Tag: travel

Buongiorno Milano!

For all our Italy enthusiasm over the years, it feels weird to admit we’d never been to Milan before November 2022.

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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

…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.


black bean soup with croutons and eggplant parmigiana

stinco, a braised Haxe, accompanied by polenta

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.


apple cake in the background; a pear braised in red wine in the foreground

We arrived at al Bacco for lunch just as they were opening, and the hostess greeted every single party (except us) with a hug and a smooch initially, and then later chef emerged from the kitchen all smiles and hugs and smooches too. Clearly we’d stumbled upon a local regulars’ joint. It was cool to observe.

Duomo

Il Duomo

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.

Oops, forgot we went to Alsace

Blame it on Covid-Stir-Craziness, maybe. But back in…uh, March 2022 we drove across Germany to scope out some wines (some famous, some recommendations) and landscapes and stuff. It was a short trip — just a four day weekend — but we covered a fair amount of ground: from Regensburg to Zurich (just a pitstop to visit a pal), from there to Colmar (our home base), and back to Regensburg with a stop in Heidelberg (another pal to visit). Continue reading Oops, forgot we went to Alsace

¡Vivan las Vacaciones! Parte Uno

After Corona largely reined our intercontinental travel plans over most of the last two years, we had kind of a glut there at the end of the 2021. We spent some time in November with Sarah’s family in KCMO (she longer than I, due to work BS), and then with my parents in Puerto Vallarta and some (kinda) new friends in Mexico City in December. So yeah, two trips to North America inside of two months. Under pandemic conditions. Couple of brain swabs. Plenty of document collection. Lots of umpteen-hour FFP2 mask sessions. It all went smoothly — it was just at the beginning of the Great Omicron Flight Cancellation Crisis of 2021-22.

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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Continue reading ¡Vivan las Vacaciones! Parte Uno

Part 2 of the LONG AWAITED TRAVEL

Perhaps you saw our exuberance on the first of this two-parter.

After finishing up Mittagessen in…um…Essen1, 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:

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!

  1. Forgive me. [↩]
  2. It is embarrassing how long it took us to get the pun on the name. [↩]
  3. Note to future me: don’t get more than a “medium” anything. [↩]

OMG TRAVEL AGAIN FINALLY

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.1 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?2 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.

  1. I bet they’ve never heard that joke before. [↩]
  2. Spoiler: they are! [↩]

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 3: Schwarzwald

After a four-hour drive down Germany’s western border with France and a hop through the Schwarzwald towards Bonndorf…im Schwarzwald, we arrived at the final Ferienwohnung destination for this trip. The arrival was not without its complications, however; TWO of the little towns off through which we were supposed to drive on the last leg of the drive were closed to through traffic, causing us to scramble and miss our predicted arrival time by an hour. Fortunately, we kept the landlady in the loop and she was accommodating. Ha. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 3: Schwarzwald

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 2: Rheingau

We were originally going to head from Freinsheim across the South of France towards its Atlantic coast, but…Covid-19 happened.

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. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 2: Rheingau

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 1: Freinsheim, Bad Dürkheim, and Wiesbaden

The annual Kulinarische Weinwanderung in Freinsheim didn’t happen this year (but you can relive its glory through our write-ups here, here, here, here, and here if you like).

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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: Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 1: Freinsheim, Bad Dürkheim, and Wiesbaden

Fun things to do around Puerto Vallarta: Roast Your Own Coffee

In December 2019, we spent a couple weeks at one of our usual vacation destinations. But we did a ton of new stuff.  See all our posts tagged with Puerto Vallarta.

Background

We are fully aware of our coffee dependency — never moreso than while hopping time zones. So we decided to Learn the Process of Coffee Roasting via this AirBnB Experience, which popped up while searching for things to do in the area. We were looking to AirBnB for inspiration after our good buddy Kristin’s recommendation to take the Pasteis de Nata baking class during our trip to Porto.

Getting There

Daniel’s coffee shop, La Cabra y La Mata, is not in Puerto Vallarta. It’s not even in Jalisco. But it’s less than an hour away by bus in Bucerías, a sleepy resort town north of Nuevo Vallarta with long stretches of beach.

We started our journey with a walk to the airport — about 20 minutes from our home base in PV — and caught a bus going towards Bucerías, or maybe La Cruz de Huanacaxtle or Sayulita. Bus fare was $20 MXN per person each way, payable in cash to the driver upon boarding and stating our destination. That works out to around a dollar or euro, depending on the exchange rate. We monitored our progress on the bus via GPS and just got out at a stop that seemed close enough.

The Shop

Coordinates: 20.75515,-105.33859

Continue reading Fun things to do around Puerto Vallarta: Roast Your Own Coffee

Parte 3: Modena and Parma

This is the next installment of our road trip around Northern Italy in September 2019. You can catch up on

Modena and Parma were undiscovered country for us. We’d been to Bologna before (ten years ago!). We’d heard good things about Emilia-Romagna and Italian cuisine from various sources — including our waiter at Colline Emiliane on our trip to Rome. But for all the famous foody aspects of this bit of Italy (balsamico, parmesan cheese, prosciutto), we’d never actually been. Well, why the heck not? We loved both these cities.

Continue reading Parte 3: Modena and Parma