Philadelphia Part II

Zak and I checked into our hotel room only to be shocked by how nice it was. Now, keep in mind that Zak and I don’t travel fancy. We stayed in hostels throughout Europe and rejected several Philly area hotels because the pictures on the websites were “too fancy”. So, imagine our shock when the hotel we choose was way above our standards. Our room had a breakfast bar, walk-in closet, linen closet, kitchen with dishwasher, large lovely bathroom, two beds, flatscreen tv and office area. What?! This place was one million times nicer than my first NYC apartment and Zak’s current dorm room studio.

After our shocked look at our lodgings, we headed out for a stroll around downtown Philly to see the famous LOVE sign.

Then we went to this outdoor game board park with it’s large Sorry pieces, Monopoly pieces, dominos and bingo chips. We’re not sure what motivated this awesome thing to happen, but we thought it was awesome.

These are photos of us with a former Philadelphia mayor.

You know, Philly makes me think that NYC doesn’t have enough statues of people. We really need to step up our game.

After our stroll, we headed to a magical place literally called the Magic Gardens.

It’s an entire space indoors and outdoors that is all mosaic glass.

It’s hard to describe but spectacularly awesome.

This is where the night gets blurry as we then spent the next 5.5 hours in a pub, drinking and enjoying Philly cheese steaks and watching football. Can you think of a better way to end a day? I can’t.

 

Philadelphia Part I

Over the weekend, Zak and I decided to take a trip since we both had the whole weekend off for the first time in forever. We decided to take a mini-trip to see a city we had never seen but that is so close to New York. So, we looked up some options and decided to go to Philadelphia which is less than two hours away. Maren let us take her car so we got to have an awesome road trip! Thanks Maren. We started our day in Philly with a trip to the Mutter Museum. This is a museum of medical oddities with babies in jars and preserved parts of strange anatomy and a piece of John Wilkes Booth’s spine. This place was awesome. We absolutely loved it. We learned a lot and it was cool for me to see what a lot of medical conditions looked like on different parts of the anatomy. The coolest thing was that this museum had in it something Meghan and I once watched a discovery channel special about. There was this woman who died and on her autopsy they found a stone baby in her abdomen. It was a baby that she had carried then it had died but it stayed inside her for 24 years and calcified so that it was literally stone when they took it out of her. The amazing thing is that she had two children with this stone baby inside of her. Anyway, it was cool to see something in person that I had seen on TV.

         

After the Mutter Museum we headed over to see Independece Hall and the Liberty Bell. You know, the traditional Philadelphia stuff. We made sure to take photos with all the founding fathers we could find.

One of our favorite statues was the Signer. It is a statue that is a tribute to all those who signed the constitution. Although why it isn’t a statue of a person signing anything is beyond us. Lisa thought it looks like the statue is signing into a microphone.

We thought it would be a good idea for each of us to pose like the statue. We’ll call it our tribute to the signers of the constitution.

On the walk to the Liberty Bell, there are stones along the way showing people who contributed to the building of the area. Our favorite was this one below that listed this man’s profession as “gentleman”. Now, for those of you who don’t read a lot of Jane Austen/Bronte sisters novels, you might not know that in those days the most fashionable of men did not have a profession and were instead called “gentleman”. In fact, it was often shameful to rich families for their children to take on professions, even jobs like doctor and lawyer reflected negatively upon the family name. Gentleman seems to have meant a lot of family money and fancy suits and living the dream in that fashion. Let’s face it, being a gentleman was once a lot more awesome than it is today.

Below is Independence Hall as seen from the glass enclosure of the Liberty Bell.

Before you get to the Liberty Bell, there is a long enclosure with a history of the Bell and other interesting Bell facts. With the Bell facts came these photos the Zak and I decided to recreate in our own Bell photos.

After the historical area of Philly we checked into our hotel and then headed out to the more modern parts of the city. Photos and stories to follow in Philadelphia Part II.

