Leah & Julian in The World

Church in Florence

Florence is the city that is credited with starting the Renaissance, and produced famous artists including Michelangelo and Leondardo.  Architecturally it is completely different from Rome.  Many of the building facades are flat, but heavily decorated with painted or mosaic features.

We were actually pretty bad tourists in Florence.

I think we’d both reached saturation point as far as churches, museums and art galleries go, so we laid low for most of our time there.  We also missed our opportunity to see Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia (no tickets left) and see some of the Renaissance art in the Uffizi Gallery (again, no tickets available).

We believe he was a revolutionary?

So, I don’t think we’re qualified to really pass judgment on Florence.  Our experience there was good, but not great.

Osteria De'Golosi

Of course, I can’t let a post go by without mentioning food!  We enjoyed some excellent traditional tuscan fare at Osteria De’Golosi.  We’re creatures of habit, so we went twice.  First time J had roasted cinta pork and I had pasta stuffed with pears and cheese (no photo sorry!).  Second time we both had tuscan specialities – I had chicken with fresh vegetables, and J had stuffed calamari with tomato sauce.  Delicious!

J's stuffed squid

Trattoria der Pallaro

We heard about this Trattoria through the ever present and reliable Rick Steves’ Best of Europe guidebook.  There is no menu – you eat (or don’t) whatever they put in front of you.  Although, based on some reviews on Trip Advisor, the menu doesn’t change all that often.

First up is an antipasto course.  Raw fennel in olive oil (not a huge fennel fan), green olives, fava beans in an awesome tomatoey gravy, the world’s best proscuitto and pretty damn good salami and of course, crusty bread.  Shortly after we were brought this, they also brought out some fried risotto balls and some other fried patty, which were very tasty but escaped the camera.

Antipasto!

Next up was the pasta course – a simple red tomato sauce, heavy on the parmesan (the way we like it!).

Pasta pasta

As if this wasn’t enough, the main was next.  Roast veal, broad beans with a tasty sauce, mozzarella balls and homemade potato chips.

Main course

Finally, dessert.  Apricot flan/tart with a shot of mandarin juice!

It counts as a serve of fruit right?

Phew.  All this food was only 25euros per person, including house wine and mineral water.

Trattoria der Pallaro is located at Largo der Pallaro 15, near Campo de’ Fiori.

We had some fantastic food while we were in Greece.  In fact, we enjoyed one restaurant in Santorini so much we went back 3 times!  The third time, we got free lemon tart – delicious!  If you’re ever in Santorini (which I highly recommend!) try Aktaion in Firostefani.

Aktaion Restaurant - the best!

I’ve always been a fan of Greek salads, and the ones in Greece, obviously, are the best.  A thick hunk of marinated feta perched atop kalamata olives, cucumber, fantastic tomatoes, green capsicum and salad onions, generously drizzled with olive oil.

Greek salad

We tried some of the regional specialties as well, including fava bean balls, Santorini salad (fish instead of feta), zucchini pie, moussaka, omelette and deep fried fava, tomato, mint and onion fritters.  Julian was even brave enough to try Greek coffee, which apparently has the texture of dirt or sand…

Deep fried tomato (with fava, mint and onion)

Santorini salad (topped with fish)

Fava balls (with smoked mackerel)

Sea Bream

From here, I’m hoping our culinary experience will improve even more – we’re off to Rome today!

Greek coffee

Thought I’d take a quick moment to review a few restaurants we’ve tried in Berlin.

First up is Mr Hai & Friends, one of 3 restaurants owned by Mr Hai.  It’s a Vietnamese restaurant that is just around the corner from our hotel.  We ventured there our first night as we both were in desperate need of some vegetables.

Mr Hai & Friends

Ordering in a foreign country can be quite overwhelming, especially when you go somewhere that isn’t aimed at tourists.  There was no English translation for the menu, and although we’ve picked up a fair few German words, it was still a bit off a mystery.  Fortunately, we’re reasonably adventurous eaters, so we just took our chances.  And that my friends is how I first ate frogs legs.  Turns out “frosch” is German for frog, and they are considered seafood for Mr Hai’s purposes.  For the record, they were delicious, and quite reasonably priced at €15 for the dish.

There’s plenty more (non-froggy) items on the menu, and the food is delicious and quite reasonable.  We liked it so much we went back for lunch the next day.

Stylish Turkish

The second place I’m reviewing is Hasir, which is a Turkish restaurant near Hackescher Markt.  This came recommended by Rick Steve’s, and is a pretty posh place.  Fortunately, the prices are very reasonable.  We made up for our vegetarian the other night with meat meat and more meat!  It was  delicious, reasonably priced and had a great atmosphere – that’s the trifecta in my book!

My camera informs me that it is day 56 – that’s the halfway point of our trip!  In some ways it seems to have flown by, in others it seems that we have been away forever.

Day 56 saw us awake on the overnight train from Zurich to Vienna.  We departed Zurich at 22:40 and arrived in Vienna just after 09:00, managing to get some sleep on the hard beds.  We shared the tiny couchette with an lovely older Swiss couple.  Fortunately we booked a 4-person couchette – the 6-person one is the same size, they just stick another two beds above the four!

