The Escapades of Jam and Lam

Monday, October 22, 2012

Warsaw, Val D'Orcia and Bologna

We've been having problems with our camera again. Luckily we were still able to transfer pictures off of Laura's camera. One downside is that we've been using my camera as the primary camera, especially for food pics - so you won't get to see all the amazing food we ate in Italy until after we get back. Apologies again for the out of order pictures.

We're about a month behind on blog updates - we're currently in Spain!

We had and great little break in Poland visiting our good friend Ela (and her 1-year-old son Sebastian). We did a bit of sightseeing, but we mostly just took it easy, hung out, went on walks, wrote the last batch of of posts and did our laundry. Sebastian's grown a lot since we last saw him - he's getting quite good at walking!

The culinary highlight of Poland for us were the pierogi. Ela took us to a restaurant around the corner from her and we tried a whole bunch of different types of pierogi. My favorites were the ones stuffed with potato and cheese and the ones with sauerkraut.

From Poland we flew to Rome on discount airline WizzAir. The flight was super-cheap (under $100 per person). We visited Rome 3 years ago so we only stayed in one night on our way to Val D'Orcia.

Val D'Orcia is a picturesque area in southern Tuscany (and a UNESCO world heritage site). The most famous town in the area is probably Montepulciano. We stayed in a smaller town, Pienza, in an amazing airbnb (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/207961). From our kitchen window we had a hillside view of the entire countryside. We bought some wine, sausage, pecorino (which Pienza is famous for) and ate by our window several times during our stay. We also did a lot of walking (to burn off some of those calories). We were able to track our walk from Pienza to neighbouring San Quirico: http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/95311893. We happened to visit right after all the fields had been tilled, so there wasn't much more than dirt, but the views were still awesome. I can only imagine what it'd be like in the Spring when everything is green.

There was one restaurant in the town that we had read about before visiting "Latte di Luna". We ate there twice and the food was awesome. We particularly liked loved their homemade pasta, especially the pici ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pici). I'll post pictures when we get back.

We took the bus and train from Pienza to Bologna with a stopover in Siena. Bologna is much less touristy than most of the other parts of Italy we've visited, but it's still beautiful. Bologna is a university town (founded in 1088 and still going - it's the oldest university!).

We stayed in another airbnb. This time we were in a room in Eli's house. He had a couple other airbnb / couchsurfers at his place while we were there (a Russian girl, a guy from Australia, and a Canadian couple that took our room once we left). It was a fun experience - Eli was a great host. On the first night we arrived he was giving pasta making lessons to the other travellers and we joined in and sampled some of their squash ravioli (which was super-tasty).

We left Bologna on a brutal 4:50 am flight to Casablanca (it was so early that we stayed at the airport that night.

Sebastian and Jerome

Freshly tilled fields of Val D'Orcia.

Trevi fountains in Rome.

View of Bologna from the Asinelli tower

Siena's Piazza del Campo

Hillside view of Siena

Walking in the fields of Val D'Orcia

Jerome, Ela and Sebastian

The Garisenda tower has a lean of 3.2 m. We climbed the taller (and less meant tower next to it)

Jerome and Ela eating Polish pastries

Friday, September 28, 2012

Prague

We had a really amazing time in Prague. We arrived very early in the morning by the night train, and walked all through the city enjoying the morning light. We walked across Charles bridge and up the hill to the castle. We climbed the tower of St Vitus - all 500 steps - and had a wonderful view of the city.

We were in Prague from September 17th to the 20th which luckily coincided with a big international music festival in the city. We went to see Dvoraks Sabat Matar in St Vitus played by the Prague philharmonic orchestra and choir. It was very beautiful, the acoustics were amazing and we arrived early and so got great second row seats beside a 3 star general and we're pretty sure an arch bishop. The next day we got tickets to a concert at Dvorak Hall by the Prague Radio Orchestra with violin solos by Vilde Frang who is a 23 year old virtuoso. It was also really awesome!

We also went to an organ concert at a small church another night which was quite interesting as well.

Another highlight was the Lobkowicz palace which was a lovely little museum with a great audio guide. It's at the palace of the family, who were very famous in history. We got to see original Beethoven manuscripts of his 5th and Eroica symphonies which were both dedicated to prince Lobkowicz. They were quite amazing, and seeing Beethoven's own signature was quite something.

We visited Wencelas square and the old town square where there is a neat astrological clock. And just enjoyed wandering around the city.

On our last night before the night train to Warsaw, we had a very nice dinner which ended with the chef coming out and painting a dessert for us on a piece of glass.

The night train to Warsaw was quite nice and we awoke early to some very nice sunrise landscapes.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Budapest

We arrived in Budapest on an extremely rainy day around 11am, and found out we couldn't get into the apartment we were staying in until 8pm. So we parked our bags at the station and walked all around the city. We didn't take any pictures that day as it was quite miserable, but we discovered that there was a wine festival going on all week on Castle hill, we found out the Faust wine cellars we had been excited to visit happened to be closed for holidays the whole time we were in town, had a nice traditional Hungarian lunch complete with Goulash, and paprika chicken crepes, and figured out the less than intuitive subway system.

We also happened to find the Ruszwurm Cafe which was an epic little tea room and confectionary - possibly the oldest in Europe. We popped in at about 5pm as we were pretty wet and cold, and found the most amazing atmosphere and tea and cakes! The cakes are all tiny layered and made there, and in many different and tasty flavours. If you ever happen to be in Budapest, you really need to try a piece!

The next day proved to be much nicer, so we headed to the wine festival where we spent the whole afternoon tasting local and specialty wines and munching on traditional snacks. The two most notable wines were Egri Bikaver or Bulls blood which is a famous red wine, and Tokaji which is a sweet dessert wine.

Another day we spent going to the Central marketplace which was pretty interesting, the Cave Church, climbing the citadel hill, walking across the city and up Castle hill. We then rewarded ourselves with another tea and piece of cake from Ruszwurm cafe. We also explored the castle area and ended with a dinner by the side of the Danube.

One of the neat things we tried were a street food called Transylvanian chimney cakes. The stall we got them at made them by hand and cooked them over a wood stove. They were very tasty and warm and delicious. We actually saw them in Prague also, but they looked no where near as good. We found a neat tea shop where we played backgammon on a real board! We'd been playing quite a bit on Jerome's phone, so it was fun to roll some real dice.

Finally, on the last day we went to a place which Jerome had seen signs for all week, but I'd been chickening out about. It was a spa type place where you put your feet in water with these tiny little fish, who nibble on your feet to make them nice and smooth. Well that's what it feels like at least, and is extremely ticklish! Really they don't have teeth. It turned out to be quite fun as we laughed for pretty much the entire time, and was very memorable!

We ended the trip by taking the night trip to Prague. It was a bit hard to sleep, but was a really fun experience, as I'd never been on a night train before, or slept in a top bunk - but I managed to not fall off even when the train kept stopping and starting in the night.