 

 

 

Trip Food Part VII

Today I tell you about the yummy food we ate in Lichtenstein. As you have already read, we expected to mock this tiny country and instead fell in love and talked about moving there and making our own denture fortune. When we got hungry, we didn’t have high hopes for this tiny hamlet and we were again wrong. We went into this hole in the wall Filipino food/gelato store and were in for the best lunch of our trip. For those of you who are concerned about the combination, I tell you that this is a New York specialty and so we felt right at home. Not the Filipino/gelato combination specifically, but the combination of odd things. For example, the cell phone/yogurt shop that Zak frequents or the Mexican/Chinese food restaurant on 78th street. Needless to say, we were happy to find an odd combination so far from home.

Above is our super yummy lunch of noodles and veggies and rice and goodness. After our yummy outdoor picnic lunch, we went back inside to try one of the many handmade flavors of gelato.

We tried the cheddar cheese and the purple yam flavors and they were really really good. Even the bits of cheese that I alread told you about were a nice and fun treat.

We had gelato many times on our trip in France, Italy and Lichtenstein and liked this one the best. And look at the super-cute cup our gelato came in. It’s a party both for the eyes and the taste buds!

 

Trip Food Part VI

Still in Switzerland on our world tour of cuisines, on the day we spent entirely in the town where we were staying, the lovely Lucerne, we opted for a Chinese feast. We did this at a restaurant whose sign fell down out front while we were inside. Luckily this was not foreshadowing of a bad meal.

We started with some vegetable curry and some sweet and sour chicken. This chicken was hands down the best sweet and sour chicken either of us had ever had. And we live in New York, where it’s practically on every street corner.

Our meal also came with some spectacular egg drop soup and egg rolls. I won’t show you the egg roll as I’m pretty sure you know what it looks like.

This is the front of the restaurant and the entire bing haus sign fell and hit the lantern and also brought down the lantern when we were halfway through our meal. For a brief period of time, no one could get in or out. Also of note was how funny it was to be served Chinese food by a german-speaking swiss family after ordering chinese food described in german on the all-german menu. Switzerland really is an interesting place.

 

Trip Food Part IV

Switzerland, ah Switzerland. When we were stopped by the ultra helpful and ultra chatty Mr. Pelham of the New York Pelhams, we asked him what we should eat that was uniquely Swiss. He told us that Switzerland doesn’t really have it’s own culture as it has three regions that speak three different languages and this makes for an odd national culture, namely one that doesn’t exist. He told us the only think Swiss is fondue and it was too hot to eat it. So Zak and I did a tour of the world in our three days in Switzerland. Starting with Germany at the restaurant next to Camp Swiss where we stayed. Lucerne is a German speaking town and the menu and our waitress were entirely German-speaking. The owner of the restaurant came to the table and explained every menu item in detail. Since we had spent about $12 on food in our first 8 days of travel, we decided to eat like chapions in Switzerland and every meal we ate had courses. I begin with our soups: I had a lovely pureed broccoli and vegetable soup that sorta tasted like Grandma Genow’s soup of the same variety. Zak had an awesome tomato/basil soup that rocked the house. We decided that if all we had eaten at that meal had been the soups we would have been extremely pleased with our choices.

But, we did continue to eat. And next up I had weinerschnitzel. After eating this meal, I have decided that schnitzel is the chicken fried steak of Germany. Except that it’s pork and not as greasy and there’s no gravy. But you know, other than that. This was an excellent meal and I’m glad that I tried it. Again, I got to enjoy the awesome house dressing.

Our redmeatitarian friend, Zak, opted for some fish with veggies and rice. This was also really good.

Our final course was our dessert sampling. We tried two different custardy things. One was coffee flavored, the other was mango. Needless to say, they were awesome. We declared this our best meal so far in Europe and were very glad that we decided to man up and actually eat. We were also sitting next to a great couple who were celebrating their anniversary and took time out to tell us where to go and what to do to enjoy Lucerne. So this meal wins for best meal and for best eating neighbors and most considerate owner. Well done, tiny near our hostel restaurant!

Okay, this is not all we ate in Switzerland as we were there for three days, but I’m not going to post them all at once as it would be the world’s longest blog. So, stay tuned for Trip Food Part V-Bern, Switzerland.