On the EuroNight Train

We celebrated the halfway point in Vienna at Das Biedermeiercafé-Restaurant.   Very reasonable prices, a friendly host, good local wine and excellent meals – no wonder it’s a Michelin-recommended restaurant.

Fiaker - beef goulash with fried egg, sausage and dumpling

To end this post, I thought I’d share ten of the things we can’t live without in Europe:

1 – Eurail pass, timetable and map
2 – Combination lock on my daypack
3 – Technology (camera, laptop, unsecure wireless connections and tripadvisor.com)
4 – Laundry detergent in a tube
5 – Jeans
6 – Wizard Mastercard (no annual fee, 55 days interest free, free cash withdrawals, good exchange rate and no currency conversion fee!)
7 – Rick Steves’ Best of Europe guidebook
8 – Bi- and tri-lingual Europeans
9 – Glasses (to see sights and read signs from as far away as possible when carrying a backpack!)
10- Our blog readers. Thank YOU

Schweinwürstl, wiener würstl und sauerkraut.

Munich is stereotypical Germany – beer gardens and the associated foodstuffs, costumes and music.  The Hofbräuhaus is the biggest beer hall in the centre of Munich.  It is where Hitler first spoke to a large crowd.  The hall itself greets you like a beer and sweat sauna, so we dined in the slightly less crowded beer garden.  Two litres of beer, eight pork sausages, sauerkraut and dampfnudel later, we left feeling quite satisfied indeed.

Well it’s not all about the beer.  The Deutsches Museum is perhaps the best science and technology (certainly the best I’ve seen) museum in the universe!  We spent about three hours here and only covered a small part of the 10 miles of exhibits that present information of probably a senior high school level.  The museum contains real, working, life-size exhibits of absolutely everything related to science.  You can make paper, build a bridge, perform a titration, press a tablet, generate electricity, gaze for a star and so on and so on.  We did spend some time at the pharmacology exhibit (hey, it was one of the few bilingual ones) which had extremely well presented displays including a giant cell you could walk into.

There are two types of meat in Germany – pork, and processed pork.  We dined at our first European Michelin ‘gastro-pub,’ just a light lunch (salad with pork) but the ingredients were quality and fresh.  So, to get away from the schweinefleisch, we ate Afghani from a little restaurant below our accommodation.  Probably the most similar food would be Turkish, but definitely different – lots of aromatic spices.

Now that's a handle.

Leah wants me to write about the shower in our room – it’s just there next to the bed, no ensuite – just a shower in the room.  But alas, I won’t say anymore because it’s not that exciting for you to read about.  Small things…

The shower.

New Town Hall, Munich

For South Park fans...

Madenburg

After picking up our C-Class Kompressor (thanks for the complimentary upgrade, EC) from Frankfurt train station, we headed 1.5 hours south to Landau (one hour if you like the fast lane of the autobahn).  In Landau we met with ‘tour guide’ Andy (and his daughter Maira) who just happened to stay with my family in Brisbane 19 years ago.  We were provided with a superb visual and informative tour of the Palatinate region, including: the Mediterranean-like vineyards,  Madenburg (castle), Trifels Castle, authentic German cuisine, Schreber Gardens, Landau itself and a quick trip to France…

Landau is one of the warmer places in Germany.  It has a Mediterranean climate in the summer at least; according to Andy it is ‘bloody cold’ in winter.  It was here we felt spring had really begun and also the first time we could dry clothes outside under the sun!  Some of Landau and the surrounding villages were destroyed in WWII but many old, beautiful red and yellow sandstone buildings remain.

View from Burg Trifels

From Landau it is a short drive to a (insert collective noun for castles here) of castles.  We walked through the woods up to two of these, Madenburg and Burg Trifels.  The view from both was, although hazy, spectacular of the little terracotta coloured villages nestled in the woods or vineyards below.  Burg Trifels (built 11th C on the stone apex of a 500m high mountain) is again red sandstone and is a complete castle – rebuilt by the Nazis during WWII and restored again recently.  It is here that King Richard I (depicted as the good king in Robin Hood) was captured in 1193 as he was returning from the crusades.

Inside Burg Trifels

Our culinary horizons were broadened by Andy.  We sampled the regional specialties of beer, wine and food.  The region is known for its wine, both red (dornfelder) and white (riesling, grauburgunder) and there is an annual festival each autumn.  As for food, well we don’t have to eat for the rest of the week now.  For dinner, I ordered a sample plate of local food which included bratwurst, sauerkraut, saumagen (pork and potato in a real pig’s stomach) and a leberknoedel (liver ‘meat-ball’).  It was actually all very delicious, hearty food.  We also ate many cheeses, wursts, bread, cold meats and of course Oster ei.  Lunch the following day was an ‘Aussie’ BBQ of corn, pork sausages and pork steaks, held at Andy’s Schrebergarten.

Meat, meat and more meat.

Live in a flat without a garden? Why not buy a Schrebergarten?

I mustn’t forget the short excursion to France.  Wissembourg town is only 30 minutes drive from Landau, just after you pass through the no-longer-used border checkpoint.  As you enter, everything quickly becomes French; the town offers a more relaxed café atmosphere and plenty of patisseries!

Maira, Andy and Leah in Landau