about 3…do people really travel like that? Haven’t they heard the stories of the murderers who pick you up and don’t have inside door handles so you are stuck in there forever?? or was that just what my mom told me?…)

Anyway on our way back I was much better prepared, I had my Euro cash in hand as we approached the first booth only there wasn’t a toll guy (or girl) there. The booth had been taken over by a bunch of people with a big white bed sheets spray painted with some big French words (that I am pretty sure weren’t taught in my grade 10 French class) jumping up and down screaming and waving us through the gate. We smiled, waved and carried on through, hubby already happy at our €6.95 savings. Sadly the next booth hadn’t been overtaken by bed sheet toting pyromaniacs but we figured we couldn’t complain. Little did we know the best bit was yet to come…

As we approached the amazing bridge we got to the top and saw a pile of burning tires…could our favourite protesters be there?? As we got closer we noticed they had also somehow made these toll guards disappear and not only were they waving us through (hubby already smiling and calculating a savings of €11.95) but they handed us two bags of frozen fish…after consulting my French English dictionary I found that the fish was cod meaning not only had we saved over €11 today but we were up 24 fillets of frozen cod. Vive la France as they say!

Even the dogs walk slowly

We just returned from a lovely 3 day Bank Holiday break in Valencia, Spain. Valencia is about 3 hours south of Barcelona along the Mediterranean coast and is probably best known for their lovely oranges, the America’s Cup Sailing race and this year, hosting the first Formula 1 night race.

We had amazing weather for the entire three days with nothing more than wispy clouds in the sky and temperatures above 24 ever day which made for a lovely break from the fairly crap rainy weather we have had here.

One thing we did find on this trip (and have found on other European trips) is that the pace of life is incredibly different than London and certainly of that in Canada. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, we North Americans seem to go at a pace faster than that of our British and European counterparts. One notable example is the number of holiday days you get here from work as you get between 23 and 25 days to start with at most companies (compared to 10 in Canada). And, when you are on holiday it is pretty sacred, you never call anyone on holiday unless someone had died or the office burned down (not to ask where you saved a file on the server). Also, when you leave work for the day in London you leave work and you don’t go home to check your email at nights or on weekends nor does everyone insist on carrying a blackberry so they can be contactable at every moment of the day (although I do…I can’t help it).
Then, when you go to Europe though its a totally different story and Valencia was a perfect example. We were flipping through our tour book on the airplane and discovered that their business hours were Monday/Saturday 10am-1:30 then 5-8:30….seriously?? A 3.5 hour lunch break every day?? Yup we can attest to that as we arrived mid afternoon Saturday to the entire city was virtually shut down and then again shut tight on Sunday.

The other thing though that you notice is that the general pace of life is slower. Walking along the sidewalk people walk very slowly, there aren’t speed walkers shouting down their mobile phone dodging through the crowds trying to get somewhere in a hurry. When we were waiting for (their extremely efficient) metro trains we noticed that when we got on we weren’t followed by 10 people charging down the stairs to the train diving in at the last moment only to get their bag/hand/hair/child stuck in the door making them bounce back open and delaying the train. The people who missed the train merely sat down and waited for the next one….what a novel idea.

As much as I can recognise and point out these differences, I also realise that I am pretty used to my blackberry toting, talking fast, walking fast, typing fast, way of life and that 3 days is about all I can handle before I find myself dying to run down the stairs to catch a train and having to restrain myself from walking up the back of the slow moving man with his equally slow walking dog while checking emails on my blackberry….its good to be back

Easter in Barcelona

We had a lovely trip to Barcelona however we weren’t the only people who chose this city for an Easter break as the entire city was packed! There were queues around the corner for every Cathedral, Gaudi building and tourist bus but luckily there were enough restaurants for us to duck in to for some tapas and crowd avoidance!   

By far my favourite building was the Sagrada Familia, a church which Gaudi originally designed however has continued to be built following his death thanks to anonymous donors and the funds from the admission tickets.  It looks like something out of a fairytale and it amazed us that they are keeping true to the original design and continuing to build in the unique style (and yes, those are fruit at the top). 

I learnt a few things on the trip including that a one star hotel isn’t that bad as long as you keep the curtains closed so you don’t look right into the run down building behind you, BBC weather lies as there wasn’t one day that was 16 and sunny, a 20 euro boat cruise of the harbour does NOT incule any sort of narration and paella tastes lovely when sitting overlookign swanky boats in the Mediterranean.  

Not surprisingly I was very impressed with their Metro system as it was one of the most futuristic looking one I have had the pleasure of riding.  First of all the notification board telling you when the next train was coming was so accurate that it told you how many minutes and seconds until the next train and it was dead on each time.  Its waaaay better knowing that your train is coming in 4 minutes 23 seconds than just knowing its in 4 minutes! 