 

Trip Food Part III

Zak and I lunched in Austria after our surreal trip to the crystal museum. We lunched in the middle of the old square under a golden roof from the 1st century. We decided to share another sampling of things that sounded good on the menu. (Of note, in this part of Austria, the fare is mainly German). We tried a three-meatball combo. One was mushrooms and rice, one was some sort of cheesy goodness and one was garlic and herb-y. Good stuff. Then we had this stuffed baked-potato that had broccoli, spinach and tomato sauce in it. Let’s take a minute to talk about the house dressing of Europe. From France to Germany to Austria to Switzerland, the house dressing was the same and was the best thing we have ever tasted. We finally decided that it’s some sort of honey mustard vinagrette. The only odd thing about this is that Zak doesn’t like honey mustard dressings and I don’t like anything made with vinegar of any kind and yet we both raved about this dressing.

After our meal we opted for this blueberry scone situation with a vanilla custard sauce and giant cups of hot chocolate. Notice how they are almost bigger than the dessert plate. Also, are you seeing the cut out heart on our tablecloth? I don’t think I noticed that when we were there. Did Zak and I secretly have a romantic lunch in Austria?

I’d like to say we took great advantage of food in Italy, but it was again, a place where we forgot to eat. There is just so much to do and so much to see that Zak and I kept doing and seeing right on through meal times.  We did have some great cheap pasta ($6) in Verona for lunch one day.

And we had the best peach bellini ever at a hole in the wall place in Venice. Neither Zak nor I like bellinis all that much, but thought that when in Italy, we should probably have one and we were not upset by our decision. This thing was so very good. It cannot be described. That’s how good it was. On the plus side, since we had again forgotten to lunch this day, they gave us free chips with our drinks and we very much appreciated our free lunch.

Now, Zak and I did not eat what is pictured below but I wanted to show you how expensive things are in Venice. This is $10 Euro’s for sundried tomatoes, which is more than $10 US. Venice is one of the most expensive cities in the world and puts New York prices to shame. Perhaps this is the reason Zak and I opted for drinks and free chips in Venice instead of actual food. Oh, we also had gelato in Venice. You can’t go to Italy and not have gelato. Sadly, no photo as our desire to eat our cool treat overcame our desire to photograph it for you.

Up next, the world tour that was our eating in Switzerland.

 

Trip Food Part II

Next up, Amsterdam. This is a muffin that we split while in Amsterdam. That’s all I have to say about the muffin.

After the muffin, we went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered cheese dip and what came out was this:

This was the best thing ever! It was not at all cheese dip, but was instead shrimp and spinach melted in some sort of delicious cheese that we ate with a fork. It was so good that instead of ordering actual food, we just split a few of these.

The next morning, we drove through Germany to get to Munich where we ate dinner at a brewery that has been in business for 200 years. We decided to do a sampling of German fare and started with this giant mushroom meatball thing. It was so so good.

Next we had some apple pancakes which were more like fried apple fritters that you dipped in homemade applesauce. In case you weren’t sure, these also rocked!

We also tried some apple/almond/bread bake sort of thing that our waiter recommended that was really really good. The bread and apples were soft but the almonds were crusted in sugar and had a lovely crunch. Germany knows how to cook, I tell you that for sure.

In addition to our yummy food, we also had a few local-brewed beers which were really good. That’s a lot coming from me since I don’t like beer. I liked a lot of the beers that I had in Europe. Note that I tried a lot of beers in Europe since it seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, how can one go to Amsterdam and not have a Heinekin (which taste different there) or go to Germany and not try German beer? It would have been criminal. And I must say, they have a much better idea of how to make a good beer than Americans do. I think I would become a beer drinker if I lived in Europe. Sadly, I do not and thus must stick with my Vodka drinking. On a related note: How great would it be if vodka-loving Brianne moved to Russia?

Also in the above photo you will notice two little shot glasses. Zak is a bartender at a place in the city and there is this bottle of liquor with a pear that is from Europe and is really expensive. Needless to say, we had never tried any in America. However this place had it for $1.50 per glass and so we tried some. This was extremely strong stuff. Extremely strong. For Zak and I to think something is strong means it cold probably kill others. With that said, it was very very good.  We felt very adult to be sipping away at our pear flavored goodness in Munich.

Next up, Austria and Italy.

