Looking back July 12, 2011

We got back from holiday last Tuesday night, exactly a week ago, but it feels like it was a long time ago that I was walking through the Swiss countryside.

It was a successful trip: we based ourselves in one town, and travelled by trains, boats, and buses each day as we explored the
region. We’ve been before, so there were old haunts to revisit, and new places to become acquainted with. We went up into the mountains, walked through vineyards, and alongside lakes. And we even walked alongside a lake that was up in the mountains, which was a new one for me.

This photo shows the town we stayed in, and we paddled in this lake – it was icy cold. Any plans for swimming in it were quickly ditched!

There’s no avoiding the fact that Switzerland is an expensive place. We bought an all-inclusive transport pass, which meant we could get on buses, boats, and trains without having to buy a ticket. We had a tight budget for the rest of our expenses – breakfast was provided at our hotel, so we just had to buy lunch and dinner each day. For the former, we usually stocked up on picnic-style food from the many excellent supermarkets that are dotted around the place. For the latter, we usually went to a restaurant and had a main course only – typically costing at least £15, before you even factor in drinks. The budget did not stretch far enough to include a pudding! (And bear in mind we’re both vegetarian – menu prices for dishes featuring meat and fish were even higher.)

But don’t worry: we bought plenty of chocolate from the supermarket, and treated ourselves to ice creams when we were out and about. We worked our way through many of the Kinder products that are on sale over there too – most of them filled with creamy goodness and stored in the refrigerated section of shops. I also sampled the meringue in Meiringen, where meringue was invented – I can report back that it was worth the investment!

I kept track of our travelling. We used:

• 5 boats
• 27 trains
• 5 buses
• 2 cable cars

I have uploaded a selection of my photos now, and you’re welcome to take a look. I’m already thinking about where we can go next time we go back to Switzerland – I’d better start saving up.

Home July 6, 2011

Last night we flew home from Switzerland, where we’ve spent the past week on holiday.

It was strange, after spending a week in the Alps, to fly home to a country that is for the most part flat – I have been walking up and down hills non-stop for the past seven days, but the little town I live in is mostly hill-free.

We’ve had a wonderful time, but as ever, it’s great to be home. And particularly to be reunited with Daisy, who was shipped off to a cattery for the duration of our holiday.

Great to be back in my own bed, with my own pillows and a kitchen full of familiar food (as vegetarians, we don’t fare so well in Switzerland – I’ve had all the pizza and pasta and cheese I can face for this week). Of course I did bring back more than my fair share of Swiss chocolate, which I shall be enjoying over the days and weeks to come (I even brought some dark chocolate back to make brownies with).

I took more than 500 photos, so I’m now faced with the daunting task of organising and uploading them, and eventually making some sort of album. But all of that can wait.

This picture shows a covered bridge in the city of Thun. I love how the water roaring underneath it is so crystal clear. It flows out into the lake we stayed on – Lake Thun (known in Swiss-German as the Thunersee), where the water is so clear that you can see your feet when you paddle in it. Which of course we did.

Bruges March 21, 2011

On the second full day of our weekend in Belgium, we took a train to Bruges. Travel tip for if you are staying in Brussels: the train station there is big, confusing, and it’s hard to know where to go even to do something simple like buy train tickets. Allow plenty of time! Luckily for us we got our tickets and found our way to the platform in time, and it was very crowded. Bruges is incredibly popular with tourists, and the train was packed.

At first we didn’t get seats, and I was worried: my mother looks well but has big problems with her knees. I wanted to find her a seat but was struggling to work out how to ask the other people on the train if they’d be willing to let her have their place – my French is very rusty, and I don’t speak Flemish at all. Happily, a nice man (who was also standing) noticed she had a walking stick, and he asked the nearest young people to us to move to that she could sit down. Phew. I stood for most of the journey, but didn’t mind that.

When we arrived in Bruges we took a taxi from the station to the city centre, which turned out to be a good move as the taxi driver was very friendly and happy to play the role of tour guide as well as taxi driver, pointing out the sights and the best chocolate shops en route.

Bruges is pretty, really pretty. Lots of lovely old buildings have been beautifully preserved so that now, while they may be major shops, they still look like they always have. As we passed a clothes shop with nice things in the window, we were drawn inside and buying tops almost before we realised that it was in fact a branch of H&M. Not the most genuine of souvenirs to be buying, but never mind. (This photo I took shows H&M, and the old building it occupies.)