Once you got on the train they had little maps inside showing all the stops but each stop you had been to was lit up and the next stop was blinking to show you that you were going in the right direction and find out where you were quite quickly.  There was also a handy arrow that lit up telling you which side of the train the doors would open on so you wouldn’t be caught embarrassingly standing on the wrong side when the doors were opened.  Finally and most excitingly, you could use your mobile on 75% of the lines! 

This is a bit of a double edged sword as part (okay most) of me does enjoy a nice quiet ride into work while I tuck into my free paper free of  annoying ring tones and obscenely loud conversations but the other bit of me likes the idea of being able to send and receive email and surf the web on the way in so I don’t miss a second of the outside world.  Pretty sure though that there is little that will happen in the above ground world in the 34 minutes I spend under it that would warrant having to hear people rambling on about their plans for the day or organising with the wife who will pick up dinner. 

Bottom line, Barcelona is lovely and definitely worth a visit.

Tapas and Easter eggs

As we have both Friday and Monday off as statutory Easter holidays, we are taking advantage and getting out of the country and travelling to slightly warmer temperatures (hope my Easter chocolate doesn’t melt).  Have a great Easter  and I will write  next week and let you know how we got on in the land of tapas and Rioja wines. 

I leave you with an oldie but a goodie Easter cartoon….

Back in one piece

Well we are back from our ski trip.  We went to a lovely little place called Engelberg in Switzerland (never heard of it?  don’t worry, not many have which is why it was a great ski destination). Do you know who has heard of it though?  Every skiing family with kids under 5 and parents who love nothing more than kicking back with a glass of Swiss wine after dinner and letting their kids run screaming through the hotel. 

Yes, this blog is coming from a childless couple who was travelling with another childless couple.  Don’t get me wrong, I like kids, I just have issues with the ones that scream through dinner, then scream while playing a Disney Princess game at 10:00pm at the table right beside us (conveniently located 10 tables from their parents).  Do you KNOW how hard it is for me to not swear when losing at Yahzee (or any game for that matter)?

Anyway other than the kids, (the guy beside me on the plane passing out just before takeoff and leaving our passports in a hotel safe in Zurich) everything else about the trip was great.  We had the most amazing weather for the days we planned on skiing and over the course of the trip, about 6 feet of powder fell with our last day being the best day of all with fresh snow and a clear blue cloudless sky.

The thing we really liked about Mt Titlis (yup that’s really the name of the mountain) was that it wasn’t that busy….on what our hotel owners called ‘the best ski day of the year’, we never found ourselves waiting for more than 3 minutes to get on a ski lift and there were hardly any other skiers on the hill. At some points, it was only the 4 of us skiing down certain sections.

Luckily, the couple we travelled with had a simliar sense of humor as we did find ourselves in fits of laughter in appropriate and inappropriate times.  Most often however, we had the best chuckles over the ’lost in translation moments’ like when our waitress wished us ‘Good Appetite’ every time she served us a course of food (in fairness, Bon Appetite does translate that way but it was still funny) or when the woman from the front desk called up to our friend’s room exclaiming ‘It’s say goodbye time!’ which was an attempt to tell them that it was time to leave for dinner.  Other times, our laughter might have been the result of a few bottles of screw top Swiss wine but thats just a guess.

Overall though it was great and not breaking anything while skiing was a definite plus…otherwise, I would probably have been stuck playing the Disney Princess game with screaming kids (resisting the urge to teach them how to swear).

Jetsons-esque

I am back from skiing and happily made it in one piece!  I will blog about the trip later but until then thought you might be interested in my foreign gadget which I found on the trip. 

This gadget/machine thing was located at the bottom of the ski hill and was a Nestea tea vending machine that dispensed the bottles either Hot or Cold!!  Pretty cool (and very appropriately for a location that can be chilly).   

Basically for 2 CHF (1 pound/ 2 Canadian dollars) you choose your flavour of tea then they ask if you want it hot or cold.  Once you hit hot, an arm comes up and takes the bottle then places it in this mini microwave thing located below beside the picture of the mug (at this point my hands were pressed against the glass like a child at a toy store while I let out an ooooh neat!). 

 

It takes about 20 seconds then this arm grabs your tea and brings it to the side where you get it via a trap door.  The tea isn’t boiling hot but definitely warm to hold and would do the trick to warm you up on a chilly winter day.   Clever from a marketing point of view too as I really had never thought of drinking Nestea warm but it was quite nice and I would definitely get it again (okay partially to see the mini microwave thing again).

This has restored my faith in the fact that we aren’t too far away from the Jetson’s Food A Rac A Cycle which created full meals at the press of a button…I can’t wait! I have already cleared off a space on my kitchen counter.

Hoping to be back in one piece

I will be taking a mini break from blogging as we are heading off with friends to go skiing in Switzerland for a week.  I am looking forward to it but am not the best skier.  To put it in perspective, below is the trail map for where I learned to ski – it was called Glen Eden (that’s Canadian for snowy golf course)

 and this is the trail map for where we are going (click to enlarge)….

At least I should still be able to type with two broken legs!