 

Trip Food Part I

As promised to Lisa before we left for Europe, Zak and I took picutres of everything we ate while on our trip. I will now describe them for your enjoyment and jealousy.

Our second night in Paris, Zak and I ate our first full meal in Paris. We had a tendency to forget to eat while in the City of Lights. Our entire first day we split a baguette of bread, split an orange and had some wine. Anyway, our second night, we went a place recommended by my boss where they bring out courses of meals to you in large baskets and you eat for hours. It’s right by the Notre Dame cathedral and we loved every second we spent here. First for your meal you get cold salads and cold meats and this giant basked with lettuce and whole vegetables.

Then onto the main course of chicken and lamb with mashed potatoes, ratatouille and bread. Then a cheese course, then a fruit basket, dessert course and then espresso. This meal lasted for 2 hours and was so very good. It doesn’t hurt that after our meal, we saw the sun set behind the Notrel Dame cathedral.

Moving forward, our next destination was Brussels, Belgium where we did the right thing and started our day with waffles and fries and belgian beer for breakfast. Yes, I said for breakfast.

The ketsup in Europe is very different from what it is here. It’s much sweeter and has a lot more sugar. It’s very odd to have a condiment taste so different.

Our waffles were so good with little balls of sugar baked in, topped with strawberries and chocolate. You’ll notice in the photo my raspberry breakfast beer. It was a great way to start our day.

After wandering around the city for the day, we had dinner at a seafood restaurant, having been told that the seafood in Belgium is some of the best. As it is so readily available, it is also very cheap. Zak and I had these giant plates of mussels for dinner and it was way less than what you’d pay for just a few in NYC. This was my first time having mussels and I must say they were quite good. They were cooked in this yummy broth with onions and celery and Zak and I ate them all. We also enjoyed more beer and wine and fries with our dinner.

After our dinner, we headed back to a chocolate shop that we had already visited earlier in the day to get more chocolates and some chocolate covered strawberries and bananas on a stick. I cannot begin to tell you how good Belgian chocolate is. You really can taste a difference. And, much like all things there, it is so cheap. If you go to a chocolate store here and get a single piece of chocolate, it’s $2.50. In Belgium, Zak and I bought the dessert picture above and 10 other pieces of chocolate for $14. We were so sure that they had rung us up wrong that we went back to the store to check. (How impressed are you with our tourist honesty right now?)

Needless to say while we often forgot to eat while in Paris, we did not neglect or stomachs while in Belgium. We had waffles twice, fries twice, mussels, more chocolate than any two people should eat in a day and only drank beer and wine. No water at all. This may be what contributed to our going to bed before the sun set that day and sleeping for 12 straight hours. True story. But nonetheless, an awesome culinary day!

Stay tuned for Trip Food Part II featuring Amsterdam and Munich.

 

Vaduz

Yes readers, this is finally it. After 5 months of slowly but surely blogging about my Europe trip, this is the last entry. Today I tell you about the glory that is Lichtenstein, smallest country in the world and largest exporter of dentures in the world.

Zak and I went here from Switzerland one day as it is between Switzerland and Austria and was a very short trip by train and bus and we thought it would be a funny thing to say we did. Yes, we went for the novelty, figured we’d spend a few minutes there and then be able to mock this teeny tiny place for all the rest of our days.

Little did we know that we were about to get smacked in our cocky faces with the awesomeness that is Lichtenstein. That’s right!

Vaduz isthe capital city and home of the royal family and where we spent our best day in Europe. We started out by wandering around the tiny town and then settled in for lunch at this outdoor Phillipino restaurant where this woman made us the best food ever. It was so so good. Then we headed inside to pick our gellato flavors for dessert. She makes all the gellato from scratch which is why there were such odd flavors like the two we chose: purple yam and cheddar cheese. That was not a typo. I said cheddar cheese complete with real cheese chunks. I don’t think I’d want to eat it every day, but it was not too bad and definately worth trying. The purple yam rocked the house.

After our yummy lunch, we headed up the mountain to see the castle where the royal family lives. Of note, we did not know at the time that the royal family still lived there. We thought it was like the other castles we had seen in Europe which are decorative or had been turned into museums. Obviously, this will come up later in my story.