There were little Catholic shrines all over the place – mostly statuettes of Mary above doorways. Some of them were very old and looked the worse for wear, while others were new or recently cleaned.

There seemed to be even more chocolate shops in Bruges than in Brussels, and again we tried out a few of them. The sheer numbers of shops made it a bit overwhelming in terms of choosing which one to go in, and then which chocolates to buy. Such were the tough decisions we struggled with that afternoon!

Before heading back to the station, we stopped in a cafe for a cup of tea. It was a welcome surprise when the tea arrived with a little pot of some sort of custardy pudding – a very vanilla-scented pot of goodness. I’m all in favout of cafes over here importing that idea and serving free custard.

And that was it: we returned to Brussels by train, and then the next day took two more trains to get back to Nottingham. It all went by rather quickly, but it was nice to be abroad for a few days.

Brussels March 20, 2011

On our first day in Belgium we explored Brussels. My grandfather, who I never met, was from Brussels, and so I found it interesting to look around the city and wonder about which places he liked to visit. Because such a large area of the city dates back to the 15th century, much of it will not have changed since his days there in the 1920s.

The Grand Place is incredibly beautiful and has been so well preserved over its lifetime. Every way you turn, an ornate building looks back at you. I can never understand how these sorts of buildings got built, so many hundreds of years ago and without all the technology and tools we have at our disposal these days.

And there are chocolate shops all over the place! As you’d expect I sampled quite a few different kinds while we were away, and I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit that despite my Belgian heritage, I think I prefer Swiss chocolate… I do love the Belgian flaked truffles, and very much enjoyed eating those, but in terms of chocolate bars, I think the Swiss win. I liked seeing how in the supermarkets we visited, most of the bars for sale were Belgian in origin, just like how in Switzerland most of the chocolate they sell is Swiss. It amuses me that countries can be so close to each other geographically and yet they know what they like when it comes to chocolate.

We also made sure to sample the waffles – and again, it became clear that I’m not very Belgian after all. The waffles we had were nice enough, but I wasn’t wowed by them. However, the fries! The fries were excellent – they really know how to cook a nice chip!

As well as walking around the older part of town, we made a visit to a big art gallery to see some paintings my mother has liked since she was in her teens. I think she really liked seeing the originals in person.

Once we’d taken in all the culture and waffles we needed to sample, we went shopping – our hotel was close to a smart shopping district, and there were a few places I wanted to visit. First up was Zara Home. Have you been to one of those? We don’t have one near us, but I think there are a few in the UK. The stock is really nice, and it’s mostly reasonable. I found a quilt I liked but didn’t fancy trying to stuff it in my suitcase to get it home. Another visit was to Hema – a shop I’d read about a few months ago on Decor8 and had been keen to visit ever since. It’s an inexpensive and colourful place, and we bought a few cheap and cheerful goodies while we were there.

But the best shop we went into on our trip was Dille & Kamille, a kitchen, home and garden shop that was a pleasure to spend time in. I quietly took a few pictures while we were in there so you can see what it was like. Products were beautifully displayed and affordable – I wish we had this shop in the UK, it would be such a good place to buy presents for people (and yourself). It was a big place, and one corner sold lots of kinds of loose-leaf tea. Near that was a counter in front of lots of enormous jars of fresh herbs and spices – it seemed that you could take your own spice jars in to have them filled. There were all kinds of kitchen tools and linens, and candles in every colour imaginable. I think we visited three times in all, and goodness only knows how much time we spent pottering around the place.

I bought some sweets, some notebooks, and a bar of handmade soap. My mother returned, as she always does from any decent shop, with armfulls of candles and teas.

Back from Belgium March 17, 2011

So, I was in Belgium, and now I’m back. I got back on Sunday, and already that feels like a very long time ago, thanks to a couple of migraines and a difficult week at work (budget cuts, job cuts and other things that will be familiar to anyone working in the public sector these days). So before I forget all about what I got up to on my long weekend in Brussels, I wanted to write some of it down.

On Thursday morning, my mum and I caught a train to London, and from there we took the Eurostar to Brussels. I’d never been on the Eurostar before, and it was pretty simple and quick. I have to admit I am a little bit afraid of being in a train in a tunnel underneath the sea, but it all happens very quickly before you can start to worry about giant sea creatures and other tunnel-dwelling beings.

We headed straight for our hotel in a taxi (a word of warning if you’re planning a trip to Brussels: we found the taxis to be scruffy old things, and not the most appealing way of getting around). And our hotel was something a bit different: the Pantone Hotel. Our room was decorated mostly in white, with pops of purple on the walls. It was a nice place to stay (though the location is not central, it is actually very close to a decent shopping district), and the staff were all friendly and helpful. Pantone products are in evidence throughout the building: coloured sugar, coloured loo roll(!), painted bicycles, and there are plenty of interior design magazines to read in the reception area.

One of my favourite things was that each morning I walked out to a local deli to buy fresh almond croissants. They were delicious – we soon went from buying one each to buying an extra one and sharing it.

Lots more to tell you about next time!

The big adventure: shopping for fabric and craft supplies October 6, 2010

As we travelled through California, Oregon and Washington, there were a few opportunities to treat myself to fabrics, ribbons, craft papers, and so on. I’ve come home with a little stash of things that will keep me occupied over the winter months. I like the idea that things I bought on the other side of the world will be entertaining me long after the holiday is over.

In San Francisco, I bought ribbons. There is a shop there selling nothing but ribbons – it’s like the promised land or something. Megan told me about it before we even arrived, so I had been looking forward to it for quite a while. It was much bigger than you might expect a ribbon-only shop to be, and I was able to spend quite a bit of time in there.

In Oregon, I bought a little bit of fabric, and in Seattle I bought a little bit more. I also spent some time (and money) in Impress Rubber Stamps, which is a little crafting shop that somehow carries an enormous range of stuff. I could spend hours in there (perhaps I did, I don’t know).

I like paper crafts, but – how can I put this tactfully? – I find that a lot of the places that sell stamps, papers, etc tend to err on the side of tacky… with too much emphasis on hearts and soppy messages and things saying ‘best mum ever’ and those kits for making your own cards that come with everything pre-cut and pre-chosen, so that there’s no need for the person making them to possess even an ounce of creativity or imagination… I’d better stop there before I get cross, and just admit that I’m a bit of a snob about these things. Anyway, Impress is NOT like that – they have beautiful things, and the sample projects that are scattered around the shop are as inspiring as any I’ve seen.

The big adventure: from San Francisco to Seattle October 1, 2010

We hit the road on a Monday morning, and San Francisco looked sparkly in the sunshine. I found it very exciting to start our road trip with a drive over the Golden Gate Bridge – it seemed like the perfect way to start an adventure. First up was Muir Woods, somewhere I was very keen to visit. It lived up to my expectations, and I really enjoyed the hike we took through the tallest trees I’ve ever been near.

I get travel sick – pretty frequently, and sometimes it can make me feel very ill indeed. A road trip is perhaps not the best holiday for someone who suffers from motion sickness, and so I’d done as much as I could to stave off the dreaded nausea. I had car sickness medicine, boiled sweets, and salty snacks to nibble on.

For the most part I was OK, which I’m counting as an enormous victory. There was one day in particular where I struggled though: we were driving for several hours along a road that hugged the curves of a mountainous stretch of forest. It was such a beautiful place, but the terrain really was not on my side. A couple of times we had to stop and pull over so that I could have some respite. The first time, I staggered as I tried to get out of the car, and my limbs felt like jelly. I’m told I was also a certain shade of green. But once we cleared that stretch of road, I improved very quickly and things were mostly good from then on.

However, I seem to have developed somewhat of a Pavlovian response to the travel sickness medicine. The one I use is one you take before you set out. You can swallow it with water, or you can just chew it. Most of the time I just chew it – and so now I am finding that the taste of the tablet is enough to make me feel a bit sick. I’ll be taking it with water from now on!

Anyway, more about what we saw. I can’t do it justice, but if you were to follow the route we took, you’d find that it’s a region packed with nature at its very best. We saw HUGE forests, long stretches of spectacular coastline with deserted beaches (whenever we stopped to visit a beach, we nearly always had it all to ourselves), tidepools, sand dunes that stretch as far as you can see, Bigfoot, elk, whales, and all sorts of other lovely things. Oh, and breweries! We visited quite a few of those, and I don’t think they ever disappointed us.

The big adventure: San Francisco September 20, 2010

We began our holiday in San Francisco, a city we’d visited before, but long ago (when we were young!), when our budget meant we had to stay in a youth hostel and live on whatever we could cook in the hostel’s little kitchen. This time the budget stretched to a hotel, and so things were a lot more comfortable.