So, we treked up this mountain road and it was absolutely breath taking walking up this mountain and seeing what was below in this most beautiful and under-appreciated country. When we finally got to the top, it does take a while, we saw the castle. Zak thought he’d wander past the chained off areas and into the inner courtyard to take this picture which is so great that I have been using it as my screen saver. The only problem is that he then got yelled at by what can only be called the Secret Service of Lichtenstein. It was about this time that we realized that the King and Queen still live in the castle. It was neither decorative nor a museum. At this point we calmly and slowly headed back down the mountain, having made it our goal not to be shot or arrested by royal guards while on our trip.

For the part of our trip that we expected to be a bust, it turned out to be one of the best things we did and we’d both go back if we were in the area.

So, if you can believe it, that concludes blogging about the trip. Well, sort of. You see, I have given you only the smallest of details of each of the places we visited. There are so many stories and so many wonderful things we saw, people we met and funny things that happened that I just couldn’t type them all out. Nobody has heard all about our trip and we’ve been back for five months. We really had the best time. In typical Zak and Brianne together fashion, some crazy things happened (like our smoking mini-van and getting lost in Verona for 2 hours looking for Paola) but they made our journey all the more fun. We saw so many places in such a short time that I wouldn’t recommend the itinerary for anyone else, but I also wouldn’t change it if I had it to do all over again. The only problem with the itinerary is that every time Zak and I talk about returning to Europe, we inevitably want to go back to all these places we’ve already been in addition to the many places we didn’t get to see.

I wish all of you could see all 1500 photos we took on our trip to get a small sense of what our time abroad was like.

Oops! I just remembered that there will be one more Europe blog as I purposely didn’t talk about any of the food we ate because we took pictures of all of it so that I could have a food blog. That’s right, a whole post or two dedicated to the glory that was the food on our trip. Get ready. I suggest you not read that post on an empty stomach either.

 

Lucerne, Switzerland

Lucerne, Switzerland is the place we stayed during our three days in Switzerland. We called it our “hub” and it is from here that we took trains to our other Swiss destinations. It was cheap and in the middle of where we wanted to go and so we camped out. And I do mean camped out as we called our hostel “Camp Swiss”. It was on a lake and there were trails and canoes and hiking and we felt that at any moment there would be campfires, smores and craft time like the camps of our youth. Alas, there was no arts and crafts time, but we still enjoyed ourselves. The photo below is our side of the lake.

This photo is on the other side of the lake and is the view from our side.

Lucerne was an absolutely beautiful city. The old part of the city was from the 5th century and part of it was surrounded by a wall. You know, the way those Europeans like to do it. Below is a photo of that wall with another couple of tourists.

We walked over the old bridge which was burned down in 1992 and part of it had to be rebuilt. Note it in the background of this lovely photo.

They saved the old burned paintings that had been on the bridge and put them back up as a “reminder of what Lucerne and the world lost that night”. Serious stuff, no?

Near this bridge was my favorite bridge of the trip (everybody has a favorite bridge of their trips, right?). The Death Bridge. For some reason that no one really seemed to know, this bridge was built with paintings of death coming to get various people. As you walk along and look up, it’s death coming for a priest; death coming for a mother; death coming for a baby. It was creepy and awesome.

This picture of Zak is my favorite because it looks like he is seeing something frightening that is coming for him that none of the rest of us can see.

We wandered all over the old part of Lucerne and saw this statue of a lion that was built to commemorate those fallen in battle. It was gigantic. There aren’t words to describe how large this was. It was built into a giant stone wall on the other side of a small pond next to a glacier park. The best part is that it’s hidden behind a row of restaurants and real estate offices. So, you’re walking in the newer part of the city and then you cut a right, walk down an alley by an electronics store and here you are.

Zak and I spent a day wandering around this beautiful place and then ended the day at a rooftop bar overlooking the old and new parts of the city with the mountains in the background. It was truly a sight to behold. This is the view from our table on the roof.

We learned that Lucerne has a population of 70,000 people and had some of the best food of our trip. One of our friends requested we take pictures of everything we ate and we did that with gusto. So prepare yourselves for an all food blog to come shortly. And prepare to be jealous. For now, you can just enjoy the lovely pictures of Lucerne.