In many ways San Francisco is a beautiful city, but it’s also one with a lot of deprivation. There seem to be big areas that are best avoided, and while that’s true of any city, San Francisco’s no-go zones seem to be on a rather larger scale than I’m used to.

We travelled around by bus, and I did not always feel safe – I certainly wouldn’t have felt safe taking a bus by myself there (and I speak as a member of a public transport using, car-free household). The area around our hotel was not the best – passing through it dampened our spirits a little every time we ventured out.

On the other hand, the nice neighbourhoods are VERY nice, and they have pretty views and lovely shops and places to eat. And there are wonderful public parks – Golden Gate Park is an inspiring place, with a huge range of scenery and activities. We spent a day there exploring the California Academy of Sciences, which is a modern and envrionmentally-conscious museum. They have a light and bright building containing two domes. One houses their planetarium (FANTASTIC!), and the other houses a tropical environment containing birds and butterflies (also fantastic!). And underneath all this is an aquarium (fish!). It’s a great place – even the catering facilities are worth going to. If you go, my advice would be that it’s warm in there: the tropical dome feels tropical, and so you need to have layers on, and ideally a fan with you.

We headed straight from the park to the Bi-Rite Creamery, an ice cream shop so in demand that people (us included) queue round the block for a taste.

Our wait was 40 minutes, and while I hope I don’t have to queue that long for ice cream again, I really didn’t mind. I had salted caramel ice cream, and it was lovely. (Later on the trip I tried a second salted caramel ice cream at Molly Moon’s in Seattle, where I didn’t have to queue at all. I wonder if this is a flavour we’ll see in the UK soon?)

Resurfacing September 19, 2010

The recent radio silence round these parts is due to the fact that we’ve been off on our holidays, spending the past two weeks pottering around far from home. We headed west to San Francisco, then travelled by road up to Seattle with our friends Megan and Scott, where we spent a few days before flying back home. It feels like we’ve been away a really long time, but in a good way.

Now we’re back and the usual real-life inconveniences are starting to make their presence felt – returning to work, a larger than ever pile of laundry, and so on. But it was such a great holiday, so hopefully it will carry us through for a while. And it’s nice to be home – the very first thing I did was top up all the birdfeeders, and all weekend I’ve been watching to see if the goldfinches have noticed. I’ve also been enjoying cups of tea, crumpets, Radios 4 and 6, and most of all, being reunited with our little cat, Daisy.

I took hundreds of photos, and I’m hoping they will help me to remember all the things we saw and places we visited. Megan’s already written about the tour we took of a chocolate factory, so I’ll let you go and read that while I catch up with my laundry.

Seeing stars August 10, 2010

We’ve been away at the coast for a few days, in Southwold. Have you ever been there? It’s a sweet little seaside town in Suffolk, which has avoided much of the tackiness that clings to many coastal resorts. Mostly this comes down to money: it’s the sort of place where wealthy Londoners have second homes (and where the beach huts cost more than many people’s first homes). It’s also the sort of place where our last Prime Minster went on holiday.

I enjoyed pottering around the shops – the numbers of wealthy tourists passing through mean the town can support shops that wouldn’t survive in other towns of the same size. If you like Cath Kidston goodies, this is the place to be. There are a couple of charity shops but I couldn’t find anything worth having in them – I suspect the people of Southwold make do and mend rather than decluttering their homes.

One of the highlights of the trip was the night sky: we live in a town, and so when the sun sets, not that many stars come out. But in Southwold, you could actually see the Milky Way. And luckily for us, our visit coincided with the Perseids meteor shower. We headed out around 11pm on Sunday night armed with a little map of the sky, and walked around until we found somewhere far enough from the streetlights to get a good look. The perseids are right above you, and so it wasn’t long before our necks were aching. Ideally, you’d be lying down to see them – we tried lying on a bench but as night was falling, everything was starting to get a bit damp!

While we scanned the skies looking for meteors, we saw a few other goodies: the afore-mentioned Milky Way, and perhaps half a dozen satellites. Finally, I saw one: a bright streak across the sky, which disappeared very quickly. I saw a second one a bit later, but the best one we saw was back at the house, standing on the porch – a really bright meteor shot across the sky above us.

The Perseid meteor shower peaks this week, and so there is still time to see them if we get another clear night.  Thursday night sounds like a good time to go out and take a look – there’s a BBC guide to whereabouts in the night sky to look here. But don’t hurt your neck!